Chapter Thirty-Six

“Where are we going?” Jenna asked. “Back to the apartment?”

She felt sick and shaky. She hoped it was just a reaction to getting out, a sort of relief, but Smith’s words echoed through her mind.

She’s poison.

He’d refused to say any more and had gone into a fit of panic when Luke had forcefully divested him of the mask. After that, he’d made no sense. Luke had cuffed him and dragged him along with them. He was somewhere in the vehicle following.

Beside her, Luke glanced away from the road. He frowned. “No. The apartment’s been compromised.”

“That was my fault, wasn’t it? I told the police. I should have trusted you.”

He shrugged. “Why should you? I lied. In the circumstance, I would have done the same. But tell me, how did you know? I thought we were close, but you vanished.”

“I overheard you talking with Callum. You said you were using me. As bait.”

This time he turned and stared at her. “How? We closed the door. You couldn’t have overheard us.”

“I don’t know, but that morning I woke up and everything felt different. All my senses more acute. I thought maybe my medication had been having some sort of effect, suppressing my senses, and I was hearing normally for the first time.”

His eyes narrowed as he considered her. “Being able to hear through a concrete wall is not normal.”

She laid her head against the back of the seat. “Then I don’t know, but I did hear. I got out of there and phoned the police. They told me David didn’t have a cousin.” She studied his profile, the lean, handsome face. “Who are you, Luke? For that matter is your name even Luke?”

“Almost. Lucien Hockley. Look, I’ll tell you everything when we get to a safe place. Why don’t you rest for now?”

She closed her eyes but saw again the terror on the doctor’s face. “What did he mean? That I’m poison?”

“I have no idea, but we’ll get the truth out of him. Did they use any drugs on you?”

“Yes.”

“Well that’s probably it. Maybe there’s some residual effect as the chemicals clear from your body.”

If that had been the case, the man she had killed would have worn a mask. He certainly hadn’t thought she was poisonous. In fact, he’d been quite willing to get very close to her. No, something had happened between then and when the doctor had come back. He had found out something that terrified him.

Something about her.

…

“How is she?” Callum asked.

“She seems fine. Physically at least.” Luke frowned. The Conclave had held her for nearly two days, yet she seemed to have suffered no physical harm. She said she’d been interrogated, they’d used drugs, yet there was no evidence of any intravenous injections.

“So, why don’t you seem happy about it?”

“I am, I just don’t understand, and I hate it when I don’t understand.”

“You think she might be some sort of plant? That she’s working for them? Could they have let us take her?”

“I’ve thought about it, but the fact is, if she were a plant, they would have made it far more convincing. She would have looked like she’d been interrogated.” He ran a hand through his hair. He was getting a weird feeling about this. “What about the doctor? Where is he?”

“Locked in one of the basement rooms. Screaming we’re all going to die, that we have to let him out. He’s babbling. He claims some guy called Lynch broke her nose.”

Luke’s fists clenched at his side. “Where is this Lynch?”

“Well that’s the other thing. Smith claims your girlfriend killed him. He reckons he’s never seen anything like it.”

“Well, let’s give him an hour or so to calm down, and then we’ll question him. Have you started going through the stuff you picked up?”

“No. I’d rather leave it to the experts. If the hardware’s been encrypted or booby-trapped, Stefan is more likely to pick it up. You know, they’re going to be on to us by now.”

“I figure they’ve been on to us longer than that, but we should be okay here for a while. This house is hard to trace back to us.”

…

Jenna lay curled on the crimson velvet cover of the four-poster bed, huddled in a robe she’d found in the adjoining bathroom. Luke had told her to rest, but there was no way she was going to sleep, and besides, she didn’t feel tired; she felt alert, wide awake, and hungry. She wanted food, and then she wanted to know what was happening and why. Luke had promised he would tell her what he knew.

When she was about to get up and go hunt for him, there was a quiet knock on the door, and Luke poked his head in. “I thought you might have trouble sleeping.”

“You thought right.”

He came in and shut the door behind him. He’d showered, his dark hair damp, and he’d changed into faded jeans and an olive shirt. Something warm stirred to life deep in the pit of her stomach when she looked at him. He might have set out to use her at the start, but he’d saved her last night. “Thank you,” she said.

A startled expression flashed across his face. “For what?”

“For saving me. A second time.” Something that might have been guilt flickered across his features, but he shrugged it off. Crossing the room, he placed a mug of coffee on the table beside her and stared down at her for long moments. “You look good,” he said.

“I feel good. And I don’t understand it.”

“What don’t you understand?”

“This, for a start.” She lifted her hand and waggled her fingers at him. “It should have taken weeks to heal.”

His face was blank for a moment, and she realized he’d forgotten about her broken finger. Then shock flashed across his features. He reached out and took her hand in his, turned it over, and studied it, a frown forming between his brows. “How long has it been like this?”

“Since the morning after…” She paused. She’d been going to say the morning after they’d made love, but suddenly she felt shy. “Since the morning I went to the police. I woke up, and it was fine.”

“This ties in with something I didn’t understand. You were interrogated, but there’s not a mark on you.” He stroked a finger down over her cheek. “Smith said you had a broken nose.”

“They used drugs, and one of them hit me. I thought it was broken, but…” She trailed off. “Has the doctor said anything else?”

“Nothing that makes sense. Yet. We’ll talk to him later.”

She remembered the red-hot agony as the drug had coursed through her body. “Good.” She picked the mug up from the table as Luke sat on the bed at her side. “Where are we?” she asked. “I couldn’t tell in the dark last night.”

“We’re about forty miles south of London. We should be safe here for a while, but they’re going to come after us. We need to find out how you’re connected or this thing will never go away.”

She sipped her coffee. “I was lying there thinking about it, and the more I think, the more it doesn’t make sense. I feel like my head is about to explode, but otherwise, I feel fine. Really great. Which doesn’t make sense, either.” She bit her lip. “There’s something else—I killed a man.”

“Smith mentioned it.” Head cocked to one side, he considered her. “How are you with that?”

She searched inside herself. Did she feel any guilt? “I feel good. He deserved to die, but that’s not it. I killed him with one kick. I shouldn’t be able to do that.”

He didn’t answer, and she finished the coffee and put the mug down. “Will you tell me what you know? Tell me who you are?”

“Of course.”

“But first, do you think I could have some food? I’m starving.”

He grinned. “You want to get up?”

“Yes, please.”

Rising to his feet, he held out a hand. “Come on, then. We can talk in the kitchen.”

She followed him through the house and down the broad stairway. The place appeared to be some sort of manor house, beautifully decorated in period style. It felt like a home and not a hideaway.

Finally, they entered a big open kitchen, and Jenna sat on one of the seats around the wooden table. Luke placed crusty bread, butter, and cheese in front of her. Jenna’s stomach rumbled, and she tore off a chunk of bread, spread it with butter, and bit into it.

After pouring them both more coffee from the machine, Luke sat down opposite her. She ate in silence for a few minutes, and when her immediate hunger was satisfied, she sat back, cradling the mug of coffee. “Tell me,” she ordered.

A flicker of amusement flashed across his face. “Tell you what?”

“Everything. Who you are, for a start. How you got involved in all this.”

He stared into her face, as if unsure where to start.

“At the beginning would be good,” she said.

Surprise flared in his eyes. “From the beginning, huh? Well, you’d better make yourself comfortable.”

Jenna made to settle back in her seat but changed her mind, got up, and refilled her cup. She brought the pot to the table and refilled Luke’s then sat back down. “I’m ready.”

“I come from a wealthy background. My mother died when I was young, so my father brought me up. We were close. I was supposed to go to Harvard when I was eighteen, but my father killed himself a month after my eighteenth birthday.”

Shock ripped through her. “What?”

“I was…surprised. I just couldn’t believe he wouldn’t have talked to me. I went a little off the rails for a while.”

The connection clicked in her mind. “You joined the French Foreign Legion.”

“I was a hotheaded idiot, but the Legion was good for me. It taught me discipline. After I got out, I visited Callum in London and met his sister.”

He paused and took a drink of coffee.

“Callum has a sister? I somehow can’t picture him with family.”

Pain flashed in his face. “Had a sister. Leah is dead.”

“How?”

He gave her a small smile that didn’t clear the bleakness from his eyes. “You’re getting ahead of yourself. Leah and I were married a month after we met and a year later, she gave birth to our daughter—Madeleine. Things were going well until I had a visit from an agent with the CIA. She claimed my father hadn’t committed suicide but had been murdered. I called Callum, asked him to come over, help me look into it. We started digging into everything—my father’s last months, his business dealings, his personal life. At first we didn’t find much, but then I was given a letter. My father had left it for me in the event that I was investigating his death. In it, he told me he’d been approached by someone to join a group. A group whose sole concern was the amassing of wealth and power.”

Luke rose to his feet. He ran his hands through his dark hair then shoved them into his pockets and paced the room. Coming to a halt across from her, he leaned against the counter and continued.

“Once we knew where to search, we found signs of an organization—the Conclave—that had a hand in everything; government, policy making, military. I knew I couldn’t take it on alone, and we were no longer safe. We set it up that I was going to ‘die,’ along with my family, and we’d take on new identities.”

Jenna felt a sense of dread rise up inside her. She knew where this was going. “What happened?” she whispered.

“We didn’t move fast enough. They set a car bomb. It was supposed to kill me. Instead, Leah and Maddy were killed.”

Jenna pushed out her chair and stood up. She crossed the room, wrapped her arms around Luke’s waist, and hugged him close. For a minute, his arms tightened around her, then he held her away gently. “We need to finish this.”

She nodded.

“They were killed outright. Callum was in the car behind. He managed to pull me out, but there was nothing we could do for them.” He rubbed at the back of his neck, and Jenna could see the remembered agony in his eyes. “With the help of a CIA contact, we faked my death. Lucien Hockley died and Luke Grafton was born.”

“I’m sorry. About your wife and baby.”

“It was ten years ago. In the past.”

“There are some things you never get over.” At least that explained his aversion to relationships. It was probably just as well.

“Maybe.” He shrugged. “Anyway, we’ve spent the last ten years going after them, but the whole setup is based on secrecy. At the lower level, no one knows anyone but their immediate contacts, above and below. People are recruited, and they themselves select a suitable candidate.”

“Do you think that’s what happened to your father?”

“Without a doubt. But if they’d researched him closely, they would have known he would never be involved in such an immoral organization.”

Jenna frowned. “But what do they want? Is it political? Religious?”

“Neither, as far as we can tell. From the intel we’ve gathered, the Conclave crosses all political beliefs and religions. I’ve come to believe their only creed is power.”

“I still don’t understand where I come into this. And how did David get involved?”

“A few weeks ago, we captured a low-level soldier of the Conclave. There was little he could tell us—”

“You tortured him?”

He looked surprised at the question. “We persuaded him that it was in his best interests to talk. Do you think that makes us as bad as them?”

She thought about the question, about what had been done to David. What they had tried to do to her and to Luke, whose whole life had been changed beyond comprehension by their activities. How good it had felt when she killed the man who tried to rape her, and she realized she would do it again in a second. They needed to be stopped, and somebody needed to have the guts to stop them.

“No. You got no pleasure from whatever you did.” A shudder ran through her as she remembered the sadistic pleasure in the doctor’s eyes as he injected her with his chemicals.

Luke studied her, his face serious. “You know that for sure?”

She smiled. “Oh yes.” She sat, and Luke followed her and sank down opposite. “Go on,” she said.

“He told us something big was going down, code-named Descartes. He didn’t know what or when, just that it would be soon, and he also gave us the name of his contact in London, a Lee Carson. When we picked up Carson’s trail, he was following a man. A Dr. Griffith.”

“David,” Jenna murmured. “But that still doesn’t explain why.”

“I presume he must have done an internet search and it was picked up. Carson questioned him about Descartes. Under torture, Griffith revealed it was somehow linked to a patient. You. I assumed the identity of his cousin—”

“You had photographs of the two of you together.” He raised an eyebrow and she scowled. “Okay, I’m being naïve. I guess that sort of thing is easy.”

“Very easy. I went to see you. Unfortunately, you refused to cooperate. I had to find some way to make you trust me. I sent some of my men in to frighten you, with the intention of rescuing you and gaining your trust, but they got there too late. When they arrived, you already had visitors. We came in as fast as we could.”

“Would your men have tortured me?”

“No. You were never supposed to be hurt. I haven’t sunk that low yet.”

“Because I’m a woman?”

“No, because you’re an innocent.”

He fell silent. Why was she so shocked? Why should he have thought twice about frightening her when he didn’t even know her? When she was his last lead on a mission that had driven him for ten years?

And really, if he hadn’t sent his men after her, they wouldn’t have found her in time and likely she’d be dead by now. It wouldn’t have been an easy death. All the same, she couldn’t quite shake the sense of betrayal or completely ignore the tears that burned her eyes. She blinked and forced the feeling down.

He reached across the table and took her hand in his, stroking his thumb against her palm. “If it makes you feel any better, for the first time in over ten years I actually felt guilty. I was furious with myself. I should have never let you out of my sight after the first moment I met you. I knew you were involved, and I put you in harm’s way.”

She thought about pulling her hand free, but it felt too good. “Yes, it makes me feel better. Finish the story. Did you find out anything when I was gone? Did you get anything valuable from the place I was held?”

“We got the hard drives from the facility where you were kept; they’re being analyzed now.”

“How did you find me, anyway?”

“After you went to the police, we got some information that something relating to the Conclave had just gone down in Ivory Coast. We followed the lead and found a whole village had been wiped out by some sort of bioweapon. We think it was a test for something bigger.”

“A village? How could they do that?”

“I don’t know. We were able to follow the trail to a company in the UK. The owner fit the Conclave profile perfectly—”

“They have a profile?”

“Yes. It’s not foolproof, but it allows us to pinpoint probable members. We persuaded this man to talk, and he gave us information that led us to you.”

“Thank you. I know you didn’t have to come for me.”

His hand tightened on hers. “Yes, I did.”

He was silent for a moment, but she sensed there was more. “What is it?”

“You remember we were investigating your father?”

She’d hated the idea, but she realized her father must be tied in to Descartes somehow. He’d been there at the start of it all. She rubbed her arms, suddenly chilled. “Did you find anything?”

“Yes. That up until twenty-two years ago Dr. Jonathon Young did not exist.”

“I don’t understand.” Whatever she’d been expecting, it wasn’t this.

“Oh, it was cleverly done. He must have had help. We had to dig deep to get the truth.”

A sudden coldness filled her with dread. “So who was he? And why did he have to change his identity?”

“His name was John Creighton. We traced him through Merrick. They both went to Cambridge University—your father studying medicine, Merrick biochemistry—and later they worked together in a research facility.”

“Are you sure it’s him?”

Luke nodded. “We have photographs of Creighton and Merrick.”

She picked up her empty cup, got up, and filled it with coffee, more for something to do than because she wanted it. Her whole background was a lie, and suddenly she was scared of what she might discover. Then something else occurred to her.

“My mother? Who was she? Was my dad married at the time?” Had he left his wife behind when he took on the new identity? Is that why he would never talk about her mother?

Luke got up and came to stand beside her. “There is no record of John Creighton ever marrying.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“There’s more, Jenna. There’s no record of him ever having a child. There is no record of your existence at all.”