Even Heroes Fall

27. Violet

The sound of sirens made me nervous as I paced the hotel suite where Miranda and I were staying temporarily whilst the Met decided whether or not we were at risk. I couldn't complain about the luxuriousness of the hotel, or the fact there were two bedrooms, and a main room giving us all the space we needed. But I hated this feeling of being locked up, being unable to anything helpful whilst Marshall was missing and all Max cared about was the bloody flashdrive.

It was safely in my pocket, although I dare not use it with Miranda hovering close by. She seemed to have recovered from the attempted kidnapping at Theodore's funeral and was now in furious phone conversations first with her lawyer and then after with her numerous society friends. 

I'd had a message from Jo earlier asking if "anyone was every coming home" and I assumed she was referring to the fact I was missing, Laura was at work, and Celia was god knows where. I dropped her a text to let her know I was staying with my mum (not a total lie), and then checked with Laura to see how she was doing. I knew work had been crazy busy for her over the past few days. Her response was brief:

yeah all gd here, incident down at Creekmouth brought in bunch of dodgy looking guys all beat up refusing to give statements, treating as best we can but rushed off our feet! Hope ur OK xx

I frowned at her words as something niggled in my brain. I knew she worked at Barking Hospital but it seemed strange that an incident close by had provided the hospital with a load of what sounded like criminals. I Googled Creekmouth and it turned out to be some kind of industrial estate in the North London docks. Then something Max said came back to me about Castlemain's hideout being close to the river, but he was not sure exactly where. As I was turning over this new information I received another text but it was not from Laura, it was from Max.

Got this from Celia, thought you would want to kno she is ok:

"We need to talk, meet me at Barking Power station at four pm, C"

Blinking at the message, the first sign of life from Celia in almost a week, I dragged up Google maps again and checked the location of Barking Power Station. It was just up the road from Creekmouth. That could not be a coincidence. 

Checking mum was safely out of earshot in her room, shouting down the phone to her lawyer, I called Max.

'Oh, you're answering now?' He sounded terse.

I breathed through my annoyance at him so I would not give a snappy retort. His refusal to act like a real hero in times like these was extremely irritating, but maybe that was why we needed to become a team. As much as I hated to admit it having him around was useful for things I was not strong enough to do, and I was obviously going to have to act as his sense of right and wrong as his seemed off half the time.

'Don't go,' I replied quickly, once I held back my own angry reply. I was worried he was already on his way there as it was close to three thirty already. 'It's a trap.'

'How do you know?'

'Laura,' I said, hastily, as a plan formed in my head I ran into my hotel room and grabbed my bag. I unzipped it and started searching for my temporary Justice outfit. 'She's been overwhelmed with patients the past couple of days from an "incident" close by.'

'I know, I spoke to her yesterday.'

'She works at Barking Hospital.' I tucked the phone under my ear, stripping off my jeans to pull on my Justice clothes. 'Said a bunch of beat up dodgy looking guys came in from an incident at Creekmouth. Max, that is just down the road from the power station, what if-'