‘And the dead woman matches those fingerprints.’
‘Exactly. She was going under an alias – Kim Walker. British, supposedly. When the local police in Spain brought the murder to the attention of the British authorities, there was no record of this woman in any databases. She had a passport, a driver’s licence, both fakes, but nothing else. No birth records, no employment records, or anything else that matched the identity. The Spanish police took her fingerprints, passed them over to the Met to help the police identify her.’
‘And when Scotland Yard ran those fingerprints in the system it alerted the JIA.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Do the police know that?’
‘No. The profile is heavily restricted. The police search would simply have shown no match. But the Met have assigned one of their detectives to help find out who this woman really was. He’s in Spain already, working with the police there.’
‘You still haven’t explained how you think there’s been a leak.’
‘When the alert came in, we did some checks in the metadata of our systems. There’s a record of her profile being accessed a little over a week ago. It wasn’t highlighted at the time because the access was from a legitimate user account on a terminal at MI5 headquarters. Or so it seemed.’
‘But the user had no idea what you were talking about when you questioned them.’ Ryker made speech marks with his fingers as he emphasised the word that significantly played down the lengths to which the JIA would go to get answers. He wondered what had happened to the poor sod whose ID had been compromised.
‘It’s not an inside job,’ Winter said. ‘At least not by that user. He’s clean. But someone somewhere found a way into the system.’
‘Sounds professional.’
‘Professional, yes. Official? We don't know. It’s possible the hack was the work of another agency but the nature of the death suggests otherwise. Like I said, this was a revenge attack. Personal. Regardless, someone accessed our system to find information on the Red Cobra. And now she’s dead.’
Ryker looked down at the photographs again. At what was left of the poor woman’s face. ‘Except she’s not.’
Winter raised an eyebrow. ‘Not what?’
‘The Red Cobra isn’t dead.’
Winter glanced down at the bloody images then back at Ryker, confusion on his face.
‘I know her,’ Ryker said. ‘I know her better than almost anyone else who’s alive. You had a profile on the Red Cobra? Your profile was wrong.’ Ryker tapped the pictures in front of him. The blood-stained face of a dead woman he’d never seen before. ‘I don’t know who that poor woman is, but I can tell you with certainty that she isn’t the Red Cobra.’
CHAPTER 6
When Winter left, Ryker locked the front door then double-checked the remaining doors and windows. Satisfied everything was secure, he walked over to the closed bedroom door. He let out a deep sigh and turned the handle.
Lisa was lying on the bed, facing away from him. Her hair was still wet but her bronzed skin was now dry and matte, and she was dressed – a pair of shorts and a loose fitting cotton top. Ryker guessed she’d showered following her saltwater swim – an almost-daily routine. He could see from the reflection in the mirror on the far side of the room that she was awake. Ryker moved over and lay down on the bed next to her. His body aligned with her curves, fitting into her naturally as it always did, and he couldn’t help but feel a fleeting moment of arousal before she spoke.
‘You agreed to help him.’ She wasn’t angry, more disappointed. But was it disappointment in him or just in the way that life works out?
‘I have to.’
‘No, you don’t. You could have said no.’
‘And then what?’
‘And then nothing. Winter would go away. He’s not going to have you killed, or give up your new identity, just because you refused to help him.’
‘Probably not,’ Ryker said, though he knew he could never rule out such a thing.
‘Then why did you say yes?’
‘Because this one really is my problem.’
Lisa shuffled, half-turning so that she was facing him.
‘You wanted this, didn’t you?’
Ryker took a couple of seconds too long to reply. His silence gave away his answer. ‘I need to do this. You can change my name, you can give me money, you can send me to any corner of the world to live as a free man. But a small part of who I once was will always remain inside of me. That’s the man you fell in love with.’
‘I know. It’s not that I don’t love him. It’s just that I’m... scared. Scared that if you go out there – even if it’s for the right reasons – you may not come back to me.’
‘I’ll always come back.’
‘Not if you’re in a coffin, you won’t.’
‘That’s not going to happen.’
‘Don’t you think we’ve been through enough troubles?’
He considered her words, which significantly downplayed the deadly situations they’d fought together. Through it all, he’d always felt an unwavering loyalty to her and a desire to keep her from harm – even though at times it seemed like his loyalty was misplaced.
Ryker remained silent and Lisa looked away from him again. In many ways he was surprised that she was being this amenable. There he was, on the brink of destroying the ever-so-frail life they had been building and her protest was mild to say the least. Either she was keeping her anger bottled up or she’d seen this moment coming. Was his going back to the JIA just an inevitable outcome?
‘What’s the job?’ she asked.
‘I can’t say.’
‘If you want me to support you on this maybe you should.’
‘I need to find someone. Someone else who doesn’t want to be found.’
‘How apt.’
‘Indeed.’
‘A woman?’
The question was double-edged but he wasn’t about to wait. ‘Yes.’
‘You know her?’
‘From a long time ago.’
‘Huh.’
Ryker knew what she was thinking but he didn’t try to defend himself. He saw no point. What had happened between him and the Red Cobra was in a different life. ‘You could come with me.’
Lisa smiled. ‘No. This, here, this is my life now. With you. Angela Grainger, FBI agent, is dead. She was killed in a shootout in a car park in Beijing. Remember?’
‘I remember. Carl Logan, English spy, was killed out there too.’
‘The fugitive lovers.’
‘That’s what the papers said. A real life Bonnie and Clyde.’
‘And when are the press ever wrong?’ Lisa smiled again.
‘But you’re not dead,’ Ryker assured. ‘I still see Angela inside you every day. And I like her.’
‘You like her?’ Lisa teased.
‘I love her.’
‘Then come home to her.’
‘I will. I promise.’
CHAPTER 7