Emilia could almost taste how close she was. All Charlie needed was an extra little encouragement.
‘You’re a liar. I saw what you did.’
‘We are in the same boat,’ she pleaded. ‘We’re as desperate as one another. Something happened to me which means I don’t know anything before a few weeks ago. Tell me who I am and what you know about me and I’ll drive you back to the pub where you were supposed to be meeting Rosema—’ She stopped abruptly. Charlie glared at her.
‘How do you know about Rosemary?’ he asked slowly. ‘Or that we were meeting at a pub?’
Emilia wasn’t quick enough to think on her feet and for Charlie, the penny had already dropped. ‘She doesn’t exist, does she?Youare Rosemary.’ His body seemed to fold in on itself.
Emilia recalled how Charlie had proved tricky to expose in a city of 3.5 million people. Then out of the blue, something struck Emilia. ‘Charlie is a twenty-five-year-old single man with no known girlfriends or boyfriends,’ she’d told Adrian. ‘I wager that like most people who’ve grown up in the shadow of Match Your DNA, he has an account.’
Moments later and Adrian’s team had an answer. ‘There are two accounts using different names but both with identical DNA. And both are unmatched.’
‘What are the odds?’ Bianca asked.
‘Nine in seventy trillion. Even twins don’t have identical DNA.’
After identifying Charlie, they used algorithms to sift through his tens of thousands of pages of internet history to learn his likes and dislikes and gain an insight into his personality. Then they created an entire life and social media history for the fictitious Rosemary, a character named after a very old Lenny Kravitz song that Charlie had favourited on his streaming playlists. And within days of them sending Charlie notification of his ‘Match’, he’d responded.
His conversation had been initially cautious, and Emilia hadn’t pushed him. But soon they were messaging regularly and he had paid for her flight from Ireland to Manchester. But the government’s unexpected release of his image that morning had taken Emilia and the Hacking Collective by surprise. Instead of being picked up by the team and escorted from the pub as planned, he had fled on foot and they’d had to track him.
Now, as their eyes remained fixed on one another’s, Emilia could see how crushed he was. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said eventually and a small part of her meant it.
‘I believe that you don’t know who you are,’ Charlie replied. ‘And I’ll give you your answers. Not because I want to help you or believe that you’ll get me to safety, but because the truth is going to hurt you just as much as you’ve just hurt me.’
Suddenly, what sounded like two shots rang out.
Emilia yelped but before she had time to identify the noise, it was followed by two more mini explosions. Whatever the cause, it was derailing their vehicle. Swerving across the road, the car hit a central reservation before flipping over onto its roof and throwing its occupantsaround like ragdolls. Finally, it landed back on its axles and scraped to a halt.
A shooting pain ran through a disorientated Emilia’s spine as she pushed herself up from the rear footwells and looked out of the back windscreen to assess the damage. Behind the stinger used to burst the tyres, a crowd was approaching her car. She couldn’t let them come for Charlie, not when she was so close to the truth.
She scrambled around the car until she found her weapon on the front passenger seat, lifting it to fire a shot through the back window. She protected her face with her hand as it rained glass shards. And it had the desired effect as the mob scattered. Emilia had bought them time.
‘They’re backing away,’ she told Charlie, quickly scanning their outdoor surroundings to see where they could escape to. ‘I don’t know how long I can keep them back so we need to get the hell out of here. Can you open the door?’
When Charlie didn’t respond, she turned her head. ‘Charlie, I need you to focus. Can you open the door?’
Only now did she notice that he was slumped across the driver’s seat, unconscious. ‘Damn it,’ she muttered and went to turn his head so she could pat his face and waken him. It was then that she saw his eyes were wide open and his neck angled in an unnatural position. It was clearly broken. Charlie was dead.
‘No!’ she yelled. Even knowing it was a futile manoeuvre, she couldn’t give up without a fight; she tried to locate his pulse, then pushed him across both seats and gave him chest compressions. But it was too late. This gang of greedy faces had robbed him of his life and her of an explanation.
The anger she felt towards Bruno when he laughed at her was nothing compared to the rage against Charlie erupting inside her now. Emilia raised her balled fists above her head before beating his lifeless chest and arms with every ounce of her strength. Saliva frothed in the cornersof her mouth as the frustration consumed her. Then from the glovebox and without knowing why, she grabbed the metallic silver device she’d killed Bruno with and skewered the exact same spot on Charlie’s scalp. But it wasn’t enough to quell her fury. There were others who needed punishing too.
It took two kicks before the crumpled door released and she could exit. The crowd continued making its approach toward the car, determined to get its pound of flesh and a cut of the reward money. Emilia saw every face before her as someone who had prevented her from being reunited with her family. And without forethought, she marched towards them, removed her weapon and began firing at will. Even when they screamed and turned on their heels, she continued to shoot until the bullets ran out, and she watched their bodies drop to the ground as fast as each spent cartridge.
PART THREE
THREE WEEKS LATER
Chapter 81
FLICK, CORNWALL
Rainwater pooled on the metal bench and seeped into Flick’s jeans, dampening the backs of her thighs and her bottom. She tugged at her waterproof jacket until there was enough fabric to sit on, but it exposed her forehead to the drizzle.
The weather had been poor since her arrival in Cornwall weeks earlier, but she had grown accustomed to it. She opened a pre-packed sandwich purchased in a tearoom she’d passed at the beginning of her six-mile hike. There were slim pickings on the shelf and the two thin layers of brown bread housing a sliver of ham and a thin slice of processed cheese was the best it had to offer. ‘Sorry,’ she said to her baby bump, apologetic that today, she’d yet to digest anything with nutritional value. As she nibbled it, she took in the rolling landscapes of Cornwall’s Tidna Valley that surrounded her.
She ran her fingers through her shorn black-dyed hair. She was still becoming accustomed to it, along with her coloured contact lenses and glasses. The several pounds of baby weight she’d put on helped to fill out her face and stomach and made her look less like the terrorist the whole country was still on high alert for. Her new alter ego ‘Martine’ had, fortunately, yet to be recognised.
