Run Rabbit Run

by Kate Johnson

  ‘So,’ Rachel said, digging into a sundae that was bigger than she was, ‘spill. What did you do and why did you do it and why are you here and is anyone after you?’

  I sighed. This was going to be a long session.

  I was starting my second sundae and explaining to Rachel why driving in Italy is hell, when something started shrilling and beeping and I pawed through my bag for my new phone. But Rachel rolled her eyes at me and took a new iPhone out of her bag.

  She checked the display, swiped casually at the screen and said, with a forty-something amount of ennui, ‘Hi, Gram.’

  I took a deep breath and let it out. Here’s the thing. I came to Ohio because Rachel lives here, and she’s one of only two people I know in America. The other lives in New York City, which is a much more obvious target for anyone looking for me. Who would expect I’d go to ground at the home of my friend’s nine-year-old daughter?

  I chewed my lip, the only flaw in my otherwise brilliant plan nagging at me. Namely, the particular friend whose daughter she was.

  ‘I’m downtown. No, just – look, I can explain this – don’t you dare! It’s very – no, I can get a – okay, all right, I’ll be there in ten.’

  With a swish of her perfect, shiny black mane, she slid the phone back into her bag and sighed. ‘That was my grandma. The school called her and told her I hadn’t turned up. I’m only, like, half-an-hour late. Jeez. So now I have to go home or she’ll call the cops and report me as missing. You wanna come?’

  Yikes. Teresa Cortes had seemed perfectly nice on the one brief occasion I’d met her, but I was suddenly afraid she’d turn out to be terrifying.

  ‘Well …’ I said.

  ‘You’ll have to come,’ Rachel said matter-of-factly. ‘I need a ride or I’ll be late. Come on.’

  She trotted out of the ice cream parlour and I barely had time to throw down some money before I ran after her. Rachel is a bit like Luke that way: utterly certain that the world will follow her lead.

  She leaned against the car, face turned up to the sun, the prettiest child I’d ever seen. In half-a-dozen years she was going to cause her father nightmares. He was probably already having them, just for practice.

  I am so never having children.

  256 Washington Drive was an ordinary, weatherboarded, all-American house with a big porch and a green lawn and a gigantic American Ford in the driveway.

  As I pulled up and parked at the kerb, I checked my face in the visor mirror and recoiled. Not the best face to be greeting a matriarch with. But the only face I had.

  ‘Ready?’ Rachel asked me, and I wondered if my fear showed on my face.

  ‘Ready.’

  Teresa Cortes came out of the front door as we were getting out of the car. She was in her sixties, her skin supple and smooth, her black hair flecked with very small amounts of grey. She wore jeans and a white shirt and had baseball sneakers on her small feet. She’d emigrated from Mexico many years ago as a small child, and it was her colouring that Rachel had inherited.

  ‘Rachel,’ she began, sounding shocked, ‘who on earth did you get a ride home with?’

  Rachel grabbed my hand and towed me forward. ‘Gram, you remember Sophie, don’t you?’

  Teresa stared at me. I extended a hand weakly.

  ‘We met at the wedding? I was the maid of honour.’

  ‘Remember, Gram? You said how pretty she was in her dress.’

  Teresa blinked once or twice, then smiled and took my hand and said, ‘Of course. I was so surprised to see you. You must come in and have a drink. How long have you been in town?’

  She knows, I thought. She knows and she’s going to call the cops as soon as we’re out of sight.

  ‘I just got in this morning,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure if maybe you might have spoken to Harvey recently?’

  Oh, yes. Rachel is Harvey’s daughter. You know, Harvey who’s in the CIA. Before he met Angel he had a fling with a beautiful student, which resulted in Rachel. When Rachel was a baby her mother died in a plane crash, leaving her child to be raised by her parents.

  That’s the snag with this plan. Maybe I was a bit more sleep-deprived and terrified than I realised when I came up with it, but at the time it seemed like genius. Hiding in plain sight! No one will come looking for me!

  I’d forgotten, however, quite how intimidating Rachel’s grandmother could be.

  Her eyes narrowed calculatingly. ‘I have.’

  ‘Then you’ll know the position I’m in.’

  A pause, then she nodded.

  ‘I need your help. A place to stay. I promise you won’t be in any danger – no one even knows I’m in the country,’ I said, praying to all the gods I could think of that this was true.

  ‘She didn’t do it, Gram,’ Rachel piped up.

  ‘Rachel, go in the house. Go,’ her grandmother said, and Rachel sulkily obeyed. ‘You’re wanted for murder.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, I am,’ I said, ‘but I swear to God I’m innocent.’ Backtrack, Sophie, don’t blaspheme, you’re in Middle America! ‘Someone framed me and I need a place to stay while I figure out who and why.’

  Teresa said nothing.

  ‘Mrs Cortes,’ I tried, ‘Rachel is a really bright girl. Do you think she’d bring me back here if she thought I was guilty? Do you think Harvey would let me near her if he thought I was?’

  She lifted her chin a little and looked at me. ‘Harvey knows you’re here?’

  ‘No,’ I admitted. ‘No one knows I’m here. Please. I’m running out of places to go. If I get caught, they’ll take me to jail and the trial will never, ever come up.’ Overdramatic, but do you think I cared? ‘I didn’t kill anyone, but without evidence to prove that, I could go down forever.’

  Another silence. I could tell she was thinking.

  ‘All right,’ Teresa said eventually, and I let out a big breath I didn’t realise I’d been holding. ‘But if there’s any bit of trouble I’ll call the police.’

  ‘And you’ll be within your perfect rights to do so,’ I gushed gratefully. ‘Wow – thank you so much. I really need this.’

  ‘Come inside,’ Teresa said, ‘and we’ll talk some more.’

  Sheila’s goons failed to turn up and drag Luke off to an oubliette, but the clawing sensation in his gut didn’t go away.

  They’d nearly found Sophie, and it might be his fault. Had he led them to BBC&H? Although if they already had the offices under surveillance, maybe not. What would have happened if Harrington had caught her? At very best, the evidence was so stacked against her that even a reasonably fair trial had a pretty good chance of convicting her. But the chances of even getting a fair trial with a pit-bull like Harrington were pretty small. He’d be more likely to fire accusations at her, lock her away in some interrogation cell and psychologically torture her into confessing. Or maybe actually torture her. The man was insane.

  Or he might just shoot her on sight.

  He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling but seeing Sophie, lying pale and unconscious on the deck of a scruffy fishing boat. She’d nearly drowned a few months ago and the memory of her limp, white body, heavy in his arms, cold and unmoving and bloodless, still haunted his dreams. He’d wake with a start, the memory of her icy flesh a physical sensation against his skin, only to find her warm and sleepy beside him, mumbling that he’d just kicked her in the shin.

  ‘I had to fall in love with someone who gets nearly killed three times a year,’ he muttered.

  Maybe Sheila had a point. He needed to back off and let the evidence come to light. The more he interfered, the more MI5 became convinced she was guilty. Maybe he should just leave it. Sit at home like the Service’s faithful Labrador and await news.

  The inaction would drive him demented. But would it help? Was Sheila being cruel, or was she trying to help him?

  He rolled over and thumped his pillow. Should have been up hours ago but wasn’t sure what the point was. Sophie wasn’t talking to him, Sheila was icily mad at him, and i
f he so much as looked at a picture of Sophie, Harrington would have him thrown in the Tower.

  He shoved back the covers, stomped into the kitchen and defiantly grabbed the packet of Dunhill’s. The gold lighter felt heavy in his hand. Slowly, he took out a cigarette, held it between his teeth, cupped his hand around it and flicked the lighter open.

  The flame flickered abruptly into existence. Bright, blue and clean.

  ‘The hell with it,’ he said around the cigarette, and ducked to light it.

  His phone buzzed.

  Luke froze as if someone had just walked in and found him naked. His phone lay on the counter, within reading distance.

  A text from Sophie’s brother.

  He put down the cigarette – he could go to hell later – and opened the text.

  ‘Mum says have you heard anything yet?’

  Sickness churned in his stomach. Sophie’s mother. Her brother. Untold friends and cousins and colleagues. None of them knew Maria or Docherty – probably just as well in the latter case – and had no idea Harvey was CIA.

  They had no one else to turn to for news of Sophie.

  Sighing, he put down the lighter and texted back. ‘I’ll be there in ten.’

  When he arrived, all their cars were in the drive. As he passed the front window, Sophie’s mother leapt to her feet. She met him at the door, her face white.

  ‘What is it? Is it bad news?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head for emphasis. ‘Last I heard she was fine. Listen, can I come in? I have an idea.’

  It transpired, over milk and home-baked cookies, that Teresa had been a legal secretary in the days before her daughter died and left Rachel to be cared for.

  ‘I don’t know how the law works in England,’ Teresa said, ‘but I’m pretty sure leaving the scene of the crime is not a good thing.’

  ‘What was I supposed to do?’ I said. ‘If someone had come in and seen me there, holding the gun that shot him, what would they have thought? I don’t have a scrap of evidence in my favour so far. All I have to go on is my own knowledge that I didn’t do it.’

  ‘Which is not going to stand up in a court of law,’ Rachel said.

  Her grandmother frowned at her, then said to me, ‘Can you think that this man had many enemies?’

  ‘He was a lawyer,’ I said. ‘Probably every case he lost created him an enemy. Plus he was involved with MI5 – there are bound to be loads and loads of people he pi – he upset.’

  ‘Well, then,’ she stood up, ‘I suppose you need to find out which cases he worked on. Come on. You can use the computer in the den.’

  I followed them into a little study where Teresa booted up a rather new and shiny-looking computer. ‘You know how to use this?’ I nodded. ‘If you need any help, Rachel’s your best bet.’

  She left the room and I glanced at Rachel. ‘So, kid,’ I said. ‘How’re your Googling skills?’

  ‘Pretty awesome,’ she said modestly. Well, of course they were. Whereas I can never find anything on the Internet. Whatever I search for usually ends up bringing me porn.

  There’s probably a metaphor there somewhere.

  ‘I need to get into the private files of a law firm called Barton, Barton, Chesshyre & Holt,’ I said. Rachel tapped this in quickly and looked up at me, bright-eyed and inquisitive like a little bird.

  I went still.

  ‘How,’ I asked, ‘did you know how to spell Chesshyre?’

  ‘My dad called,’ she said. ‘He told me you were in some trouble but he wouldn’t say what. So I started looking around for news.’

  My heart seized up. ‘It’s made the news?’

  ‘No. Not yet. I mean, the whole murder-of-an-MI5-agent thing has come up on Twitter, but your name isn’t linked to it. They just said stuff like “former service agent” and things like that. I mean anyone could figure out it was you.’

  I began having palpitations, until I reminded myself that Rachel was smarter than Doogie Howser. ‘Anyone who knew the precise time and date where I’d last been seen, you mean.’

  ‘Well, sure.’

  ‘Your dad told you that?’

  ‘Well, not told me exactly …’

  Her gaze shifted away.

  ‘Rachel Harvard-Cortes, whose conversations have you been listening in on?’

  ‘Only my dad’s,’ she protested. ‘I put a bug on his cell ages ago.’

  ‘Rachel, you are nine.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Her expression said, clear as if someone had written it there: What does that have to do with it?

  ‘Your dad is a CIA agent.’ Who probably had no idea what a devious little creature his beloved daughter was.

  The same expression. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You can’t – you shouldn’t – how did –’ I gave up. ‘All right. What else did you find out?’

  Rachel calmly laid out pretty much the entire story. Harvey – and therefore the CIA, and therefore, unless their powers of deduction were worse than Tammy’s, MI5 – had linked Judge Shepherd and Sir Theodore’s murders. After yesterday’s spectacular mess of crap, Jack and I had been linked together. However, as yet no one knew our current whereabouts. As yet.

  I ran my hands over my face, horribly tired. My brain couldn’t process any more.

  ‘Okay, look. You’re the genius here. Can you get BBC&H’s records online?’

  Rachel looked at me doubtfully. ‘Will they be online?’

  ‘There’ll be a company intranet. Emails between partners. There’s got to be a way of accessing it.’

  Rachel frowned, but she said, ‘Okay, I’ll try. Beats gym class any day.’

  She began typing at the speed of light. Every bit of it looked like gibberish to me.

  I started to feel really old.

  After a while, clearly surplus to requirements, I wandered out onto the back porch and took out my phone, staring at it for a while as I tried to drum up the courage to call Luke.

  I failed. I dialled Docherty’s number and when he answered, asked how it was going with my guns. You see, I might not be as clever as Rachel, but I had worked out one solution for shipping my firearms abroad, and that solution was simple: get Docherty to do it.

  ‘You really want me to send them to Harvey’s kid?’

  ‘Sure. Just don’t tell –’

  ‘Luke. Right. They’re on their way. Should be with you tonight or tomorrow morning.’

  I didn’t ask how. For all I knew Docherty owned a teleporter. ‘Excellent. Words cannot describe my gratitude.’

  ‘If words can’t …’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘Actions can’t either. We did this before, Docherty.’

  ‘Sure, and it worked out fine then.’ Yeah, so fine I hadn’t even seen him since. ‘I hear you got Luke’s car blown up.’

  Occasionally, I wondered what would happen if Docherty and Rachel ever met. It’d be like Lex Luthor teaming up with Hermione Granger. The world would have about five minutes to survive.

  ‘Only by accident.’

  A slight pause. ‘Glad to hear it wasn’t on purpose. That makes two now.’

  ‘Yours wasn’t on purpose either.’

  ‘You going to apologise to him same way you did to me?’

  I closed my eyes, but that didn’t help because all I could see was the night we’d spent together. It had been hot, intense, and wonderful in a terrifying sort of way, and it wasn’t really something I was particularly proud of.

  ‘Can we not talk about this?’

  ‘You brought it up.’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘Whatever. Why are you in Ohio?’

  ‘Seemed like a good idea at the time. Well, listen. I have work to do. So … thanks for the guns and stuff, and if you tell Luke where I am I’ll castrate you.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  I ended the call and sat there drumming my fingers for a while. Right, Sophie girl. Stop dwelling on the giant craphole that is your life right now, and think of something productive.

  S
o what I needed to know was which cases Irene and Sir Theodore had worked on together. Then I needed to know if any of the people involved in those cases were likely to have a grudge against them, and if they did, were they free enough to act upon it.

  In my head, I started working on a list of people who had grudges against me. It wasn’t cheerful, but it needed to be done.

  I counted eight enemies. Two were dead and the remaining six were in jail. All of them had been imprisoned in maximum security facilities. Several of them were still recovering from the injuries I’d dealt them while they tried to kill me.

  I was still recovering from a few scars of my own.

  I got up and was about to go back inside to see how Rachel was getting on, when my new phone chirruped and bleeped at me. I glanced at the display, and did a double take. It was a UK mobile number, and it wasn’t Docherty’s. My heart physically leapt.

  ‘Luke?’ I answered it cautiously.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How did you get this number?’

  ‘Why, trying to keep it from me? Docherty gave it to me.’

  Bloody Docherty.

  ‘Where are you? What did you do to your old phone?’

  ‘Nothing. I just thought this one would be better.’

  ‘He says it’s registered to a Miss D Meanour,’ he said, in exactly the same tone I use when I’m second-guessing one of my dad’s terrible jokes. Half-speech, half-groan.

  ‘What can I say, my creative powers are a little bit tapped by now.’

  There was a long pause. I closed my eyes and pictured him beside me. If I tried hard enough I could almost imagine he was here with me. ‘Listen, Luke, I’m sorry. About what I said before.’

  ‘It’s okay –’

  ‘I mean, I’m under a lot of stress right now. I mean, a lot.’

  ‘I know. So am I. It’s –’

  ‘It’s really hard –’

  ‘Really, really hard,’ Luke said, exasperation in his voice, and I smiled.

  ‘So, are we okay now?’

  ‘We’re always okay,’ he said gently, and I felt a rush of love for him.