Rogue Read online

  She loved those trainers.

  But now she decided to stick around a bit longer. “How do you know me?”

  “The café. The beach.”

  “That sounds like you’ve been stalking me.” Her tone was laced with ice.

  “No, no, I wanted to ask you out. You know, for a drink or something.”

  He looked pathetically sincere, but Carrie had known some fantastic actors in her past. Academy Award material. And each time it had been a man trying to get close enough to kill her.

  “Wallet.”

  He straightened and blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. It’s either that or I call the cops.” It was a bluff. If this man was an assassin, he’d be confronting her without ID. A quick glance revealed the mothers were already losing interest.

  “Here, then.” She took the brown leather wallet and flicked it open. His photo stared back at her along with a local address and other information. It all seemed genuine.

  “All right, well, next time pick a different approach, Jacob Anderson. Don’t follow me again.”

  She flung the wallet back to him and turned away, dealing with a turbulent mix of feelings. The fact that she’d attacked instantly, without thought, proved she hadn’t left that insane world as far behind as she’d hoped. And yet it had been the right thing to do. Until now, she’d assumed her life had become more balanced, but all she’d done was disingenuously tip the scales to where she wanted them. She had an old life, old connections. A man called Miller had threatened to kill her, as had the Hellfire Club. If they found her, they would end her life without mercy.

  All I want is to be left alone.

  Should I leave Cocoa Beach now?

  She headed home. That was a question for sitting in the dark, alone, in the dead of night, which how she got her best thinking done.

  It was a mistake to relax here. To think I’d be able to ease into a new life.

  No matter how hard she’d fought to make it, her past wouldn’t lie dormant. Undiminished, it stayed inextricably linked to her present and her future.

  CHAPTER THREE

  At home, Carrie double-checked her security protocols. The door was reinforced with a high-end deadbolt and a good old-fashioned metal bar. Also, chocks under the bottom lip would give precious extra seconds in the event of forced entry. The single window was barred and bolted, the glass one-way only. In addition, she had an inexpensive motion sensor and CCTV set up, which she could check with her laptop and through an app on her cellphone.

  All was well.

  Nevertheless, she physically checked everything to put her mind at ease. Once she’d done that, she took another recce out the window. It looked over a busy street, where tourists sauntered, where cars parked by meters, and where locals stopped each other to pass the time of day. She knew most of the routines by now. She even had a monocular telescope that fit over one eye, perfect for studying faces, or conducting a full sweep of the swathe of beach she could see in the distance.

  All clear.

  Carrie took a quick shower, slipped into fresh jeans and T-shirt and threw a ready meal into the microwave. She stood at the tiny counter as the machine whirred, and tried to clear her mind. Around her, stood familiarity. A white sink with rusting corners. A tub of old spatulas and spoons that came with the flat; an old toaster, and a brand-new coffee maker – her single addition to the timeworn kitchen. She could cross from the microwave to the sink in one step, and then two more to the kitchen door. The living room held a sagging double sofa made of yellow leather that made her wince every time she witnessed the unsightly onslaught. The TV was basic, small and chipped along the top edge as though, in the past a previous tenant had thrown something at the screen and missed. There was also a low coffee table. Beyond the living room, the bedroom was her sanctum, where she placed fresh plants and flowers, used a new mattress and thick cotton sheets, and kept everything she cared about.

  The shards of her past life were like the broken pieces of a mirror. Touch one, embrace one, recall one, and it would cut her – often deeply, but she couldn’t rid herself of them. Not the album of photos in which she posed happily with her parents until the age of ten, nor the thin swatch of pictures where she stood with her foster parents, safe and loved but unbearably miserable. Unable to reciprocate the unconditional love and care they showered upon her.

  I broke their hearts again and again. I couldn’t help it.

  To keep myself sane. To cope.

  No. It was to punish them for not being my real parents. Everything fell apart when they died, and I haven’t felt whole since.

  Struggling to combat old feelings of inadequacy were a daily struggle for Carrie. She fought, and she won, remembering how lost and incapable she’d felt when her parents had been shot in front of her. And, in particular, when nobody came to help. When every bone in her body had shrieked at her to do something, to help, to stop the killer, to staunch the pouring blood . . .

  But she’d been unable to move, frozen to the spot.

  Later, she used those memories to make her strong.

  But it was a constant battle. Old horrors like that never died.

  She flicked through barely recognisable snaps of her army days, clad in a dirty uniform in the middle of a demanding exercise; a couple more of her with some of the men in her life who had come and gone. There were snaps she wished she had of her work as an MI6 agent; the good times when they’d saved lives, rescued families in terrible danger, beaten down men and women whose only goals were to bring horror and tragedy to the world.

  After quitting MI6 she’d repressed the bad memories of all the jobs she’d unwittingly carried out for the Hellfire Club. It made her feel unclean, unworthy, after she’d started suspecting them, when she guessed the Three Old Men were using MI6 to further secret agendas. It made her feel violated. All her good intentions and actions besmirched. Better to compartmentalize the memories, to shut away everything that had happened. Now they were malevolent ghosts trapped behind a brand-new charm, her new personality, struggling to get out.

  Clearly, suppressing those memories had been the wrong move, but she’d survived two years on her own and had had no reason to believe she couldn’t last many more. The old men of the Hellfire Club were using MI6 assets to further their own agendas. She had helped them, albeit without realising it at the time. That much was clearer now than it had ever been. She had left without their blessing, and knowing that they were engaged in criminal undertakings.

  She hadn’t seen anyone else stand up to them. And as such, their machinations had become even more vile and widespread, reaching into the private sanctums of the world’s richest governments.

  She remembered all the people who’d died to further the old men’s ambitions. Not many by her hands, not in comparison to others, but even one was more than enough.

  It was the last mission that had confirmed her suspicions about the existence of the Old Men. Her team had been engaged in a mission in Germany, with the local government’s blessing, and had taken out a vicious smuggler, who trafficked everything from ornaments to human beings. Several British Citizens, including children, had been included in his latest cargo, so MI6 had sent in a team to save them and end his operation. They were entirely successful. She even stuck around to talk to those they rescued, to accept their thanks and oversee their safe journey back to England. There were pats on the back, even laughter from the kids, and then an hour of downtime.

  She was called Rogue back then. Rogue had wondered why they hadn’t been exfiltrated immediately. She’d noticed a couple of anomalies during recent missions – nothing glaring or terrible. Just a few things that didn’t fit. A week earlier, in Africa, a group of villagers she’d visited during a previous assignment had disappeared. Their houses were still present, as were their belongings. But the people were missing. She questioned this, but received only vagaries about relocation in reply. It was even more odd that this village sat close to a diamond mine.
A week before that she overheard a transmission between their team leader and HQ.

  A question had been asked on the transmission: ‘Is this Hellfire or MI6?’ The words had jarred her. There had been rumours previously among the ranks of a covert organisation working inside MI6 – something she’d dismissed as outlandish and absurd. This question brought it all back. Now, she was on her guard. They had done good here. Achieved something worthwhile. A short time later, however, orders came down that another op had been greenlit in the area. Rogue was instantly suspicious.

  The team leader said that the new order had come from “The Old Men”. Rogue had heard this name before, during the other suspicious ops. The Old Men’s orders were that they could reveal their movements to no one and were supposed to look like they were leaving the country.

  Who were these Old Men? And why were these ops feeling questionable? They made her doubt the good she had done, doubt the people and the country she worked for. She didn’t want to be part of anything illicit and worried for the innocents involved. But still, her fellow soldiers were game and exhibited no uncertainties. It was then that Rogue had another thought – what if rescuing the kids who were about to be trafficked had been merely a reason for MI6 to send operatives into the country? Something these Old Men had manipulated for their own ends? Her morality hit hard. She couldn’t keep doing this.

  The new mission went down fast. An English skinhead gang who worked for the Aryan brotherhood was here in Germany, looking to set up new trafficking routes and fresh lines of funding. The mission was sanctioned supposedly because her team was close by and battle ready. The skinheads were known in Britain and Europe as lethal criminals, so the timing appeared fortuitous.

  Much too fortuitous, Rogue suspected.

  They were classed as highly dangerous Tier One hits, which meant the team were to take them out with prejudice. No mercy. Rogue recalled every little detail of the operation.

  “Eyes on the prize,” she had said, having climbed atop the cab of an old JCB that sat in the corner of a demolition company’s yard.

  “Good line of sight,” others had reported back.

  “Ready to engage.”

  She waited for the go. Their targets were standing close together in the centre of the untidy yard, surrounded by rusting machinery, coils of linked chains and a jumbled mountain of hooks and buckets and other attachments that helped knock buildings down. She counted five locals, two important looking individuals wearing leather jackets and their bodyguards – and four visitors – the Londoners. Two were rough-looking gang members. She could tell by their tattoos. But the other two were different.

  She focused in on them using her high-powered gun sight. One was a tall man wearing an ankle length black coat, the other was a young man clad in a black windbreaker and looking uneasy. She couldn’t see the tall man’s face. The top of the JCB’s cab wasn’t the easiest place to settle but Rogue had experienced worse in the last few years. An open sewer in Afghanistan came to mind, along with the rat-infested heap of garbage from where she had taken out a pair of human traffickers. The JCB was heaven compared to that.

  The five locals faced the four visitors and began a debate. Their discussion was animated, sometimes loud. The locals did most of the talking. The two London gang members made a show of walking away, but the tall man stayed, almost as if he wanted to switch sides. Rogue remarked on it over the comms, but her words changed nothing. The team leader counted down the minutes and took orders from a remote HQ.

  This was why Rogue preferred to work alone. Something was off with the scenario playing out below, but it seemed only she could see it. Maybe they could use it to future advantage? Maybe they could help someone in dire need? Maybe the tall man was being coerced?

  The young man stayed close to him, too. Rogue was trained to read body language, and guessed this spoke of a family relationship. She was about to comment again when the attack order came through.

  High-powered rifles reported loudly in the night. Two of the five locals went down, dead. A third stumbled and clutched his shoulder, trying to draw a gun before another bullet hit him square in the chest. Rogue placed a bullet between the shoulder blades of another gang member as they started to split and run. Then she was moving, jumping to the ground and rolling. Tall man and young man were loping along obliviously to her left, staying together. It was clear they were untrained and unhappy to be here. Quickly she keyed her comms system into life.

  “Believe civilians are to the left. We taking them alive?”

  The answer shocked her. “Negative. No loose ends.”

  What the hell did that mean?

  “No loose ends? They’re fucking civilians.”

  It was insubordination, but Rogue’s anger, frustration and disbelief had built to boiling point. The team leader shut her down, remotely disabling her comms. She was left with two choices. Continue with the op or risk the rest of her team turning on her.

  She ran into the fray. Confronted the last gang member. Leapt aside to evade a knife thrust and then caught his wrist as his handgun turned on her. She forced it up toward the sky, looked left to where the tall man and young man were practically cowering.

  “Run,” she hissed. “I can’t help you.”

  They hesitated a few more seconds. The handgun she was grappling for went off. The sound of the gunshot galvanised them into action. They ducked behind a pile of wooden pallets and then ran after the two remaining locals who were angling for a portacabin. Rogue shook her head in exasperation even as her opponent booted her shins.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Swiftly, she broke his wrist, caught the gun on the way down and aimed it at his own shin, firing twice. When he hit the floor, she put a bullet in the back of his head. Gang members – she could kill.

  Her team were running after the civilians and locals, cutting the distance in half very quickly. One of the locals turned and opened fire, sending the team into cover. Stark lighting lit the area badly, just a few old, battered floodlights with most of their lamps burned out. The yard was littered with obstacles.

  They converged on the portacabin. Rogue didn’t need her comms to know it was going to be a full strike. The team took positions and made ready.

  Shots came from the far window of the portacabin, the last remaining local trying to ward them off.

  She saw her team start moving, and dashed ahead, wanting to be in front of them. Anything to give the civilians a chance. She crossed the ground fast, staying low, gun concentrated on the windows. There was movement, a dark figure against the pane, but she refrained from firing. She struck the door hard, sending it slamming back against its hinges, and rolled inside.

  There were three shapes, one of which would be the armed local. A shape turned aggressively toward her. Rogue didn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.

  But it wasn’t the local she killed. It was the young man wearing the windbreaker. In that split second, he’d moved quickly to protect the tall man. The local was busy on his knees in the corner, pulling sticks of C4 wrapped around a detonator out of a safe. Rogue saw the way the young man fell, knew he was instantly dead. She saw the look of horror that flashed across the tall man’s face and thought . . .

  That’s his father . . .

  In trying to protect them she had put herself in the worst position imaginable.

  She raised a hand toward the father, a man she later discovered was called Miller, not sure what she was trying to do. He glared, distraught, face cracking even as she watched. He set his eyes on her and screamed, “I will kill you. I will get you for this. You remember! I will kill you for this.”

  At that moment the local with the C4 flung the entire duct-tape-wrapped package in her direction.

  “Stay!” he yelled at her. “Stay, or I blow us all to hell!”

  He brandished a cell phone in one hand, still holding the gun in the other.

  Rogue froze, waving a hand at the open door to her left to warn the rest of
her team. She could hear the team leader on the comms, the cynical side of her wondering if he was asking whether he should let her explode or not. The local exited through a back door and, after a few moments, the tall man followed. Rogue backed slowly out of the portacabin.

  “C4,” she told the nearest man. “Move away now.”

  It was only fifteen seconds after she exited the cabin that it exploded, a sheet of fire detonating in all directions and shooting up into the night. The sound of the explosion rolled across her, dominating her senses. Rogue was already on her knees and felt a piece of shrapnel strike her spine. It knocked her flat on her face. A wave of heat rushed over her and then came the sound of debris falling and the hope that something serious didn’t land on her.

  She took a whole minute to look up.

  Her team were down. Most were okay, just cut and bruised, but a man she didn’t know had lost an arm. Her own spine was bruised for days, making her walk with a limp. And when she looked back at the portacabin she saw a red-hot burning mass of flame. The local and the tall man had escaped.

  But inside all that, she saw with her mind’s eye, the young man she’d shot dead. The tall man’s son. She saw him burning.

  It modified her thinking and, days later, it made her run. It was almost the final straw. The horror that finally decided her was when she returned from the Miller mission to the staging area to find the kids all gone.

  “What happened?” she asked the team leader. “Where did they go?”

  Not an ounce of emotion crossed his face. “Already shipped out.”

  She fixed him with a look of pure anger. “No way. No fucking way. You tell me what’s going on right now.”

  Her hand tightened on her gun, knuckles white. The team leader saw it and raised his weapon. “Stand down, Rogue,” he’d said. “And learn your place in the chain of command. If I say they’re shipped out – they’re shipped out. If I say they’re in Disneyland – they’re in Disneyland. Got it?”