The Society

by Karen Guyler

  Lily nodded, nestling closer. “I knew you’d prefer salt and vinegar, I got pigs in blankets.”

  “You knew right.” Eva hugged her tighter. “You okay?”

  “I’m good, I’m with you.” And that was her simple truth, the trusting warmth of Lily next to her, the slow crunching as Eva watched her taste testing each side of every crisp to find which had the strongest flavour. Eva would do anything to keep her safe. Paying an extortionate amount to the café owner for use of the landline was nothing at all on that scale. Breaking her code of conduct, the rules of her sabbatical, her word to DI Smith, less still apparently.

  “Addison? It’s Eva Janssen.”

  “A pleasure to hear from you.” But the pleasure wasn’t Addison Clarke’s, it belonged to intense hazel eyes.

  “Luke?”

  “Addison has his calls diverted to me while he’s overseas. Can I help?”

  “I don’t. . .”

  “Try me.”

  “I was wondering if it would be possible to hitch a ride with him the next time he’s flying out of the country, me, my daughter and husband.” He might not have noticed her falter over that last word. “But if he’s already overseas.”

  “He is but his jet isn’t. Where do you want to go if the world’s your oyster?”

  “Tirupudur near Chennai in India.” She hesitated, but Addison probably already knew. “I’d like to check out what’s happening at the Every Drop sites, it’s a way of looking out for Addison’s investment too, but anywhere out of the UK would be great.”

  “Let me see what I can do.”

  32

  Luke’s seeing what he could do opened doors she’d never expected to walk through, right out onto the tarmac apron, where a half dozen private jets gleamed in the rays of cold sunshine.

  “Oh my God, are we going on a private jet? This is so cool. You have to let me get a photo of this, Dad.”

  Charles handed Lily her phone. “Just the camera, no internet.”

  Luke came down the steps of the closest gleaming plane. He smiled and held his hand out to Eva, drawing her in close, murmuring in her ear. “I quite like being your knight.”

  Eva snapped a glance at Charles, but he was more interested in checking the number on the tail.

  “Hello, young lady. You all excited for your trip?” Lily nodded and grinned at Luke so hard you’d never know anything awful had happened to them that morning. “Let’s get on board then.”

  The inside of the plane was more than she could have dreamt of. She rushed from seat to seat, undoing tables, reclining, straightening up, opening cubbyholes, stroking soft leather. “Wow, this is all so cool, Anya’s going to be so jealous. Everyone’s going to be so jealous.”

  “I just have to go over a couple of things with security. Passports?” Luke held his hand out to Eva.

  With a flick of the cover he’d see she wasn’t Sara Peyton and Lily wasn’t Madeleine. Charles had gone through the biometric scanners at security while Eva’s insides squirmed and her heart beat ‘criminal, fake ID’ against her ribcage all while she smiled at passport control and agreed that Madeleine Peyton was her daughter, keeping a hand on Lily’s shoulder to guide her through the subterfuge.

  Eva placed hers and Lily’s on Luke’s palm but rested her fingertips on them. “It’s probably not a good time to tell you they’re not. . .” She dropped her voice, felt herself sagging. “I’m sorry, someone blew up our house this morning.”

  “Hence travelling light.” She nodded, even that an effort against her new bruises and scrapes, delayed shock and the exhaustion the promise of comfy reclinable seats had released in her. “And the hasty exit.”

  She nodded again, waved a hand at her front. “And the fetching look of building dust.”

  Luke looked at her passport. “It’s a good one, I won’t tell if you don’t.”

  “Thank you, I’m—”

  “You’re not going to apologise again, are you?” He smiled, teasing her, but she couldn’t help being defensive. “I’m not normally so helpless.” The word stuttered out of her. She hated even the sound of it.

  He touched her arm. “Take a seat. Last-minute security check, then we’ll be out of here.”

  Lily was still road-testing everything in the cabin.

  “Lily, calm down and strap yourself in somewhere.”

  “Sir, can I put your bag in the hold?” A woman in her early twenties looking catwalk perfect, everything manicured and hair sprayed away, held her hand out for Charles’ holdall.

  “No, I need to keep it with me.”

  “Of course, but I need to stow it in one of the cabinets for take-off.” He relinquished it like he was Lily giving up her phone.

  “Last minute security check, can I take your passport?” Luke asked Charles.

  “Is it necessary?”

  “If you want to take off. As the plane’s representative, I have to call in the passenger details, additional measures. The pilot’s a little busy finalising the fuel stops.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Chennai, as per Eva’s request. Three stops en route. Eva’s explained.” Luke soothed. “It’s fine, they’re good, Charles.”

  “Maxwell Peyton, you mean.”

  Eva looked at him, that was the name he chose? Something grated at her.

  “Maxwell.” Luke held his hand out and Charles placed his passport in it.

  Luke exited the aircraft.

  While the air hostess readied them for take-off and Eva got Lily to sit still long enough to fasten her seatbelt, Charles threw a hasty “be right back” at them and followed Luke out.

  “Bet the food on here’s out of this world.” Lily laughed at her joke. “Mum, that’s funny.”

  Eva tried. “It is. What do you think they have?”

  “Bet they have champagne, they’ve got to have champagne.”

  “You’re not having champagne.”

  “Not for me, but in the billionaire books they always have champagne. Is the man who owns this a billionaire?”

  Eva made the right noises at Lily’s chattering, laughed when she did, all the while peering out of the window. Where were Charles and Luke?

  “Take your seat please, otherwise we’ll miss our take-off slot.” The air hostess told Charles as he got back on and walked towards the cockpit.

  Where was Luke?

  Eva got out of her seat to look out of the hangar-facing windows on Lily’s side of the plane. Was that—?

  Running down the steps to the tarmac, around the rear of the plane, she gave the fired-up engines the widest of berths.

  Just in sight from the plane, it was what she’d thought she’d seen. The upturned sole of a shoe, in which was a foot belonging to a leg, belonging to an unconscious Luke.

  33

  “Luke? Can you hear me?”

  It was an automatic response to get to her knees to help him, even though Eva’s body protested. More soreness from last night, this morning. She put her fingertips on his neck, his pulse beat against her touch.

  “What happened?” Stupid question while he couldn’t answer her.

  No obvious signs of injury, no blood pool spreading out beneath him, no sweat on his face, no clamminess on his palms.

  “Hello?” Eva walked around the stationary plane in the hangar, “anyone here?” Her voice reverberated in the immense space as she scanned the walls looking for a phone. The pilot, of course, he could radio the tower to get help. “Luke, I’ll be right back. I’m just getting you help.”

  Out of the hangar, the space she walked through was unexpected. Where—What? Eva bolted three steps, five, until that becoming all too familiar star bursting of pain through her leg warned her to slow down. But not now. Even running flat out, there was no way she would catch Addison’s plane pulling away from her, taxiing towards the end of the private area.

  She pushed herself after it. She couldn’t see if Lily’s or Charles’ faces were pressed against the windows, hands hammering
at her to save them.

  Faster.

  She gritted her teeth against visions of a car mounting the pavement, against an unknown deadly something lying in wait to blow up their house. The Society winning, after all. Eva stared so hard at the plane as she limped after it, willing it to stay in one piece, to not turn into a fireball, that her eyes ran.

  Lily, no.

  No, no, no, you can’t take her.

  Eva pushed herself harder, harder. Her mind screamed Lily’s name. A siren from somewhere behind her; someone had seen her running onto the airfield like a terrorist. Good, they’d have to ground the plane. Eva turned to hurry them up, but it wasn’t airport police, a fire engine, anything that might help, anything that made sense.

  A silver van shot past her. Eva stumbled, pain flared, her knee only being held together by the support Charles had bought her. The runway was so far. But even as the plane rolled forwards for its take-off slot, she ran. Past the van as its doors opened and two men got out.

  “Stop the plane,” the words fell out of her, a tangled mass of not enough air, too much emotion. “Stop it, Lily!”

  She limped on but something snaked around her, foreign hands that gripped and pulled.

  “Eva, stop.”

  “Let me go. I have to stop them.”

  The man held her hard, barrelling her towards the van. Making herself limp against him, rigid, trying to jump away, push herself off him. But he’d been trained for better efforts than hers.

  She was in the van. The side door slammed to the roar of the jet thundering past them, lifting skywards, wrenching Lily away from her.

  34

  Eva lay where she’d landed in a rolling darkness. A light turned on above her, yellow holding back black. They’d carpeted the interior, the sides and roof too. Just her in the large space.

  The leaning of high-speed corners and the forces of hard braking and quick acceleration eased. Out of the airport, she guessed, into regular traffic, but it was only a guess, no visual, no auditory clues. Who soundproofed their van? Eva shivered. Who were these people?

  Stay aware, Evie.

  Daddy, I’m trying.

  What can you do?

  She couldn’t change what the plane was doing, where it was going. She pushed hard at the tsunami of panic that threatened to overwhelm her. Not now.

  Lily. I’ll find you, sweetheart. But first she had to get free. Think.

  Stay aware, Evie, the most important thing. It had saved her father once when he’d been thrown into the back of a van on assignment, seized as currency. When there seems no way out, he used to tell her, you searched for the unexpected, always the best weapon.

  His bedtime stories to her then had been a game. Pop quiz, Evie, what do you do if? But she’d never been terrified for her daughter in those games, her baby girl, an innocent. Eleven years old, heading into the abyss of words Eva couldn’t think about. Breathe in, out, count it. The numbers, just think of the numbers. Banish the known truth, skipping at the edges of her reason, that some men paid fortunes for pre-pubescent children. Charles was with Lily, he would protect her.

  The van stopped. Eva crab-crawled to the side door. No lock for her to undo on the inside. She hit the sides but the sound barely reached her ears, deadened to a flatness that no one would hear on the outside of the panels. So organised and thorough, they must do this a lot. She swallowed.

  The brake lights. By sabotaging her knee support, she could use one of its hinges as a screwdriver. She ran her hands over the panels as the van drove off again. But her arm buckled, and she face-planted the rough carpet. A wide curve, a big roundabout?

  Her captors had thought ahead of her; both brake lights screwed behind a wire cage she couldn’t get her fingertips into, and the screws, too flush to reach, needed an allen key.

  Eva sat back against the corner that gave her the best leverage behind the driver.

  What now, Daddy?

  His child had never been in danger, he’d only had to think about himself when he was. The van lurched forwards, braked quickly. The distance between her and Lily was the furthest it had ever been since Eva had first felt her kick inside her, the fluttering butterfly kisses of Lily’s ‘hey, Mum, I’m here’, since Eva held her tiny form, overwhelmed that this life was in her hands, since Eva had promised she’d be all the parents Lily would ever need. Always there for her, she and her baby facing the world together.

  Eva mustn’t cry, it wouldn’t help anything. She made herself pull it back. Be aware. Look at it like an analyst. Okay, she spelt out in her mind what had happened on the airfield.

  The hostiles had incapacitated Luke, not important enough to take? That made sense. Every unwilling hostage was a potential problem, needing resources to restrain, keep alive. So why split them up and take her somewhere different from Charles and Lily? Double sites, double teams, where was the sense there?

  When her father went missing, he had the Army looking for him. No one would miss Eva, no one would guess at why she’d disappeared, no one would look for her. She was on her own.

  The world was a big place, Lily one small child. Eva couldn’t get a breath. Pins and needles prickled in her hands. She had to stay able to function. Not enough oxygen. Lily. A darkness hovered, all seduction, no pain there, no worry, no dread, no terror, no facing making it all worse.

  Her hands were clawing in on themselves, the edges of the darkness at the corners of the van solidifying, a curtain falling over this nightmare reality.

  What had they injected her with?

  Cramp tore up her left calf muscle. Eva screwed her body up against it, a living rigor mortis. No injections, there’d been no time for anything like that in their snatch and grab of her. A panic attack, she must be having a panic attack. Out, she had to breathe out, slow it all down.

  Be ready, that was all she had. Too late now to be wishing she’d taken Gordon’s long ago offer of a field position and all the useful training that came with it, self-defence, offensive fighting, getting out of situations like this with a paperclip.

  Eva felt her weight against the panelling behind her increasing as the van nosed downwards, a steep slope, taken cautiously. Parking ramp?

  Slow driving, manoeuvring, then the engine switched off. Wherever it was they were going, they’d arrived.

  Eva positioned herself in front of the side door. It would open to her left, where would her abductor stand? Further down she’d guess to accommodate the sliding door.

  Slam, slam, the driver’s door, the passenger’s, the two men were out. She was wearing flat boots, no heels for stabbing. No keys, no jewellery apart from her wedding ring, her engagement ring. No help to her at all.

  The side door clicked and began its path back through the runners. Eva shot out, a bruising misjudging of the widening gap. Her feet to the tarmac, her knee paying the price, hobble-sprinting away. Just away.

  “Hey!”

  “Bloody hell—”

  Eva wove her way round the cars parked in the underground garage. The overhead lights in the concrete-edged space did little to dispel the menace personified in the running feet searching behind her.

  There, the raised kerbs of the streamlined passage for cars out through the exit. A black-arrowed white sign pointing to the right. Eva followed the directions, but the metal latticework of a shutter rolled down and locked to the floor barred her passage to freedom. Swipe card activated. Only a steep concrete-sided access road on the other side. No one to hear her scream.

  She whirled away from the exit, searching for refuge amongst the cars parked nose to tail in the crowded spaces.

  35

  “Eva!”

  Eva leant against a pillar. If her knee would have let her, squatting behind the boot of the dark-coloured grimy car beside her would be better. Not being here would be better. Being held hostage alongside her daughter would be best.

  “Eva, it’s okay, you’re safe now.”

  A woman, a voice she recognised? Out of its place a
nd time, her mind floundered to identify it. Nora?

  “Eva, come on out. We can’t figure out where your family’s gone while you’re hiding down here. Gordon’s giving you resources. I’m too damn old for a chase around the garage. I’ve got coffee on.”

  It really was her, standing in the middle of the car park.

  Eva let Nora wrap her in the briefest of hugs, pulling away before she burst into tears.

  “You’re safe now. We’re beneath our building. Sorry about the snatch and grab but we had intel you’re a hot target.”

  “Lily, do you know anything?”

  “Not yet. Come on, you look like you need one of Gordon’s whiskies. We had to pull the guys off assignment to get you, hence the van, not a comfy car where they could have explained.”

  “I wouldn’t have gone with them if they had. Lily and Charles are on that plane.”

  “We know, we’re on it. Come on.”

  Nora deposited Eva at the ladies on the first floor. “First things first, take a shower, looks like you have half your house on you.” Nora nodded at her surprise. “There’s clean clothes in there,” she gestured at the long locker beside the shower door. “Debrief next, two doors down on the right, I’ll leave the door open. Take as long as you need.”

  Eva stood under the powerful stream of hot water. If only it could wash away everything out of kilter in her life. The pummelling on her bruises wasn’t so bad, and as much as every graze stung, they were nothing compared to the tear at the heart of her, the ache in her arms to hold Lily. And Charles. She couldn’t even go there. Thinking of the last few hours, dwelling on what she felt—no, she only had one focus, Lily.

  Nora waited for her in the meeting room. “There you go, get that down you.” She pushed two mugs across the table. “Start with the whisky. It’s better than tea for shock.”

  It burned Eva’s throat, made her shudder even as she embraced the warmth it spread through her, the unknotting of the fibres of her being. “Is there any news on the plane?”