Chapter 26
CHAPTER 26
LUKE MAY HAVE kicked me out, but no way was I giving up.
Old me never gave up, and tonight, I felt more alive than I had in months. I also felt kind of guilty about that.
What did I have in my pockets? A wad of cash, a set of lock picks I’d got at the same time as the knife, and the phone I’d bought after I got to England.Not enough. If I was going to help Luke, I needed more equipment, especially as he wasn’t keen on my assistance.
Based on past experience, the kidnappers wouldn’t be in touch straight away. Now the first contact had been made, my money was on them leaving Luke to stew for a while. They wanted him tired and unable to think straight.
Not too long, though, because that had other risks. The longer Tia was missing, the more likely others would notice and involve the police.My educated guess was that the next contact would be in the early hours. That gave me a bit of time.I just hoped it would be long enough to do everything I needed to before the circus started.
I set off on foot into the village, keeping in the shadows. The kidnapper’s message had said “they” were watching, but I was fairly sure there was nobody out the front of the house. I hadn’t seen anyone in the lane earlier, and more importantly, I hadn’t felt anyone.
The woods out the back would provide a better hiding place, but I’d check those later, and the gardens next door. The kidnapper had referred to “we” rather than “I,” but a gang was unlikely. A pair, maybe, but more than that tended to lead to infighting.I’d worked one case where three idiots argued so much, one ended up in hospital while the abductee snuck out the back. Made my job an awful lot easier. I had a feeling this case wasn’t going to be so simple, though.
As I neared the village, I called a taxi to meet me outside The Coach and Horses. Nobody would bat an eyelid at a cab picking somebody up from a pub. Within ten minutes, an ancient Vauxhall Vectra with a taxi plate on the back rolled into the car park.
“Where to, love?” the driver asked.
“London, please. Belgravia. I’ll give you directions when we get closer.”
It took just under an hour to reach my destination, a part of the world I hadn’t visited since last year. I had the cab pull over to the side of the main road and hopped out.
“Keep the change.” Money wouldn’t be so much of a problem now.
“Thanks, love. Do you want me to wait?”
“No, I’m fine from here.”
I walked along a couple of side streets until an eight-foot wall loomed ahead. Cameras watched me—I could see their red eyes in the gloom. I crossed the road and hopped up on a rubbish bin, one installed by the council last year in an effort to keep the borough tidy. The extra height allowed me to see the house beyond the wall. No lights. No movement.
Good.
As the occasional car trundled past, I walked around the block and went through the same routine at the front. A single window glowed next to the front door. Ruth, the housekeeper, had always been a creature of habit, and she turned the hall light on when she left each day, a welcome for anyone coming home late.
I smiled in the darkness. Albany House looked the same as the last time I visited, and better still, it appeared nobody was home.
Ten minutes. I had ten minutes to get in and out, and I set the timer on my watch. The instant I breached the perimeter, a unit would be dispatched from the London base of my company, but even if the driver broke the speed limit, they’d take fifteen minutes to get there.
How about the police? Well, they didn’t worry me. Nobody would make that call. After all, it wasn’t against the law for me to break into my own home, was it?
I put my head down, vaulted over the gate, and jogged along the driveway. High up on the wall, the camera swivelled around as it tracked me. I didn’t have my key, but it only took me thirty seconds with my lock picks. Then I looked into the retina scanner. What, you didn’t think I’d entrust my security to a single lock, did you?
The deadbolts shot back with a muffled thunk, and I pushed my way inside.
One minute gone. I flicked the lights on and ran straight to the study on the ground floor, pulling back the mirror on the wall to reveal a hidden door. A sixteen-digit code punched into the recessed keypad got me through it and into the basement. Two minutes gone.
The basement contained a carefully amassed arsenal of everything one could possibly desire to either start a small war or prevent one, all neatly arranged in racks and lockers. The really good stuff was hidden in an armoured room at the back, but I didn’t need any of that today.
I grabbed a couple of bags and filled them with equipment. Bugs, tracking devices, a spare phone, night vision goggles, infrared goggles, a parabolic microphone, and a handy little scanner that would detect the transmissions of any wireless cameras or listening devices. I was a kid in a candy store, one who’d been living on muesli for months.
Should I take a gun? Decisions, decisions... I opted against it. They were illegal to carry in the UK, and the drawbacks of getting caught with one would outweigh the benefits. I picked up an extra knife, though.
Thankfully, I insisted on everything being kept in its proper place, and it only took me three minutes to find the equipment I wanted.I removed more cash from one of the safes, gave my perfectly ordered playroom one last wistful glance, re-locked the basement, secured the mirror back over the door, and ran through to the kitchen. Five minutes gone.
Food. I needed food. Luckily, Toby had left a pile of compost-flavoured protein bars in the cupboard, and I grabbed a handful. They tasted like sawdust, but I wouldn’t starve. Those and some bottled water went into my bag.
Six and a half minutes gone.
The phone on the kitchen wall rang. The moment my eye was scanned, alarms would have blared in the control room. That call was someone wanting to find out what on earth I was playing at, andI bet I knew who. I could just picture the scowl on his face as I ignored him.
The noise was driving me nuts, and I stared into the hidden camera.
“Pack it in!” I shouted at Nate. The house was wired for sound as well.
The phone stopped, but five seconds later, it started up again.
I didn’t have time to deal with this. I’d been thrown into this situation, and despite having three months to think of what to say to my friends about my breakdown, I hadn’t got around to it. Now wasn’t the right time, not with my head all over the place.
The phone didn’t stop. Nate would be pacing the control room in Richmond now, an earpiece wedged into each ear.
“Nate, you’ll wear a hole in the floor.”
He didn’t answer. He couldn’t—the house only contained microphones, not speakers. Although I bet myself $100 that next time I set foot in there, he’d have wired one in.
I dashed up the stairs, trying to block out the ringing, and grabbed some warm clothes and a blanket. A quick glance at my watch told me my time was almost up. I ran to the other side of the house and took the stairs to the underground garage.
Eight minutes.
What was in there? A BMW X5, an Audi A4, a sporty Yamaha motorcycle, and my latest toy, a shiny black Aston Martin V12 Vantage tucked up under a cover in the corner. I’d been hoping for the Land Rover Discovery I’d driven on my last visit to the UK in case I needed to go off-road, but no such luck. The X5 would have to do.
I liberated the keys from the lockbox in the corner and bleeped open the car. The bags got slung in the back, then I popped the bonnet. Twenty seconds later, I’d disabled the tracker hidden in the engine bay.
As I hopped into the front seat, I hoped I remembered how to drive. I had no idea who the BMW belonged to—my friends had a tendency to abandon their cars in my garage—so I kept my fingers crossed I wouldn’t break it. Breaking cars was Dan’s job.
I aimed the key fob at the garage door and tapped my fingernails on the steering wheel as it slowly rolled up. At the end of the driveway, the gates creaked open.
Nine minutes and fifty-seven seconds. Nice.
Back behind the wheel at last, I took the odd liberty at traffic lights but drove sensibly enough that I didn’t attract attention. The response unit would be coming from the opposite direction, although the chances were they’d called off the dogs when they saw me leave. They weren’t about to chase me through the streets of London, not when they knew they didn’t have a hope of catching me.
Once I was sure I hadn’t picked up a tail, I pulled into a lay-by, savouring the adrenaline rush. Oh, I’d missed this. I’d missed the challenges and the danger and the risk.
But I was back now.
I smiled to myself.
I was back. And I had a kidnapper to catch.
Seeing as I’d missed dinner, I gulped down a protein bar and took a slug of water. Midnight was fast approaching when I punched Luke’s postcode into the SatNav and headed back to Lower Foxford.
As I drove, guilt chewed away at me. I owed my friends and colleagues an explanation for what I’d just done, but I didn’t know how to put it into words. The calm, rational part of my brain was still suffering from a serious malfunction. Every time I tried to think , my head filled with fuzz, like static from an old television.
Yes, I had to talk to them, and sooner rather than later. But first I needed to help Luke.
When I reached the village, I parked on the far side of the woods behind Luke’s house and assembled my kit. I wanted to check for prying eyes.
An hour later, I’d been through the woods and neighbouring properties with infrared goggles and the transmission scanner. Nothing. Apart from several hundred rabbits and a couple of deer, I was alone. For completeness’ sake, I checked the front of the house too, but nobody was watching. They just wanted Luke to think they were.
My next job was to get into the house. I swapped out the goggles for a handful of Nate’s custom bugs. Each incorporated a tiny camera and microphone and worked on motion sensors. I’d selected the battery-operated version as they didn’t need to last long. If Tia was missing for more than their natural life, we had bigger problems.
I did a quick circuit around the outside of the house. Luke was sitting in the den, staring into space as he tore pages of a notepad into pieces. Did he even realise he was doing it? I squinted through the window at the computer in front of him. He’d been trying to track Tia’s cell phone, but by the looks of things, he hadn’t had any luck. Hardly surprising—the kidnapper would have to be stupider than a rock to leave the phone on. Any teenager with an internet connection could track them nowadays.
My chest seized as I watched Luke. Guilt. Fear. Guilt that I’d hurt him. Fear that we wouldn’t get Tia back. Before my husband’s death, I’d locked all those pesky emotions firmly away, but I’d gone soft in my little sabbatical. I wished I could offer Luke some comfort, but my presence would only make things worse.
A few minutes later, I swung myself up onto the balcony outside my old bedroom and picked the lock on the sliding door. Before venturing into the rest of the house, I packed everything I wanted to keep into the rucksack I’d brought and left it outside. There wasn’t much—my old phone, a bit of cash, and Ashlyn’s passport. While I was at it, I put my wedding ring back in its rightful place. I’d missed the feel of it on my finger.
I inched open the door to the upstairs hallway and tiptoed to Luke’s bedroom. It only took seconds to install a bug in the light fitting. No, I didn’t expect Luke to get much sleep until Tia was found, but I had the opportunity, so I took it.
Next, I crept downstairs and hid another device in the kitchen, peeping out from behind a stack of plates in the dresser. Ideally, I’d have put a camera in the den, but even though Luke was now dozing over his desk, I didn’t want to risk venturing in there. I settled for putting a third bug in the flower arrangement opposite the den door instead.
With that done, I fitted tracking devices to both of his vehicles then went back to the BMW to watch and listen. An alarm would alert me to any sound or movement, so I lay back under the blanket to wait.
At 8 a.m. one of the sensors woke me with its insistent beeping. Luke was moving through the house. On the screen in the receiving unit, I watched him open the safe hidden behind a Picasso print in the bedroom and count the cash inside. Why? Had a ransom demand come in? If it had, it must have been by text message, because I hadn’t heard the phone ring.
At eight thirty, he did get a call. Arabella wanted to know where Tia was. Tia normally walked to her house in the morning so they could ride to school together.
“She’s not feeling well,” Luke said. “She ate something that disagreed with her.”
A pause.
“Yes, I’ll tell her. I’m sure she’ll be very grateful if you take notes.”
Another beat.
“No, I don’t think she’ll be in for a few days. She’s sleeping at the moment, but she’s been really sick. I’ll get her to call you when she’s feeling better.”
His voice shook as he spoke. He was a terrible liar.
Not like some people.
At nine, Luke left the house carrying a briefcase—empty from the way he threw it into the back of the car. I followed him to the bank, staying well back and letting the tracker do its work.
He’d obviously gone to pick up more money for the ransom, but how much? What story had he come up with? Banks tended to get a bit funny about handing over large bundles of cash in this day and age of electronic transfers. I knew Luke kept ￡150,000 in the safe because I’d watched over his shoulder and memorised the combination then looked while he was out, but clearly that wasn’t enough.
No detours on the way back—Luke went straight home. Back in the bedroom, he piled up the cash from the briefcase and the safe, counting as he went, and I tallied up the bundles on my phone. ￡250,000, if I’d estimated correctly, and he packed the lot into a duffle bag he dug out of the closet.
That was it? ￡250,000? That was all Tia was worth? Luke could and would pay a lot more. Why such a low amount? Was the kidnapper being sensible, knowing the tricky logistics of obtaining cash under the radar? Or was I missing a bigger picture?
Luke piqued my curiosity when he disappeared into the den. He was only in there for twenty minutes, but when he came back, he added a memory stick to the bag. What was on there?
As he stood up, he looked directly at the camera. Haggard and scared, he was a shadow of his former self. When he started pacing, I wanted to tell him to rest, or at least eat something. He’d need his strength later. My frustration had no outlet, and I made myself unclench my teeth.
Heeding my own advice, I had a snack then relieved myself in the bushes. Oh, the joys of being on a stakeout. Not for the first time in my life, I questioned my sanity. Why hadn’t I bought myself a tropical island and marooned myself on it? Somewhere idyllic like the Bahamas or the French West Indies? I could have been getting a tan instead of frostbite.
I sighed. Who was I kidding? No matter how uncomfortable I might be, I’d stop at nothing to get Tia back. I slouched down in the front seat, ready to play the waiting game.