Her Nightly Embrace Read online

  She smiled and climbed on top of me, taking my wrists in my hand, and pinned me down.

  “Hi, I’m Ariel, your designated spirit for this evening.”

  “And how are you with the ways of the flesh, O spirit?”

  “Let’s find out!” she said.

  We laughed, play-wrestled for another round.

  TWENTY-ONE

  That was a nice dream. A dream of fresh sheets and room service, safe sex, and a promise of escape that I’d never have.

  But every dream ends, and I had to return to reality the next morning.

  Ariel and I walked out of her hotel together to prolong the last embers of that dream, until she got into a taxi for the airport and I headed for my car to the office.

  Mark was back from Mexico when I walked in.

  “Que pedo güey!” he cried, Mexican slang for “What’s up, dude!” or its equivalent.

  “Mark, how can you spend a whole week in Mexico and still come back white as a sheet?”

  “I am tan-proof, sir. My deepest mark as an Englishman.”

  Benjamin and Olivia were watching and logging the videos on Sandra’s laptop. There was one of Darren, Powys, and six other bankers in balaclavas and tracksuits in a conference room at Holloway-Browner, shouting and laughing as they gathered around Jack Higglesworth. He was in an orange jumpsuit and on his knees.

  “Is that—?” I began to ask.

  “We are here to execute our brethren who has failed to live up to our code and make maximum moolah!” cried Darren in the video.

  The other bankers yelled in agreement.

  “Failure is a disgrace to us all! He is to be punished! He must pay!”

  “OFF WITH HIS HEAD!” they cried.

  “Jackie boy, your volumes lack volume! You are crap!”

  Gavin began to mime sawing Jack’s head off with a wooden ruler while the others clapped and laughed.

  I realized that Sandra was the one behind the camera, filming on her phone.

  “Well. That’s fucked,” deadpanned David.

  “Completely off their faces on coke,” Benjamin said.

  “This is probably not an approved team-building exercise,” Marcie said.

  “I take it Roger’s seen this?” I asked.

  “He was well pleased,” Cheryl said. “More leverage.”

  “Leverage for what?”

  “Whatever deal he might want to make with the bank down the line.”

  “Oh. Of course.”

  Roger came out of his office in announcement mode.

  “I just got off the phone with the editor of the Morning Post. They’re leaning on us about the password. Where are we on that?”

  “Nowhere,” Olivia said.

  “And Holloway-Browner’s legal department called earlier,” Cheryl said. “They were fishing about Ms. Rodriguez and, quote, ‘any confidential information she might have passed onto us.’ ”

  “How did they know about us?” I asked.

  “My guess is the Post must have called them to fish for information and get a statement,” Cheryl said.

  “They’re applying pressure on us from two fronts,” Roger said.

  “I better prepare a brief,” David said. “If we’re getting accused of theft of confidential papers, I want us to be prepared. Cheryl, if Holloway’s lawyers call again, put them through to me.”

  “Ravi,” Roger said, “you have my permission to do whatever it takes to get that password out of Ms. Rodriguez. If we don’t know what’s on that drive, we can’t control the situation.”

  “But that affects her, not us. Why do you want the information, boss?”

  “Leverage, old son. Now, be firm. Don’t be her psychiatrist. Don’t be her priest. You need to be teacher here. Sir is very cross. Drag it out of her.”

  “Why do I get the feeling you know something I don’t?”

  “I always know something you don’t, old son. Now on your bike.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  I was barely two blocks out of the car park from the office when a black SUV screeched up and cut me off.

  I hit the breaks, narrowly avoided plowing into it. Three burly bastards got out. Casual clothes. Denim. Jeans. Boots.

  Glowing eyes, canine teeth, burning red skin. The Rakshakas I’d seen twice before in my visions of the two murders. These were the ones. It was this lot all along.

  I blinked. They were human now.

  One of them walked right up to my side of the car. He had friendly eyes and a warm smile, but I already knew he was a monster.

  He tapped on the window. I lowered it just a jot.

  “How ya doin’ today, brother?”

  American.

  “All right,” I said. “Apart from just getting cut off. Who might you be?”

  “Call me Jarrod. Let’s talk about Sandra Rodriguez.”

  “What about her?”

  “We need to talk to her.”

  “Regarding?”

  “Stuff she took from her employers. And some other stuff, but that’s really between her and us.”

  I glanced at Jarrod and his two men. They kept flicking between human and Rakshaka. It felt like a migraine. My heart was pounding, but I wasn’t about to panic yet. None of the scenarios that were going through my head had a good outcome for me here.

  “She’s under our protection. So if you want to set a meeting, I’ll run it by her and get back to you.”

  Jarrod laughed.

  “Oh, man. You don’t know the bear you’re poking here, brother. We can be your worst nightmare or your new best friends.”

  “I don’t need arseholes for friends.”

  Jarrod’s smile didn’t waver.

  “You’re a cool customer. I like that. Say, can I call you Mr. Chips? After the movie about the schoolteacher? Always liked that movie.”

  “I hate movies about teachers.”

  They know about my past? What else do they know?

  “Look, brother, I’m approaching you here out of professional courtesy. We’re going to have our talk with Ms. Rodriguez with or without your blessing. She’s playing a dangerous game.”

  “Because an investment bank is hiring ex-military types to kill people for a cover-up?”

  Jarrod’s smile grew wider.

  “They tell me you’re smart. Let me give you some advice. One professional to another. Walk away. This isn’t going to end well for your client. No dishonor in admitting you’ve done all you can, since you and us, we’re not in the same league.”

  “Ah, now that you’ve said that, I can’t very well drop her, can I? I have a duty of care to my client.”

  I held Jarrod’s gaze and didn’t blink.

  “What next? Are you going to take me someplace and torture me? Bit of waterboarding? Beatings? Electrodes? Urine-soaked sack over my head?”

  Given what I’d already seen they were capable of, I was well and truly fucked, but I wasn’t going to beg just yet.

  Jarrod backed away from my car, still smiling.

  “I’ll see ya around, Ravi.”

  He gestured to his men, and they got back into the SUV and drove off.

  Slowly I unclenched my grip on the steering wheel and started to breathe again.

  TWENTY-THREE

  I waited till Jarrod and his goons were long gone before I phoned Roger.

  “I just met the killers of Jack Higglesworth and Darren Cowley.”

  “What?!”

  “Three men. Ex-military. Professionals. American. Wanted us to drop Sandra. They let me go.”

  “The bloody cheek of it!” bellowed Roger.

  “They know who we are. They know all about my past. That means they must know all about us.”

  “Damn and blast! This is completely unacceptable!”

  “They said they were approaching me out of ‘professional courtesy.’ What’s that about?”

  For the first time, I heard Roger become flustered.

  “We’ll talk about this later,” he stammered.<
br />
  “They could have grabbed me, tortured me, and killed me. Why didn’t they?”

  “Just thank your lucky stars they didn’t. Are you coming back here?”

  “No, to the safe house.”

  “Make sure you’re not followed. Any trackers on the car?”

  I got out and looked in the wheel wells, under the chassis.

  “No tracking devices, thank God. Don’t think they had time to hack the GPS or computer, either.”

  “Remember,” Roger said. “You can’t be paranoid enough here.”

  “One of them called himself Jarrod.”

  There was a pause on the line.

  “Did you say Jarrod?” Roger asked.

  “I told you they would come back to bite us in the arse one day,” Cheryl said. They had me on speakerphone.

  “I know, I know,” Roger grumbled.

  “Who are they, boss?”

  “We’ll talk about this when you get back here. Get to the safe house, read Ms. Rodriguez the riot act. I have some calls to make.”

  He hung up.

  I realized my hands were still shaking.

  I got back in the car and started the engine.

  When you’re worried someone might be following you, you take different, circuitous routes, all the while watching in your rearview mirror for a tail, even up to five cars behind you, then you try to shake them off.

  I could sense Lord Ganesha towering over the city, looking down on me and all my folly as I drove my ridiculously convoluted route before I got to the safe house. The problem with elephant heads was you couldn’t really read their expressions. I didn’t need to look out the window to know how sage his face looked as he loomed over us all.

  As I drove, I let out a long, hard shout, venting all my frustration and madness. I howled all the way to the safe house.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I didn’t bother ringing the bell, used my keycard, and stormed right in. Ken came out of the kitchen with a pot of tea.

  “Where is she?”

  Sandra was in the living fiddling with her phone while Clive was reading the Mirror.

  “So how much longer am I going to be stuck here?”

  “You want to leave?” I said. “There’s the door.”

  I was no longer in the mood to indulge her.

  “Oy!” she cried, indignant.

  “I just met a pack of American paramilitary dickheads. Apparently, they want you very badly.”

  “Fucking what?” Clive jerked to attention.

  Even Ken tensed up.

  “So if you want to go out and take your chances with them, be my guest.”

  The look on Sandra’s face changed. Her eyes darted about, gears turning trying to find another way to talk herself out of giving me a straight answer.

  “Look, I—”

  “We can’t assess the threat to you or how to help you until we know what’s really going on. We need the bloody password!”

  “I told you! I don’t know!”

  “I don’t believe you!”

  “Fuck you! I hired you! You work for me!”

  She looked to Ken and Clive for support, but they just stared at her.

  “So do you have any expert security advice for me, then? Who are the men that are after you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Bollocks. They’re the ones who tossed Jack off the roof. They hung Darren and tried to make it look like an accident. You saw them at the office the day Jack died, and you knew they did it, didn’t you? That’s why you were running scared.”

  “All right, all right!” she said. “They’re a private military contractor. They’re called Interzone.”

  “Fuck me!” Ken said.

  “The Interzone?”

  “Yes.”

  “The same Interzone that shot up that village in Afghanistan?”

  “Yes!”

  “We ought to charge you extra, luv,” said Ken.

  “Ravi,” Clive said. “You sure they didn’t follow you here?”

  “I made sure of that.”

  “They don’t need to follow you. They could have tracked you via the GPS on your phone.”

  Shit.

  “They don’t have my keycard,” I said. “They can’t get through the front door without it.”

  I turned back to Sandra.

  “Now the password.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, voice shaky now.

  “Tell me the password or you’re out on your ear.”

  “I don’t know! How many times do I have to tell you!”

  “Ken, Clive, pack her shit up. We’re done.”

  “You can’t do that!” she cried.

  “We’ll charge your credit card for services to date and email you an itemized receipt as well as a termination letter. We can refer you to another agency, but I don’t fancy your chances.”

  “You can’t do this!”

  “WHAT’S THE BLOODY PASSWORD?”

  “I don’t know! I don’t know! I don’t know!” She burst into tears.

  We watched her sob for about a minute. I believed her, finally.

  “You knew what was on the drive all along, didn’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “It wasn’t Jack or Darren who downloaded those files off the bank’s servers. It was you.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not as innocent as you like to make yourself out to be. You wanted payback for getting sacked. Tell me I got it wrong.”

  “You’re right.”

  “We need to know what it is people are dying for. What’s in those files?”

  “It’s the deal we worked on as a team. Jack, Darren, and I.”

  “What, it fell through?”

  “No. It went brilliantly. We are—were the best. But the blokes got bigger bonuses than me just because they have cocks. Even though I was the one who kept everyone focused, who had her eye on the ball when they were slacking and nearly got some figures wrong. Then when I brought it up, I got sacked for not being a team player. When I was the one who held the whole thing together.”

  “For wanting your due.”

  “When they gave me my notice, I decided to copy all the files on the deal to hold it over their heads.”

  “Blackmail.”

  “Compensation. I deserved it for the years I put into that fucking place. Darren agreed if we could split the payout.”

  “So why was Jack killed? Was he in on it?”

  “No. When he stepped out for lunch, I used his computer at the office to copy the files. So they wouldn’t know it was me. Darren was in on it.”

  “And when they traced it to Jack’s computer later, they thought he was the one who did it,” I pressed.

  “Took them a few days to notice, but yes. That was when they launched an internal investigation. They focused on Jack and didn’t suspect me. I didn’t think they’d go all Scorched Earth on us!”

  “Those PMC, they were there the day Jack died, weren’t they? When Powys called him in, they were there to interrogate him. Did you see them?”

  “Yes. We all did. Two big fuckers in Powys’s office. We thought they were security guards or investigators. We saw them lead Jack out of Powys’s office, and that was the last we saw of him.”

  “How big is this deal? What kind of deal is it that would make them call in an American PMC to silence you lot?”

  As she started to answer, we heard footsteps outside the front door, and the familiar whirl and click of a keycard being inserted into the lock and opening it. Who the fuck could it be? Only Ken, Clive, and I had a card.

  We all stepped in front of Sandra by instinct, ready to face whoever it was coming in. We heard hurried, heavy footsteps down the hall, stomping towards us.

  Then they stopped before the came in the living room.

  It occurred to me then that if they had guns, we were well and truly fucked.

  A metallic ping.

  A pin being pulled.

  A little
black cylinder clattered in from the hallway at our feet.

  “GET DOWN!” screamed Clive.

  Later, Benjamin would tell me it was an M84 stun grenade.

  Flash-bang.

  I can tell you that it lived up to its name.

  Everything exploded in white, and the bang was loud enough to feel like permanent damage. I was already on the floor, my head scrambled as I struggled to work out if I was still alive.

  The explosion settled into a ringing in my ears. I tried to get up, but my inner ear was all doolally, and I fell over again. I could just about make out Sandra screaming. Colors danced all over my eyes. I sensed three, maybe four large men running into the room.

  A voice above me, behind my head, close enough to my ear, above the pain and the ringing.

  “Stay down, brother. You’re better off that way.”

  Jarrod.

  I’d stopped thinking by that point. I tried to shake off the blindness and deafness and stumbled out after them. I made it out to the street and saw the tires of the BMW had been slashed beforehand. I saw Jarrod and his men had put a black hood over Sandra’s head and bundled her into a black SUV.

  And behind the wheel of the SUV was Ariel.

  And it all came crashing down on me: she was Interzone all along. It wasn’t a coincidence that she had come back into my life just when Sandra hired me. They must have been watching Golden Sentinels for a while. She was there to keep tabs on me. She must have cloned my keycard while I was asleep last night. They just needed to know where the safe house was. Jarrod showed up to goad me into coming so they could track me by my phone’s GPS.

  I could only watch as the SUV peeled off and disappeared around the corner.

  Behind me, Lord Vishnu watched and tweeted this on his phone. I felt all of them watching me now, taking photos with their phones. They were all around, scattered all over the street. I knew why they chose me now. Who else was in my position of witnessing the madness of not just my life, but my job gave them a ringside seat to the times. They wanted to watch and learn. I was their lens into this world. They were here now because they wanted to see what I would do next. They always showed up en masse when I was about to do something drastic, and they would tweet to each other about it.