Page 97 of Close Protection

The basement.

The faceless woman.

‘Malcolm.’

Her eyes narrow.

‘His name was Malcolm. Wasn’t it? I saw you that night. You killed Malcolm, didn’t you?’

Her eyes light up. ‘I knew you were there! I couldn’t be sure but I had a feeling a small pair of eyes were on me.’

‘You killed a man, just so you could live?’

‘Yes.’ She looks at me like I just asked her if grass is green. ‘Malcolm was about to ruin everything, not justfor me but for you and your father too. If Malcolm came out with his findings, you and your father would’ve been blacklisted from society. I did you a favour.’

I completely ignore her twisted logic and fire off the next question. ‘How did you even come to know about the formula that you’re now so desperate for?’

‘Malcolm’s journals.’ She shrugs, like the answer is obvious. ‘He kept extensive notes about what he was working on, and because he worked with George the majority of the time, his findings were the most present. He hinted at George making a toxin that was potent, lethal and undetectable but he didn’t explain any more. We tried to look around for any evidence suggesting this but found nothing. And with the whole his-wife-just-died thing, George had a lot of eyes on him so we couldn’t keep digging. We knew he had something but after my death, he left MI6 for good and kept to himself, so we had no reason to intervene.’

‘But why now? It’s been nine years?’

She lets out a sigh. ‘Love.’

‘What?’

‘You wanted to smell like me.’ She smiles a little, and her face fills with the warmth that I remember. ‘You wanted to be close to me so much that you used up all of my perfume. So a few months ago your father startedworking on recreating that perfume for you, for your birthday. The reason it couldn’t be replicated was that your father had mixed his basic antidote starter mix to my perfume to give it more projection, which actually ended up altering the smell. So if he was going to recreate the perfume, he was going to need to remake the antidote starter.’ She laughs to herself, glancing over to Daddy in the corner.

‘Love is the most potent emotion, Daphne. He knew it was stupid to get the very specific ingredients to make the antidote starter, but he did it anyway. For you. I mean, that man has some serious flaws and he doesn’t show his love very well, but when it comes to you and putting a smile on your face, there’s nothing he wouldn’t do.’

Fine, but none of this explains what happened.

Almost like she can read my mind, she continues.

‘The ingredients that you need for an antidote starter like the one your father created are very hard to come by unless you work somewhere like MI6 or Daveeno, but because your father cut ties it wasn’t readily available to him so he had to find another way. He reached out to one of his old friends in MI6 asking him to get the stuff for him. What he didn’t know is that we’d been monitoring of phones recently and unfortunately the man your father reached out to had one of them. We had a few clues aboutwhat was in your father’s serums because of an old diary Malcolm kept so we knew he was up to something, we just didn’t know what. That’s when we sent in Stefan to go and look around his work office. When he found one of George’s journals, he brought it back. We went through it and found out that your father did indeed make a toxin but Malcolm told him to get rid of all the evidence because he didn’t want Daveeno finding it. George wrote down a riddle to find it in case he ever needed it and that’s what we sent Teddy in with.’

‘Why do you even want the formula?’

‘I like money. And a lot of people will happily pay a handsome fee to get their hands on such a powerful serum.’

That makes sense.

‘How did you even know the formulas were in the necklace?’

‘Torture, darling. Torture.’ She points to Daddy. ‘He explained that when I was sleeping he stuck it in the back of the photos, but that’s about it. We weren’t able to get the location of the necklace out of him. But that’s where you come in. Just like me, he has only one weakness. You.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I laugh, and this laugh is filled with humour. ‘I’m a weakness to you? That’s the most ridiculous statement I’ve ever heard. One of your men attacked mein my own home, then two of your people chased me around a mall, trying to kidnap me, thenTeddyattacked me andshotme, and then another man attacked me in the cottage you claimed was your favorite place on earth. Don’t patronize me and say I’m your weakness, because the evidence shows that’s just not true.’

She looks embarrassed.

‘Well, I never said my methods were sound.’

‘Your methods didn’t even work!’ My voice rises in annoyance. ‘Why did you bring me here? To use me to threaten Daddy?’

She nods.

‘So what’s your plan? Threaten Daddy, get the formula, then what? Set us free? Or are you going to kill everyone? The staff that you’ve locked away as hostages included? Staff that, mind you, you used to know. You loved Josh and Bethany, but now, all because of greed, you have innocent people scared out of their minds. They didn’t do anything wrong, yet they’re the ones paying the price.’

Before my mother has a chance to answer, the lights turn off.

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