Hannah Pole - Song Of The Wolf

“I’m damn well coming in. You better have washed her. I don’t want your stink all over her when it’s my turn.” His voice reverberated through the room as the door began to open…

“OI!” he shouted, opening the door fully, “I said…”

His sentence got cut short as he stepped into the bathroom, the door swinging closed behind him. “What the –”

Alison didn’t wait for him to finish, just leapt at him from behind, sending the tip of his companion’s knife straight into the back of his neck. The guy didn’t stand a chance; he fell forward, his body hitting the floor with a heavy crack. She’d killed him instantly, the second the knife had hit his spine. She repeated the process of cutting through his neck so his head was completely severed before scrambling back against the wall, choking down air as she did.

Adrenaline was still pulsing through her even as tears fell. She broke down sobbing in fear and terror. She was so stupidly lucky he hadn’t turned around. She hadn’t had the strength to fight him; she’d used up the very last of it lunging at him. Her body felt so weak she doubted she’d be able to stand.

And now she was a killer. She’d never taken a life before. And now she looked down on the two men that had taken their last breath because of her, she felt sick. Life was precious, something not to be wasted. And she’d taken it away from them.

The worst part of it was that she didn’t feel anything. There was no guilt, no regret, just nothing. These tombs had deserved to die, they had made her life a living hell and she had no doubt there were many females prior to her who had suffered the same abuse she had and perhaps had not come away from it alive.

Back in his ‘den’ as the others liked to call it, Dax was frantically performing search after search. The Internet was a wonderful thing these days; it gave unlimited access to the world’s secrets if you knew where to look. The sun was out and shining brightly, he’d been at this all night. It had been about five in the morning when he’d finally got home and the Djinn had gone straight to bed. He revelled in the warmth of the sun’s rays shining through his glass house. Though the entire building was built with bullet-proof reflective glass, some of the rays still seeped through and lit the entire house up. He was sat in his large leather chair at his desk, staring at his huge computer screen – which was, in truth, a floor-to-ceiling glass panel that had a graphics board hardwired into the glass, so not only could he see through it and watch the land behind but he could also bring images up on it. Not even the government had technology this advanced. Perks of being part of the council’s structure.

There was a loud digital ping as his phone went off next to him. He grabbed it, and hit ‘answer’ as he shoved it against his face.

“Speak,” he barked into the receiver.

“Dax, its Tam.” Her husky tones filled his ears.

“What have you got?”

“OK, I’ve been out to the beach where Alison was taken. You’re right, there was a boat that had been pulled ashore several weeks ago. There is still an imprint in the sand from the bottom of it, though it’s been so battered by the sea we can’t tell much from it.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” he snapped, probably a little more harshly than he should have. It wasn’t her fault Alison had been taken. And to Tamriel’s credit, she was up and working on the case at five in the morning, as soon as Dax had texted her. She was one of the hardest working, most driven females he’d ever come across.

“Cool it, Dax, don’t be an arsehole,” she snapped back at him. He heard her shush Leyth who was growling in the background. Mated males could be ridiculously protective and Leyth was no exception.

“Sorry. I’m just –”

“Yeah yeah, tell me something I don’t know,” she snorted, cutting him off. “Anyway,” she continued, “after I’d been down to the beach I got on the net and I’ve been rooting through the Navy’s database.”

“Ah, you really think the Navy is going to be involved?”

“Hell no, but they do sell off equipment that has been discontinued.”

“And?”

“And about six months ago they sold an ex-miniature submarine to an unknown bidder. They are nicknamed ‘midget submarines’ because they weigh less than 150 tonnes, can be manned by as little as two people and have no on-board accommodation.”

“So we think the Circle bought it?”

“Well, we’ve been looking into local harbour auctions too. They have sold over twenty boats in the last six months to an ‘unknown’ bidder too.”

“How do we know they are related?”

“Here is where it gets interesting. The submarine and the boats were all sold to an unknown bidder but they’re never untraceable, there are always accounts that the payments need to come from.”

“Not if they do it in cash.” She made a strange ‘ahh’ noise, making her sound like a teacher whose student had just got the right answer.

“True, however large payments like that don’t go unnoticed in bank accounts, the exact cash sum of each purchase was drawn out of the same bank account on the same day the purchase was made. From a bank not ten minutes away from the auction, the payment came from the account of one…” There was a shuffling noise as she shifted through what sounded like a load of paperwork; she’d obviously been researching this for hours.

“Jason Smith. Who is a high-flying investor for the fishing trade.”

“And he’s linked to the Circle how?”

“He’s not. But we went to question him an hour ago at his home in Whitstable. We’ve only just got back.”

“And…?”

“And we found him dead in his living room.”

“Crap. So no leads.”

“Dax, he’s been dead for a long while, we reckon about five months. He was well into the rotting stages when we got there, and there are no fingerprints at the scene but get this: the last thing he actually purchased and signed for himself was a disused oilrig off the coast of England but we haven’t found where exactly yet. It has been redundant for decades, apparently it was built on unreliable intelligence and when they found nothing, it was just left to rust. It’s little more than a pile of scrap that goes unnoticed these days. So why would he buy it?”

“Because someone forced him to.”

“That’s what we think. He is co-owner with a partner that is using a false name on the deeds, there’s a paper trail so vast that it’s nigh on impossible to trace it back to whoever it is. But we also know that this ‘partner’ is the co-owner of every single one of those boats and that submarine.”

“It’s got to be worth chasing up.”

“Definitely. There are some old dockyards in Chatham that Leyth and I are planning on investigating. That’s where the submarine was auctioned off. It might give us some useful leads, and if not we can see if anyone went with Mr Smith on the security camera footage. You want to come?”

“Count me in, I’ll get my stuff together, leave in ten?”

“Sure thing, we’re just going to go and brief Julian.”

Finally they had a lead that might work. Tamriel made a good private investigator; she and Carl had the right idea with their new firm. Dax was well educated and a frigging genius with technology and hacking but he would never have thought of a submarine, even now the idea seemed ridiculous. But hell, the Circle were everywhere, it made sense that they would take to the seas as well.

Dax hastily typed the name ‘Jason Smith’ into his computer’s search programme and then ran a separate search for redundant oilrigs on the coast of England and left his computer running. It would ping the results to his phone if it found anything anyway. Shoving his thick bomber jacket on and checking his knives and Glock were present, he stalked out of his house, clicking the alarm sensors on as he walked back to the mansion.