The Phoenix

She wasn’t here for a procedure today, only for a longer consultation with another of the clinic’s surgeons, the nose job specialist Dr Henry Butler. But she still had that look about her, as if she were about to face the firing squad. Why on earth couldn’t these women trust their own instincts?

Samantha approached the desk. For one, hopeful moment the receptionist thought she was going to cancel and leave. But instead she asked where the ladies’ room was.

The receptionist pointed to a door across the hall. ‘But I believe somebody’s in there at the moment.’

‘Is there another one? I’m sorry but I … I need to go urgently. I think I might be sick.’

‘Here.’ Reaching into a drawer, the receptionist handed over a key. ‘Patients aren’t really supposed to use it, but if it’s an emergency.’

‘Thank you,’ Samantha grabbed the key gratefully.

‘It’s on the first floor, next to the pre-op suite,’ the receptionist told her. ‘Turn right at the top of the stairs.’

Halfway up the stairs, Ella leaned back against the wall and took a moment to compose herself. So far, everything had gone remarkably smoothly. She’d had a Plan B in place, in case the receptionist had refused to direct her upstairs. Together with Gabriel, she’d identified three different windows of opportunity for encountering Athena when she would be both alone and incapacitated. But her nerves were already starting to get the better of her, and she was relieved to be able to act now.

In her right hand, she clutched the bathroom key. In her left, thrust deep into her jacket pocket, she felt the contours of the syringe.

‘It’s incredibly simple,’ Gabriel had assured her over dinner last night at Hakkasan in Mayfair. Relieved to have abandoned his wild-goose chase in Istanbul, at least for the moment, he was sipping warm sake as if the next day’s assassination attempt was just a regular day at the office. ‘You use it like an epi pen. Stab her anywhere at all on her body. Through clothes is fine. You just stab, push and go.’

Ella climbed the stairs and turned right. The ladies’ room was in front of her to the left. Pre-op was straight ahead. If the schedule was going according to plan, Athena should be in there right now, heavily sedated, and alone.

You just stab, push and go.

Kill and go, you mean, thought Ella, moving towards the door. Gabriel had probably done this sort of thing scores of times. But for Ella it was all new, and a step she couldn’t take back. Once she had ‘stabbed’ and ‘pushed’, Athena Petridis would be dead and she, Ella Praeger, would be a killer. A murderer. Yes, she was avenging her parents’ deaths, and ridding the world of an evil, dangerous woman. It wasn’t that she was having second thoughts about the morality of what she was about to do. It was more that she knew that from this moment on, her life would forever be divided into ‘before’ and ‘after’.

The hallway was deserted. A whiteboard on the wall outside the room had the word ‘Hambrecht’ scrawled on it in marker pen.

This is it, thought Ella. Stab, push and go. Stab, push and go.

Try as she might, she couldn’t seem to stop her hands from shaking.

Parked outside the back entrance to the clinic in a nondescript white Ford transit van, Cameron McKinley felt his mouth go dry and his heart begin to beat uncomfortably fast.

‘Are you certain?’

‘Yes, sir. Quite certain. It’s her. What should I do?’

Shit, thought Cameron. Shit, shit, shit.

Ella Praeger was there. In the clinic. Right now. How was that possible?

It had been a long time since Cameron had stooped to become personally involved in hit jobs for Makis Alexiadis, or any of his clients for that matter. But after the debacle with the Praeger girl in Italy, when those cretins managed to ‘lose’ her from a moving speedboat, he couldn’t afford another screw-up. One more mistake would cost him not just this most lucrative and loyal client but, in all likelihood, his life. He had to get this right.

Last week he’d gone into Wimpole Street himself, posing as an electrician, to get the lie of the land and to make sure everything went smoothly on the day of the kidnap. Once Athena Petridis was safely unconscious and in the back of his van, he would drive her out to a secluded, private woodland in Essex, shoot her himself, and bury her with his own two hands. Only then would he feel confident that Makis could truly forgive him. Only then would he be safe.

‘Sir?’ Roger Carlton, Cameron’s partner for today’s job, was one of his most senior and trusted operatives. ‘Sorry, but I have to go back inside soon or I’ll be missed. I need an answer.’

‘OK,’ said Cameron, beads of sweat forming on his brow. ‘Hold on. I’ll get back to you.’

If Ella Praeger was here, it must be for the same reason they were: to kill Athena. Cameron McKinley could not let that happen.

Stomach churning, he ca

lled Mak.

‘Kill her. Do it! Kill them both.’

The excitement in Alexiadis’s voice was terrifying. He sounded manic. Deranged.