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

is a safety deposit box number 427. The code to open it is 3367. You will go there on May 22nd and open the box at 0930.

 

Do not fail her.

 

Helena

 

King looked at Mereweather. “When did you get this?”

“Last night,” he said. “We had tests done, the DNA belongs to Helena Snell.”

King screwed the letter, stuffed it into his pocket. He looked at his watch, studied it like he hadn’t seen the time or date in a while. “I need to go,” he said. “That’s the day after tomorrow.”

“I can give you a lift. You’ll need to check into Thames House, we’ll arrange air tickets…”

“I’m doing this myself, Simon,” King interrupted.   

Mereweather shook his head. “It needs to be official. We need agents on the ground, electronic tracking, a plan set in place. If we stand a chance of getting Caroline back, we need to mount an operation.”

King shook his head. “No. Just go! I’m doing this alone.”

“You’ll come back to Thames House, that’s an order…” Mereweather stopped mid-sentence, his eyes on the gun.

“You don’t get it, do you,” King stated flatly. The pistol was steady in his hand. “Are you alone, Simon?”

“Yes,” Mereweather said, but seemed to regret it. He quickly added, “People know where I am, what I’m doing. You can’t seriously be threatening me, Alex? You’ll never get Caroline back without help.”

King stared at Mereweather, smiled thinly. “When the time comes, I’ll call you,” he said. “But I’m not finding Caroline anytime soon. I’m keeping her safe. You’ve read the letter. You know what she wants from me. She’s too clever to get caught. She has set the trap, and it’s not baited for her.” He walked past Mereweather, the pistol held down by his leg. He didn’t look back as he stepped inside the cottage and closed the door.

His bug-out bag was packed and stowed by the door. He dropped the pistol on top of it as he walked past and took the stairs. He went into the bathroom and started to run a sink of hot water. Out of the narrow window, he could see the tail-lights of Mereweather’s hire car bouncing down the lane. For a moment, he was reminded of Amanda Cunningham tearing away from his cottage in Cornwall.

King splashed the water on his face and picked up his shaving bowl and brush. He looked at his reflection in the mirror. A hollowed-out version of his former self. Dark, gaunt and haunted. He closed his eyes and thought of Caroline. He tried to think of her on a happier day, in a special memory. But he had only been able to picture her on that bathroom floor. For a month, his vision of her had been tarnished by those events.

He could see Helena looking at him as he found the bullets on the patio. Those predatory, almond-shaped eyes. She had stared impassively at him, while Victor Bukov had glowered. She had been calm and calculating, a hunter waiting to strike at her prey.

King dropped the bowl in the sink and punched the glass, smashing the mirror and breaking the cabinet door. He ripped the door off its hinges. Then he looked down at the water in the sink, blood swirling on the surface, before sinking and clouding the water. He turned his hand over, studied the bloodied knuckles, the gashes to his forearm. He plunged the fist into the water and it stung so badly that he grimaced. He caught the sight of his expression in the shards of mirror left holding onto the cabinet frame.

That was what it was like to feel.

That was what it felt like to be alive.

For a month he had been numb. A shadow moving away from the light. He had no emotion, no feelings other than self-pity and despair. He plunged his hand into the water again, then ran the tap and let the scalding water wash over the slashes.

It was agonising, but it felt so good.

He stared back at the shard of reflection. There was light behind those eyes once more. A glimmer. The man looking back at him was more intense, more to be reckoned with than the eyes of the half-slaughtered beast he had seen these past weeks. He snatched a deep breath and it felt invigorating. Like he had been barely breathing these past weeks as well. Never filling his lungs fully. And that was it. He had been half-dead

King had played down the stories, played down his reputation. But he knew what a monster he had been, what he had done in his past. He would never have let Caroline know. The traitor in Geneva was right to have found an easier, cleaner way out. He would have begged King to do it if he had been given the chance. Now Helena Snell had released him. He was going to find her. He was going to hunt her to the ends of the earth. He was going to turn her world into an unimaginable Hell. Her very own version of Dante’s Inferno. A wasteland where her soul would even beg for mercy long after he had taken her life. Because she had unwittingly unleashed a demon. A man who had spent his entire life denying what he truly was.

The Reaper.

Reaper

By

A P Bateman

 

1

 

Georgia, Black Sea Coast

 

Fight fire with fire.

King had always undertaken a measured response to violence according to the severity of the attack. A lifetime of judgement. He knew there was no way a war - especially a dirty, secret war - could be won without the stark reality of ruthlessness. He had fought and won many of these wars. Some played out on the desolate terrain of Northern Iraq, in the mountains of Afghanistan or