Another tug and Mark fell to the floor. He stared up at his boss, astounded and bewildered by what was happening. Smith slumped against the wall, a smirk on his bloody face. Mark went to lunge again, but this time Adams caught him before he could make contact. It was over; his interview, and probably his job too. He could see the work camp in the distance waiting for him. Charlie Smith had beaten him again.
When he came back to his senses he was on the other side of the mirror and Adams was yelling at him.
“What the hell was that? I asked if you wanted to interrogate him, not smash his face in!” Adams' face was redder than usual, the veins at his temples bulging dangerously.
“He said I forced Rachel.”
“I don't care if he said you like wearing your mother's underwear and calling yourself Sheila. You're the one in charge. You've got to keep control. Let me see your hands.”
Reluctantly, Mark held them out. They were bloody and cut, much like Smith's face.
“Shit, Bellamy. Go get those cleaned up.”
“What about the prisoner?”
“I think it's best I deal with the prisoner on my own from now on. Go, we've still got work to do before they transport him.”
Mark pressed his hands together, shame being quickly overshadowed by his growing anger. The pain in his knuckles felt good, and he craved more.
* * *
Charlie's face hurt. He hoisted himself off the floor and, with difficulty, got back in his chair. He licked at the cut on his lip. The pain had helped wake him up, although he'd regret the fight in a couple of hours. Hours? How many had passed since his arrest? One? Two? It wouldn't be long now. He needed to stay focussed. The moment would come, and he had to be ready.
The cell door buzzed open again, but this time it was just Adams. He took in Charlie's wounds with a shake of his head. The agent had an omnipotence about him that made Charlie less sure of himself.
“What did you take off him?”
Charlie smiled at the agent. “Only half a packet of mints. I'll share them if you like.” He put the mints on the table. He'd taken them out of Mark's pocket when the second blow came. It hadn't been the payoff he was hoping for, but at least he had something to take the taste of blood out of his mouth.
“Was it worth it?”
“It would have been if he'd had something useful. Tetchy son of a bitch, isn't he?”
“I imagine you calling him a rapist put you off to a bad start.”
“Well, there is that. Although it wasn't like Rachel could turn him down, given his position in the world.” He pushed a mint between his lips.
“Maybe not. Maybe that's a problem for her. Maybe she holds such a grudge at being forced into a relationship with a cop she feels the need to punish someone—like working girls who service S'aven's boys in blue.”
Charlie flexed his jaw. Adams was trying to get a rise out of him, and he wasn't in the mood to play. “How long before the Institute arrive?”
“They'll be here soon enough. If you tell me what happened with the girls, I'll speak to them. Make them go easy on you.”
Charlie snorted. “Does that line ever work?”
“If they knew you cooperated—”
“They will still poke at me until all my useful brain tissue has been cut away.”
“That's just what they want you to think.”
Charlie's humour failed him. He stared at the agent and wondered if the guy really believed what he was saying. “Listen, I've spent long enough in Institute hospitality. I know exactly what happens to those of us unfortunate enough to be taken alive.”
Adams looked genuinely surprised. “You were in an Institute laboratory?”
“Didn't they tell you? Me and my brother are the ones that got away. We're the big blemish in their otherwise perfect genocide. Surely they put all that in your file?” He sucked hard on the mint, trying to rid himself of the bitter memories. “I guess they don't tell their associate agents everything. Makes you wonder what else they've forgotten to mention, doesn't it?”
“Why don't you fill me in?”
“Because I'd be doing your job for you, and I can't tolerate laziness in the public sector.” Charlie's face was really starting to hurt now. “Why are you so interested? None of this stuff is ever going to see the light of day. Even putting it in a file could get you noticed by the wrong people.”
“The truth is important to me.”
“A cop that wants the truth. You're an endangered species, Agent. Almost as endangered as me.” Charlie toyed with the packet of mints again. “What will you do with it?”
“With what?”
“The truth.”
Adams rapped his knuckles on the desk. An understanding was developing between them, even if neither of them acknowledged it. “I don't know. I suppose it depends what the truth is.”
“And what are you willing to sacrifice?”
Adams didn't say anything, but Charlie got the feeling the answer was “a lot.” Adams wasn't that complicated a character. He was clearly a good man, good at his job too, but the limitations of the work had worn him down. There was no wedding ring, but the way he fiddled with his ring finger suggested there had been. His suit had once been expensive but was now old and worn. Maybe he couldn't afford a replacement, or maybe he just didn't have the time to go shopping. Charlie could see why investigating this case was so important to him. Even if it didn't make any difference, the truth was all Adams had left.
“If the Institute take me, I'll be going up north. My brother and Rachel will come after me. Maybe they'll rescue me, maybe we'll all die, but there is one thing I know for certain: your killer will still be on the loose.”
“I've read your file, Mr Smith. Even if it isn't you, I'll still feel better about you being behind bars.”
“Really? I'm that bad? And here was me thinking we were making friends.”
“I saw what you did to the colonel.”
Charlie rolled his eyes. Yes, he and John had taken down the old colonel, but that was different. That was history. “He didn't suffer anywhere near what he deserved. If anything, it was a mercy killing.” Charlie screwed his hands together, gauging how much he should reveal. “Colonel Moore was in charge of our incarceration back at the laboratory we were being held in when we were kids. He authorised the mass murder of everyone associated with our project. Inmates, doctors, he even shot the fucking janitor. We shot him, like he shot them, but we let him stay in bed instead of marching him out into the snow.”
“So what did your wife do that was so bad? I read her autopsy, she suffered for hours.”
Charlie ground his teeth. Adams wasn't playing fair.
“Any man that can do that to a woman—”
Charlie felt his control snap. “Look at your file again, Agent! Tell me exactly how I managed to kill my wife while stabbing myself three times in the back, causing irreparable nerve damage.” He thumped his leg in case his point wasn't clear enough. “And then, despite being unable to move, unconscious, and close to death, I set a fire in the hallway that took out half my home. And then tell me, while all this was happening, what I did to my little girl.”
Now he had Adams' attention. The agent straightened in his chair. His heavy body tensed. He paused, his eyes scanning over Charlie, and when he spoke, his voice was cold, almost afraid. “What girl?”
“Lilly. My girl. My daughter, Lilly Smith. She was at home that day too. Nobody found her, nobody reported her missing or found her body in the house.” Charlie licked his lip. It had stopped bleeding, and he had to resist the urge to bite it.
“What happened to her?”
“What do you think happened to her? She was taken.” Charlie glanced away. If they got him to the laboratory he would never find out what really happened to her. She had been eradicated from the records already. Maybe telling Adams could change things.
“By who?”
“By the same people that stabbed me. The same people that killed my Sarah.
The same people that will do anything to get Reachers off the streets and into their laboratories.”
“You expect me to believe there's a conspiracy against you?”
“Like I said before, I don't expect you to believe anything,” Charlie said, stretching his legs out. There was something about having the truth down on record—even if it was a record destined for the incinerator—that appealed to him. If this was it for him, then, at least for a while, there would be a document with his real testimony recorded somewhere, with his daughter's name there for someone else to find.
“You got kids, Agent?”
“Two. They live with their mother. The job doesn't make allowances for family.”
Charlie nodded. “This world doesn't make allowances for a Reacher family. We tried to keep her safe, but she was never safe. You see, we made a mistake. We settled down, thinking we could have a normal life for her. It was only for a while, but it was long enough. Long enough for them to find us. Lilly was a good girl, looked just like her mother. She was so quiet too, like she knew if she made too much fuss she'd draw attention to herself. Maybe that's how we all are. Maybe it's part of our nature to stay hidden and try to survive.”
Adams was silent, and this time Charlie mimicked him, watching as the planted seed of information started to grow inside the agent's head.
5
Jess O'Connor's body was bagged and tagged within half an hour of her being discovered. Even the mortician got to her before rigor mortis. Things moved quickly when the deceased's estate was still flush and there were executors pushing for a death certificate. She was formally identified through her prints from an old criminal record, then stuffed in the refrigerator with the rest of the expired. By morning her death would replace her late husband's in the headlines.
The only hint at a suspect was the Institute being left in charge of the case. If a Reacher suspect was guilty, there was no need for a trial or evidence. The Institute even held their prisoners in their own London department, a facility specially built for detaining Reachers until transportation came. There they had eight hours to interrogate, sedate, and prepare the prisoner for extradition. The location of their department was unknown. The agents were anonymous. Finding where they were keeping Charlie was impossible.
“If this place is supposed to be top secret, how are we supposed to find him?” Rachel said.
Roxy, cigarette pressed into the corner of his mouth, shrugged. “Nothing is top secret. People have shit memories. Somewhere, someone always writes it down. All we have to do is find it.”
“It would be easier if he was picked up on this side of the wall,” John said as he trawled yet another government database.
“Unfortunately, Charlie's prick has never been one for convenience.” Roxy blew a plume of smoke away from John's equipment.
Rachel was still new to this. Working with the brothers had started out of necessity and, although they could use her powers in the field, the desk work was beyond her. “So what are our options?”
“We keep looking until we find him.” John's focus remained fixed on the computer screen. He punched at the keys, navigating page after page. Still nothing. She admired the man's determination, but it was useless without direction.
“We could cross the border, have a word with the coroner? She's named in the paper,” Roxy offered. “Might be she knows who's in charge.”
“Crossing the border and finding her could take hours. We can't afford to waste that kind of time. Besides, she might not know anything.” John didn't stop typing.
“And we're not wasting time now?”
John scowled, his fingers moving more violently against the keys. “You said someone always writes it down.”
“I was being optimistic for Rachel's sake.”
Rachel sat between them before the sniping got worse. “Maybe we can pick him up when they move him? You said they move him after eight hours, right? And there are only a few ways out of London. We must be able to work out which one they're gonna use.”
“Once he hits the road he'll be with heavily armed guards. Soldiers trained to fight to the death to protect their cargo. That's why they wait eight hours, to make sure there's enough backup. They've got to prepare an armoured vehicle, get someone to escort them through the checks, prep the route, the roads. As soon as he's in that truck, the best we can do for Charlie is blow it up.”
“The glass is always half-empty with you, isn't it?” Roxy said.
“You got a better fucking idea?”
“Hey, I'm just saying a little positive attitude might make things better all round.”
“You know what would make things better all round—”
Rachel rolled her eyes; they had almost made a full ten minutes without threats being thrown. “What if they move him early?”
John's clenched fist stopped before it reached Roxy. “What did you say?”
“If they moved him before the eight hours were up, what would happen?”
“Well, they would be unprepared and rushing. Possibly no soldiers. Possibly an easier target. But why would they move him early, pet?” Roxy leaned forward, a small smile creeping onto his face. He glanced at John, and the animosity between the pair instantly fell away. “We need Jay.”
John was already on it.
* * *
London constantly teetered on the edge of a full-blown national emergency. All the major capitals in the world were under siege, and London hadn't escaped. Each threat was taken seriously—nobody wanted to be the person in charge when that final, catastrophic bomb hit. And it would eventually. Most of England's other major cities had succumbed to the overwhelming violence the last two decades had brought, leaving the capital as a final beacon… or a final objective, depending which side of the fence you were standing on. The further north you went the worse the damage was, and cities like Leeds and Doncaster had almost been annihilated after the Red Forest War. London—having been responsible for most of the preventative strikes that totalled its northern neighbours—was increasingly aware that her crimes would not go unpunished and, as daily bombs erupted in S'aven and the surrounding small towns, London grew more and more paranoid.
A simple phone call was enough to seal the city and close the borders. But they wouldn't stay closed for long, and that was where Jay came in. Jay Hoyle had been employed by the British government for a short time—he'd had brief employment with most of the western governments stupid enough to hire him. He had worked with the British Home Office developing a software he called End Game—a simulation program that created any particular type of Armageddon the authorities were worried about—which tested response systems and potential hazards, in the hope of highlighting any weaknesses in a city's response to a disaster.
End Game, sent via message to a select few thousand, promised naked photos and delivered a fake apocalypse infecting a twenty-mile radius over the course of a few hours. Bombs started exploding all over the city, hospitals became flooded with trauma patients suffering from suspected biological contagion, rioting in the streets started to overwhelm the authorities: London was under attack—at least that was what the computer systems running the city reported.
From a small hotel room near the border, Jay clicked Send and waited for the poison to spread through the veins of the city link. He was on the train when the first explosions were reported. Mass panic started to spread over the course of the next hour. By the end of the third hour the capital was locked down. This was the worst attack London had ever seen. And in those three hours not a single security official bothered to look out his office window and wonder why, when the end was so definitely nigh, the outside seemed totally ignorant of what the computers were saying.
The border between London and Safe Haven was a contentious issue on a good day. London, although she refused to admit it, needed Safe Haven. The capital city was flush with wealth but too arrogant to clean up after herself. If you could afford to live on the greener grass then you could afford a
S'aven team to follow you round and make sure your every whim was catered to. The city still needed refuse collectors, street cleaners, bomb locators—that was what S'aven workers were for.
The border opened each morning, letting socialite Londoners make the walk of shame back to mummy and daddy, and beckoned the start of a new day for S'aven's lucky border workforce.
Jobs in S'aven were hard to come by. The factories were always brimming with people, and the more people the lower the wage. Unskilled labour would wait outside the old brick buildings, watching the chimneys puff toxic fumes into the sky, and pray for some kind of explosion, maybe a machinery malfunction that took out half a team or more—anything that would create job openings. There were jobs on the docks, but if you weren't known by the gangs operating the import/export industry, you wouldn't be allowed to even look at the sea without losing your kneecaps. It was the same for working in the marketplace and the clubs. If you weren't pretty and young, you had no hope. And in S'aven nobody stayed pretty or young for very long.
Most of S'aven didn't even dare to dream of cleaning the shit out of London's streets. Those high-paying jobs, where a worker could come home with enough in his pocket to actually think about putting something aside each week and still feed his family, were so rare and so coveted people died over them. And it was this trade that kept the shanty town going, and more importantly, that kept London wanting the borders open. So when workers arrived to closed gates that morning things turned ugly very, very quickly.
* * *
John's phone buzzed. Rachel leaned over his shoulder to check the message, but couldn't read the screen. “What does it say?”
“Colon, bracket.” John put the phone away.
Rachel bit her lip in apprehension. “What does that mean?”
“It's a fucking smiley face. And you know it's a smiley face too, you pretentious wanker. 'Colon, bracket,' you can be such an utter twat sometimes,” Roxy snapped.
“Okay, so what does the smiley face mean, then?”
Every Storm Breaks (Reachers Book 3) Page 3
