Chapter Sixty-Nine
Haze
I opened the door to find my father standing there with a suitcase. Was he coming to say goodbye? Or moving in, so we could bond?
Drake motioned toward the suitcase. “I got you this. To apologize for the whole taking Bibi thing.”
“New luggage?”
Drake frowned. “No. Mario.”
I looked again at the suitcase. Great. Another dead man. I thought of how big Mario had been, and how small the case was in comparison.
“He was taller than—”
“Not anymore.”
“Right.”
What the hell was wrong with this guy?
“Couldn’t you just get me a bottle of perfume? Some flowers?”
Drake shrugged. “He saw too much. I’m cleaning house. You need to be more ruthless.”
My father was aware of how many men I’d killed. Yet this was his takeaway?
“I’ll bear that in mind,” I said.
“I need to get a flight back to Brussels. So I don’t have time for…” He tapped the case.
It wasn’t going to be easy disposing of another body, but I figured we had no choice but to fit it in.
“I will send you the details I use to contact The Corporation. Maybe you can find a way to track them down. I tried to make them understand you’re not a threat. But I worry they have discovered our genetic connection. Despite my history, they might fear I’ve gone soft.”
“Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll let them know you kidnapped your granddaughter and threatened to kill me if it turned out I was working for the rival gang.”
He nodded. He might speak five languages, but he didn’t seem to understand sarcasm. “I’ve done all I can. You need to stay alert. They still want you dead.”
My first pep talk from my father. I wondered how I would’ve turned out if he’d claimed me back when I was a motherless child.
Was there any good in him at all? I wasn’t one to be giving out parenting advice, of course—and besides, where the hell would you start with this guy?
But it could be argued he had been trying to be a good parent.
In his own deeply fucked-up way, he had been looking out for me.
In Ivrea, he’d arranged to save me, but not Fox.
Fathers often believed a daughter’s love interest wasn’t good enough—they just didn’t always take that to the extreme of thinking that meant it was fine to let them be killed by a pack of gangsters.
“You get your money?”
Drake smiled. “The keyring served its purpose.” He handed me a small box from his pocket. “This is a thank-you gift for Bibi. For keeping it safe.”
I opened it. Inside was a necklace with a silver pendant in the shape of a penguin. It was covered in diamonds.
“You got this for a four-year-old?”
“She can sell it for sweets money,” he deadpanned.
“Next time you want to know how we’re all doing, can you just call me? No more sending people to watch us. It’s creepy.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.” We nodded at each other. “Goodbye.”
“Bye.”
I wheeled Mario inside and closed the door.
Fox came out of the kitchen. “That was like listening to two robots malfunction. At least we know where you get your inability to express emotions from.”
“I’ve also learned he’s not good on presents.” I motioned toward the suitcase and the necklace. “I guess I really didn’t miss out on much growing up without him.”
“You don’t have to welcome him into our lives, but you can still ask him things you’ve always wanted to know: who his parents were, where he grew up, if we should be aware of any predisposition to genetic illnesses.”
“Next time he’s in town, we’ll do lunch.” I kicked the suitcase. “Now, what do we do about him?”
“Let’s drop him at a secure location until we can find a permanent resting place. I’ve got a lead on The Corporation.”
—
Fox parked our minivan outside the Brentford branch of You Pay, We Store!
Drake had given us the details of the website he’d used to communicate with The Corporation.
had a chat forum where people could discuss their top tips for clearing drains.
Once Fox had logged on, there was a back-end weblink that took him through to a secure page where orders were given and received.
Jenny had been able to track it to a host server that was masking The Corporation’s IP address.
If we could get to the server, we had a chance of getting the IP address, which would then lead us to the device The Corporation was using. A long, painful dance, but one we needed to do.
We’d spent the last month trying to get to The Chameleon, and now he was helping us get to The Corporation. You want to stop the snake, you have to cut off its head.
had a registered storage locker at You Pay, We Store!, a facility that was open 24/7. We put on our baseball caps and walked in, heading straight to Number B36 on the second floor. Our hope was that the server was being stored inside this locker.
There was no one else here. Which was understandable at 4 a.m.
The lock was easy enough to break.
Surprisingly easy, really. Something was jangling in my mind as we pulled up the locker door. Inside, it was empty except for a stack of blocks with a bundle of wires, and a timer that was counting down at lightning speed.
Tick-tock, tick-tock.
Ding.
Fox and I looked at each other. This couldn’t be it. This couldn’t be how it ended.