Acolyte (23 page)

Jonah and Never shared a look. Bob Crenner's voice was shaky.

‘What's happened, Bob?' asked Never.

‘They said he'd been shot.' Bob started to drive again, and fast. ‘They said he'd been killed.'

Bob drove, his face dark and focused. ‘When we get there,' he said, ‘take my car and go on. Understand? If you need to run, then run.'

There was no need for discussion, Jonah knew; Ray was the priority. They would do as Bob said, take his car and go on alone. But only when they knew what had happened to Ray.

By now they were driving along a country road, forest either side. Jonah thought they must be five or ten minutes from the location Bob had been given.

At the sound of a ringtone, Never pulled out his phone and looked at the screen. ‘Shit,' he said, passing his phone to Jonah. ‘I was supposed to call Annabel the moment we got you out of there. I'd already told her what was happening.'

Jonah took the phone, feeling an unwelcome sense of nerves that, given everything else that was going on, had no damn right being there.

‘Never?' she said as he answered.

‘It's me,' said Jonah.

There was a pause. He heard Annabel breath out. There was such intense relief in the sound that Jonah felt suddenly dizzy. It was the thought of how scared she'd been, making him realize again how deep a hole he'd just been dug out of. And how much she still cared for him.

‘Jonah,' she said. It was all she seemed able to manage for a moment.

‘Bob and Never got me out. I'm OK.'

‘Did the people who took you say anything?' Her voice was uneven, shaky. He supposed his own must sound the same.

He kept his voice low, not wanting Bob to overhear. ‘They claimed Andreas is looking to carve out some kind of Utopia rather than blow it all to hell. That he wants to get his disciples positioned and take over. It was plainly bullshit, but I think his followers believe it. And I know why they left us alone all this time.'

‘Why?'

‘They want Tess. We were a trap. If anything had happened to us, she would've been scared off, losing them their only lead.'

‘Why do they want her?'

‘He didn't give anything away.'

‘Jonah,' she said, ‘you need to get as far as possible from there as fast as you can. You understand me? You and Never need to split up. I'm leaving too, right now.' She paused. ‘We'll be safer on our own.'

He heard the phrase and closed his eyes. He knew it summed up the way she'd already been thinking about their relationship, and it hurt. It hurt, because that was exactly how he'd felt since the age of fourteen, since his mother had died. The pain of loss, making you curl up, hide from people. Hide from letting yourself be dependent on them.

It had taken him over a decade to finally let himself fall in love, and the woman he'd fallen for had the same damn problem.

We'll be safer on our own.

But now, the truth of it was undeniable.

‘I know,' he said. The admission hurt. ‘Look, something else has happened here, Annabel. Something serious, but as soon as we can run we'll be gone. We have to – hang on a second.'

Ahead, a police cruiser was slung across the lane, a solitary cop standing in front of it. On the left side of the forest road, Jonah saw a smaller road at right angles to it, a black van moving slowly
down it towards them. The cop raised his hand and Bob stopped the car, lowering his window, but the cop went around to Never's side and waited for Never to lower his. It struck Jonah as odd, but he didn't give it any more thought.

‘Crenner?' asked the cop.

‘Yes,' said Bob, killing the engine.

‘OK. Wait there a moment.' Another car pulled up behind Bob's, a family, rowdy kids laughing in the back. The officer waved it past then looked along the road in both directions. ‘Give me a minute, fellas. I just need to check something.'

The cop stood a little back from the car, Bob and Never watching him.

‘What's the deal?' asked Never.

Bob shook his head. In the distance, Jonah could see the car that had passed them vanish over the crest of a low hill.

‘You still there?' Jonah asked Annabel.

‘Of course.'

‘I couldn't talk for a moment. I have to – look, we might not see each other for a long time.'
If at all
, he thought.

‘I know.'

‘I still love you, Annabel Harker.'

She didn't reply for a few seconds. To Jonah it seemed like forever.

‘I love you too, Jonah,' she said.

And then he heard the sound of an engine revved high, screaming with power, closing in. No time to think, for any of them: all they could do was turn to their left and see the black van accelerate over the five-car distance it still had to travel. Then the vehicle smashed into them.

Jonah came to. He could hear Annabel's voice from somewhere distant: Never's phone, lost in the car. She called his name, halting and scared. Then she hung up. Jonah understood she must have been calling out since the moment she heard the impact.
Run
, he thought.
Run, Annabel, and don't look back.

He knew he'd blacked out but had no idea how long for. It couldn't have been more than moments: airbag powder filled the air around him. He tried to move, his back and side shrieking at the attempt. Something deep was torn, but he checked himself over quickly. Battered but intact.

He looked around and despaired. Bob was slumped forwards and to his right. He wasn't moving at all. Jonah couldn't see much of him, but anything he could see was wet with blood.

In the front passenger seat Never was leaning against his own door. He was moaning, his hand coming up to his head.

The van had hit the front-left side of the car; the driver-side door had been impacted hard enough to be pushed in deep, the metal touching the steering wheel. Jonah tried to look outside but the glass next to him was opaque, a shattered web barely held together.

There was enough light coming through to suggest that the van wasn't there now. For an instant he wondered if help could already have arrived, but he knew that was the thought of a man desperate to hang on to the possibility that this had been some kind of
accident.
That the ‘cop' who'd waved the other car through hadn't simply been waiting for potential witnesses to vacate the scene.

Everything about the situation screamed set-up, but the logistics of it seemed impossible. Heggarty would have needed people in place who knew where Bob's car was, and knew where to send them so that they could be intercepted, detained.

Dealt with.

Jonah tried to speak but just ended up coughing. Then he heard footsteps.

Someone pulled Bob's twisted door, managing to force it open, the metal crying out. A hand came in and undid Bob's seat belt, then grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled roughly.

Jonah heard himself protest, his voice little more than a croak. Then his own door opened and hands took hold of him, dragging him onto the cold, damp ground, the pain overwhelming. Twelve feet away he could see Bob lying motionless where he'd been dropped. Someone in a long black coat strode over to Bob and raised a hand. Jonah saw the gun, saw it fire, saw Bob Crenner's head come apart.

‘No!'
he screamed.
‘No!'
He kept screaming it, again and again, as the figure turned to him and approached; he tried to scramble backwards, unable to get to his feet, inching away pathetically as the black coat came for him.

He thought of Never. He thought of Annabel. Then the figure leaned down beside him and he felt the sharp pain of a needle; as he lost consciousness, he thought of Annabel's father, Daniel Harker, who had felt a similar stab in his arm before waking up to a long, slow death.

After she ended the call, Annabel stared at the phone.

She'd called out Jonah's name repeatedly, getting silence in return, and panic had taken hold.

No coincidence. No way. The thought had made her hang up, an image forming in her mind of people closing in on the other phone, hearing her voice, knowing somehow where she was. And if it
was
just an accident, Jonah would be able to contact her, assuming …

She closed her eyes.

She was ready. Bag packed. Ready to leave, to disappear. And to hope that Jonah and Never would be in touch soon.

Then there was a knock on the door of the apartment.

Her blood froze.

Andreas's people couldn't know she was there, surely. She was renting with a fake ID, and she'd been damn careful. They couldn't know.

The knocking grew louder.
Ignore it
, she thought.
Stay calm.
It had to be innocent, and there was no point in her rushing out to the fire escape for something
innocent.

With her eyes locked on the front door she reached over and grabbed the shoulder strap of her bag. She lifted it, slow and silent, and backed off to her bedroom, pushing the door across but not quite closing it, realizing just how familiar she'd made herself with the sounds her apartment could make: the door swung over
without noise, but the handle would squeak if she used it, and shutting it without turning the handle would produce a resounding click as the latch found home.

She opened the bedroom window, knowing it was silent. She stepped out onto the fire escape, something she'd tried twice in the weeks before. Three floors up, she'd not actually attempted the descent, but everything had looked well maintained.

Now it was time to see.

The knocking stopped, and so did she, half out of the window, not knowing if there would be the sound of a splintering door or if whoever it was would appear on the back street below at any moment.

Then the knock came again, and she moved, closing her window, descending with care. Rather than lower the final section of ladder she opted to drop from the lowest point of the fire escape to a garbage container, then to the ground. She followed the route she'd planned, keeping as casual a stride as she could, cutting through a cemetery and heading for the parking lot where she'd been keeping a second car. As she exited the cemetery she knelt down and retied the shoelace on her left foot, giving cover as she reached over to the storm drain beside her and dropped her phone into the darkness. Just in case. As soon as she could, she would source a new phone.

She stood and walked.

Annabel blanked her mind and focused on getting out of there, on losing herself and keeping her head down.

They couldn't have known where she was. Ditching the phone had been an unnecessary precaution. The knock on her door had been innocent.

And Jonah was fine.

She knew, deep down, that at least one of those things wasn't true.

Jonah opened his eyes to darkness, uncertain if he'd opened them at all.

Something was covering the lower part of his face, and he couldn't move his arms or legs. There was a smell of antiseptic in the air.
Hospital
, he thought, but he wasn't in a bed; he was seated, lying back, like in a dentist's chair.

He didn't know where he was, or why; he could only remember that something was
wrong.
He felt content, in a way he was immediately wary of. Given how badly injured he'd been when he was shot, he was familiar with the euphoric glow of opiate painkillers.

He blinked, unseeing, as the memory of the car being hit returned, along with the image of Bob Crenner's head fragmenting, and the sound of his own screams as the dark coat approached him.

This was no hospital.

He was aware of the pain lurking underneath the medication, in his side most of all, but every part of him seemed to have some grievance and the effect of the medication was fading fast.

He tried to move again and could feel straps on his arms and legs; whatever it was on his face, it had his jaw clamped shut. His head was restrained. He listened: the echo of his own breathing suggested the room he was in was small.

He thought of Never, moaning in the front seat of the car. Still alive. Back then, at least.

The lights in the room stuttered on, chasing away the last of the euphoria.

The white room was tiled and bare.
Easily cleaned
, he thought. Up high in one corner, a camera watched over him. Unable to turn his head, he could just see a table on his right but couldn't tell what was there. Glints of steel, though.

He closed his eyes again.

A sound made him look to the far wall. A door opened; as pure white as the wall, it seemed to appear from nothing. Through it came a short man with a genuine smile. He wore a white coverall, the kind Jonah wore at revivals to keep from contaminating the scene. The kind that kept your clothes clean, too. When there was too much blood.

The man's face was ruddy, his hair short and failing. There seemed to be nothing crouched on his shoulder but Jonah knew he needed to be wary of his new-found ability.

The man closed the door and approached, the smile growing. ‘Welcome,' he said.

Jonah tried to talk, but it was muffled by whatever was covering his face.

‘Wait, wait,' said the man. ‘Allow me.' He leaned across and gently removed it; a leather mask. Before Jonah could speak the man brought over a container with a plastic straw, placing the straw in Jonah's mouth.

‘Drink,' said the man. Thirsty, Jonah took a short sip before he thought he should be suspicious of what was offered. It seemed to be just water. ‘Now,' said the man. ‘What do you wish to say?'

‘The others …'

‘Ah. Well, now. I'm afraid the grab team let us down. We were supposed to have all three of you here, but the impact had been misjudged. The injuries of your detective friend were such that the decision was taken to leave him. Naturally, he had to be finished in a way that rendered him impossible to revive. You understand, Jonah?' The man paused, seeming to expect an answer.