Closer, page 10
I was clutching at straws. I knew that.
But what else did I have?
It was still early, but perhaps that was in my favor. Before I had time to reconsider, I pulled some clothes on and headed out.
9. Cassie
She should never have sent the message.
She knew it was wrong. Even if it was not, explicitly, contravening orders, it was against all protocols.
It most certainly had not been what Connor had meant by tidying up all loose ends.
A breach of security, potentially endangering the operation. Potentially endangering Cassie and any other agents in the field.
Another mistake.
How did she know Matthew wouldn’t go straight to Napier to warn him?
She’d ensured the message was sent anonymously, but even so, he must at least suspect it was from her. He’d be angry with her. Resentful. He had no reason to simply do as she said and depart the scene. And Napier was his oldest, closest friend.
She’d been stupid.
Sloppy and unprofessional.
So out of character.
She would go to Auldbrigg Haw first thing and scout the place out from a distance. See if she could determine whether Matthew was still there, and whether security had been tightened even further.
Stupid.
After this job was over – which would be soon, she was sure – she would ask Doug Connor for a break. Time to recharge, and find her focus again. Time to reassess why she was doing this.
She was a good field agent, but burn-out was not so much an occupational hazard as an inevitability. Perhaps that was what had happened. Matthew hadn’t been her weakness, but more a symptom of a more general malaise.
A glitch.
Sending that message had been stupid.
She’d smashed the cellphone already. Taken the SIM card out and hammered it repeatedly between two rocks, until it fragmented, and then done the same to the phone itself, before gathering the debris and casting it all as far as she could into the water.
She had to find focus.
Because tomorrow she was going to kill Stewart Napier, and anyone else who got in her way.
§
She slept out on the flat rocks again.
The nights were cold now, but she liked being under the stars. Liked getting out of the confines of the old buildings – the musty smells of decay and abandonment, the sense of being closed in, the lurking knowledge that if she slept indoors she would be sharing the building with a corpse.
Her sleeping bag was military-grade – lightweight and well-insulated – which made sleeping in the open more manageable. It didn’t make the rock any softer, but she’d slept in far worse conditions.
She forced herself to sleep, using all the tricks she knew. Relaxation techniques; meditation to still the rush of thoughts going round and round her head; breath control to slow her heart.
She woke several times, and on each occasion forced herself back into sleep.
The final time she woke, the sky was lightening with dawn. She heard birds crying somewhere out over the water. She squinted, and saw the white scimitar shapes of gulls following a small fishing boat back in from the sea.
She stretched. Turned onto her side and looked back up toward the cluster of old Navy buildings, and then she saw him.
Matthew.
He stood only a short distance away, arms slightly splayed as if frozen in mid-turn.
He’d seen her, too, was staring.
Cassie twisted, and swung her legs around so she could sit, her knees tucked up under her chin, her arms wrapped around her shins.
She couldn’t believe he’d found her.
Was he alone?
Even as she held his look, she was alert to any hint that he was accompanied. Any movement in her peripheral vision. Any sounds.
Finally, his form slumped a little, as if he’d been holding his breath and had only now released it.
“Matthew,” she said, her voice catching.
“Cassie. Or whoever you are.”
His voice was tight. He was struggling for control – from emotion? Anger?
She hung on tight to her legs, pressing them so hard against her chest she could barely breathe.
Finally, she said, “You were supposed to leave, not come after me.”
“You think it’s that easy?”
He looked broken, and Cassie felt sick with guilt. She’d never wanted to hurt him. Had blinded herself to the inevitability that a relationship built on such flimsy foundations must surely, one day, shatter.
You always ended up destroying those you let close.
She felt a stab of cold on her cheeks, and knew it was the sea breeze chilling tears on her skin. She dipped her head and rubbed, too roughly, against her knees.
“Who are you?” he asked. “What are you?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“If you tell me you’d have to kill me – something like that?”
He was trying to turn it into a joke, defuse things a little, but all Cassie could think of was Connor’s instruction to tidy away all loose ends. Simply by coming here, Matthew had demonstrated that he had worked out too much. If she proceeded with her assignment, then he would know enough to work out she was responsible. He would tell the police, MI5... She would never be able to work safely in this country again.
Right now, she was staring at the biggest loose end of them all.
She had the Sig Sauer tucked away in a pocket sewn inside her sleeping bag. It would be the simplest thing to tidy up this loose end now.
It was what she’d been trained to do. What Connor and anyone else in Section Eight would expect her to do.
She couldn’t hold his look.
“How much of it was true?” he asked. “Was any of it?”
The things they’d shared. The things they’d said.
Cassie met his look again.
“The bits that mattered,” she said, surprised at how small her voice sounded. “They were true.”
Now it was Matthew who looked away – down at the ground, and then beyond her, out to the gap in the hills where loch became sea.
Then he looked at her again.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand. Whatever you are... whatever you’re up to... how you can do that.”
“I don’t let people close,” she said. “I never have. Until you. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want to. But I fell. I fell for you hook, line and sinker. And then things got... complicated.”
He took a few steps closer, until he loomed over her.
“It was all lies,” he said.
She shook her head. “It was the worst kind of lies,” she said, struggling to explain. “Because so much of it was true. I’d never felt that before.” She paused, then went on. “I’ve never been in love before.”
He dropped to his knees before her. So close, she could see the tension etched into his features. It hurt so much not only to see him like this, but to know she was responsible.
“You said there was danger,” he said. “You said I should get away.”
She nodded. Swallowed.
“But how could I run?” he went on. “When I knew you were still here?”
“Because I’m the danger, Matthew. Me. It’s what I do.”
She saw the understanding in his eyes, and knew it wasn’t a revelation but a confirmation of suspicions he already had.
And then he leaned forward, looped a hand around to cradle the back of her head, to draw her closer, and pressed his mouth against hers.
10. Reunion
I saw her lying on her side on the rocks by the sea. A sleeping bag was bunched up beside her, as if she’d slept out in the open.
She heard me as I approached and when she looked I froze, as if paralyzed.
She twisted, sat, drew her legs up in front of her.
“Matthew,” she said hesitantly.
“Cassie. Or whoever you are.” I realized I really didn’t know who she was.
The first exchange of words was awkward, cagey. My head was all over the place and I didn’t even try to think this through. Didn’t try to understand the rush of emotions I felt. So many contradictions!
I kissed her.
We said stuff, yes, but the kiss was what mattered. The communication that rose above all others.
I could no longer imagine a life that didn’t feature Cassie, whatever the complications.
When we broke for breath she was crying, sobbing violently, and I held her to me, stroked her hair. How could someone be so chillingly terrifying and simultaneously so vulnerable, all at once?
I held her until the sobbing subsided, and then I kissed her again. My hands cradled her face, my lips tender on hers. It was all that mattered, just then.
Now her hands were on my head, her fingers buried deep in my hair, so tight she was pulling painfully at the roots, but I didn’t care. That kiss – so tender at first – started to become something else.
She eased back, until she lay on that flat rock, still kissing me, her hands in my hair guiding me down with her until I lay on top, pressing down against her.
For a moment I could forget. Could lose myself in the sensation of her body beneath me, the muscle memory of how we fit together, how she would roll her pelvis and grind herself against me.
Her hands moved down, found my waistband, my buttons.
Was this another ruse? A salve to distract me?
I didn’t care.
Suddenly, nothing else mattered in the world, just this moment, this overpowering need.
I pulled at her clothing, pushing her top up to expose bare skin, finding the button of her jeans, the zipper, tugging them down across hips, thighs, pulling them clear.
She pushed a hand inside my clothing, and I gasped at the sudden intensity of her grip on me.
Her hands guided me as we shifted position, her legs spread wide. Pressed me against wetness, softness, her panties pulled aside.
I pushed inside her. Kept pushing until I could push no farther and I ground against that wet, soft heat.
All the time, we held each other’s look, my face inches from hers. I saw the sag of her jaw as I entered her, heard her gasp as I pushed deep. Saw the way she turned her head a fraction to the side, grinding the back of her skull against the rock, as I held myself deep, pressing myself hard against her.
She pushed her face up, toward me, found my mouth again, her fingers sliding into my hair once more. Her kiss was urgent, hungry for me, for us.
We started to move together, finding a familiar rhythm, our bodies naturally responding to each other’s every move and response as if we had never been apart.
I buried my face in the hollow between jaw and neck, breathing in deep the scent of her hair.
Her hands on my head pressed, guided, steering me lower, so that I kissed her neck, the narrow strip of shoulder exposed where her top stretched to one side.
Lower, dragging across rucked up clothing. Finding a breast, where her top was pushed up. Lips closing around the nipple, making her spine arch, her whole body pushing up against me.
Her fingers were still tangled deep in my hair, clutching and caressing – such an intense sensation.
I could sense she was close, right up at the edge of climax.
At any other time I might have paused, held myself deep, waited for that peak to subside, before starting again. Teasing her with that closeness, taking her to the brink and then making her wait.
But now... Now was no time for finesse, no time for tease and delayed release.
Now was all about the moment, the urgency, the absolute, undeniable need we both felt.
I pressed deep, my pubic bone hard against her clit as I sucked that nipple in, started to flick the tip of my tongue across it, knowing exactly what response that would provoke in her.
She cried out, pulling my face hard against her as her whole body bucked against me. As she slumped back a moment later, I could feel the throbbing deep inside her, muscles clenching and squeezing as her orgasm kept going.
I drew back, almost all the way out of her, then thrust hard and deep and this time it was my turn, even as her climax drew itself out... That surging deep in the pit of my belly, the rushing sensation.
I dragged my head clear, tipped it back, gasped – an almost animal grunt – as climax took me.
I thrust again, as I started to soften inside her, reluctant to let this moment go, and perhaps now fearful of what might follow.
She clung to me. Held me deep. Wrapped her legs around my waist as if she, too, was fearful of losing this moment.
Might this be the last time we were together like this? The world could easily tear us apart in the blink of an eye. I understood that now. All we could do was live for the moment.
I kissed her. Softly. Tenderly. Little more than a lingering pressing of lips.
Eventually, we disentangled ourselves and came to sit side by side, knees drawn up, facing out toward the mouth of the sea loch.
“How did you find me? I thought I’d been careful.”
I sensed an element of professional failure in her tone – that a bumbling amateur like me should find her so easily.
“I listened to the things you said when we were together,” I told her. “I cared.”
She watched me, waiting for more explanation. There were tears in her eyes again. Why did it hurt her so much that I cared?
“Your message said I should get away from here, which implied you weren’t far away. I remembered you looking at this place one time when we passed, knowing more about it than anyone would in passing – as if you’d already checked it out.”
She nodded, perhaps satisfied that they were clues only I would have been able to pick up on.
The tears in her eyes spilled over now, and again I felt out of my depth. What had triggered this? What was she thinking?
“You should go now,” she said, in a voice so small I could barely hear her words. “Head south. London. Forget about me.”
I was shaking my head long before she finished. “How could I do that?” I asked her.
“You don’t understand. Just believe me, and go. You’ll be safer away from here. Away from me.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She laughed, and then when she clearly saw my puzzled look, she explained. “I’m Cassandra, remember? The one in the Greek legend fated to always tell the truth and have no one believe her.”
“I never did like Sunday names.”
“Then believe me now. Go.”
We sat in silence for a time.
“You should stay clear of me,” she said eventually, still persisting. “I’m trouble. And a serious risk to life and limb.”
“I don’t believe that, either. And I’m going nowhere.”
“You don’t even know me.”
I twisted toward her, and took one of her hands in both of mine.
“I know,” I said. “But I’d like to.”
She looked away, her cheeks still glistening.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s start with why are you here? Why did you want to be at Auldbrigg Haw?”
She said nothing.
“What were you doing there?”
More silence, then she glanced at me. “You wouldn’t want to know,” she said.
“Try me.”
She stood, an abrupt movement that made me jump.
She stepped over the rocks, went down to the water’s edge, and stood staring out to sea – anywhere but at me.
I went to join her. When I put my hands on her arms to turn her she kept her face averted, like a sullen child.
“Try me,” I said again.
When she met my look I’d never seen such an anguished, lost expression on someone’s face.
“I’ve been ordered to kill your oldest, dearest friend.”
The words made no sense.
Cassie was a sweet, sensitive young woman. A young professional who got on well with everyone and found peace in quiet moments on her own with her needlework.
She was the woman who I still – in some convoluted, entangled manner I didn’t quite understand – loved.
“You...?”
She nodded, biting her lower lip in that way she had when she was nervous.
“Napier?”
Another nod.
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t need to know. It’s what I do.”
I turned away. It was as if all the jigsaw pieces in my head had been shaken up, only now they didn’t even belong to the same puzzle any more.
She’d had a gun in her bag. A fake ID. Burner phones. It all made sense.
And yet it didn’t.
Not at all.
“You’re... an assassin?”
“A closer. I close things down, tidy everything up.”
She pronounced the word with a z-like ‘s’: someone who closes. But being particular about the terminology really didn’t help me just then.
She was a paid killer.
“And you don’t even know why? Don’t you care?”
“I work for the security service. I take orders. I shouldn’t be telling you this.”
“MI5? MI6? Why would they want my old friend dead?”
“Because he’s a significant threat to national security.”
“How? In what way?”
She wouldn’t meet my look, and I couldn’t work out if that was because she didn’t know, or because she knew and also knew I wouldn’t like the answer.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said.
“You just follow orders.”
I walked away a short distance across the rocks, then stopped and turned back to face her.
“And me? What were your orders regarding me?”
“I told you,” she said. “I close things down. I tidy up the loose ends. It’s what I do. Until now.”
And then I started to understand at least some of her anguish. I was one of the loose ends she was supposed to tidy up.
It’s what she did... until now.
This time she had not followed orders, had been unable to, perhaps.
