The Killing Files (Project Trilogy, 2, Band 2) - Softcover

Owen, Nikki

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1504780655 ISBN 13: 9781504780650

Verlag: BLACKSTONE PUB, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

In the second book in Nikki Owen’s electrifying Project trilogy, it’s clear that no matter how fast you run, the past always catches up with you.

Dr. Maria Martinez is out of prison, exonerated of a murder she still doesn’t remember. But even though she’s a free woman, she’s on the run.

A file exists, the contents of which could mean life or death for Maria. And members of the Project, the ruthless underground organization that framed her for murder, are after her because of it.

To escape their grasp, she must find the file and then retreat to the safety of her family home in Spain. Little does she know that this might be the most dangerous place of all, and that to survive, she’ll have to keep one step ahead.

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Nikki Owen is an award-winning writer and columnist. She was a marketing consultant and university teaching fellow before turning to writing full time. As part of her degree, she studied at the acclaimed University of Salamanca--the same city her protagonist in the Project trilogy, Dr. Maria Martinez, hails from.

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The Killing Files

By Nikki Owen

Blackstone Publishing

Copyright © 2016 Nikki Owen
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-5047-8065-0

CHAPTER 1

UNDISCLOSED CONFINEMENT LOCATION

present day

The room is dark, damp. I cannot see properly. I have been caught, that much I know, but by whom? The Project? MI5? Someone else? I don't know how I got here. I don't know how I am going to escape.

I lift my head, but it feels heavy, a sack loaded with potatoes. I inch it back. My breathing is hot, the air a woolen blanket on my face, thick and scratchy, and as my sight begins to adjust to the dark, slowly, like a curtain being lifted on a stage, I start to see small slivers of solid items. Where am I?

A room. I think that is what this is, but I am unsure. Then what? A cell? Prison confinement again? But I was found innocent. I am free, I tell myself. I am not guilty, have not killed anyone, yet even when I say the words to myself, for some reason they don't seem right, instead feel out of place, a code reassembled in the middle.

One breath, two. My eyes begin to adjust to the gloom, and my sight registers small globules of shapes. The corner of a wall, the faint rectangle of a window — snapshots only of a whole picture. There is a seat of some sort, a table perhaps, but beyond that, nothing. The air is too black for me to take an inventory, the atmosphere sticky tar turning all the soft daylight into hot, putrid night as adrenaline starts to spurt out into my blood, creating short, sharp alerts. I am not safe here.

It is then I hear it: the rustle of movement.

"Who is there?" My voice clicks with a cotton-swab dryness, and I wonder how long it is since I last drank water, as my brain rapidly tries to calculate timings and bearings and any scrap of geolocation memory it can cling to.

"Who is there?" I repeat, yet there is no answer, only darkness. A worry rises inside me, but I press it back, not wanting to panic, not wanting to melt down here and now.

Focus. Breathing. I can hear someone breathing, there, on the whisper of the air. I inch my eyes left, sensing what exists but not wanting to acknowledge it. Have I put them there, whoever it is? Is that what this is — a hit? Did I try to kill them? I didn't murder the priest, but I doubted myself then, at the trial. And then a horrific thought strikes. What if I have been on an operation for the Project and this is the result? A body on the floor beside me, injured by me and waiting to die. A killing I may later have no memory of.

I keep my torso as rigid as possible, not daring to move. How did I get here? I think hard, connect my cognitive thoughts, but no matter how much I try, nothing shakes, as if my memory has been erased.

As if who I am doesn't really exist.

The person's breathing is shallow now, graveled and raspy. I know what bleeding out sounds like — the sharp, slicing quality of inhalation — but this is not it. And yet, there is an urgency to the breath, a desperation that I cannot place, but it makes no sense why. I am a doctor, so I should know the signs, but still I cannot place them. What is wrong with me?

I blink three times and try hard to concentrate, to return my brain to function mode, focusing again on the room for clues. The edges. They are shrouded in black, but the window above affords a slip of light that plops in a puddle to my left. It is then I see it — an arm — and a gasp slips from my mouth.

I track the limb, milky-white skin on a long, limp wrist. Different from my own arms, my muscled, tanned ones with bitten nails and dirt in the creases. Even in this murky room, I can tell that this arm is clean, scrubbed.

I keep all my attention on the body part and again try asking who this is, instinctively counting the time as I wait. The numbers soothe me as seconds rack up in twos, the action slowing — at least for the moment — the anxiety that is building inside, but when I ask again who is there and no one answers, a moan slips from my mouth. The urine-colored light has all but disappeared, yet somehow I start to see something slithering into view. A long T-shirted torso. An elegant white neck. A skull.

A face.

A scream pierces the air, and I am shocked to realize it is mine. I catch my breath, frantically slap my hands up and down, straining to thrash my body forward from the seat, but still my pulse flies. Because there is a face staring back at me, a face I know. Shaven scalp, sharp cheekbones, gapped teeth and pool-blue eyes — eyes that, even in this tar-black air, shine. My hearts races; my chest tightens. How can she be here? How have I let this happen? We are all in danger now, all of us.

"Doc." The voice comes from the head on the floor.

I slam my eyes shut, not wanting to believe what is here, reciting an algorithm in a vain attempt to calm myself.

"Doc, it's okay." The voice is a cotton sheet flapping in the breeze, a rustle of green grass. "Doc, I'm okay."

My eyes open. One millimeter, then two, gradually allowing my sight to do the work my brain does not want to understand. My friend is here. My only friend in the world is lying crumpled on the floor beside me.

"Patricia?" I say, testing out the word. "You are out of Gold-mouth prison."

"Yes, I got out on parole, remember? Two months after you."

Confusion, worry. They spin around fast in my head. "You are here. Why are you here?"

"Because they have us," she says, the Irish lilt to her voice still there as I remember, but scratched now, torn. "The Project has caught up with us. You can't hide from them anymore."

The Project has found me — that's why I have woken up here in this room. They have entrapped us, and there is only one way it will end: someone will die.

"We have to get out. Tell me your status — are you injured?" I listen for her reply, but there is only silence.

"Patricia?" Still there is no answer, no words back to me as I continue to repeat her name over and over again in the gloom. When I finally stop calling for her, I flop back, flooded with fear, fear of myself, of who I am. Because it's me — I have done this. I have caused this to happen. I slam my head back and back again, crying out, yelling into the thick, black air. Why can't I recall how I got here? Why don't I recognize where I am? Why?

Why?

One solitary fat tear slides down my cheek. "Do not die." The words slip out, silent, unbidden. "Please, do not die."

My eyes search for Patricia's body, for an arm or a head — anything that can reassure me she is okay, that my friend is okay.

"I am sorry," I say. "I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry."

I stop, haul in oxygen, listen for signs of life, but in the ten long seconds that next pass, the only sound audible in the thick, foul air is the rasp of my own breath.

Salamancan Mountains, Spain.

34 hours and 59 minutes to confinement

The sun is blinding me. I kick off my running shoes, prop my hand on my forehead, and, squinting towards the distance, listen to the morning as the mountains wake up. Clicking cicadas, dry summer grass rustling in the breeze, pregnant lemon and orange trees groaning under the weight of fat fruit spritzing citrus into the air, the distant bleat of a mountain goat — all the sounds that are now familiar to me, part of my daily routine. The security camera lights surrounding my hidden villa glow green — six lenses in total, covering every angle of the property. The Salamancan earth is slowly rising.

I pick up my coffee cup, drain it, then pad...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: BLACKSTONE PUB
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1504780655
• ISBN 13: 9781504780650
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar