"Thank you for the information, I’ll have people look into it.”
I walked past her before she could say anything else and kept moving until I reached Tommy and Sara, who both stood next to Tommy's truck.
"We need to talk," I said to Tommy. "Now." The anger in my voice was easy to decipher.
We stopped out of earshot from anyone trying to listen in, a few hundred meters from those now searching the house. "I should knock you the fuck out," I said.
"Nate…"
I raised my hand to interrupt him. "Ten years ago, Mordred tried to kill me, but only succeeded in wiping my memory. Three months ago, I get my memory back, go find and kill the son-of-a-bitch and then come to find you. I told you all of this. I told you that Avalon was almost certainly involved in what happened, and that they might try to find me to finish the job they'd started. And how do you deal with this? By inviting them to meet me as I walk out of a crime scene with fucking blood on my hands!
"Jesus, Tommy. Avalon wants me dead, and you basically deliver me to their police force. Good fucking job."
"You done?" Tommy asked with a touch of anger himself.
I grunted something non-committal.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you that the person who asked for my help was Olivia."
"The fucking director? This just gets better."
"Hey, you had your turn, now you get to shut the fuck up and listen."
There was a silence between us that lasted only a few seconds, but if felt like a lifetime. There were probably only six people in the world that could speak to me like that and not get a punch in the mouth. And Tommy knew he was one of them. I shut up and listened.
"Olivia needed my help, and I agreed," Tommy said. "I didn't want to argue with you, so I didn't tell you. She's not a cop, she's LOA, and I needed your help. I thought it was going to be a nice easy job, snooping around Neil's house. I had no idea what we'd find, but I swear to you I thought at most we'd just find enough to let the LOA look into him further. I'd have never brought Sara with us if I thought for one second there might be any real danger.
"Besides, you shouldn't be too concerned about me telling Olivia that you were helping me. Your past is so deeply hidden in Avalon, that no member of the LOA, agent or director, will ever be able to gain access. You know this."
"Damn you," I said softly.
"I really am sorry for not telling you. But I'm also sorry that I had to lie to Olivia."
"What did you do, Tommy?"
"She wanted to know who you were, your past, that sort of thing. I told her that you were a member of the Faceless."
The Faceless were bodyguards, assassins, thieves or whatever else their master needs them to be. Each high-ranking member of Avalon has their own personal Faceless, and each of them wears a mask so that no one knows what they really look like. There are no files on members, and only their master knows their true identity as all of them are bound to do their master's will. No matter how disturbed or unpleasant it may be.
"Are you serious?"
"I needed to explain why any checks would come up negative. And preferably something that would make her not want to check in the first place. I wasn't left with a whole lot of good options. The Faceless were the obvious choice."
I shrugged my agreement, he had a point. "Okay, there's only one problem."
"And that would be?"
"You ever met an ex-member of the Faceless? It's a till death-do-you-part, sort of group. And even that doesn't always mean their work is done."
"You'll think of something." Tommy gestured behind me. "She looks angry, think fast."
I turned as director Green strode toward me, determined and clearly having decided that she'd given Tommy and me enough time to chat. "I don't believe we were finished talking, Mister Garrett."
"Evidently not," I said, as Tommy wandered off to check on Sara.
"You brought the girl here," Director Green said, meaning Sara. "That was stupid."
"Well, you asked Tommy to look into Neil, and that led us here. It wasn't my idea, and I know Tommy well enough to know that he was hardly expecting to find a torture chamber out here. And, like I said, you're the one who asked for his help."
"And I didn't expect him to include a member of the Faceless in this mess."
"Your disdain is easy to hear, Director Green," I said with a smile. "You know nothing about me. Before you judge, maybe you should change that."
"Every Faceless I've ever met; has served only their master, like a good little lapdog. What makes you so different, Mister Garrett? What makes you so goddamn impressive, that I should decide to trust you?"
"Firstly, I'm ex-Faceless. Emphasis on the ex. Secondly, whoever built that basement did it for one reason, to kill people in it. And whoever he is, he's very skilled at killing. This isn't the work of some amateur, like Neil, who doesn't know what he's doing. Neil may be a powerful predator, but he's nowhere near a professional. Professionals don't make the mistakes that he's made, and they're not caught easily."
"Anything else?"
"You got a wipe?"
Director Green pulled a small pack of baby wipes from her pocket and passed them to me. "Keep the pack."
I thanked her and cleaned the blood from my hands, stuffing the remaining pack in my pocket before explaining about the photos I'd found in Neil's house.
"Shit," she whispered. "This just gets worse and worse."
"One more thing." I gestured at the open country surrounding us. "Tommy mentioned that you were called with a tip that someone saw something weird at the farm. You see any way someone could just happen to spot something suspicious going on out here? You can't see the farmhouse from the road, unless you're stopped at the gate and looking in. I'd bet a million quid that whoever made that call is the same person who slit the girls throat. And that's not Neil. My guess, Neil's doing the leg work and the killer called to cast suspicion on him. To give himself some breathing room while you chased your tail. I'm guessing someone called to tell you that Neil was out. Maybe he's no longer useful to whoever he's working for."
"Fuck. Look, I'm needed here to sort all of this out, but I'll contact you and Tommy tomorrow morning." She turned and walked away, re-joining the agents buzzing around the crime scene.
I put the card in my pocket and moved to stand next to Tommy and Sara. "Can we leave now?" Sara asked.
"I assume so," I said.
"Drop me back at the office," Tommy said. "Then take Sara home."
I waited until Sara had gone back to the car before speaking to Tommy. "There's more to this than some dead girl in a basement and a bunch of photos in some asshole's attic, isn't there?"
Tommy looked around, a nervous habit he had tried to get rid of. "That's putting it bluntly. If I'm right, this is going to turn into a huge fucking mess by tomorrow morning."
Chapter 6
I dropped Tommy off at his office, but he'd been silent the whole way back and it was beginning to concern me.
"They tortured that woman,” he said before I could ask him anything. “I could smell the blood. Can you come pick me up before you go home? I think there are a few things we need to talk about."
I said I would and told him that I'd return in a few hours to give him his car back.
"How's your hand?" I asked a still quiet Sara.
She flexed her fingers and wrist. "It feels sore, but no more throbbing pain. Why, where are we going?"
"We need to talk," I said. "About what you saw."
"I saw a dead woman." Her words were spoken softly, just above a whisper.
I didn't really know what to say to that. "I'm sorry" felt too small a phrase to use for the horror that Sara had witnessed. Instead, I drove in silence for a few more miles, before leaving the motorway and driving down some quiet country roads until we reached a a dirt road. We bumped and jolted down the road for half a mile, the width just big enough for two cars, but there was no one else around at one in the afternoon on a weekday. At the end of the road sat a large grassy clearing.