The Society by Karen Guyler (best ebook reader android txt) 📕

Eva stood in the hallway and listened. Was he home?

She steeled herself. The closest door to her had a lock on it, the bar in the big screwhead beneath the handle was vertical – cloakroom unoccupied? She tapped the chrome fitting. What was she doing? He wasn’t likely to have electrified it. Grasping the handle, cold against her skin, she pulled it downwards and opened the door.

Nothing breathing in the tiny space.

Eva tiptoed to the one on the other side of the passageway. Heart thudding in her head loud enough to cover any noise she might make, tensed against a rough hand in her hair, something cold and sharp against her skin, she peered into the room.

Empty. A huge painting surprised her, CJ had seemed too angry to even know Buddha’s name, but the room was almost a shrine to the East. He needed to study harder.

She tiptoed towards the last door downstairs and peered into the space beyond it. Kitchen: sage green units all around the room’s periphery minimised the space he could be in to one cursory glance. Not there.

Eva let go her held breath, looked up the stairs.

Softly, carefully she placed each foot on the next step and eased her weight onto it. One, two. . .seven, eight. . .twelve. Thirteen would take her onto the landing.

Three doors up there, closed. Silent.

Thirteen.

Eva padded to the first door, CJ’s office. He could be just the other side of the wood, headphones on maybe, his knife within easy reach. How much of a threat was the pick gun in her hands?

Eva opened the door.

CJ wasn’t in his office.

She whirled around, no one behind her.

She eased over to the next door. CJ’s bedroom, empty.

The last door was a repeat of the downstairs cloakroom, lock in the unlocked position. A quick check of the bathroom and Eva could breathe properly. No one there but her.

She walked into his computer room, the auto-closer on the door shutting it behind her. Every screen was blank, no keyboards out. The winter light wasn’t reaching very far past the half-drawn blinds. Eva sat in the captain’s chair at the bank of monitors and waited, her fingers unfolding and refolding the piece of paper that held The Society’s contact details.

The hiss started quietly, a disturbance in the air that Eva scarcely noticed. From nothing to everything in a few seconds, raucous, threatening and, when she bolted for the door, malevolent in every way. Eva grasped the handle, but she tumbled to the floor into darkness.

44

Eva woke as though she’d set her alarm wrong and had been asleep only a couple of hours before it went off. She dragged her eyes open. Sage units, strange kitchen. CJ’s house. A bolt of adrenaline tore through her, firebombing the vestiges of the sedative he’d knocked her out with.

She flexed her wrists, but the cream cable ties holding them together on her lap were immoveable as they looked. Her ankles were also tied, one to each of the two metallic spindly front legs of the hard chair on which he’d propped her.

She blinked hard, swallowed. The wooziness might be receding, her thirst not so much. There had to be knives in the drawers. She leant forward, tipping the back legs of the chair off the floor, but it was weighted weirdly and pulled her back onto its seat. The clunk of the legs brought CJ into the room.

“Is this how you treat all your clients?” Her voice was a lot steadier than she felt.

He leant against the units opposite her. “Only the ones who break in.” In black jeans and jumper today, black socks with green aliens on them, he seemed to be a man big on co-ordination. Something in his hand. He threw it up and down, a metronomic game of catch. “How do you have one of these?”

The pick gun.

“Don’t you?”

“Pissing me off isn’t going to get you released.”

“Pissing me off isn’t going to go well for you.” she retaliated.

“How did you end up with the Professor? You’re not exactly his type.”

She didn’t want to hear what was fast becoming a truth. “I want to hire you.”

He cupped his free hand around his ear, “You know, if you listen hard enough, I’m sure you can hear the echo of what I said the other day, nothing’s going to induce me to help you.”

“You don’t want to be paid for a job, fair enough. I’ll go elsewhere.”

“You wouldn’t know how.”

“I have one of those,” she nodded at the pick gun, “one that tackles deadbolts,” thank you, Nora, for pointing out what Provisions had stressed about how good it was, rolled up in the warning don’t come back without it, “you think I can’t hire a hacker? I bought your line that you’re the best. But this job is simple enough for me to choose someone else.”

“You’re at a bit of a disadvantage.” he gestured at her.

“You think I came here without a plan? My people are expecting a check-in, it doesn’t happen, well, I’m sure you can guess.”

He laughed, a belly laugh. “You don’t honestly expect me to buy that? No phone, no ID, no keys. Oyster card, bit of cash, not promising for me to believe anything you say.”

She shrugged. “Your funeral.”

Eva hoped CJ was reading her silence as nonchalance, unconcern, not the chorus of what was she going to do that was actually hammering through her mind. She tried to pretend he wasn’t studying her, not squirm beneath his gaze.

He placed the pick gun on the worktop beside him. “What’s the job?”

“I want you to open a URL for me.”

“A URL? You don’t need a hacker for that.”

“This isn’t anything run of the mill.” She paused, he hadn’t been happy when she’d mentioned their name before. Saying it now might get her thrown straight out, or worse. Mustn’t think about the ‘or worse’. “I’m trying to get in touch with The Society. Before you say no,” she cut him off, probably about to