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

Eva mustn’t cry, it wouldn’t help anything. She made herself pull it back. Be aware. Look at it like an analyst. Okay, she spelt out in her mind what had happened on the airfield.

The hostiles had incapacitated Luke, not important enough to take? That made sense. Every unwilling hostage was a potential problem, needing resources to restrain, keep alive. So why split them up and take her somewhere different from Charles and Lily? Double sites, double teams, where was the sense there?

When her father went missing, he had the Army looking for him. No one would miss Eva, no one would guess at why she’d disappeared, no one would look for her. She was on her own.

The world was a big place, Lily one small child. Eva couldn’t get a breath. Pins and needles prickled in her hands. She had to stay able to function. Not enough oxygen. Lily. A darkness hovered, all seduction, no pain there, no worry, no dread, no terror, no facing making it all worse.

Her hands were clawing in on themselves, the edges of the darkness at the corners of the van solidifying, a curtain falling over this nightmare reality.

What had they injected her with?

Cramp tore up her left calf muscle. Eva screwed her body up against it, a living rigor mortis. No injections, there’d been no time for anything like that in their snatch and grab of her. A panic attack, she must be having a panic attack. Out, she had to breathe out, slow it all down.

Be ready, that was all she had. Too late now to be wishing she’d taken Gordon’s long ago offer of a field position and all the useful training that came with it, self-defence, offensive fighting, getting out of situations like this with a paperclip.

Eva felt her weight against the panelling behind her increasing as the van nosed downwards, a steep slope, taken cautiously. Parking ramp?

Slow driving, manoeuvring, then the engine switched off. Wherever it was they were going, they’d arrived.

Eva positioned herself in front of the side door. It would open to her left, where would her abductor stand? Further down she’d guess to accommodate the sliding door.

Slam, slam, the driver’s door, the passenger’s, the two men were out. She was wearing flat boots, no heels for stabbing. No keys, no jewellery apart from her wedding ring, her engagement ring. No help to her at all.

The side door clicked and began its path back through the runners. Eva shot out, a bruising misjudging of the widening gap. Her feet to the tarmac, her knee paying the price, hobble-sprinting away. Just away.

“Hey!”

“Bloody hell—”

Eva wove her way round the cars parked in the underground garage. The overhead lights in the concrete-edged space did little to dispel the menace personified in the running feet searching behind her.

There, the raised kerbs of the streamlined passage for cars out through the exit. A black-arrowed white sign pointing to the right. Eva followed the directions, but the metal latticework of a shutter rolled down and locked to the floor barred her passage to freedom. Swipe card activated. Only a steep concrete-sided access road on the other side. No one to hear her scream.

She whirled away from the exit, searching for refuge amongst the cars parked nose to tail in the crowded spaces.

35

“Eva!”

Eva leant against a pillar. If her knee would have let her, squatting behind the boot of the dark-coloured grimy car beside her would be better. Not being here would be better. Being held hostage alongside her daughter would be best.

“Eva, it’s okay, you’re safe now.”

A woman, a voice she recognised? Out of its place and time, her mind floundered to identify it. Nora?

“Eva, come on out. We can’t figure out where your family’s gone while you’re hiding down here. Gordon’s giving you resources. I’m too damn old for a chase around the garage. I’ve got coffee on.”

It really was her, standing in the middle of the car park.

Eva let Nora wrap her in the briefest of hugs, pulling away before she burst into tears.

“You’re safe now. We’re beneath our building. Sorry about the snatch and grab but we had intel you’re a hot target.”

“Lily, do you know anything?”

“Not yet. Come on, you look like you need one of Gordon’s whiskies. We had to pull the guys off assignment to get you, hence the van, not a comfy car where they could have explained.”

“I wouldn’t have gone with them if they had. Lily and Charles are on that plane.”

“We know, we’re on it. Come on.”

Nora deposited Eva at the ladies on the first floor. “First things first, take a shower, looks like you have half your house on you.” Nora nodded at her surprise. “There’s clean clothes in there,” she gestured at the long locker beside the shower door. “Debrief next, two doors down on the right, I’ll leave the door open. Take as long as you need.”

Eva stood under the powerful stream of hot water. If only it could wash away everything out of kilter in her life. The pummelling on her bruises wasn’t so bad, and as much as every graze stung, they were nothing compared to the tear at the heart of her, the ache in her arms to hold Lily. And Charles. She couldn’t even go there. Thinking of the last few hours, dwelling on what she felt—no, she only had one focus, Lily.

Nora waited for her in the meeting room. “There you go, get that down you.” She pushed two mugs across the table. “Start with the whisky. It’s better than tea for shock.”

It burned Eva’s throat, made her shudder even as she embraced the warmth it spread through her, the unknotting of the fibres of her being. “Is there any news on the plane?”

Nora shook her head. “Too soon. I won’t insult you by telling you not to worry, but we’re working on it. Why weren’t you on the plane?”

“I saw—what happened to Luke, Luke Fox? Did