The Carbon Trail by Catriona King

what? Following Mitchell? So what? They’ve had him under surveillance for months. But they knew nothing for sure. Now they will try harder. We will have them crawling over us, searching for connections.”
    She stopped and shot Elza a venomous look.
    “Do you know why you’re still alive?”
    Elza’s hand flew to her throat protectively and she shook her head.
    “Instead of Mitchell coming here now to work he must be brought to a new research facility. You will bring him there.”
    “But he hates me. He told me never to speak to him again.”
    Daria raised an eyebrow questioningly.
    “When was this?”
    Elza smiled slyly, remembering, and Daria wanted to slap her pretty face.
    “We had sex in his office and then he got angry with me. Like he’d suddenly developed a conscience about his wife.” She snorted. “That was a first. We’ve been fucking for two years and he’s never even mentioned her, except to say how boring she was. Now he suddenly turns moral!”
    “Did he say anything more?”
    “Just that when he made a deal he stuck to it. And he didn’t want to see my whoring face again. But…”
    “What?”
    “I don’t know exactly. There was something in his attitude. Different, somehow. When I mentioned the deal he asked what it was, then tried to cover it up by saying he was testing me.”
    Daria’s eyes widened, then she shook her head. Mitchell had been to the café the day before and he’d been fine. She would have spotted anything amiss. She smiled frostily. The girl was imagining things; getting emotionally involved.
    “Do you love him?”
    “What?”
    “Do you love Mitchell? Do you have visions of him leaving his wife and sailing into the sunset with you?”
    Elza flushed and turned away from Daria’s cool gaze, trying to mask her feelings before she answered the question; too loudly.
    “NO!”
    It was too vehement a protest and Elza knew it. Her mind raced, the thoughts tripping over themselves. Did she love Mitchell? She’d been watching him for two years and their longest conversation had been coital. But… Something tugged at her heart and she knew that the old woman was right. She hated Daria for her scrutiny; and for her insight.
    Elza turned back to her interrogator. Instead of the slap across the face she expected she was greeted by an amused smile and a look of...what? Understanding? No, definitely not that. Pity, it was pity. Daria felt sorry for her! In that instant Elza saw past Daria Kaverin’s grey hair and dry skin to the beauty she must once have been. A beauty who had known love and lost it. The two women sat in silence for a moment, each locked in their own thoughts, until Daria pulled herself upright and smiled.
    “I know now why you killed for Mitchell. Do not worry; we covered it as a mugging. It is good to know you will kill to protect the mission.” Daria’s voice became solemn. “You may soon have to do so again.”
    ***
    Mitchell ended his call to Abassi Idowu and leaned back in his chair, feeling even more confused. The cleaner said he’d found Chapman’s phone on Thursday morning, near the research suite door. But according to the computer no-one but Devon and he had entered the lab since last week. How had Greg Chapman left his phone there? And when? The logical answer was sometime on Wednesday evening. That was when the missed calls had started piling up on Chapman’s phone.
    But Chapman couldn’t have been in the lab on Wednesday night or he would have remembered seeing him there. Unless Chapman had been part of the cleaning crew? Except that he wasn’t. They’d had the same staff for two years and none of them was called Greg.
    Mitchell sat for a moment, going round in circles and trying to think of other trails to pursue. All of them led back to Jenny in personnel and she’d been too curious the day before on the phone. It would be tempting fate to call her a second time.
    His thoughts were interrupted by a sharp rap on the door. It opened