Chapter Twenty

“We lost the men we sent after Carson’s lead.”

Lauren glanced up at the words. “What? How the hell could you lose them?”

Mark shrugged, a casual lift of his shoulder beneath the designer suit. “They didn’t report in. We’re trying to trace them now.”

“Fucking brilliant. And?”

“Merrick is dead.”

In the end, she’d decided the risk wasn’t worth taking and had given the order to have him removed. “How?”

“Don’t worry. It appears that the professor committed suicide. An affair with a male student gone wrong. The student killed himself tonight as well—tragic. The professor was distraught.”

She studied her assistant, but his face remained expressionless. He could have been talking about a simple business deal. Mark was handsome, intelligent. He was also a sociopath, which was the characteristic that had landed him the job.

“Do you want any of the details?” he asked.

“No, this was more in the way of cleaning up loose ends that should have been cleared years ago.”

He frowned. “Why weren’t they? It’s unlike you to leave loose ends.”

She gave a small smile. “Would you believe sentimental reasons?”

Mark’s eyes flashed with amusement. “No.”

His response didn’t surprise her. “Show no weakness” was the motto she lived by. Today, people did not leave the Conclave unless it was in a permanent manner.

But she hadn’t always been quite this hard, and Merrick had been a friend as well as a colleague. Back then, she’d allowed him to walk away when the project he was working on was terminated. Had even employed him since on a casual basis.

Why had he surfaced now? With Descartes coming to fruition, the timing was certainly suspect.

“So what have we got? A small town GP who carries out an internet search on Professor Merrick and Descartes. The doctor is interrogated but knows nothing. Or almost nothing. Just a single lead, who appears to be a nobody. Except our men disappear when they go after her. What’s the link?”

She rubbed her hand over the smooth skin of her forehead. Mark moved to stand behind her, and his fingers massaged her shoulders, digging in to the solid muscle. For a minute, she closed her eyes and allowed the tension to drain away.

God, it felt good.

Another reason she had employed Mark—his magic fingers.

She opened her eyes and shrugged him off. He stepped back.

“Merrick didn’t actually know anything about the current project.” Lauren tapped her pen on the desk. “You had someone watching him? I take it there was nothing suspicious about his behavior?”

“Nothing obvious. He did have a visitor earlier today who didn’t fit his usual pattern. I’ve sent the pictures to your monitor.”

Her computer screen flashed to life as he leaned across and punched the keyboard. A photo of a woman filled the screen. She was beautiful, flawless, with pale blond hair pulled into a loose chignon that showed off her perfect bone structure, a full mouth, and blue eyes fringed with dark lashes. There was something familiar about her, though Lauren couldn’t place her and was sure she had never seen her before.

“Who is she?”

Mark tapped a few keys. “Shit.”

“Don’t tell me—more good news?”

“Her name is Jenna Young. Which just happens to be the name of the doctor’s patient—Carson’s lead.”

Lauren sighed. Loudly. “And no one put this together before now.”

“The information just came through.”

“What do we have on her?” Drawn by that sense of familiarity, she glanced at the photo again. “She doesn’t seem the type to take on three of our men.”

“She’s twenty-six, lives in London, and works at the National Museum of Anthropology.”

“Hmm. I suppose there might be a legitimate reason for visiting a professor of biochemistry.”

“This is her companion, though the woman met with Merrick alone.”

A photograph of a man replaced the woman on the screen.

“Nice,” she said. He was somewhere in his thirties, tall, lean with a narrow, handsome face. Something clicked into place as she looked at his eyes. Shock rippled through her. She had an almost photographic memory, and a name flashed into her mind. “Lucien Hockley.”

“Really?” Mark murmured. “We have him down as a Luke Grafton. Owner of Grafton Securities, a multinational security firm. According to Merrick’s assistant, he arranged the meeting to discuss some research into biotechnology with the professor.”

“No, that’s definitely Hockley.”

“So who is Lucien Hockley?”

“He’s supposed to be a dead man.” Her headache was back. “Sit down. We may have a problem.”

Mark sank into the seat opposite but remained silent as he waited for Lauren to continue.

“Lucien Hockley supposedly died in a car explosion ten years ago along with his wife and baby.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, getting her thoughts straight. Though she could have pulled up the file, she preferred to remember it for herself.

One of those little shivers of instinct ran through her—this was something important. Her skin prickled with reaction, and she rubbed her hands down her arms. “Lucien Hockley’s father was one of the Conclave’s mistakes. You know how we work. Each member identifies another potential member. That’s how we grow. It’s up to them to make the contact and to decide whether they are a suitable candidate for recruitment.”

Pausing, she stared at the photo. Lucien was the spitting image of his father.

“James Hockley was identified. It was one of the few occasions where the system failed.”

“Why?” Mark asked.

“On the surface, he was perfect. The Hockleys were old money, which James Hockley had multiplied many times over. The family was into everything—oil, property, even arms manufacture. Which is probably what made him appear the perfect candidate.”

“But?” Mark prompted.

“James Hockley was one of those rare creatures, a wealthy man with honor.” Lauren shook her head. “It was obvious if you did your research. The man was a goddamn war hero, but the member recruiting him was so sure he was landing a big fish he looked no further than the surface. Hockley pretended to go along with it long enough to find out about the existence of the Conclave, then threatened to expose us. He was dealt with.”

“What happened to the member who tried to recruit him?” Mark asked with genuine curiosity.

Lauren’s lips curved into a smile. “Oh, he was dealt with, as well.” The Conclave didn’t like mistakes and did not accept stupidity from its members.

“So how does the son come into this?”

“Lucien Hockley reacted badly to his father’s death. He was eighteen at the time, and he left home and joined the French Foreign Legion.”

Mark sat bolt upright in his chair. “How wonderfully melodramatic. I didn’t know the Legion existed in real life. I thought it was just in the movies.”

“No, it exists, and it’s one of the toughest training grounds a soldier can have. By all accounts, Lucien thrived there. He joined at the lowest level, but a man like Lucien Hockley isn’t born to be a private. He worked his way up through the ranks, got a couple of awards for bravery.”

“You sound like you admire him.”

“There’s a lot to admire, if you like that sort of thing. Anyway, he obviously grew out of it. He returned home at twenty-four with a wife he’d picked up in England and a baby daughter. We kept an eye on him but never considered him a threat until he started asking questions. The decision was made, and we had confirmation of the hit.”

“Instead, it appears he survived.”

“Obviously. But his wife and baby were killed, and he’s been out there all this time. A man with a mission.” Jesus, just what they needed.

“So what do we do?”

“First of all, find him.” She slammed her fist down on the desk. “Shit. Why did this happen now?”

Descartes was her baby. She’d planned it from conception. Despite those early, disastrous experiments, she’d seen the potential and persuaded the Conclave to go forward with this. Now only days from seeing the results, the whole project was in jeopardy.

A click to the next photograph showed the man and woman together against the backdrop of the spires of Cambridge University, where she had studied. Where she had met Merrick and John when they had all been undergraduates.

The couple weren’t touching but there was a sense of togetherness about them. They were well matched, both tall, good-looking. Her gaze was drawn to the woman, and that same sense of familiarity washed over her.

What was her role in this and her connection to Hockley?

“I want to know everything about Jenna Young. Get me a report by morning.”

A ripple of unease ran down her spine. It couldn’t be.

That project had been terminated. Twenty-two years ago.