Chapter Fifty-Four
Haze
I tried to understand what Fox was saying. I was sitting up in bed, my eye mask on my head, after being rudely awakened by my husband telling me what he’d learned from Norwood.
Clark Dixon, the random bad man, was not so random.
The Chameleon’s increased interest in us was beginning to make sense. Killing Clark could’ve been seen as a declaration of war. We’d thought we had been backing away, downing tools, showing The Corporation we weren’t a threat. But to them, it had looked as though we were coming for them.
Fox had killed Danny next.
Another member of their organization.
One by one.
They must’ve thought we’d been escalating.
That Airbnb dining table covered with reminders of our previous kills. They had done their research on us. They knew who we were and what we had done.
This couldn’t just be a series of unfortunate coincidences. Someone, somewhere, was pulling the strings.
Fox was trying to get me to come to the same conclusion he had.
Jenny.
But I couldn’t get there. Fox had gone behind my back and followed her last week. She’d pretended to be at the office, when she was actually at the bank.
Another lie. Just like when she’d claimed to be at her parents’ house, when he’d seen her walking down Park Lane.
I just couldn’t believe she would betray us. She was family.
But she’d chosen Clark Dixon.
She’d got us to kill a man linked to The Corporation.
She had given flimsy excuses more than once for not being around to help.
She was the one who had told me that even tiny red flags were a problem when dealing with an unknown enemy and professional criminals.
She’d said we couldn’t trust anyone.
Even though Fox was still not his usual self, I had to trust that he was right when he said he had seen her in places she wasn’t supposed to be.
Maybe she was being blackmailed? Had some sinister force threatened to hurt Felix unless she turned on us?
Fox thought she’d been recruited by The Corporation.
That she was working with them to destroy us.
Her head had been turned by money, he suggested.
She had delusions of grandeur. She wanted to become us.
She didn’t care about us, we weren’t her real family—she was chasing glory and riches for Felix.
No. Not my friend. She wouldn’t do that to us.
There had to be a reasonable explanation. I couldn’t think what the hell it could be, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one.
I slept horribly and woke to Fox sitting beside me telling me he had to go into our lawyers’ office. The legal troubles Diana Morgan had unleashed on us with the council were not going away. He needed to sign off on paperwork to help us form a case in our appeal.
We would discuss our next moves with Jenny when he got back. But I knew he wanted to start following her everywhere. To break into her house and go through her emails.
He didn’t realize how much I had learned from the shitshow of last year, when we’d hidden things from each other, not spoken our minds, and let things fester into a near-bloody showdown.
Personal growth. No more sneaking around. No more secrets. If someone you loved seemed to be lying, then confront them. Get it all out there.
As soon as I heard him leave the house, I texted Jenny, asking her to come over.
I was going to talk to her. Woman to woman. I wanted to grab her and get her to look me in the eye when I asked her, “What the fuck is going on?”
The doorbell rang, and a second later Jenny’s key turned in the lock.
“In here!” I shouted. I was sitting upright at the kitchen table, trying to work out what to do with my hands. Clasping them before me on the table made me feel too formal. Having them by my sides seemed odd too. What did I normally do with my hands?
Jenny was shouting through to me from the hallway as she dropped her coat and bag. “Some utter arsehole cut across me when I turned in to your road.” She walked into the kitchen and looked at me. “What’s wrong? Why do you look so weird?”
“Sit down, please.”
Jenny half laughed as she sat down in the chair opposite me. “Why does it feel like you’re breaking up with me?”
“How did you find Clark Dixon?”
Jenny frowned. “I told you. A woman at my gym. She knew I was police and started asking me if there was anything that could be done. I tried to get him through the normal routes, but you know the drill.”
I knew Jenny well enough to know that when she was nervous, she picked at her thumbnail.
Now, she wasn’t even looking at her hands.
She was slumped back in her chair. Her hair was up in a messy bun, and she was wearing her gray hoodie.
We’d bought matching ones on our holiday in Corfu; mine was upstairs.
“What is this? What’s wrong?” Jenny stretched.
“Clark Dixon worked for The Corporation.”
Jenny’s eyes widened. “No! He was just the boring finance guy at Boltons. He had no gang links. No mention of him in any police records, even as a person of interest.”
“Norwood says he was a non-exec director at Unique Events.”
“This doesn’t make sense.” Jenny pinched her nose.
“Of all the wife-beaters to pick, you gave us one that got us back on The Corporation’s shit list!”
Jenny leaned forward. “I promise you, Haze, I had no idea. How could I? Gretchen is a woman I met through the new gym I joined. Remember I did that taster session there? You were impressed I was trying to get fit. Gretchen got talking to me in the changing rooms, and…” Jenny stopped.
“What?”
She put a hand to her head. “I only signed up for that taster session because I’d heard the gym had links to The Corporation.
One of the owners used to be in an Albanian gang, and I thought they could be using him to run one of their shell companies.
I couldn’t find any evidence of ongoing criminal activity, but I liked the place, so kept going.
Gretchen told me she’d joined as her husband got a discounted membership through his work.
I just presumed Boltons had a deal with them.
” She looked at me. “I’m so sorry. I just didn’t think…
Clark was an English guy working at a finance company.
His record was clean. There was no reason to think he had any dealings with that world. ”
I took a breath. Was what she was saying making sense? Or was I just desperate for it to? Could it be just a horrible coincidence? Just bad luck? Really bad luck?
“You didn’t actually think I did it on purpose? That I had some kind of death wish for us all?”
“But you’ve been lying to us!”
Jenny leaned back as if I’d struck her.
“You were in London when you told Fox you were at your parents’ house. Last week, you told us you were at the office when you were at the bank. You’ve skipped out on things we needed you for with lame excuses. Has someone got to you? Is someone threatening—”
“It’s nothing like that.” Jenny closed her eyes. “It’s Dad. He’s sick.”
I tried not to look too relieved. Jenny had been all over the place because poor Frank had been struck down with something. Why hadn’t she just told us? She must’ve worried we’d get annoyed at her playing nurse when we needed her. But we wouldn’t think less of her for being a good daughter.
“Is it that vomiting bug? Flu? Take as long as you need to look after him. Poor Frank, he’s such a nice—”
“Cancer.”
“What?” I heard her, but I didn’t want to hear her.
“He’s got pancreatic cancer.” She couldn’t meet my eyes.
“Right.” I nodded.
We were both quiet for a few beats.
“He’ll get through it,” I finally said. “It’ll be fine.”
“No, Haze. It won’t.”
I didn’t know what to do.
What to say. We’d done all kinds of things together, hunted down bad men, scrubbed their blood off the floor, dirtied our hands burying them. But this was too dark.
“We’ll get him the best doctors. Money is no object. We can—”
“I’ve already tried! I looked into all these different private specialists in London. I went to the bank to check if I could remortgage my house. But…He had consultations with two of the specialists I found, the top in their field, and they both said there was nothing to be done.”
“Nothing?”
Jenny shook her head as tears rolled silently down her cheeks.
“That’s shit.” I really wished I had it in me to be better than this. More eloquent. “Really shit.”
“I’m sorry I lied.” Jenny pulled a tissue out of her sleeve. “I didn’t want to tell you guys, as you’ve got enough on. And I was worried you’d make me take a step back from all this. But I need it. I have to keep busy, or I’ll go mad.”
I reached for her and held her in a tight hug. “I’m sorry.”
“How am I meant to live my life without him in it?” she cried into my shoulder.
“I don’t know, Jen. I don’t know.”
I didn’t need a father, but she did.