Read Online Nowhere to Hide by Alex Walters - Free Book Online Page B

‘After all, given what I’ve come from, it’s not like I’m got much fucking option, is it?’

4
    The whole thing felt wrong. Too soon. Too risky. Too ill-prepared. Shit, the last time she’d done this they’d spent months preparing her for it. They’d had the legend worked out to the last detail. Every minute of her fictional past. Every last nuance of her character and personality. She’d had an answer worked out to every possible question that might be thrown at her.
    They’d put her through exercise after exercise. Memory tests. Role playing. Even that bloody farce where they’d snatched her from the airport car park and terrorised the life out of her. By the time she’d hit the street, she’d been note-perfect.
    And now, what? Just over three weeks of scrambled briefings, cobbled-together documentation, hurried liaisons with informants who clearly thought they had better things to do that make her life any easier. And here she was, sitting outside the head honcho’s office about to stick her head firmly on the block. The whole thing felt so bloody
amateurish
.
    The smart-suited young secretary emerged again from the main man’s office and regarded Marie with a look of disdain. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ she said, with no obvious sign of sincerity. ‘He really won’t be much longer.’
    The secretary didn’t bother to offer any explanation for the delay, but Marie hadn’t really expected any. She’d already assumed, perhaps unfairly, that this man, McGrath, was most likely just sitting in there with his feet up reading the
Daily Star
. For all that she felt unprepared, Marie had seen through this place immediately.
    She smiled at the secretary. McGrath doubtless called her his PA. ‘Not a problem,’ Marie said. ‘I appreciate how busy Mr McGrath must be.’ She smiled warmly at the young woman, who now smiled uneasily back, perhaps growing conscious that her assumptions about Marie might not be entirely justified.
    That was the only consolation, Marie thought. She might feel as if she’d been tossed carelessly into the deep end, but she’d already seen enough to know that, for the moment at least, she wasn’t out of her depth. Bunch of cowboys, she thought, glancing around at the large secretary’s office. All show, and no substance.
    It had taken her a few minutes to register the fact when she’d first arrived. On the surface, it had all looked impressive enough. A neat little unit in a serviced office block just off the main drag near the centre of Chester. Half a mile and a world away from the city of Roman remains and bijou fashion shops, but it probably still had what the property agents would describe as a prestigious address. The Victrix Business Park, for Christ’s sake.
    Inside, though, it wasn’t quite right. The place was an old factory that had clearly been converted hurriedly. Okay, perhaps not quite as hurriedly as she’d been converted into Maggie Yates – and, come to that, couldn’t they have found a more prestigious name for her as well? – but more hurriedly than the building’s pretensions required. She was no expert, but even sitting here Marie could see that the wallpaper was badly applied, the paintwork sloppy, the carpet cheap and already beginning to wear. Even the office furniture looked outdated. Not, she suspected, the kind of image that McGrath was hoping to project.
    There were other signs, too. As the secretary had led her in from the chilly unattended lobby, Marie had glimpsed the rear courtyard through one of the windows. A miniature junkyard – an old fridge, a discarded sink unit, a broken table lined with paint pots, all overgrown with weeds. If the offices had been recently converted, she might have thought it was just waiting to be tidied, but this place was no longer new.
    Even the staff weren’t up to scratch. There had