The Secrets We Hide (The Four #2) - Becca Steele Page 0,57

girl. Hard.

TWENTY-THREE

Me and Weston were sitting in front of his laptop, watching a little blinking purple dot move across a map, as we tracked my mother’s car. Arlo’s green dot was stationary—he was in the office, and the car hadn’t moved all day.

Cassius was following my mother’s car, at a discreet distance. He was actually driving Kinslee’s car—she’d left the keys for us to use it while she was away, because we figured that out of anyone’s cars, hers would be the least recognisable since it was a nondescript, silver VW Polo hatchback, nothing to make it stand out from any other car on the road.

As Cassius trailed my mother, he was texting us via the speech recognition on his phone, keeping us updated.

Cass: Do you see this?

Me: Highnam? Do you think she’s headed to the Crown & Anchor again?

Cass: Bet she is. Duck I lost her.

Cass: Bloody autocorrect.

Cass: OK got the map up. I can see where she’s going.

There was silence as we watched the moving dot; then it suddenly stopped and started moving back in the direction it had come from.

Me: What’s going on?

Cass: She burned around.

Cass: Turned.

My phone rang, Cassius’ name flashing up on the screen.

“Thought it was easier to phone. Autocorrect’s a fucking joke on this voice recognition thing.” His voice came through the speaker, loud and clear over the muted hum of traffic around him.

“What’s going on, mate?” Weston leaned closer to the phone, keeping his eyes on the laptop screen.

“Dunno. She was driving, then pulled into a layby and turned around. Good thing I was stuck a few cars back so I could see her turning and follow her. We’re—hey, the docks are down here. Fuck, I’m gonna have to drive past; I’ll go as slow as I can, but there’s a car right up my ass, flashing his lights at me. Bellend!” he shouted, making me jump. “What’s the fucking rush?”

“Chill, Cass.” West huffed out a laugh. “Keep your eyes on Christine.”

“Dickhead,” he muttered. “Not you, the driver behind me,” he added, after a pause. “Okay, she’s turning into the docks, she’s stopped…and I’m…okay, I’m past it now. There was a man leaning into her window—I only saw the back of his head, nothing special. He had a bit of a bald patch, I think, or it could’ve been the light. I don’t know really; I hardly saw him. I’ll turn around up here and drive back past, see if I can see anything else.”

We waited, hearing the sound of the indicator as he turned off the road and headed back in the opposite direction. His voice came through the speaker again, excitement in his tone. “I just saw her standing there with Littlefinger! I mean, Petr. She was showing him something on her phone, I think. Looked like it, anyway. Visual proof she’s still meeting up with him.”

“I wonder what they’re doing,” I mused aloud. “Can you turn back round?”

“Already on it. I don’t wanna risk going past too many times, though, otherwise someone might notice.”

Silence.

Then, “Fuck, fuck, fuck! I think Petr was watching me as I went past that time. His head turned and everything.”

“Shit, come back now.”

“I fucking am. Gonna ditch the car in the uni car park and pick mine up, then I’ll be home.” The phone went dead, and Weston and I stared at each other.

“I really hope that was just his paranoia. At least we’ve seen my mother with Petr, in person. So we know she must still be working with him, because he doesn’t work at the docks anymore, does he? There’d be no reason for him to be there unless it’s to do with her.”

Weston nodded. “Yeah. I’m adding this to our file, with times and dates.” He pulled up the login to his secure storage server and started tapping away on the keyboard.

While he was busy doing that, I tried to make myself useful by doing a Google image search on the Strelichevo sigil that had been on Vasily and Petr’s rings. I trawled through countless pages of search results, but nothing came up other than one site that Google auto-translated, and appeared to be someone’s travel blog. The writer referred to some kind of burial ground, accompanied by a grainy photo of the image on a set of iron gates. I bookmarked the site just in case, but it was only a few lines long.

Through a combination of useless directions, and my own ineptitude, I ended up outside this private burial ground early