The entire top floor of the building spread out before them, unfurnished and empty apart from two men clad in combat gear and full-face helmets walking toward them, guns held loosely at their sides.
Gates was just turning toward her, his face puzzled, when fire and fury erupted around him.
CHAPTER THREE
Drake broke into Wells’s apartment and then stood back whilst Mai moved in to disable the alarm. They were prepared for the men following them to make a move, but nothing had happened. In less than a minute, they had free reign. Drake remained motionless for a while, studying the layout of the place. A short hallway led to a living room beyond which sat a kitchen and a bedroom. The living room was furnished in a Spartan manner. Nothing existed that didn’t have purpose. There was no sign of a woman’s touch. All the colors were dark, making the corners hard to distinguish — a mirror to the apartment owner’s soul.
Alicia remained outside the door, using a well-positioned set of hallway windows to her advantage, and set about cataloguing their potential enemies in the street below.
Drake waved Mai into the bedroom, whilst he took the living room. The irony of the Japanese agent finally making it into Wells’s bedroom after the man was dead was not lost on either of them and they shared a somber look. Mai would be going through more than a few inner torments, Drake thought, since it was she who pulled the trigger.
He would have put money on it being Alicia. But then, that girl had never failed to surprise him.
A large oak table dominated the back of the living room. The only item standing on its polished surface was a framed photograph. The picture showed Wells and a few of his army pals, arms over each other’s shoulders, most likely at the end of some secret operation or other. An operation for the British government? Drake wondered. Or for this secret group he and Cayman worked for?
Drake moved on. The front of the living room held a two-seater leather sofa and a forty-inch TV. A drinks cabinet was well stocked. Drake resisted the urge to investigate. He rummaged through another cabinet, but found it to be nothing more than a tasteful frontage for a DVD/CD rack. One by one he checked every case for hidden contents. As he worked, he listened to Mai poking around the bedroom.
He heard her walking toward him. “Find anything?”
“A set of unusual DVD’s. Some erotic art books from Japan. A signed picture of Kylie Minogue. Nothing unusual.”
Drake raised an eyebrow. “You think?”
“For Wells, I meant. Now, have you checked that?”
He guessed to where she was pointing. “Boot it up, Mai. We should check but my feeling is Wells always remained old-school. If there’s something here, it won’t be on his PC.”
Mai pressed a button and the big machine started clicking and whirring. “This place,” she said, “has already been picked over. By a pro. Can you tell?”
Drake took a second look around. “Not really. No.”
“Little things,” Mai said in her quiet, unassuming voice. “Mainly, the faint scent of a woman’s perfume in the bedroom.”
“You said it was a pro.”
“She was,” Mai said with half a smile. “But even a pro adheres to the ritual of cleanliness, Matt. Besides, it’s so faint most wouldn’t have caught the scent.”
Drake gave up on the DVD/CD cabinet and walked over to her. Carefully, he gave her thick lustrous hair a sniff.
“Be careful,” Mai told him. “I keep a small poison-tipped needle back there.”
“Yet another reason not to date a spy.” But she smelled good. Vaguely of aniseed and vanilla. As he leaned forward he noticed a framed picture hanging on the wall, a photograph of a coyote standing in the foreground of a stark wilderness, snow and the barren sticks of dead, frozen trees all around. He was about to head over for a look when Mai pointed past him. “Wells has a PlayStation too. Do you think—”
Drake snapped back to the present. “No need to check, Miss Shiranu. He definitely owned that game.”
“Wells was a lonely man. Just look around. He had no one who cared for him. No one special in his life.”
“Men who keep secrets are always lonely,” Drake said. “And men who also betray their friends die alone.”
Mai bent over as the screen flicked into life. “So we’re looking for anything that might lead us to who he worked for and how he knew Cayman.”
“And for what he knew about Alyson’s death, if anything. What I need to know is who gave the order and who executed it.”
As he said the words, Drake felt the blood run hot through his veins. Someone had ordered the murder of his wife and his unborn baby. If one thing was certain in this entire world, it was the fact that all those involved would die for their sins.
Mai clicked a few icons. “Look at this,” she said, surprise tingeing her voice. “Wells had a Twitter ID, a Facebook profile, and was a member of Goodreads. I think this proves that you were wrong, Matt. He wasn’t old school at all.”
Drake clicked onto ‘history.’ The last entry, dated the night before Wells had flown out to Miami, was a single line. One link to one site.
Hotmail. Password change.
Alicia popped her head around the door at that moment and told them, in characteristic style, to hurry the fuck up. The arseholes outside wouldn’t stand around playing with their dicks forever.
“I have a crazy idea.” Drake pushed past Mai and started skimming the mouse across a plush pad. “We were always taught to leave messages where they couldn’t be found.” He clicked onto Hotmail. “Except by the person who shared the account.”
Mai glanced sideways at him as he hovered over the password box. “You know what it is?”
“If Wells had something to hide and wanted us to find it…” Drake bit his lip. “Then this is how he would do it. If not, well, we’ve lost nothing.”
He typed a password slowly. Mai’s eyes opened wide. “Maitime? Really?”
“What else could it be?”
The screen flicked onto the Hotmail website. Drake clicked the ‘Drafts’ folder and paused as three messages popped up, each one highlighted in bold to show they hadn’t been viewed.
“They should be close copies of emails Wells sent to…” He paused. “A man called Andrew Black.” Drake scrolled down the body of each email. “Nothing more than a simple message,” he said with a tinge of disappointment. “Sending latest version by snail mail, my friend. Needless to say, I know, but for all our sakes — keep it safe. Will be in touch when back.”
“Hmm.” Mai pointed to snatch of email where Andrew Black had responded. “Getting some Mai time, my old friend?”
“Hopes are high, as ever.” Wells had responded.
Drake clicked through Wells’s online directory. An address was listed for an Andrew Black at nearby Sevenoaks in Kent. “We should follow this through. If Wells was shipping something to an old friend before leaving the country, it would be of huge importance to him.”
Mai nodded and was about to respond when Alicia stuck her head through the front door. “Time to stop fannying around, people. The thugs just got reinforced.”
“We’re coming.” Drake shut the PC down. “How many are there?”
“Enough so that we may have to fight our way out of London.” Alicia grinned. “Just the way I like it.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Hayden instinctively ducked as the row of windows to her right exploded. Shattered glass burst across the room in a deadly wave. The two black-clad combatants walking toward them ducked and started to open fire. If the onslaught was designed to numb their senses and slow their reactions, it served its purpose. The whole team was crawling and scrambling across the polished floor, glass showering them and bullets impacting the walls behind them. One of Gates’s secret service men had managed to stay between his boss and the destruction. His body danced for the last time as it was riddled with bullets and he fell backward on top of Gates.