Chapter Fifteen
Cillian
“What the fuck are you talking about, Phil?” I stared at the biggest member of Galahad. It was the first time I’d ever seen him look sheepish with his mouth downturned and his fingers knotted.
“I couldn’t stop her, she said it was work.” He shrugged and rubbed his temples.
“And you’re telling us she’s not come back?”
“Yeah.” He glanced away.
“Fuck.” Finn pulled out his phone, called Rebecca.
She didn’t pick up.
“What the hell is going on?” I paced across the kitchen, my stomach churning. If Rebecca didn’t have a bona fide stalker, this wouldn’t have been my reaction. But someone was out to get her. Someone had been getting closer and closer.
And now…shit!
“Where was she going?” Finn asked, his phone still calling Rebecca’s. “To the office?”
“No, no,” Phil said. “The prison.”
“The prison! What the fuck?” I shouted.
“Bullingdon?” Finn spoke through gritted teeth. “Right?”
“I guess.” Phil swirled a piece of paper on the table so it faced me. “She left these numbers.”
“Good.” Finn peered at one that said Mary, secretary , then dialed.
It answered quickly.
“Hey, I’m trying to find Rebecca Saunders, do you know where she is?”
“And who is calling?” A curt female voice.
“I’m her boyfriend, and she’s missing. She left your number in case of emergency.”
“Missing?” A pause. “What kind of emergency?”
“A kind like we don’t know where she is and she’s not picking up.”
“She went to HMP Bullingdon to see a client.”
“What client?”
“I can’t divulge that information.”
“Listen, I don’t want to be disrespectful, Mary, but I’m worried for her safety. Rebecca has a stalker. I need everything you’ve got so I can go to the police and get them to take this seriously now and not wait twenty-four hours before they get into gear. That might be too bloody late.”
“A stalker. I…I had no idea. Hang on…wait, yes…here it is, she went to see an inmate called Samuel Conner, he’d been involved in an acid attack with another prisoner and needed his lawyer.”
“Okay.” Finn wrote down Samuel Conner. Acid . “And do you know what time this was?”
“About midday, at least that’s when I spoke to her. I presume she headed straight there.”
Phil nodded.
“Anything else you can tell me?” Finn asked.
“No, and I’ve said more than I should.” She sounded upset now. “But please, get her back, she’s precious, to us all.”
“We will.”
“And I’ll call the partners, let them know what is happening.”
“Okay, thank you, Mary.” Finn hung up. “Bollocks, this is not good.”
“What’s going on?” Jamie wandered in through the back door. Dalton was with him. The sunny weather of late had tanned his skin and lightened his already blond hair.
I looked between them. A handsome millionaire and a calm-in-a-crisis doctor, it could only do us good to have them on board. “Rebecca has gone missing,” I said.
“Rebecca, your new woman, the one who was here yesterday?” Dalton asked, his blue eyes narrowing.
“Yeah.” I clenched my fists; my adrenaline was surging. The need to run or fight or shout and break something was almost overwhelming. “That’s the one.”
“She’s a lawyer, right?” Dalton said.
“Yeah, and her profession got her a stalker,” Finn snarled. “A guy called Reg Jacks, or so we think.”
“Disgruntled client?” Jamie asked.
“Yep.” I paced to the window and stared out. “We need a plan.”
There was a moment of quiet. My brain was whirring. What was the best course of action? Where should we start?
“The prison,” Phil said. “Get the CCTV and see if she got there.”
“Good, yes.” Finn twisted his hands together.
“Mitch will be able to help with that,” Dalton said. “If that’s where she was last.”
“Yeah, it is,” I said. “As far as we know.”
“Is he on duty today?” Jamie asked. “Mitch.”
“Yes,” Phil said. “Day shifts this week.”
“Then come on.” I grabbed the keys to our shared vehicle. “Let’s get to the station, Finn, we’ll call Mitch on the way, bring him up to speed and get him to meet us there if he’s out on patrol.”
Soon we were pulling up outside Headington Police Station. I leaped out and took the wide steps two at a time.
“What can I help you with?” an officer said from behind a reception desk. His smile was rigid and his movement slow.
That irritated me. Where was his sense of urgency?
“We’ve come to see Officer Cooper,” Finn said. “He’s expecting us.”
I pulled out my phone and drew up Mitch’s number. But I didn’t have to dial because a door opened and Mitch strode out in his smart dark uniform. He had all the usual paraphernalia attached; radio, cuffs, truncheon, a bunch of keys.
“I’ll take it from here, Brad?” he called to the officer on reception.
“You sure?” Brad eyed us both suspiciously. Our Irish accent could do that, and right now, panic had made our vowels even thicker.
“Yeah, no problem.” Mitch flicked his head. “This way, I think I’ve got something.”
“You have?” My guts churned. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? What if he had something horrific like…no, I didn’t want to let my mind go down that route. This situation was frightening enough as it was.
We followed Mitch into a side office, and he stooped over a computer, clicked on the screen. “This is the recording from Bullingdon entrance an hour ago.”
“What the fuck?” Cillian said, his fists clenching.
The black-and-white image showed the front of the prison; a wide driveway, lined with grass, and then the main road. I recognized Rebecca straight away. Her sexy curves, the way her hips rolled as she walked. She was lost in her phone, her hair catching in the breeze.
“She’d been in to consult with her client,” Mitch said. “I called and checked. Nothing untoward happened.”
“And they just let her walk out of there?” I snapped.
“The bad guys are inside, or that’s the theory, she should have been okay out there,” Mitch said. “But here…” His jaw tensed. “This is a problem.”
My heart squeezed, and I had to steady myself by gripping Cillian’s shoulder.
A white car with blacked-out windows careered onto the screen, nearly hitting Rebecca. In an instant, a tall man dressed all in black was out, scooting around the car and throwing her in the back.
She barely had time to resist it all happened so fast.
I felt sick, furious, goddamn murderous.
“He’s fucking dead,” Cillian said, matching my thoughts exactly. “And I’ll enjoy killing his sorry ass.”
“What’s he doing?” I asked as he appeared to pile in with her, over her.
“Could be any number of things.” Mitch shrugged. “None pleasant.”
“Like what?” I asked, not really wanting the answer.
“Touching her up, drugging her, threatening her.”
I swallowed, bile rising. She’d be terrified, poor sweet Rebecca. We’d failed in what we’d promised to do, and that was unforgiveable. No amount of Hail Marys would fix this shitshow
Suddenly he reappeared, his face hidden from view as he stooped and rushed around the car again. The engine revved, and he wheel-spun away, sending up a spray of dust and grit.
“Plates?” I asked.
“I’ve run them,” Mitch said. “They belong to a red Transit van, they’re stolen.”
“So no leads there.” Cillian looked at me, fear in his eyes. He’d gone pale, and his lips were pressed together.
“Can we still use ANPR to follow the plates?” I asked.
“Yes, good shout.” Mitch clicked another screen to life. “Here…”
“Do we need to put an official report in?” I asked.
Mitch clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth. “Let’s just get her back and worry about that later.”
Mitch worked on the edge of the law, it was one of the reasons he’d never got promoted. He’d been caught out a few times, flirted with disciplinary action, stared getting booted out of the force straight in the eye. But he had the gift of the gab and managed to always bounce back.
And the fact of the matter was he was bloody good at what he did.
“So this screen shows the route the car took out of the city.” Mitch pulled up a screen. “They went north.”
“And what’s this?” I pointed at a red blip.
“That’s the last time the registration was picked up.”
“But that…that’s forty minutes ago? Where is the car now?”
“Where is Rebecca now?” Finn said.
Mitch turned to us. “I don’t know. Out in the countryside the cameras are few and far between, especially on the smaller roads.”
“Fuck!” I turned away from the screen and rammed my hands into my hair, tugged the roots. “So we have no way of knowing, and she’s likely still being driven away from here.” I looked at Finn. “We have to get loaded up and go after her, figure it out from there.”
Finn clasped Mitch’s shoulder. “You coming?”
“I’m on duty, man, I can’t get involved in a shootout, not without bringing a whole load of attention to Galahad.”
“I understand, mate.” I squeezed his shoulder. “And you’ve done your bit already. Thanks for all this intel.”
“Happy to help, you know that.” He frowned. “Shit, this is a big fucked-up problem.”
“Tell me about it,” I said.
The phone on the desk trilled to life.
Mitch answered it. “Yeah.” Pause. “There is? She is? Now. Okay, I’ll be right out.” He hung up.
“What is it?” I asked. Had Rebecca shown up?
“There’s a Miss Bell asking for me at reception.”
“Who?”
He shrugged and straightened.
We followed Mitch out of the office and down the dull-green corridor.
Once in reception there was a burst of energy from a pretty little blonde woman in a pink flowery dress. “Oh, Seargent Cooper, there you are, thank goodness.” She rushed up to Mitch. “I need to speak to you, urgently. Really urgently.”
“Amy.” My befuddled brain kicked into gear. Rebecca’s friend. Best friend.
She looked from me to Finn and then back to Mitch. “I need to speak to you about Rebecca.”
“What do you know?” I asked, a spark of hope lighting in my chest.
“Outside.” Mitch steered us all out into the sunshine. “We’ll talk there.”
After striding away from the main entrance, we huddled in a corner, in the shade.
“Tell us?” Finn demanded.
She held her phone forward. “She’s not answering her phone.”
“We know that.”
“And she always does, she’s…thoughtful, she knows I worry, she’s my closest friend, and that…”
“It’s okay, sweetie.” Mitch touched her arm. “Slow down, we’ll figure this out.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m worried about her, with this stalker thing and now she’s not answering her phone and she’s out in the middle of nowhere and I don’t know why she’s there.”
“What do you mean?” I frowned. “Out in the middle of nowhere.”
“We have Find Me on our phones, so we can always see where the other is; it’s sensible, single girls, you know.” She shrugged. “And her phone is—”
“Where?” My throat constricted. “Where is her phone?”
She flashed the screen at Mitch. “It seems to be in a field up near Steeple Ashton.”
“What?” I crowded to see, Finn’s head touching mine.
“And it hasn’t moved for a while,” she said. “Why is she in a field?”
“She might not be with her phone anymore,” Mitch said.
“What do you mean?” Amy gulped, and two fat tears formed and overspilled.
“We’re worried that the stalker got to her,” Finn said, the words seeming to scrape like sandpaper on his tongue. He glanced at me. Amy didn’t need the image of her best friend getting thrown into a car in her head.
Again I beat down the bile rising in my gullet. The need to run and chase and then kill this motherfucker was becoming unbearable.
“The stalker. Oh no…this is terrible. She’s all the family I have.” She clutched Mitch’s uniform. “You have to find her, please, you have to get her back. I love her. I love her so much.”
“So do we,” I said and gestured to Finn.
He nodded, and I knew our feelings matched.
Mitch touched Amy’s cheek, a tender gesture, and swiped away a tear. “You’ve brought us valuable information that we can use. You’ve really helped. Now I suggest you go home and we’ll keep you updated.”
“Home? How can I just sit at home? I’m sick with worry. I might never see her again. Oh…I can’t stand the thought of that and…” Her words became a series of hiccups and sobs, and she flopped against Mitch with her face in her hands. “Oh, she must be so scared, poor darling Rebecca.”
He wrapped his arms around her, holding her close as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do.
“You need to get the gang on the road,” he said over her head. “Get up to Steeple Ashton.”
“And then what?”
“When he dumped her phone he might have been near his final destination. Where he’s taking her.
” He paused. “If he’s a dumb criminal that is and if so that might be your lucky break.
Have a nose around, and I’ll do the same online, see if there is anywhere, any properties, that are disused, or suspicious, or known for criminal activity. ”
“Okay,” I said.
It was the best plan…it was the only plan.