She reached further, her fingertips a skin cell from grasping the container, from knocking it all over him. Could she do that, if that was her only choice?
But then he struck.
His foot slammed into her left knee, side on, pressure beyond the knee brace’s design, and she tumbled to the metal platform. Her leg lit up from within, a popping explosion burning every nerve ending, radiating out in waves of sweat and nausea. He twisted away from her, stood the container on the gangway while he got back onto his knees.
He picked it up and tipped it over the water.
Lily, I’m coming. Eva dragged herself upright. She’d do this for her baby girl. Straining against the effort, the agony, a shuffling half step, another.
“You’re going to do it, do it properly.” Eva pushed the flask the opposite way to Charles’ expectation, down through his gloved hands, down until the tumult beneath their feet that swallowed it.
“What did you do?” He looked horrified, as though he’d been trying to stop her from this madness.
“Where’s my daughter?” she screamed.
“Half would have been enough.” Charles stared at the rushing water that had devoured the flask.
“You got what you wanted now tell me where she is.” He leapt up and ran out of the pump room. “Where is she?” The slamming door cut off Eva’s scream.
She limped fast down the corridor, banging at the security room. Luke’s words were lost between his space and hers, deadened to nothing by the locked door. She typed a note on his phone, maximised it and held it up to the window. ‘Area jammed, water poisoned, look for an isolation switch, turn supply off, divert it.’
Luke moved to the control panels, scanning the calligraphied scrawls that meant nothing to her but thankfully something recognisable to him. Could he really be The Society?
She could still hear the rushing water as it made its way through the pipes below them in its steady swan dive beneath the city. Why wasn’t it shutting down? Addison’s bumpf had said it clearly enough, a sabotage-proof system. The flask was definitely big enough to trigger the safeguard. Why hadn’t it detected it and stopped the flow?
It was taking too long. How many thousands of litres had already sluiced through, picking up the agent and carrying it into the pipe tributaries that served a million people? And Charles, the only way she had to find Lily, was getting away.
Eva pocketed Luke’s phone and limped out of the building, the door crashing closed behind her.
Charles was nowhere.
What could she do?
She turned a slow circle in the darkness, the buildings around her were no help. All she imagined was the men, women and children in them already dying. Lily. She half-dragged in a breath that was more sob. She wouldn’t fall apart, she was the only warning, the only half-chance the people had.
Maybe half a chance might be enough.
They’d come from the south, her and Luke, when she’d believed he was on her side, but she didn’t think there was anything there that would help her now. To the north then, out of the wider junction into narrow passageways, limp-running on though she wanted to lie down and scream.
The passageway led into a tiny square where she still couldn’t see what she needed. Out of it on the opposite side, around the next corner, she barged into a moving obstacle.
He let loose a guttural stream that sounded like the swear words she might have muttered if someone had run into her.
“Sorry, pardon monsieur,” she remembered the French for excuse me.
The smile on his too close face was nothing she wanted to see. She stepped away from him, turning carefully.
“Excuse me.” She stepped to go past him, but he grabbed her.
“Why you running? We have lots of time.”
She’d left her scarf in her hiding place in the pump room, stupid, stupid, her blonde hair a beacon, Westerner here.
“You need to go home, the water is mal. L’eau is mal,” Eva mimed throwing up but he was only amused by her theatrics. She clutched her throat, mimed choking. Why wouldn’t he understand? “You will die, mourir, everyone,” she gestured around her. “Mourir. Vite. Family.”
“Pretty.” He stepped closer, a tightening noose.
“Get away from me.”
He grabbed a handful of her hair, winding his fingers into it in an obscenely personal attack, pulling her closer to him.
“When I get what I want.”
55
Walk away, Charles should just walk away, trust that his agent would do what he knew it would.
But Nancy deserved better. Hell, so did he. What he didn’t deserve was to be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life, always running, scrambling to stay one step ahead of an unknowable assassin who would come at him in the shape of a car, a slip in a wet shower, a tangy taste in his coffee to go.
Charles needed Jed to understand why he’d done it, how else could he avenge Nancy?
The Hotel Adina looked like a stock photo, an oasis of calm beyond the traffic and hubbub of surrounding crowds. A good message reinforcement holding a summit featuring advanced water technology where a desert city could display a run of fountains leading to the grand entrance.
He’d expected security to be tight inside the hotel, but they’d thrown a ring of muscle around it that stopped him before he got past the oasis frontage.
“Name.” The man wasn’t a Mr Universe but he was somehow more intimidating for that. And the question was tricky, which name should Charles use?
“Dr Charles Buchanan.” On his rush down there he’d practised, but he couldn’t drop his royal family accent so easily, he’d been well-trained. “I’m the relief physician for President Jed Carson.” Better.
“Dr Charles Buchanan on the list?” The guard said it as though he was addressing Charles, but his lapel mic, earpiece, whichever piece of hidden technology picked up his question, relayed the answer Charles expected. “You’re not on the list, Sir.”
“Yeah, I’m never on
