Allegiance (Twisted Book 4) Read online

  “You have a mole in the company?”

  “Yes.” He nodded, unapologetic. “It became apparent that Arthur wasn’t stealing the money.”

  “Embezzlement.”

  “Yes. Someone is embezzling money from your father’s company.”

  “Why would that call for such a big operation?”

  “No business, especially one as large as your father’s, is run – or financed – by a single person. It’s about keeping the books balanced and keeping a wide profit margin. Not only does your father have a board of directors who advise him and run the company alongside him but, like your father, they invest their own money into it.”

  “So they fiddle the system.”

  “Everyone does. You’re telling me you wouldn’t do the same?” I shrugged, avoiding the question. “Not only do the board want to know where their money is going, but also the money of their prolific and influential clients who invest with them. Politicians, media bosses, sports clubs…”

  “I’m following you.” I took a mouthful of coffee, my stomach lurching with the nausea of the Kennedy Christmas shit storm I’d found myself in. “So you cleared my father.”

  “Yes. But not entirely.” Daniel shifted nervously. “It’s possible that your father had no idea the money was being stolen until he opened the investigation, but there’s also another possibility.”

  “He was covering for someone.” Daniel nodded. I stood up and raked my good hand through my hair. “AJ.”

  “That’s the direction the investigation had started to take.”

  “Why?” I asked pacing the room. “Why would AJ steal? Dad paid him more than enough for sitting on his ass doing nothing. He has enough money for life.”

  “What is your brother’s role within the company?”

  “I have no idea. I chose to cut all connections with it. I assumed he worked next to Dad, doing whatever it was he did.” I paused. “Why did you arrest me if you knew I didn’t do it?”

  “The unit could use you, Jesse.”

  “To do what?”

  “Help us find your brother.”

  “Me?” There was no hiding my shock. “Listen, I fix bodies. I heal people. I try and keep death away. I don’t solve crimes.”

  “The fact of the matter is this. Without you, AJ has gotten away with everything. You’ll leave here and your entire life will crumble away beneath you.” He stood up and tossed a business card onto the sofa next to me. “You’re free to walk out of here and into whatever life awaits you outside that door.”

  In a split second my mind was made up. I had no life to go back to. Not now I knew what AJ had done and I could have a hand in punishing him. He had to pay and I was going to see to it that he did. What was the point in piecing bodies back together when my own life was in tatters? What was the point in stepping into the ring and fighting when it wasn’t the fight I wanted? What would stop AJ coming after me? After Curtis? And Kerry?

  It was time to say goodbye to The Gentleman, to everything I knew before and step into this new life in search of revenge and justice.

  I turned to Daniel as he awaited my response.

  “I’m in.”

  Three

  You’re dead.

  When Daniel had said it, my heart sank and it took everything not to fall to my knees and feel the pain. I had to keep the pain away. My ambitious, driven father, my beautiful, caring mother, and my smart, sassy sister, were dead, and I was pretending to be too. How screwed up was that?

  There were five bodies in the house on Christmas Day and it was already decided two of them would belong to my brother and me. AJ would think he’d killed me with the final shot, and he would think he’d gotten away with it by dying too.

  What would I be doing? Hiding in a safe house and going through my mental archives to find something that would help us catch AJ.

  After three weeks, I had nothing to offer.

  After six weeks, the brain I thought was filled with knowledge and intelligence was proving useless.

  “Let’s go back to your childhood,” Daniel said. He’d become my faked death mentor and was desperately trying to extract something from my mind that would help us. “Talk about your childhood.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.” My phone vibrated on the counter. I knew it was Curtis and I sighed. I had to leave the phone on, in case AJ called after figuring out what was happening. He hadn’t.

  Kerry called daily for the first few weeks, but eventually – and thankfully – she’d believed the reports that I was dead and stopped calling. Good. She’d move on. I could never love her like she deserved, and certainly not now, with nothing but charred remains of a family, and a brother to blame for it. But Curtis called every day, almost every hour. I wanted to answer it. I knew we could find AJ and discover the truth together, but I had to exhaust this avenue first. He was safer that way, and I was more useful to us both if I was a ghost.

  “Go on,” Daniel said, drawing my attention away from the phone.

  “I had a normal childhood. Dad got his degree before he and Mum had kids. AJ was reared from birth to take over the business, but he couldn’t do it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He couldn’t focus. I remember Dad taking him to the office one day and bringing him back an hour later.”

  Daniel wrote everything down, and nodded for me to continue.

  “So Dad decided he wanted me to take over. He’d built the company up from nothing and wanted us to protect it.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t want it. AJ wanted it and I’d seen what my father’s choices had done to my parents. To AJ. I just wanted to make a name for myself. I don’t see how something that happened twenty-odd years ago helps us now.”

  “It’s helping me profile AJ.”

  “And me.”

  Daniel stood up and set his hand on my shoulder.

  “Get some rest.”

  I said nothing as he packed up his things and left my temporary home. I waited until he’d gone and listened to the new voicemails from Curtis. He sounded like a mess. I could help him. I’d spent every night for the last six weeks going over every memory I had of my family. The pain wanted to be felt, and I wanted to hurt. I wanted to remember the pain because it was all I had left. I should have been there to protect my family. I should have just gone into the business with Dad. I could have kept AJ out. I should have answered every one of my mother’s calls, and accepted the hugs and kisses the rare few times I’d seen her over the last five years. I should have taken my little sister to lunches; I should have listened to her talk about her boyfriends without turning into a protective robot and threatening to kill them. But I didn’t. I avoided them in order to avoid AJ and they were dead. He wasn’t. Yet.

  Instead of spending another night punishing myself, I made myself useful. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat; I could just about keep a drink down. But I could creep around and help Curtis with his mission from beyond the grave.

  I wondered as I scrolled through Google, if Curtis had ever searched Charlie, and if he’d ever put two and two together. I wondered if he knew her parents’ house was mortgaged to the hilt because they’d been a breath away from bankruptcy. They were saved by an investor who bought into Andrew’s spyware and funded the majority of its journey from concept to mass production. None of it explained why Charlie was a raging psycho bitch, but it went some way to explaining why she’d mastered the art of ninja theft. She was fifteen when her parents fell into quicksand, if I’d gotten the details right. A girl who had been fed from the silver spoon her entire life and was already on track for acceptance to Cambridge, hailed as the next musical prodigy, finds out her parents are about to succumb to the loan sharks and debt collectors. It would be enough to drive anyone on the mission to untouchable wealth. But Google didn’t tell me why she’d chosen to steal instead of doing something with music and creating her own legacy. I’d figure that one out for myself.

  B
efore I had the chance to hatch a plan, my heavy eyelids clamped shut and the nightmares accepted their invitation.

  “I need to get out,” I told Daniel the next day. “I’ve been stuck in here for six weeks and we’ve got nowhere. I need to leave the house.”

  “It’s not safe. Someone might recognise you.”

  “You said I’m a free man.” I began pulling on my shoes. “I can just walk out of here. I’m choosing to consult with you first.”

  Daniel sighed. “Where do you want to go?”

  “I need a gym.”

  I’d noticed my weight loss – the loss of definition and the general weakening of every muscle in my body. I’d worked too hard to lose it. I’d already lost everything else; I had control over this and I had to exert it.

  “Jesse, you’re known in the circuit. Someone will see you and your resurrection will make national news.”

  “Then make a call and get me a gym.” My phone began buzzing again and after seeing it wasn’t AJ, I picked it up off the counter. “Make the call or I will.”

  I smirked when anxiety washed over Daniel and he grabbed his phone. It was the first kick I’d had out of the last six weeks of miserable existence.

  A Metropolitan-issued car pulled up outside the house. Daniel peered out the window to make sure the street was clear and nodded for me to open the door. I left the house, with only enough time to suck in one breath of fresh suburban air before Daniel grabbed my arm and shoved me into the back of the car.

  “You’ve got two hours,” Daniel said, heading to the chair in the corner to sit on guard.

  We’d come to the gym where his unit trained in combat. A handful of them were Authorised Firearms Officers, but he’d told me on the way that physical training was mandatory. I hadn’t missed the hint of an idea evident in his voice.

  “What exactly does your team do?” I asked as I strapped up. “It’s more than embezzlement, isn’t it?”

  “We’re a branch of the NCA – the National Crime Agency – called OCC.”

  I made a gesture, sweeping my hand above my head to show him he’d lost me. “Which is what?”

  “Organised Crime Command.” I froze mid-stretch. Organised crime. “We’re at the forefront of the battle against serious and organised crime. The public is led to believe the country is a lot safer than it is. Go and train, you’re wasting time.”

  I turned and stumbled to the treadmill, looking at Daniel as I continued to stretch out. I was working with an Organised Crime Command team. They thought, or once thought, my father was some sort of embezzling crime lord. I refused to entertain the idea of his guilt. My father was a good man. Stupid for covering up AJ and his crimes, yes, but a criminal himself? No. My father was honest. He worked hard to earn the life he’d had torn away from him. I stepped onto the treadmill and ran until my legs refused to run anymore and I was drowning in my own sweat and worry. Just how far did this go? How far would I have to go to figure it out?

  The punch bag in the corner was staring at me, calling me home. I wanted to get in the ring. I wanted to be blinded by the lights, deafened by the crowd; I wanted to feel the freedom that fighting gave me. Fighting had always been my release. I’d fought for as long as I could remember; I’d always had the ability to read the human body. I became a doctor, a surgeon specifically, to help people – to cure them and give them a better future. And I fought in the ring to keep me mentally stable; to use my knowledge as a healer to overpower someone with more than brawn. It was a challenge, that’s what I loved. Could I see the weakness and take advantage of it? Could I spot it and still claim the release I so desperately needed? Fighting was in my blood. My father fought, his father fought and his father fought, too. The Kennedy family were raised with discipline, focus, and determination.

  I had all those things and I wanted to lash out on the bag; I wanted to finally let the anger out until I beat it from the ceiling.

  But the painful reminder of what my brother had done, in the form of two healed bullet wounds on my right arm made it impossible. I couldn’t focus.

  I hated him. I had so much hate, all my instincts to heal morphed into the desire to hurt everyone who had ever done wrong to me and my family.

  I had to find P.

  I had to find Charlie.

  I had to find my brother.

  Four

  Not being able to talk to anyone would make tracking impossible. My father’s team were sitting on information from the P’s factory, waiting for instruction. Only I couldn’t give it to them, and I hadn’t told Curtis what they’d found before I disappeared. I hadn’t even been informed on what they’d found. I wanted them to dig deeper and find the answers, figure out the next step before I let Curtis in. I thought I was doing the right thing, but I wasn’t. I’d disappeared from his life, another person who had abandoned him, and as much as I wanted to call him, I couldn’t. Not yet.

  “Daniel?” I asked as we made our way back to the safe house after another session in the OCC gym. “How would I find someone who didn’t want to be found? How do you do it?”

  “We’re doing everything we can to find AJ.”

  “I’m not talking about him.”

  “Then who are you talking about?”

  He eyed me suspiciously, but I looked back with confidence, refusing to let him see through me. Would I ever not be a suspect?

  “Humour me,” I snapped. “I’m asking hypothetically. I’m sitting in a house all day staring at four walls and feeling useless. I want to know how the living members of your team do their jobs.”

  “Every operation is different, but organised crime relies on networks, a hierarchy if you will. It takes one network to defeat another.”

  I knew that. I knew P had built up a network. I’d already begun putting mine together.

  “It takes a lot of patience and strategy. We rely on intel. We place unit members in communities where the networks are known to operate. In prisons and within the networks themselves. We listen in to radio and electronic communication. We listen to word on the street. We have eyes and ears everywhere finding a way inside to track their strategies and movements. We figure out who’s at the bottom of the food chain and work our way to the top.”

  “So I could be dead for years?” I asked, but received no response, or acknowledgment I’d even spoken. “AJ is part of a network isn’t he?”

  “We believe so.” So it was just me and my non-existent life he wuldn’t discuss. “All intel so far points to two options. AJ is a part of The Arc, or he has found himself on the wrong side of it.”

  “What do they do?”

  “We believe they run one of the largest drug networks in the UK.”

  “So AJ is into drugs?”

  “Not necessarily. Look, I can't tell you any more than that. I thought you were talking hypothetically.”

  “I am.”

  I sat back in the chair and closed my eyes. I felt good. Replenished. Ready to do something besides sitting around waiting for AJ’s name to come up in chatter that I had no right to know about anyway.

  Fuck that.

  I needed Curtis. I needed to help him complete his mission and ask him to help me take down The Arc and find my brother.

  I had to get out of the safe house. I had to use Daniel to help me find P and Charlie, and then I had to get out.

  **

  It was just after sunrise on another fucking day in solitary confinement when I woke with a jolt and realised I wasn’t part of Daniel’s OCC taskforce at all. He’d been profiling me for four months, keeping me in the dark so I believed the case had gone cold. What had my compliance led to? Me not knowing what was going on, where my brother was, why I was still trapped here, and how much longer I would have to do this for. So the solution was simple.

  I had to leave.

  Everything Daniel and his team were doing would lead AJ to believe he was safe, so he’d come out from wherever he was hiding, but I was the prisoner. Whether Daniel believed I was part of t
he crime, guilty in some capacity or not, it didn’t matter. I was of no use to anyone here.

  I spent my days working out in the house when I couldn’t get to the gym, watching awful TV that just numbed my brain, sucked the intelligence I’d worked so fucking hard for, and drained me of any personality I had before everything around me went dark. I needed to move on from the grief. I thought of the murders all the time. How had they died? Did AJ strangle them in their sleep and wait as long as he could for me to arrive, before realising he had to get it over with? Had he shot them with the gun he shot me with? Had he just set the house alight and stood by while it went up in flames, listening to the screams for help as our family perished? Who were the other two bodies AJ and I had claimed? I knew Daniel knew the answers. The bodies had been identified, the Murder Investigation Team had been brought in to work publicly so the OCC could dig deeper. I thought I knew who the bodies were, but Daniel refused to confirm or deny, instead giving me the ‘no comment’ answer I wish I’d given back at the station. My family’s remains were sitting in a freezer and I wasn’t even allowed to bury them and say goodbye. AJ had ruined our lives and Daniel was keeping me hanging in limbo, with a noose around my neck, knowing only he could let me down or end it all. I was imprisoned in Hell and it was time for me to find my own way out.

  I packed my few belongings into a supermarket carrier bag; two pairs of comfortable clothes that had replaced the suits I was once known for; my phone and the notebook of strategies I kept hidden in a pocket I’d made in my mattress. I’d be damned if I hadn’t put my smarts to good use in my four months of voluntary incarceration.

  I waited for Daniel.

  He stepped into the house not long after and the realisation of what was about to happen hit him when he saw me waiting on the armchair, hugging the orange plastic bag.

  “Jesse,” he said cautiously, placing a cup of Starbucks on the table and sitting opposite me. “What’s going on?”

  “I need out.”