Page 35 of The Shadow Code (Heroes of War #3)

T he telephone rang the moment Ellie stepped inside the flat. She was still wearing her coat, one glove halfway off, the flat dim and cold around her. The sound cut through the stillness like a scalpel and she stepped forward, tentatively lifting the Bakelite receiver.

A pause.

‘Hello, Ellie.’

Not Sinclair or Jack. But someone who knew the name, the rhythm of it, the intimacy. Her mouth ran dry, and her blood turned to ice. She said nothing. But she knew. It was the same man as before, his voice smooth, calculated.

‘You don’t listen, do you?’

The silence in her flat intensified and she tightened her grip on the receiver.

A slow exhalation from the other end. ‘This is your final chance to walk away.’

She didn’t answer, didn’t react, even as the unease writhed, dark and sharp, inside her ribs. Then: ‘Not much of a warning, is it?’ Her voice was dry, edged with defiance.

A low chuckle, controlled but menacing. ‘You think this is a game?’ The tone had changed. Less indulgent. ‘You should have stayed at Scotland Yard.’

The words landed like a gunshot. Ellie’s breath stilled as the cold rushed in all at once, crawling over her skin, creeping into her bones. They’d been watching her, letting her think she was investigating them when really, they were hunting her.

The voice continued, casual now, as if they were discussing the weather. ‘I wonder what your old colleagues would say, if they knew what really happened with Sinclair.’

Her grip on the receiver slipped slightly, fingers slick with cold sweat. No one had known about that. Her parents would never have approved and so she had kept it secret. But someone obviously knew. And that meant whoever was calling had access either to MI5 records, or to Sinclair himself.

The warning wasn’t just a threat. It was proof she was in far deeper than she had realised.

‘If you’re so powerful,’ she said, her voice level, edged with steel, ‘why hide behind a telephone?’

A beat of silence.

‘If you care about your father, you’ll do the right thing.’

She heard the click as the line went dead.

Silence followed, heavier than before, and Ellie lowered the receiver slowly, her breath shallow.

The first call at the Yard had been chilling, a warning, but this was personal.

She felt a shift in the air, as if the menacing voice had contaminated her home.

Her wool coat pressed heavily around her shoulders and her fingers caught on the buttons as she tried to undo them, fumbling.

That’s when she noticed her hands were shaking.

Sinclair’s return had opened old wounds, feelings she’d been trying to bury. And now this warning. She crossed to the sink, gripping the cold porcelain, anchoring herself. This wasn’t a faceless enemy lurking in the dark. This was someone close, with access, who wanted her gone.

For the first time, she wasn’t just questioning what she was chasing, she was questioning whether she could survive it.

They wanted her afraid, wanted her to back down.

They wanted her afraid, to back down. But fear had never stopped her before, and it wouldn’t now.

The fire in her gut flared to life. Someone was digging through her past and she needed to know why.

Someone was digging through her past and she needed to know why.

She crossed to the desk, pulled out Templeton’s coded message and her notebook, then began scribbling notes about the cryptic telephone call: his words, the time, the tone.

As dusk closed in, she drew the blackout curtains and switched on the standing lamp. Soon she was sitting on the floor, cross-legged, the rug scattered with papers, open files, half-drained cups of tea. The coded message lay before her, creased from countless readings.

She should have gone to bed. Jack would expect her to rest. But every time she closed her eyes, she saw her father’s face: younger, sitting in his study with a scientific journal, lost in equations.

He had no idea how close the danger had come.

There was a connection she was missing. A thread she hadn’t followed far enough.

Kingfisher. Even Sinclair had known the name.

Whoever they were, they were pulling the strings.

She scribbled notes in the margins, then crossed them out and started over.

Kingfisher was the key. The voice on the telephone, the threats against her father, Sinclair’s cryptic warnings—it all led back to that code name.

They thought they were controlling the game, moving her like a pawn.

But she was determined to turn the board around.