Don't... 04 Backlash (52 page)

“
Psychopath.” Martin sniffed and shifted his hands down his
body to highlight the finery. “Born this way, fuckturd. Jack’s
the
made in the
UK
sociopath. Don’t
you know the fucking difference?”

Gray eased to
his feet as the banker’s face curled in anger. “After the Richards
woman was left unconscious, they said you took the codes and sat on
that desk, looking so... so...”

Martin ran a
hand along the man’s jaw, stilling him. “Oh...” He tilted his head.
“I remember you now.”

In the tunnel,
Martin came next to Gray, leaving the banker on the floor. “Not
from the warehouse, I didn’t see him there, after I took the
codes.” Gray caught the half smile in his voice. “Bastards in there
wouldn’t let me play with ‘the big boys.’ So I took away their
scribbling paper and well—” He pointed at the necklace. “—found the
codes a new home.”

Gray looked at
him as the banker got to his feet.

“
After
that night, someone started asking after me and the codes.” Martin
leaned closer to the banker. “They mentioned your piss-poor
attempts at henchmen. They mentioned
you
.” He took off his protective mask and Gray got a wicked
smile.

“See,” said
Martin, “even I had friends back then. Okay it was one of Cutter’s,
but he still counts as a... bud... mate... fuck friend.” Then
Martin was back with the banker and he seemed to search for an
eternity for something. “Sallows. That your name? It was back
then.” He didn’t look impressed. “You weren’t happy when I showed
up at yours, were you, Sally?”

“You fucked
with my daughter.”

Martin glanced
back at Gray. “He said ‘fucked with’, not fucked in general.
Semantics. I was a good lad for once.”

“
You...
my
daughter was pregnant
.”

“
And
I didn’t do fucking anything.”
Martin was back in Sallows’s face. “But you did.
And is it what pissed off old Kes? He find something out about you
that your daughter found out about her father that night? How you
like... family. You were so hard as we sat at your dining table...
talking. Remember?”

Martin’s face
darkened. “Then afterwards... after the false tears over coming
over a picture of her... how you made your little girl cry when I
made you say sorry.”

“
You
fuck, you twisted fucking little shit. You fucking sick cunting
bastard. I’d never... I didn’t—”

Martin leaned
forward. “But I never made you, Sallows. You could have stopped,
could have kept your hand off your cock,” he whispered. “Tell me,
do you carry on that sickness? In your office, maybe? With young
girls barely out of their training bras... boys? Please tell me
your daughter did the right thing that night and got her and her
unborn the fuck away from you?”

“You ruined my
family!”

“
You
came looking for
mine.”

“Enough!” That
came from Gray and Martin glared back, looking far from finished,
but then he eased up to his feet.

“I blackmailed
him that night,” said Martin.

Gray kept his
breathing even. “With what?”

Martin sniffed.
“He takes a few good dic-pics as he tried to fuck a picture of his
daughter. But he had friends, or smelled of friends, the sort that
could...” He frowned. Seriously. “Could cause trouble.”

Martin was back
with Sallows. “He got to keep the pictures. Never the codes. The
deal was that no copy of the codes could be kept. The only source
was the notepad. I took it, rewrote it to fit into a better place,
and burned the original and told him never to look fucking back.
Only you did, didn’t you?”

“But I
remembered,” hissed Sallows. “Numbers were what fed my family, and
I remembered six of the codes, maybe the ones the buyer never saw.
I kept what I could. But it was like playing suicide without
knowing for sure. I walked away with a bomb under my car with just
those six handed over and messing them around. They would have
killed me for giving the wrong ones and screwing their plans up
again. All I had to do was find you... they’d leave me alone so
long as I could prove I was looking for you, and it took so much
fucking time. So much time, and you kept it in a fucking necklace
all this time?”

Martin went in
close again. “And when you started looking, so too did Kes.
Again.”

“Again?”

“You?” Gray
stepped in. “What did you get out of this, Martin?”

A shrug was
given. “Peace for Jack. Quiet...” A grin. “And a few empty units in
the middle of London for... personal use.”

Gray stalled,
then nearly groaned. Units?

The Strachan
deal?

Fuck. Jack had
never explained how he’d obtained those units in such a prime
location. Why he had them.... Would he have even known except for
finding the documentation?

“You had them
signed over to Jack,” he said flatly.

Martin looked
over. “Do you think I’m a fucking moron? I had them signed in mine,
where they looked after the upkeep and business taxes until Jack
took them over.”

Gray went
inches from his face. “Despite Jack going into protective custody
after the codes were taken, the necklace too, in many respects, and
with Mase moving out of the area, they just waited for Jack to
claim the units, then they raped him and Jan in order to get
to
you
, to get
to a bit of extra paper—all to kill a few ex-ops who couldn’t keep
their fucking mouths shut.”

Martin never
shifted his gaze.

“Is that your
trust, Martin? That your compassion? That you protecting Jack?”

“Oh... you love
turning those tables, huh?” But Martin turned away and rested
against the opposite side of the tunnel. “Go on, then. Show me your
care now, Welsh,” he heard mumbled into the darkness. “Look after
Jack.”

Gray looked
down at Sallows. As he did, the man shuffled onto his knees, hands
going into his lap, head down as sobs racked his body.

“Kes took the
photos that Martin took,” he choked out. “It’s why I agreed to look
back and tell him about, Martin. And my associates have seen them
now. I’m dead anyway.”

“You kept
them?” The disgust in Martin’s voice came through. “What sick fuck
would keep images of his daughter stored like that? What father
would—oh.” He went quiet. “The wonders of the Internet. And that’s
the wonders of this century? You show her off, Sallows? You pass
her around to a few net-friends?”

“Kes gave me no
fucking choice but to sort you out, you sick bastard. He—”

“There’s always
a choice,” Gray said quietly and both Sallows and Martin fell
quiet. No amount of money could stop this now, Sallows knew that.
It’s why he was on his knees. He was saving his own skin and
looking for an escape.

Gray was just
looking after those he needed to keep close.

He pulled out
his silencer and pressed it against Sallows’s head. “How did you
find about Elena taking the codes?”

Sallows
frowned. “We didn’t know she’d seen them until her solicitors got
in touch a few months back. I was sent a letter by her solicitors
stating she had them, and that if anything happened to her, that I
was the one her solicitors would come after. MI6 would also get the
same letter I had. But she... she stole them through her
phone.”

“She Blue-jack
your apps, saw the partial codes you’d hidden, and hid them in a
cloud storage device.”

He got a nod.
Elena must have have found out what the codes were, or took a guess
at least, and the solicitor intervention was how his own father had
found out. He would have obtained that letter from Elena’s
solicitor, but questioned just why she had disappeared. Everything
else had come from Gray’s office drawer. “And for clarity, you were
forced to help Kes but you weren’t aware that he was the one that
had already killed two agents on that list? That he was Mossad
intelligence and the funding he gave you most likely came from the
intelligence service?”

Sallows looked
up, startled.

“You never
questioned who it was that you were selling the codes to all those
years back? That Kes is the buyer now?”

“Kes? I... I
just thought he was some well-funded Israeli extremist. He was the
one who told me about the new buyer—he came highly
recommended!”

“Of course he
did.” Gray removed the safety from the silencer. “But you did
provide him with the intel to rape mine. To torture... mine.?”

Tears fell from
Sallows’s eyes. “I just signed his cheques towards the end. He was
the one who got in touch with Elena. Maybe sickness attracts
sickness, but Kes saw Elena’s illness, her thoughts over her son,
and he helped them fester. She gave him all the finer details
regarding Martin and their psychological faults and flaws.”

Martin snorted.
“Family.”

“But like with
any illness, there’s good days and bad days,” said Gray. “On a good
day, Elena’s head must have cleared long enough to see your
threat... Kes’s....” Gray nodded, the finer details now all in
place. “Scared?” he said to Sallows.

There was a
shake of head, although urine stained his trousers. “Sorry.”

“Mostly because
you were caught,” Gray mumbled.

As Gray’s
finger went to the trigger, a body came in close, then a hand
shaped how he held the gun. A rough kiss brushed his cheek from
Martin and....

The trigger was
pulled.

“Now he’s
looked after properly,” Martin whispered in his ear as Sallows hit
the floor and red took on a dark grey in the darkened tunnel.

They made it
back to the manor with nothing spoken. Andrews had been waiting by
the main gates and followed the Merc in now Gray had changed back
from the unmarked car. Yet as they pulled to a stop on the cobbled
courtyard, Gray told Andrews to take Sam into the lounge and wait.
Jan would still be on lockdown with Trace and the others, and he
needed them to stay that way for a little longer.

His gaze found
Martin as he sat there in the Mercedes. Gray had made the culler’s
call to get Sallows removed from the tunnels. Full identity would
be found and Sallows’s family located to make sure they were left
unharmed in all of this mess too. Something in Martin’s quiet told
Gray that he knew all of the names, including Sallows’s first name,
but he kept it with him, not so much as a trophy, but more through
quiet realisation.

Martin had been
bred to take care of Jack when Jack’s world came crashing down,
only he’d brought Jack to his knees trying to do just that.

Gray knew how
he felt; he hated that he knew how Martin felt. Gray went over and
opened the door for him. “Out.”

He did, looking
over at the manor now he breathed fresh air. “Did all right for
himself, didn’t he?” Martin looked at Gray. “Jack.”

Careful of the
bullet graze to Martin’s arm, Gray slipped a handcuff around
Martin’s wrist, then led him into the manor. Andrews had been
advised to keep Sam away from the stairs, and low chatter from the
one-sided conversation came through from the lounge. Steve’s name
was mentioned at one point, and Gray shifted his head in the
direction of the lounge to see Sam pick up the phone and call
Steve. He wore clothes now, a size too big and looking like it had
come from Andrew’s surveillance kit. A nod off Andrews said Sam was
okay, and Gray carried on, leading Martin upstairs.

“He happy with
you?”

The bedroom
door shut behind them, and Gray slipped something out of his
pocket.

“He’s always
been happy here,” Gray said quietly. “I just missed the signals
sometimes.”

“No more than
Jack, I assume.”

Gray gave a
hardhearted smile. “Fuck-ups on both sides, just the bollocks to
say how much I need him now.”

Martin backed
up against the glass wardrobe as Gray pressed in close.

“Everything
planned out, eh?” Martin’s voice nearly broke, body shaking as he
looked down at what Gray held. The sister device to the electronic
tag around Martin’s ankle felt surprisingly light, considering the
amount of sedative it would push into Martin’s system. And Martin
still carried a lot of Jack’s hurt, that feeling of being drugged
even if the details hid behind a fog bank. “I need to see Kes cut
in two for this shit. I’ll fight you every fucking way because of
it.”

Gray nodded.
“Yeah, I know.” Martin jerked as Gray ran his free hand down
Martin’s cheek. “Part of me fucking loves you for it.” He rested
his head against Martin’s, and closed his eyes. “I need Jack,
though, Martin.” He gave such a sad sigh. “The selfish side of me
needs him to hold on to. Please, I’ve missed him enough.”