Deception Game (8 page)

Unlike many of the others it was a fairly recent scar, no more than a year or two old. She hadn’t been there when he’d earned it, but she knew how it had come about, and who had given it to him.

‘It still hurts?’ she asked quietly.

Drake shook his head, brushing it aside. ‘Just a twinge every now and then. It’s nothing.’

Rising up, she knelt behind him on the bed, encircling him with her arms and pressing her body against him. She could feel those same muscles she had only recently admired, as her hands traced a gentle path down his chest until she felt the slight dimpling of scar tissue.

And as close as she was, she felt him tense up when she touched it.

‘Is that how it is when you think about her?’ she asked. ‘A twinge of pain every now and then? Something that comes and goes?’

Anya – the woman Drake had been sent to rescue from a Russian prison. The woman who had almost killed him, and had placed countless others in danger. The woman who Samantha knew haunted his dreams even now.

‘Anya’s gone,’ he whispered. He reached up and took another pull on the whisky. ‘Nothing’s going to change that.’

She felt a stab of pain at this lie. They both knew Anya wasn’t dead, that her apparently murder last year had been a carefully constructed ruse, but only one of them believed the other to be ignorant of this.

‘Would
you
change it, if you could?’

She wanted to know, wanted to understand the hold that this woman had over him. What was it about her that had compelled him to risk everything more than once in the vain, forlorn hope of reuniting with her?

Would you do the same for me, Ryan? she caught herself wondering.

But before he could answer, the moment was interrupted by the buzz of his cell phone, still in the pocket of his jeans, which lay amongst a heap of discarded clothes – his and hers.

Shrugging out of her embrace, Drake snatched the phone up and studied the caller ID, his brow creasing in a frown. ‘Sorry, I have to take this,’ he said, rising to his feet and hitting the Accept Call button. ‘Jessica, I wasn’t expecting—’

He never got a chance to finish, his greeting interrupted by a rush of conversation on the other end of the line.

Samantha watched him in silence, studying his reactions as he listened intently to what was being said. She knew little of Drake’s sister Jessica, having never met the woman personally. Drake himself wasn’t inclined to talk much about his family, but she’d eventually discovered that Jessica had become caught up in the events of two years previously, taken hostage by agents of Cain as leverage to make Drake cooperate. Only the actions of Drake and Anya had saved her life.

She couldn’t say for sure what kind of relationship he had with her now, but whatever it was, she sensed this wasn’t a social call. She was delivering bad news.

‘Jess, just calm down,’ he said, his voice as tense as his posture. ‘Tell me what happened.’

That was when she saw the change come over him. The concern and the tension left him then, replaced by something else. Something she’d so rarely seen in him – shock.

‘When?’ he asked, his voice low and soft. ‘But how did you...?’

He fell silent again, listening, trying to absorb what he was hearing.

‘I see.’ She saw the muscles in his throat tighten. ‘Of course, I’ll be there. Give me some time to sort things out here. We’ll talk more soon. Okay...bye.’

‘What is it?’ Samantha asked as he killed the phone and sat down heavily on the bed, staring at the far wall and seeing nothing.

Slowly he reached up, held the hip flask to his mouth and took a long, deep pull. ‘My mother,’ he said, speaking the word as if it were unfamiliar to him. ‘She’s dead.’

Fifteen years earlier

Gasping, heart pumping, ignoring the sting of sweat in his eyes and the ache in his muscles, Drake moved in against his opponent, ducked a clumsy right hook and responded with a sharp cross that sent the other fighter staggering back.

Sensing another spectacular knockout for which the talented and aggressive young fighter had become well known, the gathered crowd roared in excitement, rising to their feet as one to cheer him on.

Drake sensed it too. Their roaring and screaming filled his body, coursed through his veins, investing his body with renewed strength. Before the other fighter could recover, he rushed forward and drove a right hook into the man’s flank, followed by an uppercut that landed flush to the jaw.

The other man was against the ropes now, gloves up, arms tight by his sides as the pummeling continued. Drake’s hands ached with the jarring impacts of bone against flesh, his muscles burning from the exertion of maintaining the assault. His strength was waning, yet still the other fighter wouldn’t go down. Still he remained defiantly on his feet.

What was wrong with him? He was beaten. More than that, he was completely outmatched. He’d been pitted against someone far younger, stronger and fitter than himself. Why not go just go down and call it a day? There was no shame in it after the pounding he’d taken, and he was at the end of his career anyway. Such stubborn defiance was just making it harder for both of them. Why?

Why?

He was drawing back his arm for another weary punch when the bell sounded, ending the round. To carry on would risk a points deduction, and he’d never had to resort to such underhand tactics before; he wasn’t about to start now. And as much as he hated to admit it, the sheer effort of trying to knock the man down had left him physically drained. He needed some time to get his breath back, then he could renew the attack and finish him off in the next round.

Reluctantly he turned away from the old fighter and stalked back to his corner as the crowd roared approval.

Brecon Beacons National Park, Wales

‘Shit,’ Drake swore under his breath, bringing his rental car to a halt on the narrow country road. Overhead, the sun shone down brightly through scattered cloud, illuminating a world of towering snow-covered mountain peaks, tiny fields ringed with hedgerows, and rolling woodland crowding in close to fast-flowing rivers. The kind of picture-postcard landscape that people travelled hundreds of miles to bike and walk through.

Perfect, apart from the irritating obstruction on the road up ahead. A shepherd was busy moving his flock of sheep along the road, probably transferring them from one field to another in search of better grazing. The herd, easily a hundred strong, were so tightly packed on the winding lane that their woollen coats seemed to merge together into a single undulating white mass.

The minutes ticked by with the car’s engine idling as the elderly shepherd eased the flock along with no great sense of urgency, and Drake resisted the urge to glance at his wristwatch. They were deep in the Welsh mountains, and he had spent enough time here in the past to know that things happened at a different pace from the rest of the world. Patience wasn’t just a virtue here, it was a necessity.

Unfortunately, patience was something that Drake was fast running out of. Today wasn’t a day for patience.

Fuck it, he decided, throwing the car into reverse and performing a three-point turn – no easy feat on the narrow stone-walled road – before stamping on the accelerator and leaving the flock behind in a spray of mud and stone chips. His new route would take longer, but it felt good just to be moving.

As the fields and mountains slipped by outside his window, he reflected for a moment on how strange it felt to be back in this neck of the woods. After applying to join the Special Air Service nearly two decades ago, he’d been based out of RAF Hereford not more than a dozen miles from here. The arduous selection programme had seen him turned loose in these very mountains in the depths of winter as part of his escape-and-evasion training. Armed with little more than a moth-eaten greatcoat and boots that didn’t fit properly, he and a few dozen other hopefuls had marched, run, swam and climbed for two days in rain, snow and mud to reach their objective. Less than half made it to the end.

He’d never forget one of the little challenges they’d been set along the way. Finding a rusted old car seemingly abandoned in the middle of the windswept moorland, they’d been instructed to open the vehicle’s trunk and memorise as much as possible about the random assortment of items contained within. Two days later while being debriefed, the first question they’d been asked was the car’s license-plate number.

That had pretty much set the tone for what the regiment expected of its candidates – be ready for anything.

Today, with temperatures in the high teens and a satnav unit to guide him, his journey was rather more comfortable than it had been back then. However, he couldn’t say he was quite as excited about reaching his destination.

During the three-hour drive from RAF Mildenhall, he’d tried in some way to process the news that his sister had delivered in the early hours of the morning, that his mother had been found dead at an industrial site on the outskirts of Cardiff. It was as simple, and yet as inexplicable, as that – just a plain, stark fact. How she’d ended up there, what events had led up to it, even the cause of her death were as yet unknown.

He was hoping to learn more when he eventually rendezvoused with Jessica.

It took another twenty minutes, and another diversion, for him to reach what the car’s satnav unit claimed was the address. He wouldn’t have known – he’d never been to this place in his life.

The building that his mother had called home appeared to have been converted and modernized from some much older structure, possibly a barn or even a water mill of some kind. Big, square and built from the same uncompromising grey stone as everything else around here, it seemed to be as much a part of the landscape as the mountains themselves.

An unpaved, single-track road led up to the property, and Drake took care to ease the rental car along this makeshift roadway, trying to avoid the worst of the potholes. An old Land Rover Series III parked to one side of the house, its dark green paintwork splattered with mud, suggested that his Ford Mondeo wasn’t the optimal vehicle for getting around this part of the world.

How the hell had his mother ended up way out here in the sticks? He remembered her as a passionate city dweller, enthralled by the fast pace of life in central London and the plentiful career opportunities it offered. Then again, how well had he ever truly known her? She’d been around little enough during his childhood, and for the past ten years he’d had no contact with her whatsoever. Perhaps she’d changed her priorities in her later years, or perhaps this was a side of her he’d just never experienced.

Pulling in beside the Land Rover, Drake killed the engine, closed his eyes for a moment and let out a breath, psyching himself up for what was coming.

His sister Jessica had arranged to meet him here, though he had no idea why. Certainly there were arrangements to be made, and the contents of the house would no doubt have to be sorted through and disposed of, but there was no need to start all of that yet.

Still, at least the choice of venue spared him from having to make uncomfortable conversation with her husband Mark. The two men had never really hit it off, even from the beginning, and the events of two years earlier had done little to spark up a friendship. The last time Drake had visited them, Mark had waited for an opportune moment, taken him quietly aside and explained in no uncertain terms that Drake wasn’t welcome in his house, and it would be best for everyone if he stayed away.

Drake’s initial impulse had been to break the arm that had been laid so patronizingly on his shoulder during this chummy conversation, but with some effort he’d reined it in. After all, the man’s wife had been kidnapped and very nearly executed because of what Drake had become involved in. The fact that Drake himself had rescued her wasn’t going to make that go away.

With that less-than-cheerful thought hovering over him, he pulled open the door and stepped outside. He was greeted by the scent of recently cut grass and wild flowers, the bubbling gush of a nearby stream, and the feel of sunlight streaming down through scattered cloud. It seemed absurd given the maelstrom that had so recently engulfed his already troubled life, but he could scarcely imagine a more tranquil scene than the one which greeted him at that moment.

He was just turning towards the house when he heard someone call out.

‘Ryan!’

He barely had time to react before Jessica rushed across the driveway and threw her arms around him, pulling him tight and holding on as if her life depended on it. Drake did nothing but hold her in return, guessing that she didn’t need words at that moment.

She wasn’t crying when she finally pulled away, but her eyes were red.

‘I knew you’d come, but I never expected to see you so soon,’ she said, managing a weak grin. The kind of playful teasing that used to happen so easily between them. ‘Let me guess – you could tell me but you’d have to kill me?’

‘Nah, too much paperwork.’ Drake decided not to mention the recent operation that had seen him return to the UK. ‘Forgive the stupid question, but how are you holding up?’

She let out a breath, her shoulders sagging a little. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then seemed to think better of it and merely shook her head. There were fresh tears glistening in her eyes now.

‘Why don’t we go inside? I’ll make you some tea,’ Drake suggested, steering her towards the front door. He didn’t really want a cup of tea, and he doubted she did either, but that was what normal people seemed to do at times like this. It was what he remembered his parents doing as a child when his grandfather had died, anyway.

She raised an eyebrow. ‘I thought you lived on coffee now.’

‘When in Rome,’ Drake replied.

Ten minutes later, they were seated at the big rustic oak dining table in the kitchen, each nursing a cup of sugary tea. It had taken a while to find what he’d needed in the unfamiliar kitchen, but even he was capable of making a brew without too much difficulty.

It was a strange experience being there, seeing the new life his mother had built for herself, and the faint reminders of the old one that he still vaguely remembered. Most of the furniture and personal possessions in the house were new and unknown to him, but every so often he’d spot something he recognized; a table lamp that he’d knocked over with a football as a child, a rug bought during a family holiday in Tunisia, a globe that he’d spent hours staring at, dreaming of the far-flung places he would one day visit.

‘It’s stupid when I think about it,’ Jessica said, staring into the steaming liquid in her cup.

Drake surveyed his sister. ‘What is?’

‘How I reacted when the police showed up at my door. You know what my first thought was? You – I was sure they were going to tell me something had happened to you. Some...mission they couldn’t tell me the details of. It never occurred to me that Mum...’ She trailed off for a moment, taking a gulp of her drink. ‘Part of me still can’t believe it, can’t accept she’s really gone.’

‘What did they tell you, Jess?’ Drake asked, feeling the time was right to seek answers to some of the questions that had haunted him for the past several hours. ‘What happened to her?’

The young woman sighed. ‘Not much. They told me the body had been found on some industrial site, lying in a pit of some kind. But...’ She swallowed hard and closed her eyes. He could see her lip quivering, could almost feel the strain she was under, trying to keep her composure.

Rounding the table, Drake laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘What is it?’

When she looked up at him and he saw the pain in her vivid green eyes, he could already sense what was coming. The circumstances of her death already pointed to one inescapable conclusion.

‘They told me she’d been murdered,’ his sister managed to say, before breaking down in sobs.

Everything changed in that instant. Drake sat down beside Jessica, sinking into the chair like a fighter dropping to the canvas after taking a haymaker punch, the world swimming and fading into darkness around him.

Murdered.

Not a death by accident or illness. Not the commonplace tragedy that families all over the world experienced every day; the kind that could be rationalized and understood and eventually accepted. Nothing like that.

Someone had killed his mother.

‘Murdered,’ he repeated, as if trying to grasp the word. ‘How? Why?’

Jessica sniffed, wiping her nose. ‘I...I don’t know,’ she said at last. ‘They wouldn’t tell me anything else. And when I tried phoning them, they keep saying they’re not able to comment on it.’

‘Christ, I’m so sorry, Jess,’ Drake said, taking her hand. It felt cold in his, as if all the life had been drained out of her. The death of a family member was a tragedy, but a murder was something else altogether. ‘I had no idea.’

It didn’t take long for the darkness to recede from his mind, for the world to come back into focus as the disparate thoughts and emotions whirling through his head coalesced into a single, stark, utterly clear objective – to find the person who had killed her, and to make them pay for it.

Feeling the need to escape the house for a while, Jessica led him outside on a walk through the surrounding fields and narrow country lanes. And for a time they spoke little more of the killing, content merely to trade little pieces of news about their lives, to reconnect with each other after nearly a year spent apart.

Drake was content to let her do most of the talking, his thoughts lingering on other more pressing matters, but he knew this little slice of normality helped her and that was enough. In truth, it felt good to be out in the sun, walking through the peaceful countryside and talking about nothing at all.