Scorpia Rising

why, although one of the reasons might have been the Italian teacher who was twenty-nine, dark, and built like a boxer. She was certainly taking it seriously with private lessons twice a week and tapes every night.
    “You’re not worrying about me, are you? I haven’t heard a thing from MI6.”
    “I know,” Jack said. “It’s not that.” She shook her head. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”
    Ten minutes later, Alex was on his way, cycling to school on the new Raleigh Pioneer 160 that he’d bought to replace his old Condor Roadracer. It wouldn’t have been his first choice, but he’d managed to get a deal from the supplier and it was perfect for getting around London, not too flashy, not likely to get stolen. And after he’d changed the seat to an ergonomically designed Rido R2, it was comfortable enough too. Glancing around, he saw Jack standing at the door, waving him good-bye. That was strange too. Normally, she wouldn’t have left the kitchen.
    But it was a beautiful spring day. The sun was shining. Alex forgot about her as he accelerated toward the King’s Road. A moment later he had turned the corner and he was gone.

    Jack closed the door.
    She was annoyed with herself. She still hadn’t talked to Alex about the letter she had received a week ago. It was typical of her mother to put it all down with pen and paper rather than to telephone or send an e-mail. Her parents weren’t that old, only in their sixties, but they had always been purposefully old-fashioned—as if they were determined to show that their world was better than the one that was taking shape all around them.
    And now her father was ill. He’d had a stroke at the start of the spring and he needed someone to look after him. Jack’s mother did what she could. Jack had an older sister, but she was living in Florida with three young children of her own. Jack had now been in England for coming up to ten years and her mother was suggesting, very gently, that she ought to think about coming home.
    And in her heart, Jack knew that she was right. Maybe it was time to go.
    It wasn’t just because of her father. She had her own future to think about. Here she was in London, almost thirty and single. She had first come to England as a student with a place at St. Martin’s School of Art, planning to become a jewelry designer. She had started working for Ian Rider to pay the fees and somehow she had allowed herself to get sucked into his world. In the early days, she would live at the Chelsea house when Ian Rider was abroad, taking Alex to school, then slipping away to do her studies until it was time to pick him up. But Ian had been away more and more often until it had made sense to move in permanently. Suddenly, without ever really choosing it, she had become part of the family, almost a big sister for Alex. She had adored him from the start, even when he was seven years old. And she felt sorry for him too. She had been told that both his parents had died in a plane crash, and she could see that Ian Rider was no substitute, not when he traveled so much.
    And then Ian Rider had died and everything had changed.
    Had she ever wondered about her employer? He had told her he worked in international banking and she had taken his word for it, but looking back, she knew that she had been foolish. No international banker kept three different passports in his desk drawer. Jack had come upon them once, looking for a pair of scissors, and she had asked him about them. It was the only time Ian Rider had ever been angry with her.
    “Never ask me about my work, Jack. It’s the one thing I’ll never talk about. Not with you. Not with Alex . . .”
    She could hear his voice now and wondered how she could have been so stupid. No international bankers stayed away for weeks at a time—and certainly none of them returned with so many inexplicable injuries. Ian had been mugged in Rome, involved in a car crash in Geneva, and broken his arm skiing in Vancouver. He had joked about it, saying he was accident prone . . . until, that is, the final accident had revealed the truth.
    What Alex didn’t know, what Jack had never told him, was that she had actually decided to leave two weeks before Ian Rider had set off for Cornwall on the mission that had killed him. She had even gone as far as typing out her resignation letter. She had felt dreadful—but thinking about it, she was sure she was doing the right thing. She wasn’t going to be a nanny and a