Long Time Lost (3 page)

Miller shepherded Kate to the bottom of the cliff path. She’d refused to put on the fleece he’d fetched for her and he was trying hard not to show how much it rankled him.

‘How are you feeling?’ he asked, from behind. ‘It’s OK to freak out. You just shot a man.’

‘Oh, I am freaking out. But not about that. He came to kill me. Just like you said.’

‘What then?’

She stopped and spun to face him. Miller lifted the holdall she’d packed and used it to motion towards the Audi estate he’d parked at the end of the seafront. They needed to keep moving but she wasn’t going anywhere yet.

‘It’s this.’ Kate spread her arms. ‘It’s you.’

‘Me?’

‘I keep thinking I’m making a terrible mistake.’

‘The mistake would have been lying there and getting shot.’

‘I should have called the emergency number I was given. I should have dialled my handler instead of you.’

Miller stared at her a moment, her vest clinging to her skin where it was speckled with blood. The nearest street lamp flickered dimly. There was nobody around.

‘You just killed someone, Kate. Think about that for a moment.’

‘It was self-defence.’

‘Fine, so go ahead and call them. Explain what happened. Here.’ Miller dropped the holdall and freed his backpack from his shoulders, thrusting a hand inside for the prepaid phone Kate had contacted him on. ‘But if you think Lane is done now, you’re wrong. He’ll just send someone else. He’ll find you the same way he found you tonight. Except it’ll be even easier the second time round. Because you’ll be in custody. The police will hold you until they can clear this mess up.’

Kate looked down at the phone and Miller could tell that she was asking herself if she should make the call. And he could understand why, in so many ways, it might seem like the easier, more rational move to make.

‘Listen to me – Lane already knows something went wrong tonight. He’ll have been expecting confirmation of the kill, and without it, he’ll send someone to find out what happened. Maybe he already has a backup in place on the island. Maybe someone is heading here right now. Come with me. Believe in me.’

‘You have to convince me this isn’t the craziest thing I’ll ever do.’

But how could he persuade her when he had doubts himself? Hanson had told him this wasn’t anything he should get involved in. Becca had said the same thing. But Miller had insisted on making the approach anyway. And now? The truth was he didn’t know what to think any more, but the part that bothered him most was whether he could still trust his motives. They’d become muddied ever since he’d first set eyes on Kate. Not because she was beautiful – although she was that and more – but because she was fierce and stubborn and committed. She reminded him so much of Sarah in that way. In a lot of ways. None of which helped.

‘Seriously? Saving your life isn’t enough?’

She didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. She just stared at him, waiting.

Miller glanced away towards the sea. He was going to have to do this. He couldn’t see that he had a choice.

‘Miller’s not my real name. Everyone calls me Miller, nowadays. I prefer it that way. But my real name is Adams. Nick Adams.’

A puff of misted air escaped Kate’s mouth. The name meant something to her. More than something, he was sure.

‘You and I, we have something more than fake identities in common. We share the same enemy. Four years ago, Connor Lane sent a man to kill my wife and daughter. I couldn’t save them.’

‘But you saved me.’

Miller’s throat had closed up. He turned away again and blinked hard. He’d learned many years ago that tears were not a good look on a big man like him. Especially when you were trying to convince someone how strong and dependable you could be.

‘I still have to testify,’ Kate said. ‘That’s non-negotiable.’

‘We’ll talk about it.’

‘No. We find a way or I don’t go with you. Helen wasn’t just a colleague to me. She was a friend. I want her killer to face justice.’

‘Terrific, so you’ll testify. Maybe you’ll get killed while you’re at it, too.’ He shook his head, undone by the earnest way she was searching his face. ‘Look, we’ll try and figure something out. OK?’

He didn’t believe it. Not then. But he had no problem lying. He was prepared to do or say whatever it took to protect Kate. Even if that meant saving her from herself.

And later, when the time came, he’d explain how things really worked. He’d let her know what they could, and couldn’t, hope to achieve. If the past few years had taught him anything, it was that a form of justice inside the law wasn’t always possible. Not where men like Connor Lane were concerned.

Kate stooped to pick up her holdall and Miller followed her to the Audi, popping the boot. There were two suitcases inside and he threw back both lids so she could see the opening he’d carved out of them where the cases touched.

‘For the ferry crossing,’ he explained. ‘The next boat doesn’t leave the island until after 7 a.m
.
They could be searching for you by then. You’ll have a small oxygen canister. Some water. Food, if you like.’

Kate looked down into the boot at the rigged suitcases. Her first taste of life on the run, the way Miller handled things. It wasn’t a lifestyle that was comfortable or pretty. It was rudimentary and crude.

But it worked.

Only Kate didn’t know that yet. Not for sure. He studied her reaction – the way she was sucking on her bottom lip – and he felt he had a pretty reasonable idea of what she must be asking herself.

Would it be a mistake to climb into the boot, or was this just one small component part of a much bigger, much more catastrophic error she was making by trusting him in the first place?

Many hours later, Miller leaned against the railings at the stern of the ferry to Liverpool, watching the humped outline of the island blur and fade from view.

The Audi was parked two decks below with Kate inside the doctored suitcases. She was reliant on him now and Miller felt the burden of his responsibility like a spiked weight in the pit of his stomach.

He gazed at the child’s sketch of the cowboy on a horse he was clutching – the crayon faded, the surface crinkled and distressed, the edges worn and ruffled by the swirling sea breeze – and he thought about a lot of things. He thought of the hired killer lying dead in Kate’s bedroom. He thought of the man’s body being discovered, and of the police officers who would be searching for her soon. He thought of how he’d held the man’s phone in his hand. Of the call he hadn’t answered. Of the men who would come hunting for them both.

Kate hadn’t thanked him for any of it. Perhaps she hadn’t understood how badly it might cost him or how much he was putting on the line. More likely it was because she understood that no favour this big could come without an obligation to match and she was afraid of what she now owed him. If so, she was probably right to be concerned.

The drinking bar at the stern of the ship was loud and busy behind Miller. But out here on deck, he was alone and unwatched.

He folded the drawing away the same way he always did, the paper collapsing like a perfect origami structure into a tight square that fitted securely in his wallet. Then, reaching inside his jacket, he removed the gun Kate had fired and the dismantled remains of the phone she’d contacted him on. He leaned over the railings and he opened his hands and let go, watching the Irish Sea swallow everything down.

Kate woke to the sound of beating wiper blades. She must have fallen asleep some time after they’d joined the M5.

‘Where are we?’

‘Guess.’

It was dusk and a fine grey drizzle was swirling around them. They were driving along a seaside promenade. Kate could see blocky, crassly functional apartment buildings, Victorian guesthouses, crumbling grand hotels and derelict ice-cream kiosks. She could see a low stone wall, drenched mud flats, and the outline of a pier flickering dimly through the murk.

‘Looks like hell.’

‘Close. Weston-super-Mare. Play your cards right and maybe you’ll have time for a donkey ride on the beach.’

Kate groaned. She was too warm under the fleece Miller had insisted she put on and her head was fuzzy. She couldn’t quite shake the sickly, seesaw sensation of the ferry crossing or the tainted air she’d breathed inside the suitcases. Her body felt cramped, contorted, like it sometimes did when she craved a run.

Miller drove away from the entrance to the pier, sweeping past a string of fast-food concessions and amusement arcades, then along a narrow back alley to a gravel parking space behind a terraced house. A sign fitted to the pebble-dashed wall read:
PARADISE APARTMENTS. VACANCIES.

‘Wow.’

‘Problem?’

‘I’m starting to think I’d have been better off getting shot.’

Miller stepped out of the Audi and thrust his arms into the air, stretching his back, his plaid shirt hitching up and exposing a midriff laced with fine, dark hairs. He was unkempt and scruffily dressed, on the wrong side of his forties, but there was no pretending he wasn’t handsome in a rugged sort of way.

Which was a bad thought to be having right now.

Kate remained seated and listened to his feet crunch gravel as he came round from behind the car and lifted her holdall off the back seat before flinging open her door.

‘Paradise awaits.’

She held back a moment, feeling sluggish and leery, then tramped after him into an unlit vestibule smelling of mildew and damp, and on up a cramped staircase to an unfinished door, where he turned a key in the lock and moved to one side, gesturing for her to go in ahead of him.

The holiday apartment reeked of stale cigarette smoke and had a decor straight out of the seventies. It was heavy on the brown striped wallpaper and dense green carpet. There was a lot of teak furniture. A lot of striped rayon upholstery in autumnal shades.

‘Paradise,’ Kate muttered.

‘Problem?’

She turned to Miller.

Who was this man, really? He’d been a stranger to her until two days ago and she still knew very little about him. They’d hardly talked during the five-hour drive they’d taken to get to this place. Kate had so much she needed to ask that she hadn’t known where to begin.

Tears stung her eyes. She felt dazed and close to despair. There were times when she’d experienced similar emotions following a big athletics meet. All the training and the build-up, all the pressure, then the mad thrill of competition and, finally, the inevitable comedown afterwards. But this was more extreme.

She’d made a mistake coming here with him. She must have, she reasoned, because why else would she feel so undone?

Miller tipped his head to one side, the salt-and-pepper stubble on his cheek grazing his shirt collar. His dark hair was long and curled, threaded with silver. His chest and arms were massive, like those of a shot-putter.

‘Not the type of place you’d come to on holiday?’

‘Not in a million years.’

‘What about the town? Have you ever been here before?’

She shook her head.

‘Which is exactly why I chose it.’ He set her holdall down and managed a fleeting smile. ‘I’m just across the hall. Get some rest. Take a shower. Come and knock when you’re ready.’

‘Ready for what?’

‘To begin your new life.’

Kate burst through the door to the apartment across the hall less than three minutes later.

Then stopped.

‘Whoa.’ A young black man reared back from behind a bank of computer monitors. ‘Looky here, people. We have a new all-time record.’

He grinned at Miller, who was pouring himself coffee from a percolator on a tiled kitchen counter, then leaned way back in his desk chair and looked behind him at a plump, attractive woman over by the window.

‘Oh, that’s brilliant, Nick. You might have wanted to mention that she was stunning.’

Kate recognised the woman right away. Not because she knew her. Or at least, not directly. Back when Kate had been a law student with a mild addiction to daytime TV, Becca Jarvis had starred in
Haymarket Close
, a Manchester-based soap on a lesser terrestrial channel. Since Becca had left the show in a storyline that involved her character fleeing her abusive spouse for a new life in Australia, Kate had occasionally caught her voice on radio dramas and adverts, though she’d never seen her face on television again.

Becca was big, brash and sexy; memorable for her ample bosom as much as her raucous laugh. And now she was standing in the same dingy room as Kate. In Weston-super-Mare.

‘You want coffee?’ Miller asked her.

‘I want to know what’s going on.’

‘You’re tired, Kate. I told you to get some sleep.’

‘You’re not sleeping.’

Miller toasted her with his mug. ‘Hence the caffeine.’

‘You never said there’d be anyone else involved. I didn’t agree to this.’

But what had she agreed to, really? She barely knew.

‘Oh, I like her.’ The young man was immaculately groomed with wiry black hair trimmed close to his scalp. He had on a bright pink polo shirt and designer specs with electric blue frames. ‘She’s feisty.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Relax, honey.’ Becca pushed off from the windowsill. She had a sinuous walk, all hips and ass. The bold green dress she was wearing featured a blocky geometric print and a plunging neckline. ‘We’re on your side.’

‘And which side is that?’

‘The good guys, obviously.’ The young man pulled down his spectacles and peered over the frames. ‘We’re too fun and irreverent to be the bad guys. Apart from Miller, maybe. But he already saved your life, so you can give him a free pass.’

Miller was sipping his coffee and taking his time over it. He seemed to be enjoying Kate’s reaction, which just made her madder and more confused.

‘Ten seconds.’ She jabbed a finger at him. ‘And then either you start explaining what’s going on here, or I’m leaving.’

He lowered his mug. ‘Hanson’s my computer whizz.’

‘A-mazing,’ Hanson said. ‘Do you have any idea how old you sound?’

‘Don’t be fooled by his appearance. I know he looks like he should be in a boy band but he can create the perfect new ID and erase all trace of your old one.’

Hanson spread his arms to take in all the computer equipment around him. ‘Miller really needs to work on his intros. Because I am so much more than just that. You’re going to be seriously impressed by what I can do.’

‘And not at all surprised by what he can’t.’ Becca winked at Kate and wiggled her little finger in the air. ‘Wow, are you going to be something to work with.’

‘Becca will handle your physical makeover,’ Miller explained.

‘My what?’

‘Relax, honey. We’re just going to refine a few things.’

‘I don’t need refining.’

‘Amen.’

‘Easy, kiddo.’ Becca clipped the top of Hanson’s head, nodding between Miller and Kate. ‘This one is spoken for.’

Kate shot Becca a warning look. Miller echoed it.

‘Ooh,
OK
. So I guess you guys haven’t picked up on the pretty blatant chemistry you have going on just yet.’

‘Actresses.’ Miller shook his head. ‘You’re going to need to alter the way you talk, the way you interact with people, your physical mannerisms. Becca will teach you how to do all that.’

‘You make it sound like you want to change everything about me.’

‘No, not everything. Just enough to keep you alive.’