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Physically she was far more her father than her mother. Physically.
The end of her father’s violent life had been crushing because it a
lso marked the end of the other two lives she cared most about. Her mother’s. And her beloved older brother’s.
It was her brother who had been the hero. At age twelve and having figured out what his father had done, Lionel O’Donnell had gone to the police. At first they had not believed the ramblings of a child. They were swamped with leads, most of them false, and under enormous pressure to catch the worst serial killer any of them could remember.
It was only afterwards that they realized he was right. By then it was too late. Her entire family had perished on a single day. Her enraged father had discovered his son’s betrayal and killed them. He would’ve killed Reggie too if the police hadn’t arrived when they did. She still had nightmares about it. She supposed she would always have nightmares.
Reggie turned to another article and started trembling as soon as she saw the photo and caption underneath. The girl’s hair was done in pigtails. The eyes were vacant. The small mouth was set in a thin, unemotional line. No joy, no sadness, no feelings at all. More than twenty years later Reggie struggled to remember what it felt like to be photographed that day. Where she was, what she’d been thinking.
Her gaze drifted to the caption underneath: Only surviving family member Jane Regina O’Donnell, age seven.
The next weeks, months, even years were a frantic whirl of events. Her mother’s family took her in. They left the country. New lives were set up. Nothing was ever said about the past—not her mother, her brother, and certainly not the monster of a father. And yet Reggie, armed with her mother’s maiden name instead of her father’s, had eventually come back to the city where he’d committed his atrocities. Her identity had been buried deep. She was no longer seven and vacant. She was Reggie Campion, a grown woman on a mission rebuilding a life from the catastrophic ruins of her past.
And yet she now wondered, and not for the first time, whether Professor Miles Mallory knew who she really was. And if that was why he’d approached her. He had never given any indication that he did know her true history, but he was also the sort of man who wouldn’t have let on if he did.
There were other items in the box, yet she decided to look at only two more. One was a photo of her mother, a petite blonde woman whom Reggie remembered as innocent if not overly intelligent or curious, and yet someone who loved her children unconditionally. The second item was a photo of her brother, Lionel, who had gone to the police and ended the monster’s reign in London, though it had cost him his life. Even at age twelve, he was tall, like his father, who had been six-four and well over two hundred pounds. Lionel took after their mother, not in stature, but in looks. The hair was light, the eyes a dim blue, the mouth usually curled into a smile. But not in this picture. This was a photo of her brother lying dead in his coffin. Reggie didn’t know where it had come from, only that she’d discovered it years ago and now found herself unable to part with it. It was sick, macabre, she realized that. But it was also a reminder of her brother’s ultimate sacrifice to save all of them from evil.
She put the items back in the box, locked it up, and slid it back into the wall vault receptacle. Reggie returned to her flat, packed a bag, climbed in her little car, and drove to Harrowsfield.
On the way there she thought of nothing else other than how to get one more chance at Fedir Kuchin. Well, that was not entirely true. Another tall man with dark hair kept uncomfortably intruding on those thoughts too.
Where was Shaw now?
CHAPTER
67
ALMOST as soon as Reggie passed the town of Leavesden and started making her way along the winding roads to the estate, the sun disappeared behind darkening clouds. At least the meteorological conditions matched her mood. She passed the entry gates, parked her car, took a long breath, and walked inside.
She’d phoned ahead with her expected time of arrival and they were waiting for her in the library. The professor, Whit, Liza, and Dominic. As she passed down the hall she saw Niles Jansen, the colleague that Shaw had steamrolled back at the cottage in Provence. She tossed him back his cell phone that Shaw had taken.
“How is it?” she asked, indicating the large bruise on his face.
“Like a bloody tank hit me,” said Jansen.
“Actually, I think it did.”
She drew a calming breath and opened the door to the library. Taking a seat on one side of the long table with all the rest aligned on the other, she painstakingly went through everything she recalled from her time in Gordes and then briefed them on the days spent with Shaw.
“And you learned nothing more about him than that?” asked Mallory, who did not bother to hide his incredulity.
“It’s hard to be a competent interrogator when you’re vomiting your brains out,” she answered. “And he’s not the sort to volunteer much information. He’s obviously an experienced hand. Other than that, it’s all speculation.”
“But his organization is obviously official whilst ours is not,” pointed out Mallory.
“Meaning that we could all be charged with attempted murder for all the good we’ve done,” said Whit. “Hell, Kuchin could sue us for what we did and probably win. Maybe we should all retain solicitors.”
“This isn’t funny, Whit,” snapped Liza. “Our entire operation could be jeopardized.”
“Shaw doesn’t know where we are,” said Reggie. “It wasn’t like I was going to bring him here.”
“See, I told you that,” noted Whit. He looked at Reggie. “And Dom here reminded all of us that you’d earned the right to be trusted.”
Reggie gave Dominic a grateful look before turning back to Mallory. “But that’s not a real solution. With their resources, they may be able to track us down. They certainly know what the three of us look like.”
“I suggest that all of you stay at Harrowsfield until further notice,” said Mallory.
