AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“We’ve spoken to every person that was clocked on to the system that night, and they didn’t see anything or anyone come and go.” Francis looks between us like he’s on his last straw. When he finally settles on me, he asks, “Any luck running the number on any of the databases?”
“Nothing.”
“Did you run it through the foreign office?” Casper asks. “I could swear that it resembles the mission codes we used to get when we were out in Syria.”
“No, I ran it through every fucking database.”
“A number like that could lead to a shit tonne of pointless sources,” Christopher groans, checking the time on his watch as though he has somewhere else to be.
He doesn’t, but he’s also counting the seconds down to when it’ll look all right for him to head home. Arabella had to give him a talking-to earlier about looking like a nutcase. At least since we’ve been here, he’s relaxed a little.
“We’re looking for a needle in a haystack unless we know where to look. Is there someone in the foreign office that we can trust to dig deeper into this?”
“Yeah, sure…of course there is,” Casper rebuffs Christopher’s suggestion. “Let me just pull their contact out of my arse, shall I?”
“Don’t be a prat. I’m trying to find a solution that will give us results. The two of you are at a loss; Leo has exhausted all he can from the journals.”
“Christopher, I don’t think that bringing an outsider in is going to work. It’s taken us years to get to where we are now.” And right now it feels as though we’re as far from the finish line as when we started. Drawing in a deep breath to centre myself, I ask Francis, “Are you sure that Harry didn’t mention anything to you about this?”
“I told you, the meeting we had with him was just to make sure that he was all right,” he replies.
“And he was,” Lucian adds. “When we left, he seemed fine.”
Better than anyone, I know that seeming fine doesn’t actually equate to being fine. Francis knows that too which means that he wouldn’t have left Harry if he thought this outcome was a possibility. Yet, if Laura is right…
“Why did he tell Laura to leave when you got there?” I ask them for the umpteenth time.
It doesn’t matter the answer they give me because there are too many unanswered questions.
“It was a personal call.” Francis looks down at the ground before levelling me with a frustrated scrunch of his brow.
“Then why does she think it was more?”
“I don’t know,” Lucian answers. “But it was a visit between friends. We talked about the situation with him and Sarah, but every time we touched on Lucy, he changed the conversation.”
“We’re missing something.” I look between the two of them.
“I’ve gone through Grace’s journals again,” Leo grits out with frustration. “Even Cassie’s gone through them to make sure that my eyes and brain weren’t blind to it from all the times I’ve already gone through it all. But there’s only that one mention of Petrushka and the link to Number 10.”
“If Harry emailed it to you all, surely he would expect one of you to be able to figure it out.” Fleur looks between us all. “Maybe you’re making harder work of it than he intended it to be.”
“Leo said that the email came in the guise of an accounts communication, right?” Cassie looks between the lot of us like we’re missing something obvious. “Is there a possibility that he had an accountant that he might have left something to? I don’t know something like a will…?”
“Have you looked into the internal files and documents for anything that Grandad might have kept on the down-low? Has there ever been a time that he and Harry worked on something together?”
Francis and Lucian look between each other, shaking their heads. We’re getting to the point where we’re going to start pulling out our hair. At least I will. If we can’t find an end to this, we’re going to spend all of our lives being picked off one by one, until there isn’t a single one of us left or we turn on each other. This is exactly what’s happened to their generation.
“Grandad was the first to be taken out. That night when he showed us those photos of Cassie that the Russians sent, he knew something was up. He must have—it’s why he wanted us to tell her everything.”
“What? So now you think that Grandad has something to do with all this shit?” Christopher scoffs. “You’re not dragging him into the mud just to save Lucy.”
“Don’t be an arrogant prick,” I snap at him. “We always look outside, but so far all the fucking rotten apples have been in our circle.”
“He wasn’t a rotten apple,” he spits, taking a step forward.
Christopher always was our grandfather’s golden boy. He could never be better or do more in his eyes. It’s not until this moment that I resent that, because if it hadn’t been like that, then maybe he wouldn’t be so fucking dismissive of the one possibility we haven’t explored at all.
“I don’t know…” I shrug, stepping to him. “He was the one to constantly preach about the coyotes among the wolves.”
