Chapter Sixty-Three
Haze
Sally was a bust, and Jenny had updated us to say that five teenagers had just got out of the car she was following and piled into a house party. Our one remaining lead was the car I was trying to find: a Ford Fiesta with a number plate ending OGE.
OGE had gone down this road less than ten minutes ago. I had to find it. I had to. We had no other leads. If I didn’t, that would be it. She’d be in the wind. At the mercy of a madman. I couldn’t let my mind go there. I couldn’t. Not while we still had hope.
Jenny had now parked up and was trawling CCTV. She’d confirmed that there was no sign of the Fiesta leaving the area. If he’d parked up somewhere and taken Bibi on foot, we’d have no idea where they were headed. I couldn’t let myself panic yet.
I went to Cherry Lane. Nothing. I turned right into Hawthorne Avenue. A gray car was parked up ahead. My heart rate sped up. I got close enough to see the number plate was wrong.
Fuck.
I kept going. I looked around. I knew this area. I’d just been here yesterday.
When my boot was overloaded with boxes of toys.
I paused.
I had to make a decision—and fast.
No sign of OGE—but then, if I knew where it was headed, what did it matter? I swerved into a parking space and got out of the car.
The charity shop was on the opposite side of the road.
The blinds were down, but the lights were on.
I didn’t believe in coincidences.
And I didn’t believe there was any reason anyone would be in a charity shop at 10 p.m.
I rang Fox and Jenny. “No sign of OGE, but I’m going to check out the charity shop here. I was there yesterday, and there was something off about this guy Freddie who was working there. It looks like there’s someone in there now.”
They reacted as I expected.
Jenny: “Looking up the CCTV around the shop now.”
Fox: “I would tell you to wait for me, but I know there’s no point.”
I saw a shadow of someone walking past the blinds.
“I’ll keep the line open.”
“The shop has a back entrance that takes you into a narrow alleyway that leads out onto Hawthorne Terrace,” Jenny said. “The alleyway has no CCTV, so he could’ve parked up and gone into the shop that way.”
The charity shop was on the corner of a quiet street.
I was going to have to break in, and doing that at the front door would draw too much attention.
If the kidnapper had gone in through the alleyway, I’d do the same.
I got out of the car and headed into the alleyway—and came face-to-face with Alain Drake.
“What are you doing here, Mrs. Cabot?”
I had a second to work out what to spin. And I couldn’t get my brain to cooperate. I couldn’t think of anything to say except the truth.
“My daughter is missing. I think she’s here.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?”
I paused. “I don’t want them to know.”
Drake observed me in silence. “This does not surprise me.” He nodded toward the charity shop. “I’ve tracked the man I’ve been chasing here.” He took a gun out of a holster inside his jacket. “You get reunited with your daughter, and then you can tell me everything.”
“Yes. Fine. Anything once I get her back.”
I could face the Drake problem another time. The only thing that mattered now was getting Bibi back into my arms.
I watched as Drake leaned down to the back door lock with a couple of small silver tools. He fiddled with them and then tried the handle. It opened.
I pushed past him and walked in.
Bibi was sitting on a display table in the middle of the empty shop. She was wearing pink rabbit pajamas. Rabbits were her second favorite animal. A large McDonald’s milkshake was in her hands.
I longed to just run to her, but I had to be careful. Alert. I must’ve made a noise without realizing, as she turned.
“Hi, Mama.” She was okay. And she wasn’t afraid. Thank god.
I looked around. No one was here.
Was she really alone? Or was this the trap? Was Bibi the bait?
But I couldn’t think of anything else other than getting her out of here. I went to her and held her close. “Bibi, it’s okay. We’re going to go home now. Before the man who took you comes back.”
Bibi frowned. “What you mean? He’s already here.”
She was looking over my shoulder. At Drake.
I reached slowly for the gun in my waistband.
He smiled at me. “Let’s not get carried away, Mama.” He tapped his jacket, indicating where his gun was. “I’d like your phone, please.”
What choice did I have?
I took my phone from my pocket, ending my call with Fox and Jenny without him seeing. How much had they heard? Enough to work out what was going on?
“And your…toys. Both of them.” He motioned to my waistband and my back pocket. Of course he knew where my weapons were. He knew everything.
Bibi was back to slurping on her shake. I handed him my gun and knife without her seeing.
Drake was The Chameleon.
It was the perfect cover.
An Interpol agent could travel freely. He had the best contacts. The best databases. He was a powerful ally to turn to. He could find out information on anyone. His credentials gave him access to anywhere he wanted to go.
For fuck’s sake. Even the name. The Chameleon. He fitted in wherever he was. An assassin. An agent. He adapted to be whoever he needed to be.
How the hell was I going to get Bibi away from him without scaring her?
She was still noisily sucking on the straw of her milkshake, getting a sugar spike when she should be tucked in bed, fast asleep. She stopped and looked up. “You want some, Mama?”
I shook my head.
She didn’t know how much danger she was in, and for that, at least, I was grateful.
Bibi’s long brown hair was perfectly straight. She hadn’t been asleep long enough to get it into her usual knotted mats. I chewed on the inside of my cheek. He’d plucked her out of her bed. He’d taken her while she was sleeping.
It had been so well planned, so masterfully executed. He was a professional, after all. He’d taken her when she was sleeping because he knew we’d have a tracker on her during the day. That was the problem when you came up against someone who thought like you.
I had to get her out of here, away from him, alive and not so traumatized that her life was ruined in another way.
I was desperate to inflict pain on the person who’d dared to take my child.
It was going to be hard to rein it in.
There really wasn’t a PG way to kill a man.
How long would it take for Fox to get here? I tried to remember where he’d said Sally’s house was. And Jenny. How far away was she?
“Can we go now, Mama?”
I needed to think. And fast.
“Give Bibi my phone,” I said. “We need to talk, and she loves watching Octonauts.”
Bibi had no idea anything was wrong. I wasn’t going to change that. My priority was getting her out of here safely—and preferably with no idea she had ever been in danger.
“Octonauts! Yayyyyyy!” Bibi spun round to look at Drake.
He took a few steps forward and handed my phone to me. He watched me as I tapped a few buttons and the Octonauts theme tune blared out. I turned up the volume and handed the phone to Bibi, then led Drake a few feet away from the table. Away from my daughter.
“What do you want from us?” I kept my voice level.
Drake folded his arms. “Last year, I was given a keyring with a set of keys on it to unlock a safety deposit box. Inside it was my final payment, my goodbye bonus. The amount I needed to retire.”
“What the hell has this got to do with us?”
“I thought the keyring could’ve had a locator inside it. I took it off the keys and planned to hide it in someone else’s vehicle to throw them off knowing my actual movements.” Drake shook his head. “But I made a mistake. The keys were the decoy. The keyring itself was the key.”
I was still no closer to understanding how any of this was our problem.
“When I realized I needed the keyring, I went to get it from my car. But it wasn’t there. My employers said it was my fault I’d lost it, and I could only have the duplicate if I did another job for them.”
Was I meant to feel sympathy for him on hearing that he’d been screwed over by his gangster bosses?
“Back in Italy, I drove you and Bibi to the hospital. Bibi found the keyring and took it.”
“Don’t accuse my daughter of being a thief! She—”
“It would’ve looked like nothing. It’s just a small metal ball. It might’ve still had the chain attached to it.”
A keyring without its chain. A broken pendant. Bibi’s penguin had been wearing it round its neck.
“Last month, I finally tracked down security footage from the hospital. I saw Bibi playing with something small and silver.”
“You came to England for the keyring? And you took Bibi just to ask her where she’d put it?”
“I know who you are, Haze. I know what you are.” He stared at me silently.
I stared back. This couldn’t be happening.
“I wanted Bibi to give it to me without involving you,” he said. “I didn’t want you to keep the keyring for yourselves.”
“You really think we’d run off with some piece of kit we don’t even know how to use? To try and cash it in at some unknown location?”
“I would never underestimate you. I’ve seen your victims.”
And there it was.
He knew us; he knew our work. He was law enforcement, but he was dirty. A child kidnapper and a mercenary. And he was judging us. A couple of serial killers who only ended bad men. There was black, white, and gray—and that was us right now.
“Don’t judge us,” I hissed. “You’re the worst of the worst. Pretending to be a good-guy agent, pretending you care about the greater good—but look at you! Anyone’s for a quick buck! It’s all about the money.”
Drake shrugged. “I like nice things, Haze. There’s no shame in that. I am good at what I do. I deserve to get paid well for it.”
I looked around the shop. “Bibi told you the keyring was here?”
“She had no idea what I was talking about, but said, ‘Mama gives all my precious things to charity shop.’ ”
“That’s not true!” Jesus, why was I defending my parenting to this maniac?
“I checked the surveillance logs and saw this place was on the list of where you’d visited. But it’s proving a little tricky to find.”
The logs. He was admitting he’d had people watching us.
“Bibi didn’t know where it was because she doesn’t think of it as a keyring.” I turned to her. “Bibi, where’s Pinga’s pendant?”
She spoke without tearing her eyes away from the screen. “He didn’t like it anymore, so I gave it to Dodo Dolly.”
I looked at Drake. I knew exactly where Dodo Dolly was.
The Chameleon had come after us for the keyring. He’d taken Bibi for the keyring. If I gave it to him, then what? The Corporation wanted us dead. And here was their pet assassin, holding us at gunpoint.
Every step of the way, this man had outmaneuvered us. Everything he’d done had brought us to this moment. He’d made it very clear that he was the professional, we were the amateurs.
How was I going to get us out of this alive?