Sphinx watches me from under an arched brow. “What are you doing?”
His eyeliner is all smudged, and his hair is sticking up in all different directions.
“You look adorable.”
“You take that back,” he says with mock offence. “I am not adorable.”
A giggle bubbles out of my throat, and I brush his hair back. “You totally are, and I’m sitting up because we need to put a plan together.”
His face turns serious, the playful expression falling from his features. “I need to show you something because it might affect what you choose to do next.”
“What is it?”
Sphinx leans over the side of my bed and pulls his laptop out of his bag. “I’ve been running a program to organise the data we found on the phone.” He fires the screen up, and there’s so much code running on it that it makes no sense to me. He clicks a little icon, enters a string of characters—which I’m guessing is the longest, most complicated password ever—and a folder opens with a list of names. “The program sorts the data by name, be it a person or a place or organisation.”
There are hundreds of names. Politicians. Society leaders. Ministers. “Fuck. Bennie knew alot.”
“You’re telling me,” Sphinx huffs. “But this is what I want to show you.”
He scrolls down through the alphabet. N. O. P… finally stopping under Q.
QUINN, Rory.
I can’t say I’m surprised that Bennie had a file on my dad, but I am curious as to what’s in it. I wonder what secrets Bennie had on the infamous Rory Quinn.
“Echo, once you look in there, there’s no going back,” Sphinx warns.
I look up into his pale blue eyes and see something flicker in their depths, something that makes my stomach churn. Fear and sorrow. “What’s in there?”
He takes a deep sigh and places the laptop on my knee. “Just… look.”
The small yellow file beckons me closer, but I can’t quite bring myself to look in it. Dread wraps a heavy hold around my hands, keeping them away from clicking the folder. I can’t even begin to comprehend what on earth could have Sphinx looking like someone just died. I know my dad isn’t a saint; he’s not even really a good man, but what could be contained in there that has Sphinx so worried?
My hand trembles as I move the cursor over the folder and double-click the pad. There are a number of subfolders: Finance, Stock, and Property. Nothing out of the ordinary, but then I see something that makes my blood run cold. There’s a file there that says ‘Norah Nolan’.
Why did Bennie have secrets on my mum?
I open the folder and see a myriad of images and documents. There are photos of her with some man, and she’s laughing and smiling. She looks happy and in love, but I don’t understand why. Who is this man? Why does he seem familiar? I try to remember where I know him from, but the harder I try, the more distant the memory gets.
I trace the lines of my mum’s face. I look so much like her, except for the hair. Hers is the colour of warm chocolate, and her eyes are a slightly darker shade than mine, like the colour of emeralds.
I pull up one of the docs, and it looks like an acknowledgement of a payment. No, wait. There are two, both for £500,000 and dated three days apart.
Then there’s an email from my dad to some random email address confirming the money had been wired.
“Who’s Larke?”
Sphinx grimaces and purses his lips. “A high-end hitman for hire.”
“Wh-what?” Why was my dad paying a hitman? No, it wasn’t possible. Dad loved Mum. Didn’t he? Why would he want her murdered?
Memories flash before my eyes. Mum pushing me on a swing in the park, riding the carousel with me, and making sandcastles on the beach.
Recognition hits me like a fucking freight train.
Hatcher. Mum’s bodyguard. The guy she’s smiling with in the pictures.
“Holy fuck. Mum had an affair?”
