She groaned, clasping her hands to her belly.
Helen turned around slowly. She made no reaction to her patient’s obvious distress. Instead, removing her baseball cap, she placed it deliberately on the table beside her, and ran a hand over the fuzz covering her shaven skull.
Athena grimaced. ‘Call Georgiou,’ she hissed, through clenched teeth. ‘Tell him … Dr Farouk …’ She was fighting for breath now, gasping like a stranded fish. The numb heat in her fingers and toes was spreading along her arms and legs, making it difficult to move, and her lungs and chest felt painfully constricted.
What’s happening? She fought back a surge of panic. Am I having a heart attack? Or a stroke? Am I going to die?
Wide-eyed and frightened, she stared helplessly at Helen. Why was the stupid girl just standing there doing nothing? Surely she could see something was very wrong? Why hadn’t she gone to fetch Georgiou, the butler, as Athena had requested? Opening her mouth to protest, Athena found her jaw was suddenly clamped shut. A rigor-like tension was setting in to her neck and facial muscles in some awful, painful paralysis. Flailing her arms, she clutched wildly at a side table, missed and landed with a thud on the carpeted floor.
Immobile, eyes glazed, she watched as dumpy Helen stepped over her, with no more ceremony than if she were a sack of rubbish or a rolled-up rug. Walking slowly over to the door, Helen locked it with an audible click. Then she flipped a switch to darken the windows to blackout and turned on the overhead lights.
She knows her way around the house, thought Athena, clocking the girl’s sure, confident movements as she glided around the room, straightening a tablecloth here or a framed photograph there, taking her time.
Finally satisfied, Helen sat down and gazed impassively at Athena, lying motionless on the floor. Athena’s sense of foreboding grew. Something clearly wasn’t right. Why won’t the fat slug help me? A dribble of saliva escaped Athena’s lips as she struggled again to speak. And then, suddenly, through the fog of terror and confusion, it dawned on her.
The powder. ‘I use it with all my clients.’
She’s poisoned me. The bitch has poisoned me!
Even in the throes of panic, Athena’s sharp mind raced. Who was this girl? ‘Helen’ knew where all the switches and systems were inside the villa. She’d clearly been here before. Had she worked for Makis? Was she loyal to him, perhaps, or to someone else within his faction? Dr Farouk had recommended her. Had he been on Makis’s payroll too? Perhaps they were both part of a rebel clique within the organization still plotting to overthrow her, a hardcore Mykonos inner circle? Dimitri had warned her about coming here to Makis’s own lair so soon after her rival’s demise. If only she’d listened!
Removing her cap, Ella leaned back and shifted forwards in her chair, trying to find a less uncomfortable position. The prosthetic fat rolls she wore under her scrubs chafed everywhere and made every small movement more difficult. But as she’d learned at Camp Hope, changing one’s body language and walk could be two of the most important elements in a successful disguise. Being heavy and ungainly had helped her feel like Helen, and that alone had been enough to pull the wool over Athena’s self-centered, narcissistic eyes.
She’d imagined this moment countless times: revealing herself to Athena as she lay dying, so that the monster’s final thought on earth would be that Rachel Praeger’s daughter had outsmarted and destroyed her. That she, Ella Praeger, had fulfilled her life’s destiny and avenged her mother’s murder at last. But now that it was actually happening, the closure she’d dreamed of eluded her. She felt no pity for Athena. She deserved none. But although it pained her to admit it, Ella found herself disappointed, even regretful, that their cat-and-mouse game should be coming to an end. For better or worse, there had been a connection between the two of them. Ella had felt it back at the convent, and she was sure Athena felt it too: a toxic yet magnetic pull towards each other. An intertwining of their lives and fates and purposes, so that only one of them could ultimately survive. Athena’s death would mean that Ella had won. But it would also mean the game was over. It shocked Ella to realize just how desolate that made her feel.
‘You!’ Athena gasped, the effort of forming and expelling the word almost more than she could bear. Soon, she knew, speech would be impossible. She must try now.
‘You recognize me, then?’ the girl asked, but in English this time, the flawless English of a native-born American. Her eyes bored defiantly into Athena’s own. How could she not have seen it before? The high cheekbones, those wide-set cartoon eyes …
‘You’re the girl from the convent,’ she tried to say. ‘The bakery girl!’ But what actually came out was a slurred mass of words, barely comprehensible.
With an effort, Ella caught the word ‘bakery’.
‘That’s right. Very good. I was the girl from the bakery on Folegandros. You saw me at the convent that day.’ Heaving herself out of the chair, Ella kneeled down so that her face was only inches from Athena’s. ‘I ought to have killed you then but I was too inexperienced. I wasn’t prepared, and I was following orders. Not any more, though. I play by my own rules now.’
She smiled, reflecting for a moment that it was actually she and Gabriel who had set the agenda for today’s strike. The reality was it was their rules now, not just hers. Almost without her noticing, their relationship had shifted from ‘mentor and recruit’, to allies, to true partners. Even so, killing Athena Petridis was personal to Ella Praeger in a way that it could never be for Gabriel, no matter how much he hated her.
Reaching down, she slipped her hands under Athena’s armpits and dragged her across the room, before pulling her up into a sitting position and propping her back against the base of an armchair. Her paralysis was almost complete now, so it was like moving a dead weight.
This woman murdered your mother, she reminded herself, determined not to allow any glimmer of compassion to creep in and derail her. Rachel had begged for her life. She had pleaded with Athena – as a woman, as a mother – to spare her. But Athena had just watched while Spyros held her head under the water. While he drowned her like an unwanted cat in a bag.
Strengthened, Ella began the monologue she’d been rehearsing in her head for days.
‘You have between five and fifteen minutes left, in case you were wondering,’ she told Athena. ‘Nobody’s coming. These are your last moments on earth. I’d like you to think about that.’
The slumped figure made a low, groaning noise, mostly through her nose, but that was all.
‘The liquid you just drank contained a nerve agent. It’s similar to Novichok, which I know you’re familiar with,’ Ella went on. ‘It’s fatal, irreversible, and reasonably painful. Although not as painful as you deserve. The cramps are from your stomach starting to hemorrhage, although your lungs or heart are likely to give way before that kills you.’
Another groan
and the rolling of the eyes triggered a seizure-like spasm, stiff and uncontrolled. Foam had begun to appear at the corners of Athena’s newly perfected lips, a sign that things were progressing more swiftly than Ella had intended. There wasn’t much time.
‘My real name is Ella. Ella Praeger,’ she said quickly, scanning Athena’s expression for a reaction. But all she could make out was the generalized fear and dilated pupils of a person anticipating imminent death. Had she left it too late?
But no. Athena ought to be lucid, right to the end. The poison Ella had administered had no effect on the cognitive function of the brain. Victims were supposed to be able to hear, see and understand perfectly, despite the pain.
‘My mother was Rachel Praeger,’ Ella pushed on, tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘You stood by and watched while your husband drowned her on a private beach near Athens. Do you remember?’