Acolyte (8 page)

So while Jonah wanted to try and forget about it all, Annabel travelled to wherever the leads took her, and she kept herself as busy as possible. She'd inherited a considerable amount of money from her father, meaning that not even the distraction of a job interrupted her goal.

Jonah understood, or at least he tried to. She thought she owed it to her dad, to be the best journalist she could be. She needed time, she needed space.

But it was over now, the danger passed. Eventually Annabel would come to terms with that. Eventually she would exhaust her leads. Hopefully before she exhausted
herself.

She served up the coffee and toast. Jonah took a wary bite but it seemed to sit well in his stomach.

‘So what have you been up to?' Jonah asked her. ‘How's the, uh, investigation? You closer to knowing who's in charge?'

One of Annabel's key interests was understanding the structure Andreas's companies had been left with since his death. Some of her earliest enquiries had revealed unnecessarily opaque arrangements and suspicious levels of security in some areas; a hacker she'd used successfully in the past had found plenty of unexpected barriers. Annabel's concern had been
why
such barriers would have appeared, now that Andreas was dead. Why would those high up in the company want to disguise their intentions?

The benign explanation was a simple one, the result of power struggles within a multi-billion dollar business empire, and of senior people covertly jockeying for position.

Annabel, though, wasn't looking for benign explanations, however much Jonah tried to convince her.

‘Slow progress,' she said. ‘I had some information that Andreas Biotech is investing heavily in areas related to revival at the moment, but none of the feelers I've put out have got me any more details. I'm also trying to nurture some Afterlifer contacts, to see if I can get anything about where all their extra funds have been coming from.'

Jonah groaned inside. It sounded like she was expanding the scope of her enquiries, and if that was true, then the prospect of her stopping was receding fast. ‘Well,' he said, ‘at least then I'd know who to throw things at.'

‘Something interesting came up yesterday,' she said, ‘when I was in Fort Worth.'

Jonah looked at her, bewildered. ‘I thought you were in San Diego. Hard to keep track of you.'

‘Got there the night before last. I had a long talk with someone who used to be involved in Afterlifer fundraising, but they didn't know the source of the extra money. Internally, they're saying it's a huge growth in grassroots donations, but my contact didn't believe that.'

He gave her a serious look. ‘You're being careful, right?'

‘
Yes
, I'm being careful,' she said. ‘Quit nagging me.'

He shrugged. He
did
keep nagging her to be discreet and cautious. The Afterlifers had a violent past, and Andreas Biotech was a wealthy company with dark secrets. It seemed to Jonah that neither organization would need much provocation before resorting to extremes.

And not just them: there were also the military connections, the intelligence organizations who had been keeping their eyes on Andreas and on the Afterlifers. Jonah thought of Kendrick, the man responsible for Baseline research which sought to use revival as a method of interrogation – killing someone, then torturing information from their corpse. Kendrick had been at
Reese-Farthing that day, trying to find out what Andreas was up to. It had been one of Kendrick's men who had shot Jonah. It had always been Kendrick's face that Jonah's fears made him see in crowds, not the face of Andreas.

Because Kendrick was still out there.

It was important that Annabel kept off everybody's radar.

‘So how about I make you take a break from all this?' said Jonah, smiling.
Be upbeat
, he thought.
Get her to relax. Maybe she'll lose momentum, lose interest.
‘I'll take you out for a meal this evening. I'll avoid alcohol, you'll get pampered, and we can catch up properly.'

Annabel's smile fell. ‘Jonah, I –' She paused, and looked down. ‘I can't stay.'

Stunned, all Jonah could do was stare.

‘I have to get a flight in two hours,' she said, looking up again.

Jonah said nothing; he walked through to his bedroom. Annabel's suitcase was on the bed, packed and ready to go. He marched back to the kitchen. ‘Two
hours
?' he said.

‘I'd planned to stay for a few days, but I got a message this morning from someone with information about the new Andreas revival investments. I have to go meet them back west.'

‘Jesus, Annabel … I haven't seen you in so long, and this is all I get?'

‘I can't just turn down information, and this was the only time they—'

He interrupted her. ‘Are you even coming back for Valentine's next month? Like you
promised
?'

She wouldn't make eye contact. ‘It'll depend on what's happening,' she said. ‘You know how important this is to me.'

‘I know what's
not
important.'

Her mouth opened a little but she said nothing. He could tell she was taken aback by his tone, but he couldn't quite read her expression: upset, certainly, and uncomfortable. But he didn't know whether she was unable to find the right words to ease his
fears, or was stopping herself from saying something more painful.

When things had first become serious between them she'd told him about previous boyfriends, the ones who had outstayed their welcome and had been unable to take her hints. It had been funny, at the time, because she'd been so clear about how relaxed she felt around Jonah, how
different
it all was. Now, Jonah was starting to think that what she'd told him had been a warning:
Take the hints. Don't outstay your welcome.

‘What am I to you, Annabel?' he said. He could feel the despair swirling within him, coming out as reckless words. ‘Tell me what I am, because right now you're looking at me like I'm a fucking burden.'

Still she said nothing, but Jonah thought he could read it now. She wanted to reassure him, wanted to please him. But none of it would be true, so she was silent.

He made it easier for her. ‘Go,' he said. ‘Just go.'

Annabel got her case and walked to the door in silence. She opened it, stepped through, and was about to shut it behind her when Jonah spoke.

‘I love you,' he said.

She paused, just long enough for him to be sure she was about to say something, say
anything
. Bring it to an end, he thought, or let him know she felt something in return.

Anything would be better than nothing, surely.

‘I'm sorry,' she said.

Then Annabel Harker closed the door.

Annabel walked for ten minutes before she called a cab, pulling her rumbling luggage behind her. She was muttering to herself, swearing under her breath loud enough for people she passed to give her a crazy-person look and a wide berth.

The journey back to her apartment in San Diego went pretty much the same way, a constant urge to yell at herself for handling things so badly. By the time she got in a taxi outside San Diego International she'd stopped muttering, but the same thoughts were going round and round in her head.

She'd gone to Jonah's because when she'd heard his message about quitting his job, that had been her first and only instinct. Drop everything and go. Maybe that said it all, but it was also the real problem. Commitment had crept up on her, and commitment wasn't something she did.

Her father Daniel had died twenty months ago, but she knew a truth she found hard to acknowledge: part of him had been dead long before that. Annabel was sixteen when her mother died, and Daniel Harker had been destroyed by her death. He'd breathed, he'd eaten; rarely, he'd even smiled. But it always felt like a show he put on for the sake of his only child. Annabel knew that if it hadn't been for her, he would have ended his own life as soon as he'd been able to.

That was what her parents had taught her of love: it was a wonderful thing, but had a terrible price. The stronger it was, the
more dangerous it became. It was a vulnerability she'd been terrified of since her first crush. Now that the real thing had found her, she was horribly aware of it.

In short, Annabel Harker had allowed herself to fall in love. She'd been regretting it ever since.

She'd run with it to begin with. The trauma of the fire at Reese-Farthing Medical, the shock of Jonah's near-fatal shooting, then his long, slow recovery. She felt comfortable around Jonah in a way she hadn't experienced before, and found herself missing him after ever-shorter times apart. She had hidden her fears deep down. She had dared to be happy.

The doubts had returned suddenly one night. In bed, they were kissing; she'd moved to get on top of him and he'd winced, pain growing on his face, hand on the still-angry scars on his chest. The horror must have been clear on her face. Jonah smiled, raised a hand to calm her. After a few seconds he managed to speak.

‘Just a muscle spasm,' he said. ‘I get them from time to time. It'll pass.'

He looked so grey.

They walked along the beach later that night, and she could see the bliss in Jonah's face that she too had felt earlier that day, but now she understood that the thing she'd always dreaded had found her: Love, and all that came with it. It terrified her.

Since then she'd spent relatively little time in her home in Virginia, focusing instead on her investigation. She knew that this left Jonah confused but she didn't know what else to do. It was the only cure she knew: physical distance, keeping herself busy. Falling for him had been a mistake; unpicking that mistake would hurt both of them, but it was unavoidable. As her dad had always told her, it was better to pull a Band-Aid off quickly. Less painful that way.

‘Fucking hell,' said Annabel aloud.

The taxi driver looked up. ‘Excuse me?'

‘Nothing,' said Annabel.

*

Her apartment was small and sparse. She paid everything in cash and had rented it under a false name – Jonah's repeated reminders for her to be careful were unnecessary, as she always
was
careful. She had another similar place in Sacramento, the benefit of independent means. Since she'd started to spend more and more time in these West Coast boltholes she'd been tempted to make them a little more homely, but part of her wanted to keep things Spartan. She felt she didn't deserve comforts.

She dumped her bag by the couch and checked her watch. She wouldn't have to leave for her meeting for another forty minutes and she wanted to use that time to get her head into the right place.

In the corner of the room was a whiteboard. She rubbed the board clean whenever she was gone from her apartment for any significant time, but while she was there she used it to get her thoughts in order, trying out new ways to link the things she knew. She stepped over to it and picked up the pen, wanting to get her focus back, and to push Jonah out of her mind.

She began by writing the word
Unity
in the top middle of the board. Unity was the group that Michael Andreas, the wealthy biotech entrepreneur, had formed after a research team working on possible military uses of revival stumbled into contact with something they believed was not human. The military had assumed the research was nonsense and abandoned it, but Andreas and his team had continued. These entities were benign, they thought; lost in some unimaginable void that revival had given access to. They termed these beings
Elders
; ancient and alien, wise beyond measure, yet trapped in the darkness for countless millennia and stripped of everything they knew, even how they had been lost in the void in the first place.

The members of Unity believed these Elders could give humankind invaluable knowledge, if only they could be taken from the void and allowed to recover from their ordeal. To do this, they sought a way to join with them – with thirteen volunteers acting as
hosts for the thirteen Elders. Not a kind of possession, they claimed, but a true physical unity, hence the name they had chosen for their group. One by one, they'd undergone a process of their own devising; one by one, the Elders had been plucked from darkness, still ignorant of their own pasts.

Unity had been the beginning of it all.

Next, Annabel wrote
Afterlifer
, and below that,
Extremists
: the small group of Afterlifers who had learned of Andreas's plan and believed he was seeking to incarnate some kind of demonic force. They had set out to stop it at all costs, and had caused the inferno that had destroyed the Reese-Farthing building where the Unity group had gathered.

She drew a single letter D and added lines joining it to both
Unity
and
Extremists.
The ‘D' stood for
Daniel
; it also stood for
Dad.
Her father, kidnapped and left to die, all because they feared he knew what they were doing and planned to expose them. They had been wrong; Daniel Harker had known almost nothing about it.

She stood for a moment and looked at the solitary letter. It represented so much loss. Also, her father's death was how she had got involved with this whole situation; it was how she had met Jonah.

On the left of the board, she wrote the name
Kendrick.
He was the military intelligence representative in the original research that had caught Andreas's eye. Kendrick had been observing the Reese-Farthing building on the night of the fire; one of his men had been responsible for shooting Jonah. What Kendrick's game was, Annabel didn't know, but she didn't believe the man or his employers had simply lost interest. She'd assured Jonah she wouldn't go digging around in that minefield, but perhaps the time was coming when she would have to.