Revenge (David Shelley #1) - James Patterson Page 0,81
Lucy—if anything. Could be a bluff. On the other hand, the Chechen had sounded distinctly unfazed.
“I wish I could have done it myself,” said Susie beside him, dragging him from his thoughts.
“I’m sorry?”
“Karen. I wish I could have killed her myself.”
Shelley sighed, pulled off his cap, and ran a hand through damp hair. “No you don’t,” he said, feeling very tired all of a sudden.
“She killed Emma. Or maybe I should say that she forced Emma to kill herself. She did that and then she uploaded film of it to the internet. And then, you know what she did, Shelley? She sat there gloating about it. Taunting me about it. ‘From one muvva to anuvva.’”
As the train wound its way through Canary Wharf she opened up, telling Shelley everything Karen had told her in her cell. And when she’d finished they were both silent for a long time.
That was it, he thought, his suspicions confirmed. When Emma had rung him that night it was to tell him about Karen. Everything else: the means of suicide, the single bullet, the body being moved. It all made sense now.
“Say something, David,” she prompted, her voice soft.
“I dunno,” he started, “I dunno what to say.”
“She was going to get to you next.”
“That’s why she called me.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Guy said that you were gutted that Emma had called me and not you. But that was why, wasn’t it? Not because she turned to me for support, a final cry for help. Just because she needed to tell me about Karen.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
Maybe Susie would feel better knowing that, but he doubted it. He wanted to tell her that he’d started off needing to know the truth himself, but it was no consolation now that he did. It didn’t bring Emma back. If anything it made it worse, knowing that she might have found her way out of the hole she was in, given the time that Karen took from her.
They fell back into silence. Eventually she said, “I’m sorry, Shelley.”
“You’ve got no reason to be sorry.”
“I do. For what happened all those years ago.”
He knew exactly what she meant. “It wasn’t just you. It was me too.”
“Was it?”
“You know it was.”
“Could anything have happened between us?” she asked.
“No, Susie,” said Shelley. “I love Lucy.”
“It broke Emma’s heart that you left.”
“But I did have to go,” he told her.
“I know,” she said, adding, “I met Lucy.”
“Of course.”
“She’s beautiful,” Susie said. “Beautiful and tough and clever. What on earth do you see in her?”
He chuckled, but the laughter died in his throat as it hit him why the Chechens hadn’t met them at the DLR station at South Quay. Why Dmitry was so fucking calm.
They were going after Lucy.
CHAPTER 66
LYING IN HER bed at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, Lucy Shelley awoke with a start, instantly needing to use the toilet.
“Oh, bollocks,” she muttered. Even on a good day, the last thing she wanted to do was get up at three in the morning for a pee.
She lay there for a while, thinking that the urge might just disappear. Why did she always do that? It wasn’t going to.
Okay, she decided, there was no point in denying it. She had to get out of bed, whether she liked it or not.
Christ, it was hard enough at the best of times. Like at home, where it was relatively warm and she hadn’t just been shot—well, most days at least—but here, this was going to hurt. She braced herself for the pain and the cold and then moved one leg out of bed. She’d always had the impression that hospitals were supposed to be warm places, overheated almost, but this one certainly wasn’t, and she was very glad now that she wore a pair of pajama bottoms over her bandages. She thought fondly of Shelley, who’d gone home and made up a bag for her before he came hurtling round to the hospital. She wondered what he was up to. Whether the exchange had gone well. Hoped he was okay.
Her bare feet touched the cold floor of her hospital room. “Ouch, ouch,” she gasped. All those years in hostile environments and here she was, defeated by a cold floor. She tiptoed across the room to the toilet. “En suite bathroom,” she’d scoffed earlier.
“We do that for all our gunshot wound cases who have their own private guard,” a doctor had told her drily.
“Remind me to get shot more often,” Lucy had replied, unsure if she was