Panic Button (24 page)

There was Dave, his idiot soldier,
gurning
into the camera with his arm around the girl he had so easily betrayed. How effortlessly he had been groomed to kill. And Gwen, the religious hypocrite, peering up at the camera she had obviously been holding in her own hand to take the picture. Her look was that of the coquettish tease, her eyes barely concealing the deep conflict within her body and soul. There was the impostor who had pretended to be Max, the grainy photo of him as blurred as the identity he’d projected to his fellow passengers. No matter, he had served his purpose just as well. And Jo.
The single mother.
The alcoholic. The sad pathetic excuse for a life who had done nothing to save his dear little Lucy, and yet who professed to love her own daughter beyond measure. Even to the point of poisoning another human being to death. He almost admired her for that, he had to admit, but for the fact that she had brought his plane down ahead of schedule... into the sea.

The man stood, weary after too many long hours in the chair, and turned his back on their faces. He felt nothing for them, not even pity. It was over.
 
He glanced at the wall chart fixed to a section of wall between racks of hard drives. Names, locations, dates and times
- stretching
back almost forty-eight hours. Each name was crossed out in red marker pen.
A grim schedule of executions.
Dawn, Rory, Emily and the others - all taken care of.
His son had done him proud, getting the luggage ready in time for the flight.

He walked through the tunnel of hardware and intelligence, toward the stairs. Ascending, he paused to turn off the power. His secret world, the Alligator’s lair, was plunged into darkness. Computer cooling fans slowed to a whisper and died, as though mourning their master’s departure.

It was over now. He locked the door behind him.

One name left on the wall chart, not yet crossed out like the others.

Sophie lay on the bed, staring at the grubby old teddy bear.

More than once, she’d thought about reaching out and holding the toy, about cuddling it for comfort. But the bear wasn’t hers, and never would be. If she took it now and held it, and the nasty man came back, he would think she liked it. He would think she’d given up somehow, by cuddling the bear. Its face was dirty and she didn’t like it. Sophie sighed and, still lying down, turned over to face the wall. She heard the bedsprings creak and pop beneath her. The rickety workings of the bed reminded her of the old trampoline in Nanny’s garden. How happy she was the day she’d first played on it, jumping higher and higher, then falling down, laughing and bouncing. But now her Nanny was dead.

Sophie winced as she replayed the muffled gunfire in her head, clenching her eyelids shut in a desperate attempt to blink away the image of the old woman falling to the kitchen floor.
Run
, her Nanny’s eyes had said. But then the masked man had taken her away, hurting her as he’d bundled her into the back of his van. She could still remember the rank metallic smell inside the vehicle, still feel the sharp sting of the needle he’d injected into her arm before her world had darkened and she’d drifted away.

It seemed like days since she’d woken up on this bed. Maybe it had been days? She couldn’t tell because there were no windows and the nasty man had taken her phone away. She’d hunted for her phone inside the room, just in case he’d dropped it. Then she could have called her mum, or sent a text, or called the police, and someone would come and rescue her. But the phone was nowhere to be found and she’d cried herself to sleep again. Sometimes she woke up crying too, wrenched from pleasant dreams in which she was back with Mum and Nanny baking cakes in the little kitchen. To wake up in the gloomy room, each time with that filthy teddy bear smiling at her, was like a little death.

Sophie felt tears welling up in her eyes again at the thought of her Mum and her Nan. Was her Mum dead now? Had the nasty man shot her too? Sophie didn’t think he wanted to kill her; he kept bringing her horrid lukewarm food to eat and tepid water to drink after all.

She propped herself up on her elbows and glanced over at the door. The red light next to the lock was always looking at her, like an angry little eye. Soon the red light would turn green, the door would open and the nasty man would be there with more yucky food for her to eat. If he wanted her dead, why would he keep feeding her? Maybe it was just a cruel game of his. Maybe next time he opened that door he would kill her.

  

 

But she wasn’t afraid of him.
 
She wasn’t afraid of death - at least that was what she kept telling herself, over and over. Sophie just wanted to be with her Mum again. She lay back and closed her eyes.
 
Saying a silent prayer that it could be so, she drifted off into a troubled sleep under the watchful glare of the little red light.

Later, while Sophie still slumbered, the light turned green.

“
Wakey
,
wakey
, rise and shine.”

The man stood over Sophie’s fragile little body, smiling quietly.

Little girls were so delicate when they slept.
He noted the fingers of her right hand were just touching the teddy bear they’d left for her. It was grubby from its exile in the attic, but it felt correct for it to be one of Lucy’s. This little girl had probably never had toys, her slut mother had drunk all their money after all, and the father was nowhere to be seen.

He knew where the father was though. It hadn’t been exactly difficult to track him down via his data trail on All2gethr. Thought he could hide, just like the others. How wrong he was, how naive they all were.

The man recalled the first time he had seen young Sophie, the day that had truly set his plans into motion. Keeping tabs on her mother’s movements, he hadn’t given much thought to the fact that she had a daughter. But when he had seen her holding the child’s hand as they’d walked home, he had been reminded of all that he had lost - more tangibly than ever. The thought that this woman, the same drunken harridan who had sat idly by while his sweet Lucy poisoned herself to death, could profess to enjoy her daughter’s company had simply become too much to bear. He had obsessed over it, night and day, and could draw no other conclusion than that of fate placing this child at his feet as recompense for his great loss. The mother didn’t deserve a child; her actions were testament to that. She couldn’t be trusted to raise a child; her lack of moral values made that much a certainty too.

He’d been a good father to his Lucy, but still she had fallen prey to the evils of the Internet, succumbed to the drink and drugs peddled by the modern world. He’d had to admit to his own failings before he could act, confident that what he was doing was right. This time he would not fail. He would exact his revenge efficiently, without overlooking a single microscopic detail.

Lucy had become lost to him because she had managed to keep her secret world hidden. So he had created a secret world from which his targets could never hide.
He knew everything about them, and this knowledge would be their undoing.
They were so reliant on technology it had been easy as pie for him to conceal the fact that he’d already had their loved ones killed. The saucy text from Sarah to Dave - sent after she’d been drugged and taken to the hanging room. The All2gethr chat messages from Emily to Gwen - a simple matter of looking at the sister’s chat archive in order to emulate her messaging style. Their bodies were gone now, drowned with the plane. Only Sophie remained.

When he’d laid eyes on Sophie for the very first time, it was as though fate had offered him a second chance to prove himself as a father, and as the moral crusader the modern world so sorely needed. It was then that he knew he must take the child for his own, and dispose of the mother.

The little girl stirred, becoming aware of his presence in the room. She opened her eyes and looked up at him, towering over her like a shadow. He beamed down at her, his new little girl. His prize. How pretty she was.

“Hell-o Lucy. Did you sleep well?”

The girl flinched.
Probably still sleepy, poor lamb.

“My name is Sophie.”

He smiled at her, patiently.

“Your name is Lucy now. Do you understand me? L-U-C-Y.”

A glimmer of fear passed over the little girl’s face.

She nodded at him
.

 

“Good girl. I should like to introduce myself properly. My name is Rupert Turner.”

He grinned down at his new Lucy, his teeth gleaming white as an alligator’s.

“Come on. Now you’ve had a good rest there are some people I’d like you to meet.”

Taking her tiny hand in his, he led her out of the room and up some concrete stairs.

He let go of the little girl’s hand and pushed at a trap door above their heads. He helped Sophie up via a little stepladder and into a garage. Seeing the girl’s nose wrinkle at the strong hospital smell inside the garage, he strode over to the corrugated metal door and slid it open over his head. Fresh air and blinding bright daylight flooded in.

Sophie covered her eyes with her arm in shock.

Rupert chuckled to see her look so pleased to be out and about.
My little Lucy.

“Come along,” he said, “Let’s get you cleaned up. Then you can meet the rest of the family.”

“Here she is!”

Rupert Turner grinned from ear to ear as he led his new little Lucy into the kitchen.

His wife turned away from the kitchen sink, grabbing a little hand towel so she could dry off her hands.

Rupert beamed at her. She looked excited. He felt a swell of pride, recalling how brilliantly his wife had played the part of the limousine driver as he’d watched expectantly via his webcam feeds. He felt amused even now at her stern, motherly manner with the passengers, as she’d insisted they hand over their mobile phones. She would be delighted with her new daughter, especially now
Soph
...
no
,
Lucy
, was scrubbed up so nicely.

“Hello Lucy, I’m Annie. I’m going to be your Mum from now on - isn’t that nice?”

She smiled at Sophie, a joyful tear in her eye. Without giving the child a chance to reply, Annie called out into the adjoining room.

“Ed! Come and greet your sister!”

Rupert’s son entered the room. His gait was a little hesitant, borne of the strange tension that existed between him and his father after all they had done in recent days. His father had been judge and jury, and he the executioner. The luggage had been so heavy to load up on the private jet, once it was laden with human effluent. Ed smiled awkwardly at his father,
then
stooped down to greet the little girl. He ruffled her hair with his big fat fingers. His hand had the same persistent hospital smell as the
odour
in the garage.

Rupert corralled them into a neat group in the middle of the room.

Then he activated the little digital camera, which lay ready atop the kitchen table next to the fruit bowl. The little red light blinked three times then the room was lit with a blinding flash as the shutter activated.