“Would you like me to bring you a drink when I finish my rounds, honey?” The deep languorous southern drawl was as sexy as it was out of place.

“Yes please, ma’am,” the trooper answered, remembering his manners.

“Sure thing, hon. Give me five minutes.” The nurse pushed her trolley into Mitchinson’s room.

“Mr Mitchinson, you seem to have slipped right down the bed. Let me sit you up and plump those pillows.” The casual banter was loud enough to carry to the trooper, as it was meant to do.

The nurse sat Barry up and plumped his pillows as she said she would. Then, quite unexpectedly, she withdrew what looked like a perfume atomiser and squirted it liberally in his face. He was paralysed. When the nurse looked right into his frozen features, he knew he was about to die.

“You are going straight to hell, Guv,” Gillian Davis whispered, still smiling like the southern belle she was playing.

Gillian’s paralysing spray did its work, but this time the mix was a little stronger than usual. Barry tried to move. He couldn’t. He tried to breathe. He couldn’t. He tried to panic. He could do that. It took an agonising three minutes for him to black out, and five minutes for his heart to stop. By the time the monitor alarm sounded and the crash team arrived, it was too late. Barry was dead, his face frozen. His eyes, dead as they were, still expressed terror.

The Chameleon was back in her street clothes by the time the trooper suspected foul play. Her dark wig had been discarded, and her soft brown eyes were back to their usual blue. In minutes she was walking back towards her car, parked a block away.

“They can never see past the uniform,” she chuckled to herself.

As Gillian had predicted, when Steve Post interviewed the trooper later, all he could extract from him, by way of description, was she was a tall dark haired nurse with soft brown eyes. ‘She looked like half the nurses in the hospital,’ he said apologetically. Despite his best efforts, the hospital could not confirm for Steve that Barry Mitchinson’s death was anything but the result of his injuries and a failing heart.

***

Perhaps it was the pressurisation or the poor administration of drugs during the transfer, but in the sleek Lear Jet, thirty thousand feet above the Atlantic, Rob Donkin woke up. His eyes flew open, but the attending male nurse had dozed off in the comfortable leather seat next to the white leather covered bed.

The lighting was subdued. Rob had no idea what was going on. He couldn’t remember anything. Where was he? Who was he? His heart began to race as he realised that he could not move. He could not feel his limbs at all. He knew that he was not breathing, but somehow he didn’t need to. It was as if his lungs were filling automatically. He could see and hear engine noise, but there was something in his mouth that would have prevented him from speaking. In fact, he could feel it in his throat. He tried to gag but his gag reflect didn’t work. Later he would hear that his voice box no longer worked anyway. He lay unblinking for minutes. He was scared. No, he was terrified. He was confused. He tried to close his eyes. He couldn’t.

The travelling nurse woke up with a start as his chin hit his chest. He blinked himself awake and looked down at his charge. Donkin’s eyes were open. The nurse dropped in a few tiny droplets of liquid and closed the paralysed man’s eyes. Then, looking more closely, he could see that the man seemed to be crying. It wasn’t possible, he thought; comatose patients don’t cry. He persuaded himself that he had overdone the eye drops.

Rob Donkin could feel the tears on his face but nothing else. The strain of trying to remember something, anything, drained him. His mind closed down. It could take no more; he would try to make sense of what was happening later, maybe.

Chapter 7 5

Vastrick Security Offices, Nr 1 Poultry. London, England.

3 months later.

Josh Hammond laughed at his own joke as Dee frowned. She was beginning to show now, and she had that glow of health that men often overlook in their pregnant women.

“I’m just your comedy sidekick,” she scowled as she took another bite of her sandwich.

They were lunching in the conference room at Vastrick’s London HQ; Tom Vastrick had joined them for this new daily routine.

“There’s no need to come for lunch every day, Josh,” Tom said. “We have her tied to a desk for the foreseeable future. We won’t let her out of our sight. I promise.” The two men smiled, and Dee frowned. She felt pretty good for a woman with several healed bullet holes and a missing rib, and couldn’t understand why she needed coddling.

Tom left the room.

Josh leaned over and kissed his wife tenderly. She kissed him back, and for a moment it all got heated and passionate.

“Sex in the overnight cot?” he suggested playfully. “After all, you’re already pregnant.”

“Too busy, Josh. I need to finish early tonight. We have seats for the match.”

Josh groaned. It looked to him as if the Hammers, his beloved West Ham United, were destined to be relegated to a lower division, and he had a season ticket so he could witness the final death throe. Dee saw the despair in his face and tried to take his mind off the subject.

“The Posts emailed this morning. They’re coming over to London in the summer to visit.” She looked out of the window at the torrential rain and hoped that the weather would behave itself for their visit.

Josh left. There was still concern in his eyes, although he had trained himself not to show it. He had work to do at his own office less than half a mile away. In this weather he would be soaked covering half that distance. Nonetheless, he shrugged as he stepped out onto Queen Victoria Street, and quickened his pace.

***

Dee returned to her office and tenderly touched the photograph of her husband. Despite the fact that she loved her career, she loved her husband more. Sometime soon she would leave all of this behind and find some other career, preferably one which didn’t involve being shot regularly.

As she spun her chair around to look out of the window, her eyes caught sight of the beautiful leather bound set of books on her shelf. She lifted the first in the series and opened it. On the title page of Clara Campbell and the Spectral Schoolboy she read the dedication;

“To Dee Hammond, with all of my affection, and thanks, for keeping Katie safe. J Jackson Bentley.”

For a few moments she was lost in thoughts and immersed in memories. She was oblivious to her surroundings when she heard a familiar voice behind her.

“The book is OK, but that girl who plays her in the films is brilliant.”

Dee spun around, then leapt from her chair as Katie Norman ran to her and hugged her wildly. Katie stepped back and rested her hand on Dee’s stomach.

“If I’m not the godmother I’ll want a damn good reason why not.”

They both laughed and hugged again.

Epilogue:

Presidential Rally, Capital Square, Richmond, Virginia . USA.

One year later.

The first black President of the USA was in Democrat territory. Despite the Democrats having lost one of its key Senator positions to the Republicans, in the form of Senator Denton Miles III, the President was convinced that the state would be his, come the election. Nevertheless, he felt that there could be no harm in telling the folks that he appreciated their support, and so he was due to appear on the podium in Capital Square in less than an hour.

Harvey Quince addressed his armour clad Special Agents in the foyer of an office block overlooking the square. Quince had taken over as SAIC, special agent in charge of the field office, after Steve Post had transferred to Florida to become SAIC in Tampa.