‘And get that damned CCTV looked at!’ Conrad barged out of the witness room followed by two of the Deacon Security team who shuffled out of the clinic after him.
The teenage protestors were locked in secure rooms. The man in black was nowhere to be found. A cleaner was attempting to scrub the black paint off the wall. Drips marked the workstation below like definitive full stops.
George was leaning over Grace. ‘You sure you’re okay? Are you hurt anywhere?’
Outrage had provided a strong anaesthetic but now it was beginning to wear off. Her back felt bruised and the cut on her hand from the library had opened up and her bandage was sodden. ‘I’m okay. Do you know where Remy Wilson is? The offender I was treating?’ She winced as she moved. ‘Is he okay?’
George shook his head and shrugged. ‘Do you want some painkillers, Doctor G? I got some in my pocket.’
‘Grace, I need you in my office,’ Conrad said.
‘I’m fine, Conrad, thank you for asking,’ Grace said.
‘Sorry. Are you okay?’
When she shook her head he said, ‘We’re waiting on the police. Will you come to my office when you’re ready?’
‘Yes, of course.’
Moments after he left, Abigail came in, looking pale. Grace turned to her. ‘Abigail! Where have you been? Are you okay? You’ve been gone for ages. I didn’t know what had happened to you!’
A trickle of blood ran down Abigail’s face.
‘Let’s get that seen to,’ Grace said, standing up. She pointed to the clinic chair and Abigail sat down. There was a small gash on her scalp and her hair was sticky with blood. George looked concerned.
‘I don’t think it needs a stitch but let me just clean it and have a closer look.’ Grace looked around at the ruined clinic. Bottles were smashed, panels had been pushed back, cupboard doors kicked off, items spilled out onto the floor. Glass crunched beneath her feet and the orange drink pooled on the floor. Thankfully, she’d saved the computer just in time. She hoped the vials and drugs she needed for Remy’s treatment were okay. She didn’t have time to order more.
But then she remembered – he didn’t need fixing.
There was nothing wrong with his brain.
Her stomach gave an excited flip.
‘Is Remy okay?’ she asked, but Abigail just groaned.
‘George, can you pass me that kit?’ She pointed to a first-aid box that lay half-open beneath the magnet arm.
‘Sure thing.’ He nodded towards her hand. ‘And make sure you take care of that too.’
He brought it over and watched with interest as Grace used an antiseptic wipe to clean the area around the laceration. Abigail winced. She looked like a little girl on a visit to the school nurse.
‘You put up a good fight,’ she said.
Grace felt as though she had revealed a hidden side to herself and a feeling of vulnerability overcame her.
‘Did they get the man?’ Abigail asked George, who had begun picking up items from the floor and putting them on the trolley next to the chair.
Grace dabbed at her scalp again and Abigail let out a little sound.
‘Don’t worry. We’ve got the team searching the building. He’s probably been caught already,’ George said reassuringly.
‘You’ll have to be careful when you wash your hair,’ Grace told her. Then she added, as casually as possible, ‘Is Remy okay?’
‘Yes, I put him somewhere safe.’ Before Grace had time to find out where, Abigail asked George, ‘How did they get in?’
Grace unwrapped her bandage and began to clean her wound. She’d have to get it seen to properly. But that would have to wait.
‘Had a guard with them. Wasn’t one of our fellas, but they had one of our uniforms. Sounds like a well-planned attack.’ He looked up at the cleaners, struggling to remove the spray paint. ‘But there’s something odd here…’
‘What?’ Grace asked, applying a pad and beginning to wrap a fresh bandage around her hand.
‘You sure you don’t want help with that?’ George asked, hovering as Grace held the loose end of the bandage in her teeth.
She nodded and he tied it for her.
‘Thanks. So what was odd?’ she asked.
Abigail turned her attention to George.
‘The kids had a lot of money in their backpacks, and I mean a lot of money. Some guy in the crowd of protestors gave it to them, they said, told them to cause as much chaos as possible. Said he could get them in posing as a guard. He was able to bypass security scanners and everything.’
‘Do you think they’re the same people who said they hacked us?’ asked Grace.
George shrugged.
‘Can the kids identify him?’ asked Abigail.
‘They’d never seen him before.’
There was more to this than ordinary protestors. The kids had just been a distraction. The man in black had been trying to kidnap Remy. But how could she tell the guard that without drawing attention to Remy himself?
‘Did they find the fake guard?’ She imagined him wheeling Remy’s chair down to the underground car park, unchallenged. Thank God Abigail got him away in time!
George shook his head again. ‘I don’t know how the hell they got in or out. Ghosts.’
Not ghosts, but Diros. She was sure of it. The intruder all in black – she remembered where she’d smelled his odour before – in the back room at the library. She’d been too panicked in the clinic to pinpoint it. They’d said they were going to come for her at the clinic, and instead they’d come for Remy. Or maybe they’d just come for Remy first.
She shivered.
Maybe they were still in the building. If they’d bypassed security then they could get to Remy. She wanted to see him immediately, check he was safe, warn him that Diros had been in the building, may still be in the building, and tell him that he’d been right all along – they could get to him wherever he was.
She also needed to tell him that she believed him. Remy was no psychopath.
How was she going to be able to gain his trust again?
First things first. Once they knew the coast was clear, she would have to pretend to conduct his treatment. It was the only way she was going to get Conrad to sign the release papers. At least she knew now that the post-treatment scans would be perfect. It would look as though the therapy was highly effective.
But now she had a new set of problems. Who had swapped Remy’s scans and why? How were they going to get away from Diros? And with the story all over the press, it was only a matter of time before the authorities were alerted. They would insist Remy was sent to Tier Four and there would be nothing she could do for him then.
And it would have been her fault. She’d brought him to the clinic and Diros knew she worked there.
‘I’m going to go and see Remy, check he’s okay,’ she said brightly, moving towards the door. ‘He’s in one of the secure rooms?’
Abigail was touching her scalp gingerly, and looked up. ‘What?’
‘Where did you take Remy? Which one of the secure rooms?’
‘I… I…’ She winced.
It was a simple question. Was she still in shock?
‘Where’s Remy?’ Grace asked more urgently. ‘Where did you take him?’
‘He’s safe. He’s in one of the secure rooms, no one can get to him,’ Abigail stammered.
Grace felt herself relax a little. ‘Okay, I’ll just go and…’
Conrad stormed into the clinic.
‘Grace, I need a word.’ His elation when she’d shown him the new treatment had completely disappeared and now there was only stress, and something else – anger.
‘I’ve an urgent matter to see to. Can it wait?’ She began to move away but he caught her by the arm. She looked down at his hand. ‘Look, Conrad, I know you must be angry with these arseholes for what they did, but it’s not the end of the world. We can fix the clinic up. There’s no lasting harm done…’
‘I’m not angry with the offenders!’ he bellowed. ‘I’m bloody angry with you!’
Grace took a step backwards, pulling her arm out of his grip.
‘Angry with me? What the hell have I done?’
He waved his shell in her face, a photograph of a younger Remy in crisp pixels, his long dark hair pushed back, a police mugshot, the black and yellow NewsFlex logo in the bottom right-hand corner.
‘This is your husband’s fault! He’s standing outside right now spouting off about Remy Wilson to the entire world – telling everyone that he’s in here, that he’s already been through Tier Three, which, incidentally, you failed to mention when you asked for a test subject. Nor did you tell me that his Tier Three treatment failed—’
‘If you had more knowledge about the offenders we’re dealing with, instead of just focusing on the money, Conrad, you’d know that Remy had already—’
He cut her off. ‘What else did you tell your hack of a husband, Grace? Why did you tell him? You’ve broken every rule on confidentiality!’
‘I didn’t tell Dan anything!’ Had he been listening in on her conversations with Shannon?
‘It’s all over the goddamned hypernet. This is gross misconduct, Grace, spying on the company, informing the press. I blame you for this whole fiasco today.’ He stabbed his finger through the air. ‘This company, my company, looks like a complete failure.’
‘I didn’t tell him anything,’ Grace insisted. Abigail eyed her silently and the conversation with Dan about the Embers Rapist that Abigail had overheard in the bathroom sprang to mind.
There was a tense silence. Grace was going to have to take the bull by the horns. ‘There’s only one thing that we can do to fix this – get Remy and use the new treatment on him. We have to come clean and say there was a problem with the original Aversion Therapy and now we have something better in place. Hell, it might even be good PR.’
She bit her lip.
‘No,’ Conrad said finally.
‘No, what?’ she asked with a growing anxiety.
‘No. We can’t treat Wilson.’
‘No, Conrad. You promised me!’ Her voice rose in pitch, echoing her heart rate.
He didn’t answer, just shook his head.
‘You said I could use an offender of my choosing. We agreed!’
‘Yes, that was before you put my company on the line!’ he roared.
‘I didn’t tell Dan anything!’ she yelled back.
‘You expect me to believe that? And you choose a high-profile offender, one who the whole country has their eyes on? What were you thinking? The deal is off the table. You can forget it.’
‘We had an agreement. I fixed your bloody treatment for you, saved your reputation, didn’t I? You can’t go back on it now. You’re lucky I haven’t talked to the press yet, Conrad. God knows there’s plenty I could tell them—’ she spat angrily.
‘I don’t have any choice, Grace! How’s it going to look if I free Remy Wilson, huh?’ He came up close to her, his face twisted and menacing. ‘My contract with the Department of Justice will be in jeopardy. The general public will think Wilson has got away with murder. The protestors will think it’s unfair that he’s been released and riot or attack the clinics around the country. I’m not losing my business because, for whatever reason, you insist this particular offender is worth treating. We’ll use Penny Lithgow’s results to cover our asses. You can forget about Remy Wilson.’
Abigail’s gaze swung between the two, with obvious curiosity.
‘Please, Conrad.’
‘The minister is furious. We look like idiots! I’m going to have to spend a fortune to boost security again because of this.’ He looked Grace in the eye. ‘You’re done here.’
‘What?’ she asked, stunned.
‘Yes, you’re done here. You’ve broken your contract and your non-disclosure agreement. It’s gross misconduct, Grace. In fact, you’ll be lucky if I don’t take legal action.’ He rubbed his hand over his face. Then he snarled, ‘If you tell anyone about Siberia, there’ll be more to worry about than just legal action…’
‘Are you threatening me?’ Grace said. She got a grip on her anger and tried a different approach. ‘Come on, Conrad. What about all those others in Tier Four? Are you just going to leave them to rot when I can help them? I can save them from—’
‘I’ve got what I need. Abigail can help the others.’
On hearing her name, Abigail winced.
‘That’s my therapy!’ yelled Grace.
‘You made your choices.’ His voice was quiet now, controlled.
‘You haven’t heard the last of this, Conrad,’ she said bitterly.
But he didn’t appear to hear her as he left the room.
Grace’s mind raced.
Screw Conrad. Remy didn’t need therapy. He didn’t need fixing. The sedatives would have started to wear off now and he’d probably be able to walk. She would go and fetch him from the secure room, get him down to the car park, into her car and then drive. She didn’t even know where. She couldn’t think that far, she just had to get him out.
‘I want to see Remy before I go. Where is he?’
Abigail didn’t answer straight away.
‘Abigail! Just tell me which secure room he’s in.’
‘He’s not in a secure room.’ Her face was angled down but she looked up at Grace from under her fringe. ‘The rooms were all full. The guards put the protestors in there, so I took him…’
‘Where?’ Grace wanted to shake her.
‘I had to get him somewhere safe. It’s the most secure place in the building… he’s in Siberia.’