Chapter 6

Harry sat in the parked car around the corner from Baldwin's house trying to quell the tremors in his hands. He gripped the steering wheel hard attempting to make it stop, but he felt the sting of tears as emotions he never wanted to feel again came bubbling up, and he felt sick. He exited the car quickly and violently heaved the contents of his stomach into the bushes. He spat out the remaining bile and almost fell back into the car, leaning his arms and head on the wheel, his breath labored with his pounding chest.

He knew he needed to press on; he could not afford the luxury of his emotions. That truth made him angry. In his life there had never been time to deal with feelings; not his feelings for Jane, Catherine, or Graham, the regrets of things he'd had to do, the colleagues left unmourned, the grief lain waste for years, eating away his soul slowly over time. And then there was Ruth… Harry slammed his eyes shut against the anguish of those feelings. His beloved Ruth for whom he could never do or say the right things.

He smashed his hand hard against the steering wheel, angry with himself for selfishly taking two minutes off his schedule, Harry started the car, slammed it into gear and headed for the next closest name on the list. There was less than 20 hours left and 19 names to go - no, 19 people to kill, he guiltily corrected himself.


Lucas surveyed the Grid and pursed his lips: every last one of them looked exhausted and stretched to the limit. He heaved a sigh; they were no closer to uncovering the list of UAE assets in the UK than they were five hours ago, and they had only 15 hours left. He leaned back for a moment in his chair and rubbed his tired eyes. His contacts at the CIA had been unhelpful, and while he often believed that they simply lied to MI-5, in this situation Lucas sensed that they truly didn't know what he was taking about. Someone at the CIA would have to know about Oil Rigger, but it would have to be someone very high up on the food chain, and it wouldn't be anyone stationed in a foreign country.

"Lucas," Ruth's voice called, "come here and have a look at this, would you?"

He pushed himself up from his chair and walked over to her computer terminal, looking at her quizzically.

"This may be unrelated, but, I was scanning the newsfeeds and noticed a rather odd trend. Over the past five hours, nine deaths have been reported. All of them a single bullet to the head, clean, quiet; some of the victims were literally killed in their beds while they slept, in some cases a partner or spouse right next to them."

Lucas frowned. "And no one heard or saw anything?"

"No."

"This feels very much like—"

"—an MI-6 black op," Ruth finished. "And what's stranger is that CCTV in the areas where the killings took place picked up nothing useful. It's as if the person or persons knew exactly where all the cameras were and cleverly avoided them."

"Do the victims have anything in common?"

"Not that I've found," Ruth responded. "Although, there is one thing that is bothering me about it…"

"Just one?"

Ruth shook her head at him. "You know what I mean… if you look at the times the police think the killings took place," she hit a button on her computer and a screen popped up with a radius lit up and red dots representing the victims, "you can see that the targets started in South Kennsington and are moving outward in a geographical radius."

"As if the killer or killers are working from some kind of list and to save time are making the hits according to location of targets."

"Exactly," Ruth nodded.

Their eyes met. Lucas looked at his watch. "Nine deaths in five hours." He looked back into Ruth's eyes.

"One well-trained assassin could do it," Ruth stated.

"And what would you like to bet that there are 11 more names on his list?" Ruth nodded. "See what you can do about pushing the local clowns on autopsy results, will you?"

"Yes, that was my next task."

"Tariq," Lucas called, "come here please and work with Ruth." He looked over at Beth. "You're with me…"

"Where are we going?"

"To see if we can catch a cold-blooded killer and get to the bottom of Oil Rigger."

TBC