Chapter 35
Kara - Present
“Lucy!”
I roll onto my back as I hear more gunfire, the leather sofa exploding as bullets tear through the material.
“I’m alright,” I rasp out as I take a moment and question my life choices.
“You sure about that, little one? I’m fairly sure I nicked you,” Andrews calls out.
“Go fuck yourself,” I say through gritted teeth as I look at my arm. Jesus Christ, I’m going to have matching scars at this rate. Someone is clearly looking down on me, as the bullet only grazed my skin.
It still burns like a motherfucker, though.
Knowing Andrews, he’s got a Glock 19, which means he has fifteen bullets. Minus the four he has shot at me, so that’s eleven left.
I’ve got seven.
But I only need one.
“So, this whole assignment was a set up then? Nothing to do with our past, and everything to do with the hard drive. Tell me, were you the fucker who ordered the attack at the charity dinner or was that the work of The Covenant?”
“Come on, Kara, there’s casualties in every war. Besides, you know how long the Langleys and I go back. Why try to fix something that isn’t broken?”
The Langleys, one of the four families heading up the Covenant, they run the Isle of Dogs like it’s their own private empire. Everything that goes in or out—money, drugs, people—it flows through the Covenant, via them.
Canary Wharf is their playground. Was, should I say. A glass and steel facade of power, ripe with overpaid, under-stimulated executives looking for something to take the edge off.
The Covenant supplied it.
The Langleys transported it.
I never knew about Andrews’ link with them. How fucking na?ve of me.
“Isn’t broken for who?” Owen spits incredulously.
“The Covenant may be reeling from the death of John Weston, and the destruction caused by Luca and you for that matter. But that doesn’t mean it’s gone,” Andrews says, ignoring Owen.
“Yet,” Owen adds.
I forget he has history with Luca. Maybe one day we will finish that heart to heart we started upstairs.
If we make it out alive, that is.
“Do you even know the importance of what’s on that hard drive? How much power you hold in your hands? I can’t let you walk out of here, either of you. It’s nothing personal. You know how this works,” Andrews continues.
“Yeah,” I mutter to myself.
Stubborn, reckless, pig-headed.
That’s what I am.
Andrews also used to tell me I was predictable, so I do something that he won’t expect.
I throw my gun out and stand, holding my hands up in front of me. I think I’ve got a plan, but I’m kinda winging it.
“Well, that’s surprising,” Andrews says, tilting his head to the side. “I have to say, I was expecting more of a fight. I’m a bit disappointed, to be honest. You’re usually so stubborn.”
I shrug.
“Knowing when to concede—”
“Is as important as persistence and pivoting,” Andrews finishes the saying.
“It’s up to us.”
I plead internally, plead that Owen knows what I’m doing here, hoping that he still has the gun I gave him.
I walk towards Andrews, who glances to the left where Owen remains hidden. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a zip tie.
“Really?”
“It’s to slow you down, Kara, not stop you.” He smirks and throws the black plastic towards me. “You know what you need to do.”
“You saved me, all those years ago,” I say as I catch the plastic and slowly pull the cable ties over my wrists. “That man would have kicked me to death.”
“The fact you were still conscious made me realise you had a stubbornness that I could use. Like I said, little one, this isn’t personal. You are special to me.”
“That’s why you’re holding a gun to my head is it? Because I’m special?”
“That’s the exact reason I’m doing it, and why you are sliding on cable ties and not falling to the floor with a bullet in your head. This isn’t personal, but I’m no idiot. I know not to underestimate you.”
“I think you’re wrong there.”
“Which part?”
“The part where you said you’re not an idiot, because you are. You may not have underestimated me, but you’ve certainly underestimated him.”
Andrews eyes widen and he turns.
He’s fast, but not fast enough. Owen pulls the trigger and puts two bullets into Andrews, who has still managed to pull his own trigger, but his body is already falling.
The bullets cause destruction in his stomach and chest, crashing through bone, ligaments, cartilage, ripping through his lungs, spleen and kidneys.
He falls to the floor as Owen stands with the Beretta Brigadier held out in front of him, his eyes wide as he watches Andrews fall to his knees. His face is a mask of confusion, pain, then nothing as the life bleeds out of him.
He falls forward.
I pull the cable ties off my wrist and cross quickly to him, rolling him over.
His eyes are glassy, his blinks slow. Owen stands over him, still with the gun trained on him, but he’s not coming back from this. He blinks one more time before death takes him, and I stare down at his unmoving body.
They say your whole life flashes before you when you die. Maybe that’s true, but I can say that as you watch someone you care about die. Memories of the time together flash before yours.
How he pulled me from the street, took me to the hospital, nursed me to health, trained me, gave me a home, cooked me dinner, supported me on assignments, paid me, gave me a life.
A second chance.
It may have been business to him, but for me…it was more.
“You should never underestimate a politician,” Owen says, looking down to Andrews’ unmoving body, the blood seeping out from him, pooling onto the dark wooden floor.
I stare up at Owen, my eyes wide, my forehead wrinkled from a frown as I take in what he said.
“Never underestimate a politician? What the—” It bubbles up in my throat, and I can’t help it. I fall onto my arse, and I laugh.
I laugh so much it makes my ribs and cheeks hurt. Owen, who frowns at first, is soon sitting next to me on the floor, joining in.
The pair of us sit in the broken, bloodied mansion of Andrews’ safehouse laughing like we have completely and utterly lost the plot.
Tears stream down our faces as I mock him in a voice and repeat what he says, which sets him off again.
I wipe my tears and pull a deep breath in, resting my head against his shoulder.
“Now what?” he asks, resting his head on top of mine.
“We move.”
“Do you have a plan?”
“What did you say before you gave that press interview?”
“That I’ll wing it.”
I snap my fingers. “I’ll wing it.”
“We need to get you patched up,” he says, pulling away from me and seeing the blood that has soaked into his top.
“The good news is you know how to fix these types of wounds.”
“I don’t know how you see that as being a good thing.” He stands and holds his hand out to me. I give Andrews a final glance, sigh, and take his hand.
“Are you okay?” he asks, his hand resting on my shoulders.
I look up into his eyes.
“It’s business.”
We stare, one beat, two beats, three beats.
He sees right through that answer, but thankfully he doesn’t say anything apart from, “Sure, it is,” before standing and stepping away.
I stare at Andrews, his broken body, his pale expression and something cracks along my chest. Something painful, but I don’t acknowledge it. No, I do what I do best.
I put it in the box, I close the lid, and I lock it with the invisible key.
I just wonder how much more space that little box has.
“Do you have any idea where we are going? Is London even safe for us now?” Owen asks as I pull out of the long driveway and navigate through the huge, posh, and overly prestigious St George’s Hill estate in Surrey.
“I’m winging it, remember?” I say as I pull up to the security gates, which open as the security guard in his little hut waves at us.
“London is probably one of the safest of places. Plus, maybe you were right. Maybe carrying on like nothing has happened is the right course of action here. They aren’t likely to shoot you if you’re on official business. ”
“Reassuring to hear that, Kara.”
“Oh, so I’m Kara again now, am I?”
“I’ve no idea who you are right now, to be honest,” he mumbles, tapping on the huge Tesla flat screen and pulling up the sat nav.
“What do you want from me?”
“Maybe some honesty, maybe some truth, maybe some goddamn acknowledgement that I killed someone who meant something to you,” he snaps, his taps getting more aggressive.
“Wow, Okay. What do you want me to say, Owen?” I glance across at him as we pull up to a light.
“That I’ve been fucked over by two so-called friends in the last twenty-four hours?
That one of those people, who yes, may have taken advantage,” I air quote, “of me, but equally saved my life when the person who had promised to be there fucking left me.”
“There it is—”
“Yes, there it is. He saved me when you couldn’t.”
“We’re back here again, are we? Skirting around the edges of the conversation we need to have, with you lashing out. Pull over,” he demands.
My head jerks in disbelief. “Fuck off.”
He reaches onto the floor and grabs the gun, pointing it at my head. “Pull the fuck over, Lucy, or I swear to God—”
“That you’ll what? Shoot me? Like you’re going to shoot me. So do yourself a favour and put the gun down, before I put you the fuck down.”
“You’re driving a car; you’re not going to do that—”
My arm flies across quickly and I disarm him. The gun is gripped in my hand just as the light goes green. The car behind beeps, and I accelerate, still pointing it towards Owen. His eyes widen as his brain finally catches up with the move I’ve done.
“So, you’re just going to ignore what’s happened back there then, compartmentalise, bury it wherever you put everything else from our past, and bury your head in the sand?”
“What? You want me to pull over and bawl my eyes out?”
I lower the gun and grip the steering wheel tight, my knuckles whitening as I tense. My heart beats wildly behind my chest, my skin is flushing. I’m hot.
Too hot.
Still, he pushes, still he talks, still he wants me to talk about what just happened.
“I want something, Luce, some sort of emotion. You’re just not—”
“I don’t want to acknowledge it.” The words fly from my lips in anger.
“I don’t want to acknowledge it, because acknowledging it means I have to admit I don’t know what to do.
It means acknowledging that I’m lost, and that I have no idea how to protect you from whatever is on that sodding hard drive.
I know everything I needed to know about this situation when that man betrayed me.
I don’t want to acknowledge it because everything I’ve spent years shoving in that fucking box is about to explode out of me. ”
I signal and pull onto a side road that leads to a dark carpark that has woods on one side.
I turn off the engine and open the car door, desperate for air. Something thick and heavy fights me, something I’d buried so deep feels like its clawing at my chest, desperate to expel out of me. Desperate to claw its way out of my chest in a messy outburst.
I climb out and I scream into the quietness of the night and let the acknowledgement wash over me.