Free Remote Control by Andy McNab

grabbed Kelly’s hand, then realized that, to reach the front door, I’d have to come out of the kitchen and into the hallway.
    ‘Just sit there a second,’ I said, ‘I’ve got to do something.’
    I had a quick check to make sure the doors were closed. I thought again about fingerprints but, if I’d missed a set, there was nothing I could do about it now. My only thought was to get out of the area and keep Kelly away from the police until I’d sorted things out.
    I went back and got her and checked the front of the house again for movement. She seemed to be finding it hard to walk. I had to grip Kev’s coat by the collar and half drag her towards the car.
    I put her in the front passenger seat and smiled, ‘There you go, that’s nice and warm. Better look after your dad’s coat for him. Keep it nice for when you see him.’
    Then I threw the bin liner in the back, settled into the driver’s seat, put my seat belt on and turned the ignition. We drove off at a really sensible pace, nothing outrageous, nothing likely to be noticed.
    We’d only gone a few hundred yards when I thought of something; I looked across at her and said, ‘Kelly, put your seat belt on. Do you know how to do that?’
    She didn’t move, didn’t even look at me. I had to do it for her.
    I tried to make small talk. ‘It’s a nice day today, isn’t it? Yep, you’ll stay with me a while; we’ll get everything sorted out.’
    Silence.
    My mind switched back to the matter in hand. What was I going to do? Whatever I decided, I knew it was no good where we were at the moment; we needed to lose ourselves in a crowd. I headed for Tyson’s Corner.
    I turned to Kelly and smiled, trying to be happy-go-lucky Uncle Nick, but it just wasn’t happening. She was staring anxiously out of the window, as if she thought she was being wrenched away from all her familiar landmarks and seeing them for the last time.
    ‘It’s OK, Kelly.’ I tried to stroke her hair.
    She jerked her head away.
    Fuck it, just let her get on with it; with luck I’d be able to offload her before too long.
    I turned my thoughts to Kev. He’d said he had some information about my ‘friends over the water’. Could it have been PIRA who’d killed him? What the hell for? It was highly unlikely that they’d start messing about like that, not in America. They were too switched on to bite the hand that was feeding them.
    Other things weren’t adding up. Why wasn’t there a struggle? Both Marsha and Kev knew where the weapons were. Why weren’t they used? Why was the front door ajar? There was no way that would have happened. People didn’t just wander in off the street into Kev’s house, they had to be invited in.
    I felt a rush of anger. If the family had been killed in a car crash, fair one. If the killers had come in and maybe shot them, I’d be upset, but, at the end of the day, if you live by the sword, you must be prepared to die by the sword. But not this way. They’d been hacked about for no reason that I could see.
    I forced myself to think rationally. There was no way I could phone the police and explain my version. Although I’d been lifted off, I was still operating in another country without its consent. It goes on in the UK, too, but getting caught would be a big no-no. The operation here would be seen as a sign of betrayal and would create distrust between the two security communities. There was no way SIS would back me up; that would defeat the whole purpose of deniable ops. I was on my own.
    Looking at my passenger I knew I had a problem. As we drove towards Tyson’s Corner I realized what I had to do. I saw a Best Western hotel on the left and an open-plan mall on the right. I had to dump the car because, if I’d been seen, that was one of the connections between me and the house. I needed somewhere to leave it that wasn’t isolated, somewhere without video cameras. As well as the shopping mall and its massive car parks, satelliting it was a