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

“Let me get someone on it. We’ve been looking at this group for a while, you appear to have an in, it’ll help us get past their firewall at least.”

“But it’s not just them after Charles, someone else instructed Steinman, told them to pretend to be The Society.”

“I’ll get a team after him, we’ll get eyes on his life, question the father. Leave it to us, Eva. You’ve done enough.”

The whisky was unknotting her, soothing her. “I just need to know they’ve cancelled the contract on Charles, he’s all Lily has to keep her safe right now.”

“Addison Clarke’s pilot has confirmed Charles paid a sweetener to change their flight plan from Chennai to Marrakech, two passengers, one man, one child. Extra to not report the change until he arrived back in the UK.”

“Marrakech? But Charles hates the heat.”

In a heart-breaking second, she realised her terrible new truth. Morocco was what, four, six hours away. He hadn’t contacted her, no email, no questions about how to reach her, call for her to join them.

A sharp panic punched Eva in the stomach. How could she possibly find them if he didn’t want her to?

49

Hypnotic in its exotic rhythm, the early morning call to prayer broke into Charles’ on off dozing. Like an aural flame, it touched the nearest mosques, and the azans rebounded around the city in a compelling round robin.

Leave? Stay? His steps to Lily continued the battle that had raged in him all night. The semantics, the likelihoods, the possibilities. His logic had deserted him, leaving his head a tormented, messy jumble of shattered dreams.

Still asleep, her breathing was easy and calm. Where should they go? The chess piece, rather the information inside it, was it the shield, the protection he needed it to be? Was his threat enough? Jed’s office would protect him regardless of what he did. Charles needed his information to do the same for him.

It should never have come to this. After everything Charles had risked for him, Jed should have trusted him, all of them who’d put him where he was. Jed the Judas paying Charles his pieces of silver carefully packed in the leather holdall, the culmination of years of expensive, no questions asked, here want another grant, research. And now he might not live to see his brilliance pay off?

He found himself in the courtyard, slumped onto the tiled edge of the pool. He had asked for the wrong payment. For all those years, he’d got it completely backwards. Would it have mattered if he’d sacrificed the acknowledgement of his academic prowess? If the world believed he was just another scientist? His empty future told him no.

Nancy, with her gone, all that he’d imagined had been snatched away, lost forever, no chance to turn the clock back and put things right as he’d planned. No happy ever after. Charles sobbed for it all.

When he fell quiet, he stayed there, sitting on the cold tiled floor, against the raised side of the pool, letting the gentle shush of the circulating water soothe.

There he was off-grid, as safe as possible, especially while Jed believed him to be in London. His gaze strayed to the closed door. Terry had probably thought that. Ironic really, his distrust of the modern world and all its tracking—no online poker for him—hadn’t killed him. He must have bought his demise instead with the turn of the wrong card, mahjong tile, the faltering stride of a horse.

Tendrils of something rotten reached for him, Terry’s reminder that he was still there. Charles needed to get rid of the body. The body, they’d hardly been brothers to each other for a long time, but it still felt wrong calling him that.

He stumbled to the kitchen and drank two glasses of water in quick succession to relieve his cried-out headache. He tipped away the half of the third glass he couldn’t face. The clear stream splashed into the sink, droplets bouncing up from the hard surface onto his skin. His index finger circled the drops. Water, the elixir of life, unless you were able to manipulate molecules, unless you were a god.

Would he? He could, he should. Round and round, his finger burst the fragile shapes on his hand, pressed hard against his bones.

The idea was wild. But perfect. And why else would he have found his way there at this time? Charles would take a last lesson from Terry – if Air Force One was on its way to Africa or Europe, anywhere on this hemisphere that was reasonable for Maxwell and Sara Peyton to travel to, that was Charles’ winning coin toss. If it was going elsewhere, so be it. His money train would go far in Marrakech, and it would only help Lily to learn Arabic. It didn’t even need to be a zero-sum game, revenge not lost, only postponed.

He ranged through the TV channels. Terry apparently hadn’t worried about fitting in, his satellite choices were English only. BBC World News stopped Charles’ channel hopping. The flash from his past smiling at the camera as though he was the greatest statesman on the planet, Jed Carson. Beaming harder still as he climbed the steps to the open door on Airforce One, before giving the expected wave and disappearing inside.

The shot panned back to the studio. “President Jed Carson leaving the USA yesterday on his way to Marrakech in Morocco, where the G20 leaders are meeting for a summit into technological advances to further progress for the human race.”

Not just Africa or Morocco, but Marrakech. Charles had won the coin toss.

“The programme commences with a dinner this evening,” the reporter went on, “hosted by Per Larsson, the Chairman of the Nobel Prize Committee. Much of the work being showcased here will be contenders for Nobel prizes next year.”

Per was going to be there, Charles had won blackjack. The luck that had got Terry this riad was rubbing off on him. Lucky Riad Eight indeed.

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