Chapter Eighteen
Fox
“Everyone dies!” The freckled barista smiled as she handed me my coffee.
“Sorry? What did you…?”
“Enjoy your latte!”
“Right. Thank you.” I walked off and looked back at her. She was still smiling.
I didn’t have time for an existential crisis right now. I needed to focus on the actual crisis we were facing. I was not handling The Chameleon’s reappearance well.
This morning, I had woken up at the kitchen table.
It took me a few minutes to work out where I was.
It was 5:04 a.m. and I was in my pajamas.
They were striped with a collar, and were the ones Haze said made me “deeply unshaggable.” They were what I’d been wearing when I went to sleep last night.
I’d tried to remember getting up in the night and coming down here. But nothing.
I’d never sleepwalked before. Maybe I was thirsty and had been on autopilot, coming down for a cold glass of water.
Fine. People did that. But then I’d looked down at my feet and seen they were dirty.
I’d followed a trail of mud sprinkles from the table to the back door.
I must’ve got up in the night, come down to the kitchen for water, and then—what?
Gone to check on the plants outside? That sounded like a totally normal thing to do.
Or maybe I’d seen a fox and gone to shoo it away?
I was sure it was a one-off. My body manifesting the stress with a little nighttime wander.
Haze had seemed totally unfazed about now being text buddies with the man who’d tried to kill us in Italy. She’d told me to get to my office and focus on making us money—she’d get Jenny on the case of tracking down The Chameleon through the number he was using.
Jenny and Haze. The two of them were becoming increasingly inseparable.
I was happy my wife was happy. Of course I was.
Haze had always been suspicious and closed off to everyone she came into contact with.
I’d only made it through her inbuilt defenses so swiftly due to—in her words—my “insane hotness and cool knife.”
We’d met in an alleyway in Paris. I’d come rushing to this beautiful stranger’s rescue, but had quickly realized she was the hunter, not the prey—which made her even more alluring.
Ours was a love affair that had started over the bloodied body of a bad man—a perfect start to what had been a perfect match.
We were the original duo. It was just that my other half now had another other half. Did that leave me with only a third?
I did, of course, have friends of my own.
Neighbors whom I’d sometimes meet for a drink, or to play a round of golf, or to hang out watching whatever sporting event was considered essential viewing.
But female friendship was a different beast. There was this constant updating on daily life, a confessing of deepest, darkest fears and unpleasant health concerns.
I wasn’t threatened. Of course not. Just a tad disconcerted.
Our killing mission had always been our secret. We were bonded together by this love of doing the right thing to the wrong men. But now Jenny had even muscled in on that.
I had, until recently, always preferred being out of the office.
Doing fieldwork, so to speak. Now, I felt more comfortable being base camp.
Sitting behind my desk. Doing research. I’d always enjoyed working, but it had never been as vital as it was now.
My paycheck was actually needed for us to live the life to which we’d become accustomed.
I had grown up in a bubble, protected from the horrors of real life by my family’s money and privilege. When my brother and I had finally stood up to our parents, ganged up to throw them out of the family business, the fallout had been the dissolving of our trust fund.
The security net that had been there my whole life, to be plundered as and when I saw fit, was now gone.
Thankfully, I had squirreled away enough that money was still in plentiful supply.
I just had to be a little more cautious than before.
Especially as I’d now realized how expensive private school fees were.
My company, Cabot Matthews Investments, was based out of a Mayfair townhouse that we’d converted into offices.
Haze was only really involved to the extent that her surname was there alongside mine.
I wanted her to feel a part of everything I did.
“CMI” was embossed on a small, discreet sign above a large mahogany reception desk that was always manned by my assistant Richard, a short, well-built man who’d dabbled in professional rugby before one accident too many had made him rethink his choices.
He had four kids with his childhood sweetheart and was very motivated to be out of the house as much as possible, and to make as much money as possible.
He might have had the least experience of all the candidates I’d interviewed, but he had a steeliness I respected.
I was bored of the well-spoken, suited-and-booted graduates who were too green to understand exactly what high stakes really were.
Richard was also good at turning a blind eye.
He never had any questions about what exactly my wife, her best friend, and I were plotting when we booked out the meeting room for two-hour-long stints.
He also never questioned exactly how I’d previously been so good at predicting which companies were about to tank or skyrocket.
Our business model for ending bad men had always had the added bonus of helping with our finances too.
Our targets always fit a certain criteria that Haze had insisted on from the start of our little enterprise.
Straight, white men who were culpable of many a terrible act were, thankfully, easy to find.
We targeted them because of the things they’d done.
Making sure we focused on those who might also have certain knowledge that would help our investments was something we’d now zeroed back in on.
I had acknowledged that last year, I’d gotten too ambitious with my choice of targets. Suddenly having Jenny in our corner had given me the overconfidence to go for bad men who were part of big, bad networks. I wanted to turn the needle enough to really make a difference to the world.
I had thought we were different, that we didn’t need to rein in ambitions just because we had a family.
Somehow, I’d been idiotic enough to believe we were immune from the pressures of trying to have it all.
I’d been out there working hard to hit our peak professionally—and at what cost?
Whatever we’d done that year had brought The Chameleon to our door.
My phone pinged. A new email from Mike Martin, sharing his mobile number in case I—“Harriet”—wanted to call him to arrange our first meeting.
I knew using the reappearance of The Chameleon was not a good enough reason to put off talking to Haze about her father.
But really, I was grasping for any excuse to not come clean to her about what I’d done.