The Society Karen Guyler (best books to read .TXT) 📖

She used his desk phone to call first his mobile, switched off and voicemail deactivated, then Lily’s, waiting for her to pick up. “Hey, sweetheart, it’s Mum. Can you and Dad come and meet me? He’ll know where I am from this number. I’m waiting for you. Love you.”

It could be a while before Charles turned on Lily’s phone and then they had to get there. Eva had all the time she’d need. She started her search with his desk and the stacks of journals, but nothing didn’t belong in his neat, orderly organisation.

“Where, Charles? Where would you hide anything?” Her look around his office stopped on the door to his lab. No, that was sacrosanct. He would only allow himself and his precious science in there.

Which left the bookcases. Shaking out each book and returning it just so should have been calming, therapeutic almost, but it didn’t get close to chipping away at the knot in Eva’s insides. She rolled her shoulders, the stretch of tendons and muscles tightening, screwing up on themselves. No relaxing until she held Lily again.

Surprise waited at the end of the second shelf of trying, wedged at the back hidden within the pages of an A4 notebook, a mobile. Eva turned it over in her hand. A basic phone, like his regular one, but grey instead of black. She switched it on, looking at the office door: its entry keypad had let her in with the code she remembered from years ago. He was a creature of habit. She tapped in the pin he’d always used for his phone and it opened its secrets to her.

She redialled his most recent call, ‘Tony Office’.

“Hello.” The woman’s voice was tiny, apologising almost for answering.

“I’m trying to reach Tony, can you put me through, please?”

“No, I can’t.”

“When can I call back?”

“No, you can’t, he died, Tony died.” The woman’s voice choked.

Maybe Charles wasn’t so paranoid after all. “What happened?”

“He had a heart attack at home, he was—You can speak to one of the other partners.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.” Eva disconnected and redialled, mimicking Charles’ RP pronunciation.

“Hello, I’m the PA of Charles Buchanan.” She paused, giving the woman time to acknowledge him, recognise his name, anything. Nothing. The silence stretched. “We’re all sorry to hear about Tony. I wondered if you knew anything about the funeral arrangements yet.”

“No, no, it’s all too soon.”

“I’ll call back another time. Again, deepest condolences.”

Eva hung up and studied the calls list. Two calls to Tony over the last two days. Nothing before then.

She thumbed through the sparse list of contacts. Nancy with two London landline numbers and a mobile, one London number for an Aleksandr, the Russian spelling, Duncan, Hunter—Hunter? That was an unusual name, could it be Hunter Malone?—Rory, Ted, none of the names meant anything to her, who were they to Charles?

She pressed the call button for Nancy but, before it connected, she heard the sound she’d been hoping for. She turned the phone off and slipped it back in its hiding place, limping to the window looking for the cab that had pulled up. But the car outside wasn’t a black cab, didn’t have any taxi signs on it.

The driver and passenger got out, one car door clunking closed, followed by the other. No need for stealth; the neighbouring units, an advertisement agency and a photographers, had closed for the night. The men looked around, one heading in her direction, one the opposite way round the building.

It’s not safe there, Charles’ exclamation in a quiet street mocked her now. She scrabbled at the keypad into his lab ante-room. Please don’t have changed this one either. Bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep. Eva pressed enter.

Green light. Shoving the door open, she threw herself inside and forced it closed.

The office door burst open.

The lab ante-room door clicked shut.

Eva charged past the bunny suits of protective clothing. A slam behind her as the man crashed into the door, hammering on the safety glass.

She heaved the lab door open, rushed inside, letting it close on its automatic closer. She winced as the man shot out the entry pad to the ante-room door, thumping on it, then shooting at the safety glass, when it wouldn’t open. Didn’t matter how much shooting he did, her opening the lab door had activated the airlock, he’d have to wait thirty seconds for the system to reset.

Thirty seconds.

The guy fired into it enough times she hoped he’d emptied his magazine while she hurried to the bottom end of Charles’ kingdom. She slapped at the green button on the wall to release the fire exit door. Then she saw the driver, turning, realising he was looking in the wrong place for Charles’ lab, sprinting towards her.

Outside Eva would have had a chance, always go for the getaway, she’d heard it bandied around MI6 enough times. But right then she couldn’t run anywhere, couldn’t reliably walk even.

She had more chance in the lab, if the door shut in time to keep the running towards her driver on the outside.

The fire exit closed over a laugh coming from behind her. The lab door had released.

“Now we get to play Jurassic Park, I’m the velociraptor and you’re the kid.”

The lab where Charles cooked his chemical formulations, made individual substances bend to his will in concoctions that behaved like magic, was like a kitchen. He had his hi-tech housed in chrome and white, with the lab benches set out in long rows. She understood the guy’s reference. A tiny thanks to Charles for opting for such a big lab for just him and his occasional assistant, the space gave Eva half a chance.

The man’s slow footsteps teased down the row of lab benches in front of Eva. “Except I’m way smarter than an extinct dinosaur. Plus I have a little twenty-first century help.”

If she could get up to the top and reach the lab door before he realised her plan, she’d have another thirty seconds to put some