Kill Chain

by Meg Gardiner

  A silver Aston Martin DB9 went past and pulled to the curb. A man climbed out of the car with a phone to his ear. He had hair like a magazine model, and his black greatcoat was riffling in the wind. Looking around, he stepped off the curb and glanced back and forth, waiting for a break in the traffic, wanting to cross the street.

  It was the guy he had seen in the white car with the bounty hunter, outside Evan’s house. Christian Sanger.

  He was the one behind all of this. He was the key.

  “See that guy?” he said.

  P.J. looked. “Yeah.”

  Up the road to their right was the entrance to the Notting Hill Gate underground station. If Sanger got across the street, that was where he would head. He knew that Georgia was coming this way on the tube. He planned to grab her off the train.

  Jesse pointed. “Hit him.”

  28

  I leaped down the stairs two at a time, swinging around the spiral staircase. My hands were bone cold on the ironwork. At the bottom I ran along a tunnel and down another flight of stairs toward the tracks. A train was stopped on the eastbound side.

  I ran out onto the platform as a beeper sounded, urgently. One last passenger jumped aboard and the doors slid closed. I rushed to the door of the train and pushed the open button. Nothing happened. I knocked on the window. A young woman in a black peacoat glanced up briefly, and returned to reading her book.

  I ran along the platform looking through the train windows for Georgie. The beeping shut off and the train began to move.

  Slowly at first, and I kept pace with it. I saw into the carriage ahead. Georgie was sitting at the far end of the car. She was hunched into her seat, clinging to one of the support poles as if it were the last solid thing standing in her world.

  “Georgie,” I shouted.

  She didn’t look around. The train gained speed. I called her name again. The wheels clacked and the electric whine of the motors covered the sound of my voice, even in the echoing cavern along the platform. I accelerated, trying to get her attention, reaching the carriage she was in and beating on the windows.

  Georgie leaned her head against the pole and closed her eyes. The train pulled away and rattled like a snake into the black tunnel at the end of the platform.

  I stopped, breathing hard. A swoosh of air blew over me and down the tunnel after the train, leaving me standing alone under curved walls plastered with gigantic car insurance ads and travel posters. VISIT THAILAND! I checked the sign above the platform; the next train was due in five minutes. Too long. She was getting farther away with every heartbeat.

  Train tag would be hopeless. I needed to get back up to street level, where I could get cell phone reception and call the law firm, Goodhew Waites. I hurried back down the platform and up the stairs to the lifts. My ribs ached and my leg was throbbing.

  I waited impatiently outside the heavy silver doors of the lift. The call light went out and the doors opened. I stepped in.

  The lift had a second door on the opposite side for departing passengers. It was sliding closed. I stopped dead. Standing outside the other door, with her back to me, was Shiver. She was wearing the maroon jacket and skirt of the St. Mary Mazzarello school. From the back she could have been any twelve-year-old. She turned and her eyes caught mine.

  Gollum eyes. Wide and withered, with a furious light. She flew at the door. Reflexively I stepped back. The door slid shut.

  The lift rose. I blinked, catching my breath, knowing what had just happened. Shiver would realize that we had missed Georgie. She would be coming.

  P.J.’s head swiveled. “What?”

  Sanger continued checking the traffic, looking around and jittering with the energy of a human buzz saw. He jogged ten steps along the curb, stopped, and put a hand to his chest. Even from here, Jesse could see that his face was whiter than paste. Something was wrong with him. How fucking great.

  “Run him over,” Jesse said.

  “You’re joking.”

  “He’s going to snatch Georgia. We have to stop him.”

  P.J.’s mouth dropped open. “Are you insane?”

  “This may be our only chance.” Sanger straightened up. “Go. He’s going to catch his breath and get away.”

  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Jesse put his hands to his head. “I can’t chase him on foot. Do it.”

  Sanger saw a break in the traffic and crossed to the far side of the street. He strode along the sidewalk toward the tube station, talking on his cell phone.

  “We’re blowing it,” Jesse said.

  P.J. set his face, shoved the car into gear, and whipped around the corner. He swerved past a bus, a MINI, and a tow truck whose driver was changing a flat tire. He passed Sanger’s Aston Martin and bundled the car to the curb. He turned off the engine.

  “What are you doing?” Jesse said.

  Sanger was jogging again, still making for the underground.

  P.J. looked at Jesse. “I’m done.”

  He pulled the key from the ignition, got out, and stalked away.

  Jesse sat with his mouth open, watching him go. Checking for traffic, P.J. ran across the street. Oh, no. He was chasing Sanger.

  Jesse grabbed the chair frame and wheels from the backseat, tossed them out and fit them together. P.J. ran up the sidewalk on the far side of the street toward the tube. By the time Jesse got out of the car, P.J. was a hundred yards away.

  The wind cut across him. He saw Sanger jog down the stairs at the underground entrance, black greatcoat swirling. Ten seconds behind him, P.J. followed.

  He found a crosswalk and reached the other side of the road, passing a woman in a mink coat who was walking a dog the size of a piece of Kleenex. When he reached the underground station he stopped at the top of the stairs. He might be able to make it down, bumping backward hanging onto the rail, but it would be tricky.

  He glanced around. Was there a way in with a ramp?

  No. But there was another entrance on the other side of the street, and that was where Sanger jogged up the stairs, phone jammed to his ear. He ran back down the street toward his parked Aston Martin. Jesse’s shoulders sagged. The wind caught the side of his head.

  Breathing heavily, P.J. ran up the stairs beside him. “I lost him.”

  Christian climbed into the Aston Martin, pulled out, and made a U-turn. The Aston growled past them, heading toward central London.

  P.J. watched. “Oh.”

  Jesse stared after it. P.J. turned to him.

  “You wanted me to kill him? To hit him with the car and kill him?”

  “No, I . . .” He ran a hand through his hair.

  P.J.’s expression was split with shock. “Who are you?”

  The air was freezing. Pedestrians swept around them, staring.

  “You’re supposed to be the good guy, the upstanding member of the family. You’re in a wheelchair because somebody ran you over. And you wanted me to do the same to that guy?”

  “I didn’t want you to kill him. I wanted you to stop him. I still do.”

  “You’re fucking nuts.”

  Joggers ran past in sleek gear. The Aston had disappeared up the road into the gleaming parade of Volvo SUVs and BMWs.

  “I know where he’s going. Come on,” Jesse said.

  P.J. shook his head, looking toward their rental car. “It’s out of my hands.”

  Down the street where they had parked, the bus was gone. The tow truck had pulled forward and stopped next to their car. It wasn’t the auto club. The driver was out of the truck, locking a bright yellow clamp on their wheel.

  “What do we do?” P.J. said.

  Jesse looked up at the underground symbol.

  Christian raced along Notting Hill Gate in his rented Aston Martin DB9. He was pumped. The bug had worked; the phone tracker had worked; they had everything. The girl was on the underground, running to a solicitor’s firm like a scared rabbit. He was going to get there first.

  A few blocks over, on the nar
row streets of oh-so-posh Kensington, was the girl’s school. He had seen two police cars at the far end of the block as he drove past earlier. Action down in the alley, bobbies in Day-Glo yellow jackets and those silly English hats with black-and-white checkered bands around the brims, lots of radios and utility belts and not a single weapon among them besides CS spray.

  He had no idea what Shiver had done to Jakarta Rivera. He couldn’t creep back down the alley to see whether he could spot anything, like a body bag or blood spatter. But she must have done it good, because he had seen no sign of Rivera since they left the school. Good riddance, puta. He just wished he could have seen it. The bitch had set his father up for Phil Delaney to kill. He should have been the one to top her.

  Ridiculous airlines, making him leave the SIG at home. The thought caused a tightness in his chest again. He rubbed his hand across his cashmere sweater, his fingers ice cold, his hands pale, nail beds as white as paper. The anemia was taking hold. The bleeding was getting more frequent, harder to stop when it happened. He needed the girl, and he needed her soon.

  Up and out of the lift at Holland Park, I ran for the exit, jammed my ticket into the slot, pushed through the gates, and ran out into the cold sunshine. I needed a cab, but there was very little traffic. I took off.

  Holland Park was far past posh. It exuded privilege, comfort, and understated grandeur. Imposing white houses were built on squares with private parks. Flowering trees were popcorned pink with blossoms. There was a sense of repose and privacy even along the main drag, as though noise, honking, jarring accents would be unseemly, just not done.

  And screw the tourist reverie. Get me out of here. After a block, running uphill, my legs were wobbly poles. I finally flagged down a taxi. The cabbie asked me where I wanted to go.

  “Goodhew Waites. It’s a law firm.”

  “The address?”

  I had my phone in my hand. “Central London. Just get going up the road. I’ll get the address.” I stared blankly at the phone. “How do you call Information?”

  He glanced in the rearview mirror. “Just landed from the States?”

  I scowled at him, catching my breath. “Floor it. There’s an extra ten pounds if you get me there before somebody taking the tube.”

  His eyebrow went up. “You got it, love. Try one-one-eight-five hundred.” He put the pedal down.

  It wasn’t so hard, actually. It was, in fact, scintillating.

  Christian found his way to the basement of the stolid brick building in Mayfair, down to a depth where there were no CCTV cameras, but there were smoke alarms. He positioned the newspapers on the floor beneath one and tossed a lit match on the pile. The flames were so hot, their radiant heat so welcome against his chill, so alive.

  It took Shiver’s voice on the phone to break the spell. “Did you do it? Get out, quickly.”

  The flames blossomed, climbing and starting to dance. The sound was a bracing crackle. When the alarm rang, he ran.

  By the time people poured out of the building, he was standing across the street. They held themselves against the cold and fretted with concern at their workplace, beginning to understand that it wasn’t a false alarm but an actual fire—these chartered accountants and secretaries and British solicitors in their blue pinstripes and brown shoes. These people had no sense of style. They weren’t like the Italians. Though in bed these weedy types were the wildest he’d ever had to deal with, and they loved their drink. It was just as well that guns were hard to come by in the U.K., because when the English let the lid off, they were animals.

  He hunched into his black greatcoat, breath swirling in the air, hoping to look like a curious pedestrian. Were people staring at him? He stepped back against the building. He glanced at his watch. The fire trucks would be here soon. Shiver needed to hurry.

  It took her another thirty seconds, but she came scooting along the sidewalk. She bit her lip and checked a piece of paper in her hand as though verifying the address, putting a hand over her mouth and looking forlorn. Hesitantly she approached a young woman dressed in clothes too tight and louche to be an attorney. Secretary, sisterly. Shiver fumbled for words and showed the woman the little piece of paper, keeping her face lowered, hair falling over her eyes, because with Shiver the eyes always gave it away. Her shoulders hunched with cold and worry.

  Your average whore could outact a Broadway star any day.

  The secretary put an arm on Shiver’s elbow and called to a man who stood at the far side of the crowd. He was thin with coppery hair that flopped uselessly in the wind, a suit cut too large across the shoulders, and oh, the hopeless stiff, a lavender tie. When the secretary approached him, sheltering the frightened Catholic schoolgirl, he bent to the child, lips pursed, and with somber formality shook her hand. Jeremy Goodhew, how do you do, my dear girl. I’m so sorry about this; we’ve had a bit of an emergency. She was too spooked to look at him for long, too cowed, but when he spoke to the secretary and gestured at his smoldering office building and pointed up the street, Shiver nodded gratefully and let him lead her along the sidewalk away from the crowd and the ringing alarms. The man was undoubtedly taking her someplace quiet to talk. Someplace where she could get hot cocoa. He touched her shoulder. The gesture looked reassuring, not sexual in any way. The fool.

  The secretary stood on the sidewalk, watching them walk away. Don’t watch too long, Christian thought. But sirens swelled, bouncing off the brick and stone buildings, and she turned away to watch the fire engines arrive.

  When Shiver tugged on Jeremy Goodhew’s arm and diverted him into the alley, Christian was the only one who saw.

  29

  “Jesse.” Finally. “I’m in a cab, heading for Mayfair. Where are you?”

  “Close, but not moving fast enough. Christian Sanger’s after Georgie,” he said.

  “Oh, God.”

  I bounced on the seat of the taxi. The cabbie, despite his bland-as-tapioca face, was gunning this bowling ball of a car through traffic, slewing along Bayswater Road as if he were Steve McQueen in Bullitt.

  “Listen, I should have told you before,” Jesse said. “When I saw the freak chasing Georgia. She didn’t just have a tracking device; she had an earpiece.”

  Earpiece and tracker: That was bad. The cabbie flung us around a corner. I slid halfway across the seat before grabbing the handhold and steadying myself. This was going in my travel opus: Cities of the World in Sixty Minutes or Less.

  “Shiver got into Georgie’s room before Jax and I got to the school. She could have messed with Georgie’s phone and stuck a bug in her backpack.” With a sinking feeling, I realized that Shiver had most likely heard everything Georgie said to me. “She probably knows exactly where Georgie’s going.”

  “We’re a few minutes from the law firm. I’ll do what I can.”

  “Be careful.”

  “I will, but . . .” His voice veered away from the phone. The crowd noise on his end was cacophonous.

  “But?” I said.

  “But I’m dealing with something,” he said, and hung up.

  The escalator was crowded. Jesse held on to the rubber handrails, leaning forward and riding it up. “He still there?”

  P.J. looked back down to the bottom. “Shit, yeah.”

  The underground guy came into view below them. “Oy. Get off there.”

  “Okay,” Jesse called. “As soon as I get to the top.”

  The man took out a walkie-talkie and thumped toward the escalator. “You can’t do that. Get off.”

  “What do we do?” P.J. said.

  Jesse smiled. “Wave to him.”

  They turned and waved like the royal family.

  The man barreled onto the escalator. Hitting the top of the rise, Jesse held the handrails and let them pull him over the lip at the end of the escalator. They pushed through the crowd for the exit as the walkie-talkie scritched behind them. Before the tube guy could stop them they banged through the doors of the Bond Street underground station, onto a side stre
et.

  P.J. glanced back inside. “Does that make up for my driving? Are we even?”

  “Getting there.”

  Off to the right was a major road, packed with pedestrians and traffic. They could see enormous department stores.

  “That’s Oxford Street.” Jesse turned the map and nodded in the other direction. “The law firm’s south, about three blocks.”

  “Catch a cab?” P.J. said.

  “Too slow. Hoof it.” He spun and started off.

  P.J. followed. “What’s next, base jumping?”

  He was out of breath. Jesse thought about the steps P.J. had hauled him up, the gap between the doors of the train and the tracks, the numerous flights of stairs.

  “I know it was hard work. Thank you,” he said.

  “You, my brother, have a major screw loose.”

  “It’s called improvisation. And we’re running out of time.”

  They hurried along the bumpy, canted sidewalk, cold in the sunlight. P.J. said, “People stare, don’t they?”

  “All the time.”

  The neighborhood looked Victorian, with redbrick buildings standing solid against the sharp blue sky. After a few blocks they turned a corner and saw a square ahead. Trees dotted the lawn, and magnificent Georgian buildings surrounded it on three sides. Jesse looked at the map.

  “Oh, wow.”

  He glanced around the square. Would Sanger risk doing something here?

  P.J. pointed down the road. “What’s that?”

  To the south, about a hundred yards beyond the square, fire trucks were parked outside an office building. A crowd milled on the sidewalk.

  Jesse folded the map and put it in his pocket. “This isn’t good. Come on.”

  Short of breath, Christian pressed the phone to his ear, inhaling the hard cold air. “Done?”