Scare Me To Death by CJ Carver (free romance novels TXT) 📕

over. ‘I honestly don’t know. But they were lucky to run during a time when CCTV wasn’t as prevalent. We didn’t have social media back then, either. We know she booked a flight from Gatwick to Hong Kong the day after the warrant for her arrest was issued. She didn’t show up for the flight. We alerted all ports but nobody saw hide nor hair of her.’

‘And Greenhill?’

‘Zilch. And I mean zilch. It’s my belief both of them either had false IDs – which don’t really work any more since Social Security have got wise to all the tricks by now – or they bought newly stolen passports. We froze Flowers’s accounts, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have a million or ten stashed away somewhere, and with lots of money, the world was her oyster.’

He leaned back in his chair, glancing outside. His office was a fair size but the view could have been better since all it faced was the blank wall of another office building.

‘I thought they could have rented a boat to cross the Channel, headed to Eastern Europe. It’s almost impossible to find someone in Croatia, for example, because you don’t need any kind of ID or information linking you to household accounts, like gas or electricity. But if I started looking for them there, I may as well just wander around the streets shouting their names.’

‘What about Central and South America?’ Lucy suggested.

‘Easy to keep off the grid out there,’ he agreed. ‘And these two are especially slippery. They haven’t contacted anyone from their pasts. No calls to Granny or Mum and Dad. They left that world behind.’ His gaze turned inwards for a moment. ‘I wonder what they’re doing now, to make a living.’

‘You think they’re still together?’

He shook his head. ‘I think they’re too astute to do that. They would have split, I’m sure.’

‘There’s a warrant out for Greenhill’s arrest too?’

‘No. He’s a “person of interest”, but he was obviously in it up to his neck because of the way he buggered off. He was a weird customer, though. No family at all. Didn’t socialise. Few people at the factory ever saw him. We never found out where he lived. I rather assumed he was living under an assumed name.’

‘Surely someone has to know where they went?’

He leaned down and brought out another enormous file, placed it on his desk. He tapped it as he spoke. ‘Friends, family, work colleagues… they’re all in here.’

Lucy pulled the file across, flipped it open. Her eye went to a photograph of Helen Flowers getting out of a limo at some swanky event that involved a chauffeur opening her door and some red carpet to pop her Jimmy Choos upon. Next, was a copy of the warrant. She continued turning the pages as Pearson continued.

‘There were rumours she went to live in Kentucky, USA. Another said she’d gone to Australia.’

Lucy studied a picture of an industrial building. The sticker on the photograph read TASS Production Facility. There was a stack of statements from people who Flowers had worked with at the MoD. People who remembered her from her sales days. Another picture of Helen Flowers and then a passport photograph of a man in his thirties. Strong jaw, dark hair closely cropped. A steady gaze that seemed to go right through her.

Lucy felt the shock of it beneath her breastbone, as though she’d been punched in the heart. She couldn’t breathe.

‘What is it?’ Pearson sounded alarmed.

She took a huge breath of air. She was trembling. She felt sick.

She held up the photograph.

‘Who’s this?’

‘Neil Greenhill.’

But it wasn’t.

It was her father.

38

Dan hadn’t sat around after Lucy left. There was no point. He was hoping the man in the mask wouldn’t expect him to react so fast. That he’d expect him to stay at home, scared for his family. Which he was. But he could no more sit at home twiddling his thumbs than stick Jenny’s potato peeler in his eye.

‘He knows where we live,’ Dan told Jenny. ‘And yes, if I do nothing, then hopefully we won’t see him again. I don’t like hopefully. I want to know that we definitely won’t see him again. Which is why I have to find out who he is, and shut him down.’

He took Jenny’s hands in his. ‘Do you understand?’

‘Yes.’ Her gaze was clear. ‘I do.’

‘Thank you.’

He texted his old buddy Max Blake and asked if he could stay. Max was an old friend from when he used to work at MI5 and who had helped fill in many of his memory blanks. Max said he was happy for Dan to use his London apartment. He wasn’t there. He was in the country with his girlfriend.

After unlocking his gun safe and withdrawing a handful of items – he left behind the guns, he didn’t want to complicate things overly – he put them in a small leather holdall. He kissed Jenny, kissed the kids. Patted goodbye to Poppy. With his overnight bag packed and in the back of his car he drove to London. Pondering the man in the mask – had he killed Kaitlyn? – he rang Lucy. It went to her messaging service. He asked her to ring him back. At the Chiswick roundabout, he pulled off the M4 and headed to Ravenscourt Park. In Max’s pad he unpacked his laptop and chargers. Settled himself in.

Lucy had forwarded him Tomas Featherstone’s address in Southwark. Dan studied the sleek, modern apartment block on Google Maps. Searched further to see it had a doorman. Security cameras. How to gain access without alerting Tomas? He needed more information. Names. Material to lull Tomas into thinking Dan was a friend. He tried Lucy again. No luck.

Dan busied himself researching TASS. The factory, the workers. He made a note of the floor manager. No mention of the whistle-blower’s name. Impressive it had remained under wraps for so long, and he wondered whether the BlackShark Sniffer’s inventor, Helen Flowers, had known who it