Out of Sight Out of Mind (24 page)

Craig’s expression said it all. Madison’s vision misted, then refocused. In the back of her mind a hundred loose ends began to knit together.

‘He loved you. Don’t doubt that.’ Craig’s voice rasped. There were lines of tension around his mouth. Jay’s hand dropped from her shoulder. She couldn’t look at him. Her focus was totally on the other man. She thought about sending in a probe.
Only if it’s necessary.

Craig’s head jerked, as if he’d heard her. She knew he hadn’t, but the awareness of what she was had to have crossed his mind.
One to you
.

Craig cleared his throat. He raised his hand, but let it fall again in an unfinished gesture. ‘At the start, you were an assignment. Get close and observe. Then Neil fell for you.’

‘But why?’ Madison put her hand to her head. Apprehension squirmed in her stomach. ‘Why were you interested in
me
?’

‘Come on, Maddie, you’re not that naive.’ Craig moved impatiently. ‘The unit I’m attached to—’ He jerked his head at Jay. ‘Ask him. Officially we don’t exist, in practice we keep track of those with unusual … gifts. Why do you think you were headhunted from that pharmaceutical job? It was to put you somewhere where we knew you’d be safe. Neil was part of that.’

Madison processed that, heart floundering. Everything she thought she’d achieved in her life, everything she’d prided herself on – her independence, her professional competence, her ability to take care of herself. Craig had just handed her a plate full of ashes. People she didn’t know existed had been manipulating reality to keep her cocooned – out of harm’s way – and she’d never even suspected it. Even the man she’d agreed to marry.

‘I was just a job.’ Her voice was barely a whisper. ‘Neil … in the end he couldn’t face the wedding.’ Ice crawled over her chest. ‘He jumped off that bridge because he couldn’t bring himself to marry me.’

‘No!’ Craig came up, almost out of his seat. Madison saw the indecision in his eyes. Confusion swarmed through her. What wasn’t he telling her? She was poised to leap into him, to get the real truth, when she saw him make up his mind. Instinctively she braced her shoulders.

‘Neil didn’t jump off that bridge, Maddie.’ Craig’s voice was rough and urgent. ‘He
loved
you. He wanted to protect you. He would
never
have left you like that. Neil didn’t commit suicide because of you, or the wedding. Neil was murdered.’

Madison rocked back with shock. Automatically she jerked her knees up under her chin, wrapping her arms around them, folding in to protect herself. Jay slid down on to the sofa and gathered her close, holding her against his chest.

‘Are you sure of that?’ he barked out the question.

Craig nodded grimly. ‘The whole thing was carefully staged. Neil wasn’t suffering from depression, or on medication. The way it was put together was clever enough to satisfy the police but there was evidence, if you knew what to look for. Not least the fact that he’d never have done that to you.’

Craig looked straight at Madison. She could see him weighing up how much more he could share with her. She pulled herself up, out of Jay’s protective embrace.

‘You’ve started now. You may as well tell me the rest.’ She curled away from Jay, so that she was sitting upright. He let her go. She trailed her fingertips over his, in acknowledgement, but her attention was all on Craig. ‘Who would want to murder Neil, and
why
?’

‘The Organisation.’ It was Jay who answered. Madison heard the hollow edge of horror in his voice. She put her hand over her mouth.

Craig nodded again. He’d given up any attempt at dissembling. Madison found herself wondering, with a small detached part of her mind, how deep in trouble he was getting by talking to her like this. Or had that been calculated, too? Did he have permission to divulge if necessary? How would she ever know? She’d never seen his face look so bleak.

‘We—’ Craig began, then stopped, clearly unsure how to go on. Madison waited, not offering him any help. In the end he sighed. ‘We think Neil was killed in order to expose you. There were two other women on the original shortlist for Creed’s experiment, one in Finland, the other in Japan. The woman in Japan lost her husband in a hit and run, the other’s partner died of unexpected complications after routine surgery. We didn’t put it together until it was too late. The Organisation was paving the way.’

Jay swore, soft but vehement.

Madison’s eyes were swimming. Emotional overload. She forced her nails into her palm. She didn’t want to let the tears fall. ‘It’s nearly two years since Neil died.’ She turned to Jay. ‘When did you start planning this?’

‘Ten months ago.’

She shut her eyes. ‘That is … horrible … grotesque.’

‘The Organisation’s roots are long, and they dig deep. They have no boundaries.’ Craig’s voice was hard. ‘They’ve been planning this a lot longer than anyone else. They always wanted that experiment.’

Fury came out of nowhere, clean and bright, scouring out the pain. Madison felt the vestiges of her tears dry, burned away in a red glare. She clutched the rage and held tight. ‘Well, they’re not bloody well going to get it!’

After they’d thrashed out a plan, in as much detail as was possible, Madison walked with Craig to the jeep.

‘Maddie.’ He put his hand on her arm. ‘Are you really okay with this? When I found out you were the one the Organisation had chosen—’ His craggy face crumpled. ‘You don’t have to go through with it. I can get you away. The whole purpose of my unit is to stop people like you falling into the wrong hands. Creed and I can cobble something together—’

‘And get yourselves killed in the process?’ She saw the knowledge in his eyes, though he was never going to admit it. Somehow it made her stronger. ‘I’ve said I’ll do it. So I will. There’s something else now – I have to … for Neil. If I don’t … then he died for nothing.’

They stood in silence for a moment. Craig spoke first. ‘Uh – are you and Creed?’ He jerked his head towards the cottage.

Madison nodded. ‘He says he loves me.’

She looked down at her feet. There were traces of sand on her trainers, from her walk on the beach. That seemed like a century ago. In half an hour, in half a second, the whole foundation of a world could change.

‘He kind of reminds me of Neil. You trust him?’

Madison shrugged. Not water she wanted to swim in with Craig.

He slid his hand under her chin, lifting her face up. ‘You don’t have to be guilty about Neil, Maddie. He was where he was because he was doing his job and because he loved you. He was a professional, one of the best, but he must have slipped up. They should never have got to him. He intended to resign, once you were married, and hand the surveillance over to someone else. I guess he let his guard down too soon.’

Another thing that only took a second.

‘But if it hadn’t been for me—’

‘Done is done,’ Craig cut her off. ‘You attract strong men, Maddie. They can take care of themselves, Creed included. He put himself through a lot to get here. He wants to take the Organisation down.’

‘He spent three months on the streets.’ The question had been haunting her. ‘You were monitoring him all that time? Why did it take so long? A week or two would have been enough.’

‘Ah.’ Craig looked away. ‘That was plan A, but then your return from Washington was delayed. He was already out there. Everything was on hold until you came back.’

‘Freak!’ Madison let the outside door slam behind her. The noise reverberated through the cottage. Crockery danced on the old-fashioned dresser.

‘Madison?’ Alarmed, Jay came into the kitchen at a run.

‘I’m a freak. A jinx. Everyone who touches me …’ She raised her hands, warding him off. ‘Three people around me have been
murdered.
You were on the streets for three months
, just to get my attention
. Anything could have happened. Those kids could have kicked your head in. You could have contracted TB, died of pneumonia—’

‘Madison.’ Jay caught her hands and reeled her in. ‘None of that happened. And none of the other stuff is your fault.’

‘Neil
died
because
of me – because I have something
corrupt
inside my brain, something evil. I’ve tried so hard to stay away from hurting people – but everyone who’s ever been close to me has been hurt. If that doesn’t make me a freak,
what does
?’

‘If you’re a freak, I’m one, too.’ He had her close to his chest now, hands on her back, desperate to calm her. She was shaking in his arms, in a way that frightened him. ‘I’m sorry, Madison, I had no idea about Craig and Neil.’

‘Why would you?’ The tension eased abruptly from her limbs. She sagged against him, as if she was suddenly too exhausted to stand. He lifted her off her feet and carried her through to the next room, putting her down on the thick rug in front of the fire. She sat shivering. He took her left hand, rubbing it between his own. The right hand was at her throat.

‘Hearing about Neil like that,’ he said urgently. ‘It had to be a shock. But you are
not
to blame. He was a professional. He was trained. The risks were part of his job. And your parents – how can that have anything to do with you?’

For a second, her eyes were pools of pure anguish. Then he saw the blankness close over them, like a curtain. Her hand was tangled in the chain at her neck. ‘Careful. You’ll break it.’

‘What?’ She looked down. ‘Oh.’ She uncoiled her fingers.

‘You always do that, when you’re upset.’

‘I suppose I do.’ She squinted down at the necklace. ‘It was the last birthday present my parents gave me.’

He could feel her body relaxing into the warmth of the dwindling fire. The panic seemed to have left her, but her face was pinched and exhausted. He stood, pulling her to her feet. ‘I think you should go to bed. Get some rest.’

Madison woke in the dark. Automatically she reached out for Jay. Her hand hit cold sheets. She dragged herself on to one elbow. Jay’s side of the bed was empty. She pushed her hair out of her face and fumbled for the clock. 2.30 a.m.

He was asleep on the sofa in front of the ruin of the fire. The pillow and the blanket, which was tangled around his legs, told their own tale. Madison stood for a while, taking in the lean length of his body, feeling something stir. He’d kicked his shoes into a heap on the rug, but otherwise he was fully dressed. One arm was flung above his head. His shirt had parted from his jeans. A smooth stretch of abdomen was on display, with an arrow of hair delving under the waistband.

She reached down and kissed his cheek. Stubble – and tension in her belly and across her breasts. His eyelids opened reluctantly, then he was up and on his feet in one movement.

‘What is it? What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing.’ She put her hand on his belt. ‘Why are you sleeping down here?’

‘I … I didn’t know whether you’d want—’ He stopped. His eyes went dark as he studied her face.

‘I want.’ She put up her arms and pulled his mouth down to hers. ‘Come to bed.’

They clung together, two shapes in the darkness. No sight, just sensation. Skin against skin, breath, urgency. Madison prowled Jay’s body, mouth avid, gasping as he flipped her on to her back and pinned her wrists. She writhed under him as he drove into her with one single, deep thrust. His mouth was on hers, swallowing speech, swallowing everything.

She shattered in the dark, dragging him down with her.

Jay put his hand against the bathroom wall. The plaster was rough under his fingers. Madison was sleeping. He’d come in here to think. She’d trusted him with her body, with a fervent hunger that had robbed him of breath, for which he was monumentally thankful, but she still hadn’t let him anywhere near her mind.

In twenty-four hours they’d be back in London, and the machinery would be in motion.

He looked across the hall, at the closed door of the bedroom. Would Madison surrender her defences to him, when the time came?

When he got back to the bedroom there was a hint of light seeping around the edge of the curtains. Madison was awake, and sitting up. She pulled back the duvet, welcoming him. He held out his arms, but when she shook her head he settled down with his hands folded behind his neck. She’d found a nightdress to put on. Long and white, with lace at the neck. Demure, but sheer enough that a man wouldn’t give up all hope. He studied her profile. It didn’t look like they were going back to sleep.

‘Something on your mind?’ he asked at last.

‘Curiosity.’ She looked at him, over her shoulder. ‘I was wondering. How did you get to be
the
Jayston Creed?’

‘My past, you mean?’ He laughed, thankfulness flowing through him at the easiness in her voice. ‘You might not believe it, but it was all an accident.’

That had her attention. She turned round, face alight now with interest. ‘Go on then, tell me,’ she ordered.

‘Yes, ma’am.’ Accepting that they were going to talk, rather than make love, he made himself comfortable, punching the pillow. ‘Jayston Creed, the authorised biography. The first bit is boringly, and I
mean
boringly, ordinary. Born 36 years ago, in Nottingham, although we later moved to London, father a GP, mother a teacher. It was always assumed that I’d follow my father in being a doctor.’ He shrugged. ‘I wasn’t really sure about it, but there wasn’t anything else I wanted to do more, so I started in medical school. Mum had died six months before, from cancer. Dad – he just lost it, after she was gone. I don’t know … maybe because he’d felt powerless to help her? He was drinking and he had a fall in the garden. Fractured his skull. A neighbour found him. That was just before Christmas, in my second year. I don’t have any other family. A couple of distant cousins, in Australia, but I’ve never met them. After my second year, there was an exchange programme with a place in the States. It was a chance for a complete break, so I applied. And that’s where it all started. Pause here for ominous music.’

Madison’s brows rose in surprise. ‘Not before? Nothing when you were a child?’

‘No.’ He passed on the interesting avenue her remark opened up. They could explore that later. At the moment this was about satisfying Madison’s curiosity, not his.

He rolled over, smothering a grin when he saw the flick of impatience cross Madison’s face. Better get on, before she decided he needed some encouragement.
Uh-oh, too late.

He caught her hand and squeezed it when she reached out to prod him. She gave him an indignant stare. If he knew what was good for him, he’d get on with the story.

‘Like I said, it was an accident. Literally. I was trying to teach a couple of basketball players the finer points of cricket, the ball went where it shouldn’t and I was knocked out. When I woke up three days later, in hospital, there it all was.’

He shifted position, to prop himself up on his elbow. ‘It was the most terrifying moment of my life. I was twenty-one years old, in hospital, with a killer headache, and I could hear what everyone else was thinking.’ He stopped; the desolate chill of memory rode over his skin, and then was gone. The warmth of Madison’s presence could make anything right.
God, you can’t lose this woman.

‘Thinking?’ She jerked him back to the present. She’d leaned forward to study him. He had to resist the impulse to pull her closer. There was real confusion in her voice.

‘More or less. It wasn’t organised, just coming at me in waves. I was petrified, afraid I was going mad. I could have ended up in a psychiatric unit, but there was this doctor—’ Another chill at a might-have-been. If he’d woken in another hospital—

Jay shook off the memory of horror. It hadn’t happened. ‘He realised what was going on. It turned out he had a little power himself. He was part of this loose arrangement, a kind of informal academy of other like-minded medicos. He pointed me at one of them, the one best able to help me make sense of what I’d become. Once I was discharged from hospital, the academy took over. They taught me to control things, how to use the power and how to scale down the volume and tune out, except when I needed it. You know what it’s like – totally exhausting, if you don’t control it. You only really make sense of stuff when you learn to focus, and once you do – well, you know how much concentration that takes. One-to-one, and close up. It’s a darn sight easier with you, of course, because the patterns are there and we both know what we’re doing. When you’re not actively keeping me out, that is.’ He slanted her a look, getting a small nod in return ‘Yes, well – I had some great teachers. I learned fast. And that was that. I was one of them.’ This time he smiled at the recollection. ‘I have to tell you that they were a pretty eccentric bunch. Some of them were downright geeky. Most of them were conspiracy theorists, anti-establishment, rabidly anti-military – you can imagine. None of them treated me as if I’d landed from Mars, which was the main thing as far as I was concerned. I finished my training in the States. I’d found out the kind of doctor I wanted to be.’

‘And that was the start of
the
Jayston Creed.’

‘Yes. Those people, they were doing some amazing things. A lot of them were working with the diseases of old age, dementia, stroke, a couple of the less geeky ones worked with the cops, doing something with trace energy at crime scenes. I never got a handle on that one. The medical side, it was all about amelioration and palliative work, helping people make the best of what they had left, after trauma – anger management, dealing with the effects of personality change, the sort of thing that goes with a disturbance in the brain. I was working with head-injury patients. I began to think that there could be more, that we might be able to get in there and do something more radical.’

‘I read some of the early papers, the ones where you started to develop the technique,’ Madison said.

‘Then you know that I found that I couldn’t do it alone. There wasn’t enough power, that’s the only way I can put it. So I started working with other adepts. Eddie Jones was one of them. When the mix-up in pictures happened we went along with it. Eddie liked the travelling and the glamour. All I was interested in was the work, plus I am absolutely crap at public speaking.’ He spread his hands. ‘What the hell – it worked. Alec Calver was my main assistant. He is
seriously
good, but even with him, there was something missing.’

‘That’s when you decided you needed a female collaborator?’

Jay nodded. ‘You were one of the ones that I considered. I’d heard a little about you. But when I met Gina, I filed the rest of the list. It took us a couple of years to get the co-operative technique right between us. We were having some success, but it was much too soon to put it into action. Then Dan’s car ran into a tree …’ He covered his eyes. ‘The rest you know.’

Madison turned towards him, drawing down his hand, and planting a kiss on the palm. He smiled.

‘Your turn,’ he suggested softly, watching her face.

‘The life and times of Madison Albi?’ Madison closed her eyes. Could she do this? Trust? Share? The answer came back to her, strong and clear. If there was ever going to be anything between her and Jay, then she had to.

‘With me – I’ve always had it. When I was a child, I didn’t really understand. I can remember things. When I was about six, being at a birthday party, knowing which gifts the other child really liked and which ones she absolutely hated, which of my fellow guests was getting overexcited and would be in a tantrum before the end of the day.’ She smiled, ruefully. ‘My parents played it down. Just a funny childhood quirk, like having an imaginary friend. By the time I was a teenager I could always tell what my friends were feeling. Not thinking, but emotions. Everyone said how I
really
understood them. They used to come to me with problems, like I was some sort of agony aunt. I didn’t have a clue about what they should do. Heaven knows what sort of advice I dished out. And then my parents were killed.’

She sat still, remembering the urgent conversation with her father, the frightening things she’d learned.
Another place where your world changed
. She’d made promises that day. Promises she’d kept. It had been her fifteenth birthday. Two weeks later her parents were dead.

Jay put his hand on her back, stroking up and down, comforting. Madison relaxed into his hold. ‘I went to live with my aunt. She worked for a place very similar to the facility I work at, but this was on the outskirts of Bristol. My parents never really wanted to acknowledge what I was. I think they hoped that it might just fade away. Perhaps things would have been different, if they’d lived … My father …’ She shrugged. ‘My aunt was the one who helped me make sense of it all.’
Helped a grief-stricken teen, with a freakish talent.
‘I decided I wanted to be normal, ordinary. I went to university, studied chemistry, and met Neil. We dated, off and on. When I graduated, I got myself a job with a pharmaceutical company. I tried to bury what I was, but it was still there. I wasn’t always good at resisting. I worked on a few projects with my aunt’s colleagues, contributed to a research paper or two. My aunt was like your geeks; she wouldn’t have any truck with the military or anything to do with weapons. With her it was the pure science.’

Madison twisted around to face Jay. ‘When my aunt got cancer, I gave up work to nurse her. When she died, I wanted a fresh start. The offer of the job at the lab came out of the blue, through one of my aunt’s friends.’ She stopped, with a grimace. ‘That obviously wasn’t what I thought it was.’

Secretly she’d been so proud to be asked. It had felt right, using her power to try and do some good – but it had all been part of someone else’s plan. To keep an eye on her. She shook off the melancholy reflection. She had accomplished things in her work.
No one can take that away from you.

‘Neil had kept in touch,’ she went on, slowly. She wasn’t going to think about the reason for that, either. ‘He was living in London, but he came back most weekends. Things were getting serious between us. There was nothing to keep me in Bristol, so I accepted the job and moved to London. I turned my life around.’ She sighed. ‘Now I know it was all engineered: Neil, the job, everything.’

‘It doesn’t change your achievements,’ Jay said gently. ‘And Neil loved you. Craig was quite clear on that.’ He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, letting his fingers rest against her cheek. ‘You’re a very special woman, Madison Albi, and don’t let anyone tell you different.’

She sank back, and rolled into his arms. There was comfort and strength there. She let herself savour it, turning her face into his shoulder. The words of the clairvoyant in the shop in Tenby murmured through her head –
you will be strong for each other.
‘Do you really think we can do this?’

He didn’t pretend to misunderstand her. ‘I don’t know, but I think together we have the best chance. I should never have got you into this, Madison. But now I have, I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather be with.’

They lay together, just holding, for a while.

Jay glanced towards the window. ‘It’s getting light. Our last day.’ The words hung between them. With an effort Madison shook off the whisper of fear. She smiled into his eyes.

‘What do you want to do today?’

‘Well if the sun shines, we could explore a castle. If it doesn’t—’ He looked down at her, speculatively. ‘We could stay here for the rest of the day.’

‘That is a decadent suggestion.’

‘I get very decadent around beautiful women. One beautiful woman,’ he amended hastily, catching the glint in her eye. He pulled her closer.

The touch of his mouth heated her skin. Her lips trembled over a moan. She turned into him, letting go of it all – fear, promises, everything. There was only them, a man, a woman, in the sanctuary of a bed. No talk, only feeling.