Mercy's Chase Read online

  Barnaby picked up on the fourth ring, his voice thick with sleep. “What is it?”

  Jason stuffed down the unpleasant sense that he was tattling. “I have a report to deliver,” he said, falling back into the corporate-speak he’d perfected with Carl Barnaby. “About the business prospect?”

  The silence made Jason feel good, like Cassius Barnaby was weighing his words. That sensation dissolved when Barnaby came back on the line. “And?”

  “I can offer a recommendation at this point. She’s good at her job and has the exact skills we’re looking for.” Jason gripped the phone. “Unfortunately, my colleague is not using our time wisely. It’s hurting our acquisition. I’d like permission to complete this project on my own.”

  Barnaby’s second silence lingered longer. A light flicked on in the bakery up the street. The town was waking, though Jason didn’t imagine these people ever slept deeply, not with the haunted light. He’d never tried Scottish baked goods. There must be a specialty for this region. There always was some—

  “You called me at home in the middle of the night to complain about your assignment?” Cassius Barnaby popped off each word like a bullet.

  Blood drained from Jason’s face. With it slipped his control. He could feel his flesh melting. He’d spent so many years stretching and morphing it that it pooled near his chin without constant concentration. “I’m sorry.”

  “Goddamned right you’re sorry. Don’t call me again until that job is done. No, don’t even call me then. I only want to hear from the Grimalkin.” Barnaby hung up.

  Jason held the warm phone, feeling more unsettled than he had in his entire tenure with the Order. There were protocols to be observed, the most basic of which was not to name names.

  Barnaby had spoken a name.

  A name most guaranteed to alert security agencies.

  Jason pulled himself back together. He needed to destroy the phone. He and the Grimalkin needed to leave the Orkneys as soon as possible.

  Always, the Order had known best.

  But they were shaken. Cassius Barnaby dropping protocol evidenced that.

  And that unsettled Jason.

  36

  Arcaibh Inn

  Kirkwall, Orkney Islands, Scotland

  Salem lunged toward the stranger in the corner, needles of fear piercing her chest. If she’d had time to fully wake, she’d have talked herself out of it. This was pure instinct. The sudden movement re-awoke the pain in her neck, throwing her off balance. She grabbed the shades to steady herself. The curtains came down, washing the room in clean yellow light.

  The corner was empty.

  Charlie made a snuffling sound as he sat up. He’d been lying on the floor next to the bed. “What is it? Time to get up?”

  Salem spun to look around the room, desperate to search every corner at once. “I thought I saw someone.”

  Charlie stared at the window. Without the curtain, it offered an unobstructed view of the alley and the brick wall. “That’ll happen.” He stood and stretched, rubbing his face. “It’s the mission. We’re tired. A little girl’s life hangs in the balance, and we don’t even know if we’re on the right track. It’s a surefire recipe for seeing ghosts.”

  Salem gulped in air, telling herself to calm down.

  Charlie picked the curtain off the floor and jimmied the rod back into the hooks. He’d doffed his jacket and was wearing only a black t-shirt. His arm muscles flexed as he fixed what Salem had broken, his movements confident and reassuring. “We need to look out for each other.”

  Salem nodded. She stepped forward, meaning to straighten the flower-patterned curtains, but when she raised her hands over her shoulders, the pain squeezed out an involuntary yelp.

  “What’s this? You’ve been favoring your left arm this whole trip, you know.”

  Salem rubbed at her neck. “I thought it went away, but I must have slept funny. It started with my office chair,” she finished lamely.

  “Government issue, I’ll bet. Might as well have us perch on a block of wood while we work.” He indicated she should sit on the edge of the bed. “Let me have a look. Can’t make it any worse.”

  Salem hesitated.

  “I’ve been told I give good massages,” Charlie said. He held up his hands.

  Salem perched gingerly on the corner edge of the mattress, her back to the window.

  Charlie rubbed his hands together until the friction created warmth. He lay his toasty palms on the exact source of her pain. Salem moaned.

  “Sweet Mary,” Charlie said, kneading gently. “You’ve a knot here the size of a caravan. That’ll take some time to dissolve. Hot and cold compresses on and off, some good massages, and rest are what you need. I can’t offer any of that.” He squeezed each side of her neck, testing. “What I can do is put your neck back in alignment to at least take some pressure off. Are you all right with that?”

  Salem wasn’t sure, but her options were limited. “Yes.”

  “Good,” he said. “Because I can be very helpful.” He jerked her head without warning, denying her time to tense up and fight the adjustment.

  The pop was loud and satisfying.

  “Oh my god,” she said. Her head felt ten pounds lighter. She swiveled her head to the left and to the right. There was an achy twinge where the knot was, but full range of movement had returned. “You’re a wizard.”

  Charlie’s smile dipped. “I may be good with necks, but I’m bollocks when it comes to keeping watch. I’m so sorry that I fell asleep.”

  “I should have set an alarm. We were both so tired.” She knew now was the time to have the conversation they’d been putting off. She squared her shoulders. “Charlie, can I ask you something personal?”

  “Is it about my snoring? I’ve been told it’s quite the horror show.” He rubbed his cheeks. “Or that I’m long overdue for a shave?”

  His boyish face was so open, almost innocent. In this small clean room, an honest sunlight pouring through the window, they were just two scared people. Salem weighed her words. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but she had to know. “That case you told me about earlier? The Coogan case? You said that you were part of a team that cracked the serial killer’s code. What was your role?”

  Charlie’s nostrils flared. The energy in the room shifted. “Ask what you mean to ask,” he said quietly.

  Salem didn’t want to continue. At Stonehenge, at the Standing Stones of Stenness, examining the flower stone, Charlie had been invaluable in terms of getting them where they needed to be, acquiring access, paving their way, and even in his knowledge of stonework, but he did not understand code. Not computer, and not ancient. She’d wanted to make excuses for him, to cover his deciphering ineptitude, but there was too much at stake. “Are you really a cryptanalyst?”

  A movie’s worth of emotions played across the screen of Charlies face. He clenched his jaw. “I am not.”

  Salem’s breath caught.

  He looked her dead in the eye. “I was on the Coogan case. I was the arresting agent, not the codebreaker. I’ve taken some cryptography workshops, the standard MI5 training, but I know about as much about cryptanalysis as you know about guns. And that’s exactly why I was assigned to you.”

  “What?”

  He ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m your standard in-the-pocket spy. Your president, Gina Hayes, pulled some strings to have me assigned as your partner. They brought me in as your overqualified London bodyguard, I thought at first. We were supposed to remain in the city, and I was to protect you while you worked on Gaea.” He cleared his throat. “You weren’t supposed to know. Then your girl was kidnapped, and here we are.”

  Salem scanned all that information. “I don’t answer to Hayes. How could she have anyone assigned to me?”

  Charlie shrugged. “You’re the President of the United States, you get t
o do what you want.”

  Salem stayed quiet.

  “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry I had to lie to you. It’s part of the job, but now that we’ve grown close, it no longer felt right.”

  Salem tasted his words. Swallowed them. They didn’t go down easy, but it wasn’t the worst she’d ever digested. While she could use another codebreaker with her now, she had to admit that his actual talents had proven useful. It chafed to be lied to, but if the choice was between hanging on to a sense of betrayal and going all in to save Mercy, it was no choice at all.

  He watched her. “Mom was a spy, you know.”

  Salem started.

  “It’s true, and in the spirit of total transparency, it’s important you know where my loyalties lay. My mother was a nurse, but she also worked for the Special Operations Executive, the British espionage organization at the time. She was one of several women who were successful spies. I know it’s difficult for some to step outside the torpor of opinion. Men do this, women do that, and never the twain shall meet. But that’s not how I was raised. I know women can do anything.” He stepped forward, a yearning in his eyes. “That’s why I felt so terrible when I’d laughed at your Stonehenge theory. I was just out of my element, and it was a shit thing to do.”

  Salem’s chest was suffused with warmth. It was freeing to have the air cleared, but there was something more than that. They’d forged a connection in the last three days. She’d had some internal pushback, but she found herself trusting him. Even more, she discovered she wanted to kiss him. He was so close, his lopsided grin so inviting.

  And there was a bed right there.

  He must be on the same wavelength because he leaned forward, his smile replaced with a softness to his mouth. It would be so easy to meet him in the middle, to work off the incredible stress of the past seventy-two hours, to feel good, even if it was only for a pocket of time.

  She yanked herself back abruptly. An image of Agent Stone had bloomed in her mind, followed by a picture of Mercy, shivering in the corner of a cell somewhere. Salem would not be so selfish as to steal time from the mission.

  Charlie was watching her, confused.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, though she wasn’t sure exactly what she was apologizing for. Maybe, like Stone, Charlie had neither expected nor would be receptive to a kiss, forget a roll in the hay. Salem had certainly read that situation wrong before, and recently.

  “Here is what,” she said. “Now that you’re being truthful about your talents as well as your original mission, we need all our cards on the table. Tell me everything else you know about what’s going on.”

  He did not hesitate. “Your mother was right, I’m afraid, and you’ve known it the entire time. The Order has Mercy Mayfair. The Underground wants to save her because she’s the codebreaker for some ultimate secret that will destroy the Order once and for all. I suspect that your mother keeps the child close because of what she represents rather than her love for her.”

  That struck close to Salem’s heart.

  Charlie continued. “Your president is a member of the Underground, as I’m sure you know, which is why she signed off on you tracking down the girl.”

  She’d already known, or at least guessed, all of that. “That’s it?”

  “No.” Charlie rubbed the back of his neck. “We’ve been followed since Stonehenge.”

  Salem’s stomach plummeted as her worst fear was confirmed. “How do you know?”

  “Little tells. Been in the business long enough. Someone watching us longer than they should. A car turning off at the right time. A man at the Dublin airport pretending to read a spy novel.”

  “The Order?”

  “Would make sense. That’s all I know for sure, though my gut tells me that you’re on to something. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be following us. They’d be ahead, waiting for where we should be.”

  “You think they’ve already solved some of the train?”

  “That’s my hunch, and it lines up with SIGINT I’ve seen. MI5, like most intelligence organizations, watches the Order. There’s not much we can do because they mostly stay on the right side of the law, and when they can’t, they rewrite it, but that doesn’t mean we don’t keep track of what they’re up to. Our current director has quite a hard-on for the Order, excuse my French. Apparently, the Stonehenge train is one the Order has been trying to crack for a while, and our best analysts believe they’ve broken at least two or three of the levels. Their analysis is that there are five or six levels in total before the payoff. Must be quite a nugget at the end.”

  Salem grimaced. “I hate every bit of this.” Her stomach chose that moment to growl so violently that she was sure the room next door could hear it.

  Charlie smiled. “Right then. Enough philosophizing. Sounds like meal time.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “We have half an hour until Bode picks us up. Should be plenty. If you’ve never had a proper Scottish breakfast, you’re in for a real treat.”

  Salem was grateful that any sexual tension that may or may not have momentarily flared between her and Charlie went unacknowledged. They easily fell back into a routine, taking turns in the bathroom before making their way to a wooden table in the corner of the inn’s cozy dining room. There were no breakfast choices other than “Scottish breakfast,” and so the massive plates of food were slid in front of them within minutes of sitting down.

  “A Scottish breakfast to start your day right,” the innkeeper said, his mood considerably improved since they’d checked in.

  “What is all this?” Salem asked.

  Charlie pointed at her plate with his fork, talking around a mouthful of food. “Black pudding, white pudding, fried haggis, sausage, tomatoes, mushrooms, eggs, toast, and jam, plus cream for the black tea, and I suspect that’s a basket of scones he’s bringing our way right now.”

  Salem started with the black pudding, which reminded her of grainy sausage. The white pudding was just as good, salty and satisfying, particularly when swiped through the bright yellow egg yolk. She’d never tasted a slice of roasted fresh tomato with breakfast, but she found its sweetness perfectly balanced the spicy pop of the sausage as well as made an excellent complement to a toast-and-egg sandwich.

  The sublime food was enhanced by the fact that she was starving. The last hot meal she’d eaten was Mrs. Molony’s delicious stew and homemade bread. Salem ate so fast that she sometimes forgot to chew. She was slurping her last bit of tea when Bode joined them.

  He smiled at their nearly empty plates. “Aren’t Scottish breakfasts the best?”

  “I’m so sorry,” Salem said, glancing down at the carnage. “We didn’t save you anything.”

  “No worries. I ate back at my room. I’m sharing a house with a bunch of other interns.” He pointed toward the front of the restaurant, where his car was parked. “I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad. The good news is that the storm has passed, which means it’s safe to explore the Gloup. The bad news is that the water is too high to take the boat in. We’re going to have to climb. And by that I mean you’re going to have to climb.” He smiled encouragingly at Salem.

  Salem glanced at Charlie, who seemed to be trying to look supportive, as well, except the lines around his mouth suggested he was worried. “There’s no other way?” he asked Bode.

  “Not unless you want to wait until this afternoon. Then the tide will be out and driving a boat in will be easy peasy.”

  Salem wanted that option so badly. She began rubbing her fingernails with her thumb to soothe herself. A little girl at the front of the restaurant laughed just then, a carefree calliope of sound. Salem and Charlie both looked at her, and then at each other. Charlie’s eyes appeared as haunted as Salem’s felt. Wherever Mercy was, she was certainly not laughing.

  “We don’t have time,” Salem said. “We have to go now.”

  “All right,” Bode s
aid. “Then let’s hit the road.”

  Charlie threw some money on the table and followed Bode out. Salem took up the rear. A prickle along her hairline told her she left something on the table. She glanced back. Empty plates, cups, and napkins were all she saw. But the innkeeper was staring at her, she sensed it. She looked his direction. He winked, the gesture friendly, then resumed his conversation with a middle-aged man who reminded Salem, somehow, of a gray-haired cat.

  The cat-man smiled warmly at her as if he knew her.

  37

  The Gloup

  Orkney Islands, Scotland

  The drive was blessedly short and the wind tranquil beneath the cold lemon sun. When they pulled into the Gloup parking lot, Salem saw that between the early hour and the departing storm, the area was empty except for a flock of orange-footed puffins guarding the cliffs.

  It was the smallest serving of luck, but Salem welcomed it.

  Bode had given her a spelunking crash course on the drive over. “Stay close to the rock and look for handholds. We’ll keep you secure up top so you can focus on finding what you’re looking for.”

  He offered her more climbing minutiae, which she had to trust her ears to store because her lizard brain was writhing at the thought of being dangled over the sea. She felt like a virgin sacrifice as they strode up the path toward the sea cave’s opening, its yawning mouth protected by only the smallest of fences.

  “What will you use as a counterweight?” Charlie asked.

  “There’s two anchors on the other side of that nearest fencepost.” Bode pointed toward them. “We cover them with grass when we’re done so no one trips on it, though you’re not supposed to cross the fence.”

  Charlie seemed almost more nervous than Salem, the flesh of his face a split-pea green.

  “Are you feeling okay?” Salem asked.

  Charlie tossed a glance toward the cliff, where the puffins were strutting and squawking like small, colorful penguins. “Not a fan of heights.”

  Salem nodded. “Me neither.”