The saliva that induced her vomiting had disappeared. Bel’s mouth was dry with fear.
The look on Rush’s face indicated that she had gone too far. “Do you know what I’ve got Thompson working on right now?” The veins in his neck grew larger.
She didn’t really like Nicolas Thompson and couldn’t have given a damn what he was working on. She shrugged.
“He’s at your apartment, Reilly, so if you’ve got something you want to say, now might be the best time to say it, because it looks to me like I’ve got one terrorist out there preparing to blow up a train and another one standing here fucking with me!”
Her own stupidity slapped her in the face. Until that very moment, she thought Conrad Rush was just pissed at her because she’d been too stupid to realise she was sleeping with someone they now suspected to be a terrorist. “There must be some kind of mistake. Esther isn’t a terrorist and neither am I.” Her policing instincts kicked in. “You must have had me under surveillance for months now? I’ve done nothing to indicate to you that I’m a terrorist. Surely Esther’s done nothing either. She works in a bar and gives free meals to the underpaid workers. She’s a good person.”
Conrad sat down. He indicated she do the same.
Bel kept her life simple. She had one phone, one computer, and one bank account. “It’s not difficult to poke into my life. Thompson should be done by now. He didn’t find anything, did he?”
Conrad shook his head. “I had to be sure.”
She gave him the benefit of his doubt. If she ever reached a position of authority, she imagined she would have done the same thing.
“If what you’re saying is true, I just don’t understand the purpose of her bombing the underground. What’s her motive? What is she trying to achieve? So what if she’s Esme Gaffney? It means she’s had a shit life, a fucking terrible childhood, and Christ knows how she survived, but how does that make her a bomber?”
“We have the intelligence, Reilly.”
“But what intelligence? Who’s she targeting?”
“Terrorists don’t need a target. They want to destroy, kill and make a point.”
“Then what’s her point?” None of it was making sense. “Who’s she working with or for?”
“As far as we can tell, she’s working alone.”
“Alone? You’re fucking kidding me?” Something was missing. “How did the undercovers get onto someone with no previous record or involvement in terrorist activities and who by all accounts is working alone?”
Conrad shrugged. “I don’t know and I don’t care. But thank God they did.”
It was too difficult to put the puzzle together without all the pieces. Bel couldn’t imagine that any grudge Esther held was worth killing innocent people to settle. She lost control of her emotions. “I love her. I don’t want her to be Esme Gaffney.” She stood and walked away. The fact that she’d said the words aloud was enough; for Conrad Rush to see her cry was unbearable.
“Look, Reilly, she’s pissed off at someone for reasons only she can know. But she needs to be stopped.”
Charlie spoke for the first time. “We need your help to find her before she does something she might regret.”
Bel pulled out her phone. “I can call her. That’s all I can offer. She didn’t say where she was going. I was supposed to meet her at the bar tonight.” She looked at her watch. She would meet her in eleven hours. It seemed so distant. She wanted to fast-forward until then so she could walk into the bar and see Esther flirting with a customer or frowning as she concentrated on pulling the perfect beer. She had to endure an entire day to reach a time where that scenario might be possible, except it was probably impossible. Whatever happened that day would shape the rest of her life. With the exception of the day her mother died, never before had Bel wanted to start the day again as much as she wanted to now.
“Bel?” Charlie raised her voice.
“Sorry, yes. I’ll try her now.” She dialled the number and placed the phone on speaker before resting it on the table in front of them.
“Hi, you’ve reached Esther. Leave a message and I’ll call you back.”
It didn’t ring, just went directly to message bank.
“It was Esther you were after this morning, wasn’t it?”
Conrad nodded. “We had her, but then we lost her. It was Scott, wondering where the hell you were, that spotted you both chatting. Then the system surged and we lost you.”
“We only went to get coffee. I was trying to walk Esther in the direction of the exit. I wanted her out of danger.” Esther was the danger.
Charlie and Conrad exchanged glances. “We had to consider you were working together. We directed our attention to the platforms. We didn’t look near the stairs,” said Charlie.
“There’ll be severe repercussions for switching off your mike, Reilly.”
Bel knew her career was probably over.
“You wanna hope she doesn’t get a chance to blow anything up, or that error might haunt you for the rest of your life.”
Bel cringed.
“No, not a pleasant thought, is it, knowing you had a hand in the deaths of countless innocent people?”
Charlie intervened. “Let’s get back to Control.” She stared at Bel, who was staring at Conrad. Bel looked away, reluctantly backing down from defending the accusation that it was her fault. Charlie continued. “We need to find her before she does anything stupid.” She nodded encouragement to Bel and eyed Rush warily.
He nodded. “You know her better than any of us. You’ll recognise her immediately. I want your eyes on every screen in there. Find her.”
Bel wanted to find Esther, but when she did, what was she to do? The faint hope that this was all a mistake had settled in the pit of her stomach, but weighing heavily on top of that was all the evidence that suggested otherwise. She was, after all, part of a team that specialised in this area, and if she were a betting person she’d wager that Hotstream had it correct. If she saw her on the CCTV, should she tell Rush where she was and risk her being shot? If she didn’t tell him and Esther detonated the bomb, she’d have to live with her death and the death of scores of innocent people for the rest of her life. She knew the drill. Shoot to kill. It seemed that either way she went, Esther was dead.