Witness X by Dawson Mark & Mariani Scott

Author:Dawson, Mark & Mariani, Scott [Dawson, Mark & Mariani, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: thriller, Mystery, Suspense
Amazon: B0788SRC2P
Goodreads: 37536435
Publisher: Unputdownable
Published: 2017-12-13T08:00:00+00:00

THE COTSWOLDS

14

Duffy drove fast out of the city, hammered the Omega north-westwards up the M40 to Oxford and then veered off the ring road to carve his way out into the sticks. The Cotswolds offered all kinds of scenic routes through pretty little villages, but he hadn’t come out this way for a pleasant day trip. Just over an hour after leaving London, the Omega rolled up at the edge of the hamlet where Tony and Tamsin Bell had their occasional weekend hideaway.

The thatched cottage was straight off a picture postcard, nestling in a secluded third of an acre away from the prying eyes of neighbours, which suited Duffy just fine. For his visit to Bell’s London home, he’d worn fashionably faded blue jeans and a sports jacket, the right touch of smart-casual. For this job he’d changed into black combat trousers, black polo neck, black jacket. He pulled on a pair of tight-fitting gloves, then popped the boot lid of the Omega and, from a NATO-issue deployment bag, took a nine-millimetre Glock 17 in a clip-on holster that he attached to his belt under the jacket. He didn’t expect to need it, but not wearing a weapon on the job made him feel strangely naked, like being without a watch. And he was dealing with dangerous operators.

Duffy favoured the Glock because he felt it reflected his own nature. Like him, it had no safety catch. It existed in a constant state of latent violence, always ready for action. He trusted nobody else to load or clean his firearms. He’d spent an hour early that morning stripping it, oiling it, then doing it all over again until the action was butter smooth. He’d filled the magazine with the Hydra-Shok hollow-point rounds that he favoured for velocity and expansion.

It took him only a few minutes to slip inside the cottage and disable the alarm system. His purpose here was the same as his earlier visit to the house in Highgate: to install some simple but effective surveillance. In a small black shoulder bag, he was carrying a variety of highly specialised, very expensive miniature cameras and bugs, as well as a keystroke logger identical to the one that he’d already fitted to Bell’s London computer.

The cottage was typical, the kind of thing you’d expect to find as the second home of rich Londoners: craggy oak beams, exposed stone walls, spotless inglenook fireplace with a wicker basket for split firewood logs that would probably never be used, leaded windows with those cute window seats all piled with embroidered cushions. Quaint English country charm, one hundred percent artificial and at a whopping price tag that became a lot more manageable if you supplemented your income by selling missile technology to maniacs who might use it to loft nuclear warheads.

Every room had the same phony designer styling. Dining room, study, bathroom, main bedroom… Duffy spent a lingering moment staring at the bed and tried not to let himself imagine Tamsin and Tony together. That was almost as difficult as getting the picture of her shockingly mutilated face out of his mind.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.