Killing Eva (22 page)

She glanced over at Jackson.

He seemed to be waiting for something. He was staring hard at the vehicle behind them, as if trying to make out the passengers.

Then he looked up into the sky.

The van once again drew closer. Eva rallied the car and pushed it further up the speed dial. She felt the effect on their car as the back bumper was grazed by the larger vehicle coming at them at full speed.

Still Jackson did nothing.

Was he afraid?

Was he hesitating?

What was he waiting for?

Eva tried to focus hard on the road ahead. But another headache was developing. Her vision was starting to swim, there was a blurring around the edges. The car was shaking now, they were going too fast, and at such speed that Eva could feel every single bump in the road.

Again, the edges of her vision went soft.

She glanced pointedly at Jackson, willing him to meet her gaze so she could communicate with him, perhaps so he would provide an explanation for his slowness. But he seemed to have frozen completely.

Then he was touching his face again – that same odd movement he had gone through back at the house after she had slapped him. Touching various points on his face as though he was trying to make sure the skin was still on.

She looked back at the road, realised she had drifted again, and righted the car.

She glanced in the wing mirror and realised the van was once again readying to shunt. They were going too fast now to cope with the pressure if it took her off guard. This could be it.

She turned to Jackson and screamed
‘Just fire the fucking gun!'

TWENTY NINE

As if kicked
from behind, Jackson suddenly sprang into action and began firing the automatic weapon. Once again, it changed the balance of the car on the road.

Eva used all her strength to keep it on its path. She could feel the vehicle was reaching the edge of its tolerance for the forces pressing in on all sides and a stray rock or a momentary lapse in concentration could send them careering off the road. She stared straight ahead and the steering wheel vibrated under her hands, her foot pressed painfully hard on the accelerator.

She felt the car reaching to the right.

She pulled it back to the centre of the road. Her arms – already weak from the recent ‘surgery' – began to shake ominously.

It didn't help that Jackson was firing his gun, creating an additional destabilising influence, and introducing yet another force pushing the struggling car intermittently to the right. But at least he was trying to warn the other vehicle off now. And it seemed to be working.

The van behind them was no longer trying to shunt into their back bumper but the lights were still shining full into the mirror. It was maintaining speed. Despite the sporadic gunfire from Jackson, the vehicle was clearly not going anywhere.

Eva glanced over at him. He did not seem particularly focused on the task in hand.

In fact, was he even aiming at them? She couldn't hear any impact from the bullets, no metal hitting metal, no smashing glass. Ok, it was a moving target but a very close one, surely some shots should be hitting home?

Despite the rushing wind through Jackson's open window, she thought she might at least be able to hear a couple of hits. She glanced quickly at Jackson.

He had stopped firing the gun.

He looked at her.

His face changed.

Eva stared.

The flicker happened again.

Eva's grip loosened on the steering wheel. The man's features were distorting horribly. His face seemed to be melting, right in front of her eyes.

She blinked and looked harder and then, remembering the road, pulled her eyes back to the front. She stared hard at the road ahead as she heard Jackson put down the large weapon. Nothing wavered and nothing changed in the scene in front of her. Not the road, the inside of the car or her hands on the steering wheel.

Her thoughts were out of control.

Had she really seen that? It had been as if his face moved, shifted shape and changed altogether, as if a mask had been lifted.

Irene had kept her head low as the bullets whizzed past the side of the vehicle. They had to push that car off the road. They had to reach Eva, Irene needed this.

‘Stay as close as you can!' she yelled at the back of the driver's head.

‘He's shooting at us, it's too dangerous,' was the response.

‘That's an order!'

She was fed up with such insubordination in such a pressured situation. She could not help feeling they would have naturally accepted the authority of a man, without query. Life was full of that kind of everyday sexism, dismissed as paranoia or laughed off.

The bullets from the car in front had stopped. All they could hear was the whistling of the wind past the open windows as the van kept pace with the car in front.

She glanced down at the lit screen of the phone in her hand and continued trying to type the message. She knew they had very little time to get to the airfield, to deliver Eva into the hands of those who could give Irene what she wanted. There was no way the car in front would be allowed to escape. She still didn't even know how the two people in the car had managed to leave the château without being caught. She had the sense that this well ordered organisation was in some chaos, that there were forces working at odds within it. Or perhaps this was all intentional. Either way, it was unnerving. If ACORN didn't get what they wanted then neither would Irene. She had betrayed people left, right and centre for this and she could never go back.

She finished typing their coordinates into the lit screen, sent them immediately and turned to face the windscreen.

The bright lights of their van were shining into the car in front and she could clearly see Eva at the wheel. It was obvious she was struggling to keep control of the car. Irene watched as Eva apparently seemed to lose concentration, staring at the man in the seat next to her, before looking back at the road. She saw her glance again as the man continued to fiddle with some sort of weapon – he was sitting sideways on, so Irene could see his profile.

She did not recognise him.

The next time Eva glanced at Jackson, he raised a small hand gun. The muzzle was directed at her. She inhaled a quick, sharp breath and then her eyes wandered to his face, which had begun to morph again. His features seemed to be blurring like a TV picture receiving interference.

‘What are you doing?'
she shouted at him, looking him directly in the eye whilst trying to ignore the shifting shapes of his features, and pretend she hadn't seen anything.

But she could see he knew she had.

When he didn't reply, she tried again to reason with him. ‘Please, I need to drive or we're going to crash. Do you want to die?'

When there was no response, Eva turned her face back towards the road, her heart smashing against the inside of her ribs. She righted the car and continued to drive, with the gun still pointed at the side of her head. She was barely breathing. The road in front seemed to rise up towards the car as she fought to maintain the fast pace at which she was driving, while also attempting to process what was happening .

All at once there was a crack, a shattering of glass and a sticky thud as the windscreen in front of the passenger seat was coated in thick red blood. Eva looked at the figure of Jackson collapsing into the seat next to her, glanced back through the shattered rear window and could have sworn she saw Irene Hunt. Then she lost control of the car.

Paul was watching the scenario play out on a screen, filmed from 10,000 feet above. He'd felt some admiration for Eva's driving under those conditions, handling a car at that speed and under that pressure. And then, suddenly, a shot was fired from the vehicle behind – unexpected. For several seconds, nothing happened before the car lurched to the right and departed the road, careening into a field and turning first onto its hood and then back onto its tyres.

The drone feed showed the other vehicle come to a screeching halt.

Paul checked a figure on his screen and sent another instruction. He had half an eye on the screen and half on the movements of the extensive and colourful ownership portfolio he had inherited from his dead boss. It was literally a goldmine and to those involved it represented decades of intricate work, strategising and risky bargains. To him, it was simply a springboard, a means to an end. There was only one reason he had accepted the offer to become involved in this in the first place and that was access to Leon. He was still waiting for that next opportunity to get to him. Nevertheless what he was doing gave him a thrill. If anyone knew this portfolio existed…

Paul was now feeling relieved to have removed the other man, despite the pressure he had felt during the earlier meeting. Just as Jackson had said he would, he'd found the detail of this all quite fascinating – now that he could see the whole picture. It was an ingenious notion, essentially ‘invading' a country without anyone noticing, establishing control not with physical might but with purchasing power and ownership. The free market undermining itself. And he was enjoying being the ‘general', leading the digital charge. He'd arrived just in time for the best bit.

Looking at the laptop, he stroked its smooth metal. What he imagined this represented was control – ultimate, long term, silent control – and, while he didn't benefit from it personally, he appreciated its ironies and its impeccable construction. Such a thoroughly modern coup.

He knew little about the mechanics but blind eyes must have been turned and backhanders accepted at so many stages to avoid a suspicious mind somewhere connecting the dots. He assumed none of those who had ‘just this once' compromised on their ethics would have realised how much their apparently insignificant action would have contributed to this incredibly powerful whole. Its very existence was unprecedented. And he had access to all this only thanks to Veritas. The system he himself had developed. No, he corrected himself – borrowed. Briefly, he realised he was beginning to believe his own deception. He shook his head. Veritas, he continued – a key based on truth – the only key that could not be faked, forged or recreated. It was the kind of security a project like this required.

Except it had been misused. It had been tested on one subject who had ended up dead as a result and the other… he glanced again at the drone feed… the other was the focus of all this effort. With the inventor of Veritas gone it could not be set up with another test subject. Thanks to Jackson, Eva was the key.

Eva wiped blood from her eye.

She yanked the key from the car's ignition.

Smoke was rising all around, she had to get out.

But what had just happened?

She looked down at the body of the man who had been sitting next to her, now twisted and sprawled backwards over her lap.

She used the tips of her fingers to turn the half blown apart head towards her. The face was not Jackson's. It was not anyone she recognised.

But it had been…

An impulse to escape rose fast and strong but she was trapped by her seatbelt and by the weight of the body pressing down on her. She tried to move, and when she realised she couldn't, she screamed. And screamed.

She beat out at the body with her fists and kicked at the pedals on the floor and didn't even notice when the passenger door was opened. She only stopped when she felt the sharp sting of a slap on her cheek.

Her vision popped into sharp focus. She looked up into Irene's soft grey eyes.

‘Jesus, Eva, get a hold of yourself.'

Eva was breathing heavily, still hyperventilating. ‘Fuck. You,' she said, loudly. She raised her hand to hit back, but stopped.

There was no reaction from Irene.

She undid her seatbelt and kicked the door further open, ignoring the fact Irene had to jump back. Then, with super human effort, she heaved the body from her and pushed it away. Irene's presence was motivation to get free. As the body slumped stiffly over towards the other side of the car Eva looked down at smeared blood on her clothes and grazes all over her face and hands. She used the side of the car to haul herself out of the seat, dropping to her knees before pushing herself up to standing; then she limped around the front of the car, wrenched open the passenger door and began hauling out the body, pulling it out onto the ground, ignoring the sickening crunches as the skull hit the car's bodywork.

When it landed on the floor, she fell on it, ripping the clothes away and righting the head, which was lolling sickeningly to one side.

‘Give me a torch,' she shouted to Irene.

When the other woman didn't respond, she yelled again until, finally, Irene's driver cautiously approached her with an industrial sized light.

Eva held the light over the body in front of her.

‘It's not him,' she mumbled. ‘It's not him.' And then louder. ‘
It's not him!
'

Irene and the driver exchanged glances.

Eva was now frantically scrabbling over the pockets on the body, apparently looking for something. She then progressed to the car itself.

When she found nothing, she returned to the body on the floor. As the frustration welled up inside, the confusion and the disappointment, all she felt was rage. She kicked out at the prone body, an almost unintentional kick which could do no damage. And then she kicked again – harder. And again.

The sickening sound of her foot connecting with the body was all she could hear. But she could not stop.

The gaps between each kick shortened; the strength behind each one was harder.

She was exhaling loudly every time she kicked him, this man who had pretended to be her brother; who she had almost believed.

How could he have looked like him?

What was happening?

Irene watched as Eva kicked out again and again. She was exhaling, grunting, almost screaming and each time she did more damage to the corpse. But apparently she could not stop. With a howl which made Irene's blood run cold, Eva gave in entirely to the rage and the attack became frenzied.

Irene stood at a distance.

There had been no warning or explanation. Although she had been told to expect a personality change as a result of the drugs, this was unlike anything she had seen from Eva before. Irene was almost afraid to go near her.

But they could not stay here.

Irene walked back to the driver. They exchanged a look and she noted he clearly did not want to be tasked with bringing Eva back under control.

Irene was not surprised.

‘Clean up here. I'll deal with her.'