The Evolution of Fear (Claymore Straker #2) - Paul E. Hardisty Page 0,18

months ago they had spoken of getting out by sea. Falmouth had been the obvious choice. Damn it. They were here, and they were looking for the Beemer, looking for him.

Clay took a deep breath, punched in the next number and enquired after a registered guest, name Lise Moulinbecq. No such person. Again, the Intercontinental this time. No luck. He was down to less than ten pounds on the card now. Rain pounded like fists on the phone box. Cars swept by. He tried the Hilton. Hiss, click. Wait. Lise Moulinbecq? One minute please, Sir. Money flowing, numbers flickering, a countdown. Connecting you now, Sir. Adrenaline surge. A big one.

The phone system churned through to her room. Nine-thirty there, no way she was still in this late. He let it ring, imagined the device pealing on her bedside table, the bed perhaps still unmade, the cast of her body pressed into the mattress, her smell in the weave of the sheets, the down of the pillow, that finely evolved chemistry.

‘Allo?’ She was out of breath, as if she’d just burst into the room. It sounded like sun, like warmth.

‘Hello, beautiful.’ He felt dizzy.

The line was silent for a moment. He could hear her breathing, imagined the rise and fall of her chest, the delicate whisper of her lips near the mouthpiece.

‘Claymore? Is that you?’

‘I don’t have long, Rania. Please listen.’

It always seemed to be this way with them. Never enough time: a precious few days in the chalet in the Alps, both of them broken, needing the other’s strength; and before that, in Yemen, caught up in a spiral of death and vengeance, just those two nights before they’d been torn apart, flung in different directions. One dark evening alone on the Cornish coast he’d calculated that they’d spent no more than a hundred hours together, ever. Nothing. Not enough to feel like this, heart racing at the sound her voice, the thought of her touch. But it was fear now that coursed through him, thick and heavy, a cholera of doubt.

‘You have to get out of there, Rania,’ he said. ‘Now. Leave Cyprus, go back to the chalet and keep quiet, out of sight.’

He could hear her taking this in, thinking about it.

‘Rania?’

Nothing.

‘Rania, please. We don’t have long.’

‘I have not heard a word from you in nine weeks,’ she said. Her tone was strained. She was crying.

Clay steadied himself. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying, Rania?’

‘Was it you, Claymore? Did you kill Rex Medved?’ Her sexy Algerian French accent was tainted with fear.

‘We don’t have time for this now. Listen to me, please.’

‘No time? After two months not knowing if you are alive or dead, you tell me that you do not have time? Answer me, Claymore. I want to know.’

Clay watched the time running away. Where did it go, he wondered, drifting again. He fought back to now.

‘Yes,’ he said.

She didn’t reply. It sounded like she was holding her breath.

‘They’ve found me. Tracked me down. Medved’s people.’

She gasped.

‘They know who I am, Rania. They know who you are, too. You’re in danger. I want you to get out now. Go home. I’ll be there soon. Then we can disappear. Together. Go to Africa like we planned.’ He still had the tickets to Cape Town in his pocket.

‘Do not tell me what to do, Claymore.’ Her tone was stern, a cleric’s.

Time disappeared. ‘Look, I’m sorry, Rania. Just go home, please.’

A pause, seconds vanishing, and then, her voice breathless, ‘Things have changed, Claymore. What we talked about in London, what we did, it was … it was premature.’

Clay said nothing, waited, sank.

‘I have work to do here. I know you want to go back to Africa. Go, Claymore. Do whatever you have to do. Make peace with yourself.’

Her words ripped through him like hot shrapnel. He stood staring at the raindrops tracking across the phone-box glass, blind sperm flicking their tails in a futile journey to barren ground. All his dreams lay massacred on the wet concrete floor. The line was open. He could feel her there on the other end, hear her breathing.

‘Please, Rania,’ he choked, overcome. ‘You’re in danger.’

‘No one is after me, Claymore–’

He interrupted her, spoke over her. ‘They wrote it in blood. On Eben’s hospital room wall after they killed him: She’s next.’

But she wasn’t listening, just kept talking back at him. ‘There is something happening … Something big … sinister … getting close. I … a few more days.’ Their words collided across the line,