‘Is that why you joined up in the first place?’ It was all falling into place.
‘Yes.’
Suddenly Jack’s decision to drop out of university became clear.
‘But I still don’t understand what your job has to do with any of this.’
He looked uncomfortable, like I’d caught him out. ‘We’re using intelligence, like I told you.’
‘Yes, so you keep saying, but I still don’t understand why.’ My temper was pricking at the edges of my voice.
Alex looked away, staring off towards the ocean.
I tried a different tack. ‘That girl, Suki, who is she?’
‘She’s someone we want to talk to.’ His face was still unreadable.
‘Why? Is she anything to do with them?’ My mind was frantic. Who knew Suki was such a fountain of knowledge? She hadn’t looked like she even knew her times tables.
Alex shook his head, ‘No. She just might be able to help us with our enquiries.’
I knew that was a line detectives used when they thought someone was guilty as sin but didn’t have enough evidence to prove it. Yet.
‘Could you be any more cryptic?’
‘Yes.’ He was being serious.
‘What can I say to make you change your minds about this vengeance mission you’re on? Tell me and I’ll say it.’
He looked at me a little sadly. ‘I’m sorry, Lila. We’re not going to stop. It’s about more than just your mum now. That was the reason we joined up. We hoped it would lead us to finding her murderers. And it almost has. We’re very close.’ He looked at me, his eyes burning, the amber in them flaming. ‘But, Lila, it’s more than that now. We’re fighting something bigger than them, and we’ll keep fighting even when we’ve caught them.’
I stayed silent. The processing filter part of my brain was on overload. Nothing more could go in. What were they fighting? And why? It was all becoming so unreal I wondered for half a second if perhaps I was still kneeling on a south London street in some catatonic state and was imagining all of this.
‘Come on, I’ve told you all I’m going to tell you. Let’s get back.’ Alex reached out a hand and the gentle pressure of his palm in mine was a reality check. Energy leaping around like that could only be in a real world, not an imaginary one.
‘But . . .’ I tried to pull two coherent words together but my vocabulary was melting at the sight of a strip of lean, tanned torso that Alex was displaying as he stretched his arms up over his head. Another pang of fear, mingled with desire, tornadoed my insides.
‘No, Lila. I brought you on this run because I knew you were going to ask me questions and I wanted you to ask them away from Jack. But I’ve told you everything I can on the subject and you’ve just got to trust me now.’
Of course I trusted him. I trusted him with my life. But there was so much going on that he wasn’t telling me about. Bad stuff, I was pretty sure. And I had completely and utterly failed to change his mind about getting involved. This so wasn’t working out as I’d planned.
Neither of us spoke, and Alex set off again, staring calmly ahead. We hit the tarmac and ran down the centre of the road. I was barely aware of the route we were taking or the traffic passing us by. I was too busy obsessing over the fact that my brother and Alex were throwing themselves into danger like it was a game. Like the consequences weren’t deadly. When in fact they were.
I stumbled and fell, crying out as I hit the tarmac, palms forward to break my fall. I stayed where I was, breathing hard, grit breaking the skin of my hands. The sticky black tar granules of the road filled my vision. Alex’s hands on my shoulders brought me to, and he pulled me easily up off my knees then turned my hands over. I realised he was talking to me and I shook my head, staring blankly at his moving lips.
‘Are you OK? Let me see.’ He brushed the dirt away gently, revealing some scrapes on the heels of my hands. I winced at the sting, like sticking my hands in nettles. He held on tight to my wrists so I couldn’t pull away.
‘You OK?’ he said again.
‘Yes.’ I couldn’t look at him.
‘You sure?’ he asked, not letting go of my wrists. The pressure was firm but I liked it, wanted him to hold me even tighter. It made me feel connected to him, anchored again.
I looked up at him. The expression on his face was so concerned that I knew he wasn’t asking me about my hands.
‘I don’t want you to do this,’ I suddenly blurted out.
‘I know,’ he said. I waited for the bit where he said, OK, we won’t, then, we’ll let the cops deal with it. But it didn’t come. A bird tweeted to fill the silence where his words should have been.
‘Lila,’ Alex’s voice was soft, ‘I told you yesterday, nothing bad is going to happen to us.’
‘Promise me.’
His eyes clouded and a muscle in his jaw contracted. ‘I promise you. Now come on, we need to clean you up.’
I brushed down my knees, which were sticky with scrapes, and sighed. My body was getting such a bashing at the moment. I eased into a jogging pace, the skin of my knees screaming in protest as it stretched and contracted until it just became one constant sting. It was only a few hundred metres back to the sci-fi building.
A group of men were out the front. From this distance, I couldn’t really tell them apart. They were all over six feet tall, with broad shoulders, and solid, tree-trunk legs. They were dressed identically, in black combat trousers, and T-shirts that clung tightly to well-developed six packs. I gave Alex a fleeting look – with his short crew cut and similar physique he should have blended with the crowd, but there was something about him that made him stand out. He was less square, more lean and graceful, and, to my totally unbiased eye, there was just no competition.
The group broke apart as we came near, and turned to face us. I slowed up, suddenly self-conscious of being the only girl, and looking such a wringing, filthy mess. Alex looked back over his shoulder, seeming to sense my reticence, then slowed his pace too and said, ‘Don’t worry, they’re just some guys from the Unit, I’ll introduce you.’
I looked at him warily and prepared myself. After a few more metres, we pulled up. I was panting and stood a little behind Alex, in his shadow, trying to brush the dirt off my shorts and wipe my hair out of my face. Then Alex turned, and I was suddenly in the centre of a circle being given the once-over. I felt myself cringe.
‘Well, I see you got all the looks in the Loveday family. Poor Jack. No wonder he’s been hiding you away on the other side of the world.’ The others started to laugh and I glanced at Alex. He was laughing too.
Another man, with arms so big and meaty that they hung out over his sides like he was wearing a lifesaver jacket, reached out a slab of a hand. ‘Nice to meet you. I’m Nick, I’m in your brother’s team.’
I shook his hand, feeling my stinging palm squashed within his paw. The other guys followed suit, bombarding me with a phalanx of arms and hands to shake.
‘Hi, nice to meet you,’ I said to each one, noticing how most were a lot older than Alex, at least in their late twenties or early thirties. I wondered how that worked when he was in charge of them.
There was only one who was younger – he looked about my age. I thought he’d said his name was Jonas. Now he took a step forward, chucking me a dazzling grin. ‘You coming to Alex’s party?’
He had quick brown eyes and an easy grin. He was the least beefy of them all and slightly less intimidating.
‘Yes, I’ll be there,’ I said, looking again at Alex.
He was now standing a few paces back from the group, observing things. He had a faint smile playing at the corner of his mouth but his eyes had set into blue ice.
Jonas grinned at me like a jack-in-the-box. ‘Great. We’ll see you there.’ Another man from his unit got him in a headlock and dragged him away.
I felt my face redden. I really wanted Alex to rescue me from this – I felt like I was on display at Ripley’s Museum of Believe It or Not. He must have s
een the expression on my face became he stepped forward into the group again. This time I felt the change in the mood, the men’s playfulness dropping a few notches as they quietened and moved closer, as though Alex was drawing them in. He hadn’t even said anything.
‘Right, I’ve got to get this girl cleaned up,’ he said now.
There were no innuendos from any of the men, though I was acutely alert to them. Alex put his arm around my shoulder and started to turn away towards the doors.
‘See you around, boys,’ he said, steering me towards the building.
Just at that moment the cylinder doors whooshed open and a woman, as whippet thin and airbrushed as a model on a runway, strode out into the sunlight. The men behind me fell silent, a hush of awe descending over them. I felt myself shrink inwards as she came towards us.
Then I heard Alex say, ‘Hi, Rachel,’ and something in me snapped in two. I think it was the last vestiges of hope that he might one day look at me as anything more than Jack’s sister.
A wide and dazzling smile split the woman’s perfectly symmetrical face. She had high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes that were almost as blue as Alex’s. She sashayed over to him, like a heat-seeking missile programmed with a new target. I almost expected her to swing one of her endless legs over his hip and wrap herself around him like ivy. She was wearing a grey two-piece skirt suit, which clung to her body, nipping in at her tiny waist. As she came close to Alex I saw she was almost as tall as him, though at least three and half inches of this was made up of steel-tipped stiletto heels.
I felt my heart cave in. She was so impossibly beautiful that Alex had completely forgotten I existed.
‘Why, hello, Alex,’ Rachel said, flicking her straight blonde hair over her shoulder. Her voice was husky, with a hint of the South.
I suddenly became very aware of how I looked. My clothes were like sticking plasters against my skin and I longed to rip them off and get into something clean, if only so I didn’t feel so much like a sewer rat standing next to an arctic fox.
‘What are you doing here?’ she drawled, her long vowels tripping over themselves to keep up. Her lips were glazed like morello cherries.
‘Just been for a run,’ he said.
Remembering I was there, Alex turned suddenly to look for me, seeming surprised that I was standing so close behind him. He moved out the way and Rachel’s gaze fell on me like a searchlight beam.
‘This is Lila,’ he said, ‘Jack’s little sister.’
Little? It felt like he had given me a paper cut down the length of my body.
Rachel’s gaze flicked over me, from my filthy trainers to my sweat-streaked, sun-baked face. For a brief moment she looked like she had just broken a tooth, but then she threw me a huge pearly-white smile and held out one manicured hand. ‘How lovely to meet you. Jack’s told me so much about you.’
I really wanted to say that he hadn’t told me anything about her, but I bit it back and politely shook her hand.
‘Rachel works with the Unit,’ Alex explained, smiling. ‘She’s our boss.’
I did a double take. She was the boss? She got to order Alex around? The reasons for hating her were piling up.
Rachel discarded me with a subtle turn of her shoulder and focused her gaze back on Alex, fixing him with her enormous cornflower-blue eyes. I looked back and forth between them, half a foot shorter than them both, feeling like a child being ignored by its parents.
I must have sighed, or maybe he heard the noise of my heart blowing up, because suddenly Alex glanced at me. ‘I’ve got to get Lila inside,’ he said and made to move off. ‘I’ll see you later, Rachel.’
Later? Another paper cut. This time it left an open wound.
‘Bye, Alex,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you. Enjoy your babysitting.’
It took a second before the comment sank in and when it did I drew in a sharp breath. My cheeks started to flare. I refused to turn back to look at her but I risked a glance up at Alex and caught the tail end of a frown. His mouth was set in a line. He threw me a glance too, no doubt to check whether I had picked up on the comment. When he saw me looking he shook his head dismissively as if to say Just ignore it.
Then two things happened almost simultaneously. A screaming, thunderous, splitting noise ripped through the sky. It seemed to flatten everything to the ground with its vibrations. And then, with bewildered shock, I realised that it wasn’t the noise flattening me, it was Alex’s weight pressing me hard into the ground. I was on my knees and Alex was bent over me, pinning me to the floor, his arms braced against my head and his chest angled against my side. I couldn’t work out why at first, my only thought that he had been hurt, but just as I started to panic and push against him, Alex uncoiled and stood up, pulling me harshly up with him.
The noise was still piercing my eardrums, making my brain feel like it was being spliced in two, and everything seemed to have slowed down. I could see the men from the Unit running in different directions. It was like watching them through strobe lights. Some had their guns in their hands and some were reaching to unholster theirs. It took me several seconds to put two and two together. The noise, the panic, the guns – someone was attacking them. Us, I realised with shock.
I was being jerked forcefully away from the noise, which was coming from the building. Alex’s grip was a steel tourniquet around my arm and he was holding me flush to his side. He was half running and I was stumbling and tripping into him as he yanked me towards his bike, the pain in my head making it all but impossible to put one foot in front of the other.
I felt myself lifted up into the air and then somehow I was on the back of the bike. My legs automatically gripped the leather seat to stop myself from sliding off, but then Alex was in front of me, his back a wall against my face. He kicked up the stand and fired it up. As I felt the thrum of the engine underneath us, Alex reached back with his arm and grabbed my hand, pulling it around him and pressing it hard against his waist.
‘Hold on,’ he said.
10
It wasn’t quite what I’d had in mind when I expressed a desire to get a ride on Alex’s bike. I was too terrified to take anything in, least of all his proximity. I closed my eyes and let the roar of the bike overtake the sound of the siren, which quickly faded into the distance. The wind was whipping my hair round my face but I couldn’t unlock my hands from around Alex’s body to push it back. The pain in my head receded with the decibel level, until it was just a faint vibration against my skull.
After what seemed like only a few minutes I felt the bike slow. It turned a few corners and then came to a gentle, rolling stop. I prised my eyes open. We were in front of Jack’s house already. I felt Alex’s warm hand on top of mine and realised that I had him in a vice-like grip. My fingers were clasped so tightly together it took the gentle pressure of his thumb to unhook them. He slowly shifted around so he could see me.
‘Are you OK?’
‘I think so.’
He climbed off the bike. I wasn’t sure how to get down, so tightly was I glued to the seat. Alex lifted me off as though I was an infant, which I now realised was exactly how he saw me. Rachel’s words still smarted in my ears.
‘What just happened?’ I asked.
‘I’m not sure. It was an alarm. But I have no idea what triggered it.’
‘So why the great escape?’
‘Because when an alarm sounds, it’s usually a good idea to run.’
I frowned at him, then remembered Jack. ‘Where’s Jack? Will he be all right?’
‘He’ll be fine.’
But he was already pulling out his phone. He hit the speed dial and then was speaking to the other person, Jack I presumed, as his first words were, ‘Yes, she’s with me. She’s fine. Yes . . . On the bike . . . Yeah. Definitely the last time.’
He looked up suddenly and scanned the street. I followed his gaze to the black SUV sitting on the kerb with its windows up. ‘Yes, they’re here. I’ll let them know. Call me when you have
something. I’ll stay till you’re back.’
He hung up. ‘Stay here,’ he said.
So he really was babysitting me – Rachel had been right. And now he was ordering me around like a child. My nostrils flared but Alex didn’t notice, he was already striding towards the car. Maybe I was just a burden to them. Both he and Jack had made it clear that they didn’t really want me here. But I didn’t need this level of looking after. It made me want to scream.
The window of the car whirred down and I saw Alex bend his blond head to speak to the driver.
I looked around me and thought about it for one second. Then I stood up and walked to the front door, pulling out my key. I unlocked the door and went inside. As I tapped in the security code on the alarm, Alex ran up the steps and into the house.
‘I told you to wait for me.’
‘I know.’
‘So next time wait for me.’ His eyes were granite-hard.
I glared at him. ‘I’m not a child, Alex. You can’t tell me what to do.’
He ignored me, pushing past into the kitchen. He shoved the door, letting it fly into the wall, and then crossed quickly to the back door, checking it. I rolled my eyes at the dramatics and walked up the stairs towards the shower. I was hot, angry and tired – but most of all I was heartbroken. A shower wasn’t going to fix that.
The bathroom door slammed behind me and the shower started running before I realised what I was doing. I sank to my knees in disgust at myself. I couldn’t even manage to keep control of my ability. This day couldn’t get much worse. I stripped off my jogging gear and climbed into the shower, drenching myself and letting the grime run off me. Rachel’s perfect glistening smile and seductively half-closed eyes appeared in my head. Enjoy your babysitting. I was still fuming when I got out. I wiped the mirror with the back of my arm and looked at myself. I was no competition for Rachel. She was a perfect match for Alex. They had looked like a golden couple standing next to each other. And she had another major advantage that I lacked – he was allowed to date her.