The Alex King Series, A BATEMAN [good books for high schoolers .TXT] 📗

Ramsay nodded. “Okay then. We’re done for the day, unless of course, you can see any developments when you get back from dinner. I’m going back to my room, taking a shower and hitting the room service,” he paused. “Marnie, you can book our flights to Stockholm.”

“I think that’s a waste of time,” Rashid said quickly.

“Why?” Ramsay asked sharply.

“I think follow the trail to Russia. Or Georgia, at least. Helena Milankovitch is Russian, she worked with those dead mafia hoods around the Black Sea towns, we have GPS coordinates to a Georgian town…”

“But this started in Sweden,” Ramsay corrected him.

“It started in Russia,” Rashid argued.

“Georgia,” Marnie corrected him.

“Whatever… But it started with Helena Milankovitch. And it started in Georgia many years before she became Helena Snell, a billionaire’s wife and a long time before she left something in a safety deposit box in Sweden.”

48

Georgia

She could not succumb to sleeping. She was nearing total exhaustion, but could not let down her guard enough, not even for the quick five minutes the weaker part of her brain bartered for in the darkness.

She had eaten some crisps and a sort of cheese turnover sealed in a plastic packet. She had squeezed the edge, watched the air build inside as she had tested for a pin-prick, the slightest puncture which could have administered another drug. Michael had quickly provided her with the food, as well as another can of cola. She was still undecided about him. Had he been the man in her room? The man pushing at the wedged door? When she had seen The Beast, she had started to believe Michael’s protestations, but the way the man had carried her back to her room, like she was nothing more than a rolled-up blanket, made her doubt the ability of the tiny wingnut which had jammed the door shut. She imagined if The Beast had wanted to get in badly enough, then he could have reduced the door to mere splinters.

Caroline was an experienced agent with MI5. She had served in the army’s 14 Intelligence Company, and she had been deployed to Afghanistan. She had seen many terrible things, witnessed the death of comrades, seen the destruction war had caused the beleaguered Afghan people. She had even been present when her former fiancé had been killed, along with many other security personnel, by a suicide bomber. But nothing had prepared her for the inhumanity, the sheer callousness of what she had seen today. Young women treated like farm animals. Herded, sorted and farmed out to where they were needed most. The sex-trade was abominable, but the baby farming was on another level. Life created as a commodity. The bodies of unwilling women used and abused as part of the process. And what of the women when they were of no further use? She thought of The Town, a thriller she had once read on holiday. A disused mine outside a remote, and controlled mountain town in Oregon, the sale of body parts from missing people. The waifs and strays, the lost and unmissed. She shuddered at the thought of the clinical barbarity. She imagined a process down the line. Maximum yield from a person, dehumanised and turned into nothing more than a product.

She rolled onto her side, and for the second time in as many minutes, started to cry again. Not entirely for what would become of her, but for those young women and the babies that were being created down in that building of depravity. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve, sniffed and curled into a ball. She felt like she had when she was a teenager and had unexpectantly lost her pony to colic. Vulnerable, as if there would never be any fun or love in the world again. Like she was not only mourning the loss of her beloved pet, her friend, but the loss of all the wonderful years she had had to date. It had severed a link to her childhood. And today, down in that place, a link had been severed between her and all the good in the world. She would never look at life the same way again. Like a dark, low cloud that enveloped everything around her, pushing heavily downwards until there was no place else to go and she was swallowed in despair.

A footstep on the landing made her freeze. She listened for another step, realised she had stopped breathing. She heard another step, then another. They were different to before, quieter, but in that certain way that told her the person was trying to be quiet. She wiped her eyes again, swung her legs over the side of the bed. She still had fight left in her. She thought of Alex, what he would be feeling after so long not knowing of her fate. She wanted to see him again, wanted to finish their plans of buying a new house together - a fresh start. Wanted to finally see the man wearing a suit for their wedding day. She fished out the wingnut from her bra, placed it between her knuckles, realising the dark cloud had gone. She had reached a point Alex had once described to her. Rock bottom. At rock bottom, live or die was not even a choice.

But fight was.

Fight decided over live or die. Doing nothing didn’t give you that choice. There was no gain from doing nothing. And the wonderful thing, in that fleeting moment, was that fear was nowhere in the equation.

Fight was all there was.

The deadbolt slid back, the key turned in the lock. Caroline reached the dressing table, pulled the leg she had undone away. The dresser simply rested back against the wall. Caroline felt the heft of it, positioned the bolt so she could swing it into whoever was going to come through the door. She let it rest