The Killing Files (Project Trilogy, 2) - Softcover

Owen, Nikki

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1504780655 ISBN 13: 9781504780650

Publisher: Blackstone Publishing, 2017

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

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.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

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 inside, counting my steps where the terracotta tiles are cold on my soles.

One, two, three, my feet move forward until twenty-four arrives and I halt at the sink, my eyes watching everything. I set down my cup, pick up a white cloth, and dry last night's dishes: one plate, one knife and fork, and one small wineglass. Opening a metal cupboard, I put the crockery away, all of it fitting easily, the only occupants in the large, spotless space.

I scan the rest of the kitchen, returning everything to its place. One pan, one white jug with a scratch seven millimeters long on the inside of the handle, one metal pot, small, for milk to warm at night when the sun rests and the night blanket covers the sky where the stars switch on and glow until morning. I count them all and document them in my head and, satisfied all is correct and present, close all the cupboards, and, stretching up my arms high into the air, recite the words I have spoken now every day since I came here to hide from the Project and MI5.

"I am Dr. Maria Martinez. I am thirty-three years old." My fingers ripple in the warm air, a gentle wisp of a breeze drifting in through the small open window, its wooden frame cracked yet solid. "I am innocent of murder. I am free."

I stretch my hands farther into the void, my muscles elongating into the empty space around me as I go through my routine to remind myself who I am, because if I did not tell myself, I fear I would be lost entirely. My hands fan out and my muscles are taut and strong, and when I twist toward the glass door of the oven, my reflection stares back, green contact lenses patched over brown eyes, black hair dyed platinum and sewn in clumps to my small skull, the flesh on my face and limbs deep and sun brown, lines thick and grooved and ingrained into my worn skin and elbows and ankles and knees.

"I am Dr. Maria Martinez. I am thirty-three years old," I repeat, inhaling, my back arching downward and my arms reaching forward so my palms flatten on the floor, the tiles cold on my skin, tiny sharp jolts reminding me I'm alive. "I am innocent of murder. I am free."

The yellow morning rays shine warm on my face. I close my eyes and I breathe it all in, moving, exhaling, saluting the sun, feeling my body work as one with my mind as I repeat my chant over and over, losing my thoughts to the repetitive medicine of it, allowing my brain to soften itself of the millions of cognitive connections automatically made every second of the day and night. I bend my knees now, toughened skin touching down on the terracotta as I crease my spine up toward the ceiling, eyes still closed as I battle in my head with the pictures that sway before it — pictures of the loud, excrement-filled prison I was kept in, of the court trial and the beatings and the discovery of the Project entire, the shredded, sordid secrecy. I breathe, try to let the thoughts pass by me as my spine curves inward now. Rippling the muscles of my torso up and down, I feel them creak and stretch after the running outside, shorts riding up and itching my skin, vest top stuck to me with sweat, and even though the irritation of it is sharp, I continue focusing, letting my brain be even a little bit at ease with who I am, all the while chanting, reminding, never ever forgetting, because without conscious thought, what would we be?

Ten minutes pass in the early morning sun of my movements across the tiles and in the empty air, and when I am ready and complete, I stand, exhale, and open my eyes. The sun shines into them and I blink as my sight adjusts to the hazy film of the day that yawns out ahead of me, my mind registering with a glow of satisfaction that there are no people to attempt to converse with, no social games for me to decipher how to play. I turn to the sink. I extract one small glass from the cupboard to my left and, filling it with water, drain the contents and, mouth refreshed, rinse out the glass and return it to its home.

When I am certain that all is in its place, I wipe dry my palms on the back of my running shorts and pad toward the lounge, grateful for my daily routine, for each phase of it I have created. Every day since I left prison and came here to hide from the Project and MI5, after my morning run and yoga, I spend three hours tracking and documenting the latest news stories on the US National Security Agency prism scandal and any terrorist crimes or cyber security threats that I think the Project may be involved in.

I am just entering the lounge past the wooden crates on the floor when, today, it happens. I don't know if it's the thought of analyzing the latest news on the NSA that has triggered it, or if it is because I slept badly last night, nightmares of prison waking me up in sweat-soaked fits, but the memory arrives, fast and bright — not the hazy part of clouds that normally occurs when such recollections float to the surface, but this time quick, a Taser prod, switching my mind from what is in front of me to what is inside, to a distant drug-hazed memory.

"No!" The sound of my solitary voice rings loud in the silence, sending the birds in the orange trees outside scattering in random directions.

I grip the kitchen sink. This process, this feeling, it is now familiar, so many times over the years has it passed, but still there is a fear as my brain is thrown into recalling something locked deep within my subconscious.

Something from my past.

CHAPTER 2

SALAMANCAN MOUNTAINS, SPAIN.

34 hours and 56 minutes to confinement

Suddenly, I am not standing in my Salamanca kitchen but instead am in a white clinical room, a room that now, from my dreams, from my nightmares, I know well.

I am fifteen years old, limbs long and thin, jutting out at awkward Bambi angles. I am sitting robot-straight in a metal bed, and my long matted rope of thick black hair is uncut and wild and resting on a white hospital gown where freckles puncture plump, sun-kissed skin, cashmere soft, no lines yet of a longer life lived. ECG probes sit glued to my small rib cage and concave abdomen, and in the background the pit-put of a heart rate monitor hums.

I turn my head and see him. The man. I intake a sharp breath, but there is no surprise in it, no immediate concern, as if I have been expecting him, as if this, here, is a routine that offers me some strange, warped comfort.

"Your vital signs are good," the man says. His voice has a Scottish edge, each word a slice of a knife, a slow turn of a screw. "Can you tell me who I am?"

"Dr. Carr." My voice is a feather, a butterfly wing. I shiver.

He smiles and when he does, his lips slice thin and it makes me think of a cut on my arm. "And you have a special name for me, don't you, Maria? What is it?"

"Black Eyes."

I can feel my nerves tense, and so I scan the room as a distraction. The walls are white, and by them stand three stainless steel seats and two cream Formica tables. There are no pictures or soft materials, just brown plastic blinds and two officers guarding the doors, with handguns hanging by their sides. I don't like it and so start to jig my leg.

"Maria, look at me. Can you look at me?"

"No." Jig, jig. "I want to go home."

His smile slips, and without warning, his arm whips out and slaps my leg still. "Stop stimming and look at me."

A sting like one hundred needle points pricks my skin. My leg drops still. I want to scream at him, jolted by the feel of his touch, but am too scared because I know he could shout and the noise would bother me too much, and so instead I attempt to do as he says so he won't touch me again.

He rolls his fingers into his palm and withdraws his hand to his lap. "I'm sorry for that," he says. "We are on a tight deadline today."

I strain my eyelids, force my sight to stare straight at him, but it is hard, hurts, almost in an uncomfortable way, as if opening my eyes to his, to anyone's, would allow them to see into me, see into my thoughts. In the end, I manage to make contact for only two seconds, then have to look away, exhausted.

He inhales. "For the next few hours, I want you to practice making eye contact for half a conversation. This will help you slip more seamlessly into a regular situation if you ever go operational. Make you appear more ... normal. Yes?" He smiles and I think I see tiny eye creases crinkle out on the corners of his face, but I am unsure. "Yes, Maria?"

"Yes," I respond on autopilot.

"Good. Look at me." I do. "One second longer, that's it. Two, three, four ... Good. You can lower your eyes now."

I drop my gaze, shattered, as he takes notes in green ink on a yellow page. Behind him, a woman walks over, petite, a tattoo of a cross on her brown neck, hair cropped so closely her scalp shines through it. The woman stops and whispers in Black Eyes' ear. I cannot hear them, so I bend forward a little; yet, when I look down at my thin, gowned body, the probes sticking out, it is merely crumpled, having barely moved at all. Beside me, the heart rate monitor beeps faster.

My body shifts on the bed. Black Eyes is nodding now to the woman who has appeared in the room, and at first the words they whisper fade into the squashed air, but after two then three seconds, their sentences filter through as, slowly, my ears switch fully on.

"The program is showing her skills are improving, Dr. Carr," the woman whispers. "Her handler at the church is communicating very positive results."

"Such as?"

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Killing Files by Nikki Owen. Copyright © 2016 Nikki Owen. Excerpted by permission of Blackstone Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1504780655
• ISBN 13: 9781504780650
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320