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  “We will get her back for you,” Schade said, but there was nothing in his voice.

  Kincaid turned away, gestured to the driver to get moving. When he spoke again, it was almost a growl. “We better had.”

  “Mo is putting the word out. Anybody hears anything—we’ll know.”

  “Oh, somebody knows something, that’s for sure,” Kincaid said bitterly. “Otherwise, how the hell did they just-so-happen to find us? We just upped security on Helena’s communications.”

  I remembered the last conversation I’d had with Epps. “And you’re confident that all your comms are secure?”

  Neither man spoke for a moment, merely exchanged a glance I didn’t catch the meaning of. I was sitting directly behind Kincaid and couldn’t see his face. There was no streetlighting to illuminate Schade’s features alongside me, either.

  “I’ll get right onto that,” he said, in such a way it could have any number of hidden connotations. He paused. “You realise we’re gonna have to let her father know.”

  “Not until we have a better idea what we’re dealing with.”

  “He’s bound to find out. And when he does…” I sensed rather than saw Schade shrug.

  “Yeah, well, let’s just hope we have her back by then,” Kincaid said. “Or we’re all fucked.”

  19

  Back at the mansion, we set up a war room in Kincaid’s office. Schade slumped into a deep cushioned armchair and closed his eyes, apparently taking a nap. His boss paced. I took one of the upright chairs near the desk, within reach of the phone, and willed it to ring. At this stage, a ransom demand was better than any other alternative.

  I tried not to think too much about Epps. He’d claimed he’d done nothing more than follow information others had already accessed and drawn logical conclusions from that about a possible attack on Helena. Now, I wished I’d pushed him further on who might be after her, and why.

  About twenty minutes after we got back, Mo Heedles came in wearing a pair of latex gloves and a disposable apron over yet another brown suit. It was close to midnight but she looked as unflustered and unruffled as she did during normal office hours.

  “I’ve checked over Mr Lopez,” she said without preamble, peeling off the gloves. “There’s a pinprick in the back of his neck—some kind of fast-acting sedative would be my guess, but I’ve taken a blood sample so we’ll know soon enough.”

  “Thank you, Mrs Heedles,” Kincaid said quietly.

  “He should have known better,” Schade said, without opening his eyes.

  Mo threw him a stern glare, nevertheless. “That’s twenty-twenty hindsight, as you’re very well aware.” She unhooked the apron, folding it with neat precision. “Let’s face it, standing there with his dick in his hands, the poor bastard didn’t stand a chance.”

  “Exactly,” Schade said, lifting his head and staring back without expression. “In this job, he shoulda learned to piss one-handed, kept his gun in the other.”

  Mo sniffed loudly but made no other response to that, one way or another. She glanced over at Kincaid, concern etching the lines deeper into her face. “I’ll let you know the minute I’ve had a chance to go over the car, dear. It’s been picked up and is on its way back now.”

  Kincaid nodded distractedly. She went out, closing the doors quietly behind her.

  “Mrs Heedles has hidden talents,” I said. “Where did you find her?”

  “She’s ex-CIA,” Schade said. He’d closed his eyes again. It was hard to tell how serious he was being with his answer.

  “Is she as good with electronic security as she is with everything else?”

  Schade opened his eyes and sat up. “No, but I am,” he said. “Why are you so concerned about that, Fox?”

  “Somebody knew where we were going to be this evening.” I gave a shrug that tried to be far more casual than I actually felt. “How else could we have been compromised?”

  It was Kincaid who spoke up. “Any number of ways,” he said, voice flat with tension. “Somebody at the restaurant, maybe?”

  Schade shook his head. “Table was booked under a fake name, dude. Standard operating procedure. And before you ask,” he added, flicking me a deadly glance, “no, we weren’t followed and yes, I’m sure about that.”

  “For what it’s worth, so am I. There’s too little traffic on the roads around here,” I agreed. “A tail would have stood out a mile—unless they were using satellite tracking. Or drones.”

  Epps, I reckoned, must have access to both.

  Kincaid and Schade exchanged another look I couldn’t read. It was getting to be a habit.

  “Our system is the best available. We’ve more failsafes and tripwires than the Pentagon,” Kincaid said then. “Whoever took Helena didn’t get to us that way.”

  “Of course, the alternative to a data breach is a good old-fashioned tip-off.” Schade uncoiled himself and sat up, his focus fully on me now. It was not a comfortable feeling. “An inside job—maybe from somebody new on the team.”

  I straightened in my chair, also. It was hard not to. I uncrossed my legs and placed both feet flat on the carpet.

  “Someone like me, you mean?”

  “Never did like happenstance, Fox, and you have to admit your arrival here has coincided with some…unfortunate events.”

  “Purely from a reputational point of view,” I said, faking calm, “why would I agree to protect Mrs Kincaid and then arrange—or allow—for her to be taken?”

  “Money, loyalty, fear. Those are the main reasons,” Schade listed. “There are others, but usually it comes back to one of those three.”

  I glanced across the desk to where Kincaid had paused. He was gripping the back of his chair with both hands, eyes fixed on me, but he didn’t step in. I knew I had to play this one out, so I sat back, leaned one elbow onto the desktop and forced my shoulders to relax.

  “Oh? So, which category do you reckon I fall into?”

  “Well, you can’t deny you need the money or you wouldn’t have taken this gig,” Schade said easily. “I don’t see it being fear—somehow, I don’t think you’d be easy to scare into doing much you didn’t want to.”

  I said nothing, just continued to stare him out. He nodded as if I’d spoken anyway.

  “Yeah, thought as much.” A faint smile touched the corners of his mouth. It did nothing to reassure. “But loyalty, now that’s a possibility.”

  “Loyalty to what?”

  “Or who.” He shrugged. “Depends who’s behind Mrs K’s abduction, and what they want from it.”

  Kincaid shifted restlessly. “If it was money they were after, surely we would have heard something by now?”

  “Not necessarily.” I shook my head. “They like to make you sweat—give you time to let your imagination run riot before they hit you with the first demand.”

  Schade’s eyes were calculating. “And you’d know all about that?”

  My temper sparked. “Of course I bloody know about it! Close protection was—is—my job.”

  On the wide plain of the desk, the telephone buzzed, making Kincaid flinch. He stabbed a finger onto the base unit. “Yes?”

  “We have movement by the west gate.” Mo Heedles’ voice was composed, even through the distortion of the speaker. “Single vehicle. Nobody got out yet—it’s just sitting there, idling. You might want to have somebody go take a look.”

  20

  Kincaid thanked Mo, started heading for the door. As he passed Schade, the bodyguard rose, turned and hooked a hand under his elbow, all in one smooth move. I saw the whitened knuckles and knew he’d gone in hard enough on pressure points to stop Kincaid in his tracks.

  “Can’t let you go out there, dude,” Schade said, regret in his voice. “You know the rules.”

  “Fuck the rules,” Kincaid said tightly. “I made the rules. Now I’m changing them.”

  He twisted out of Schade’s grasp, revealing skill levels of his own. Schade let go, but only long enough to regroup. He struck
again, swept Kincaid’s legs half out from under him, then grabbed his wrist and forced it into a lock with one hand. This time, he used it to lever Kincaid to his knees and stood over him as he gasped around the pain. Schade’s face was devoid of emotion.

  “Like I said, I can’t let you go out there.”

  I sighed and got to my feet. “Shame you didn’t protest this much when they wanted to go out earlier this evening without adequate security, hm?”

  Schade’s eyes met mine. They glinted behind the small lenses of his glasses. “A mistake is only of value if you learn from the experience,” he said. “After all, for something to happen once is misfortune—”

  “But twice is carelessness. Yeah, I know. Oscar Wilde. He was a clever guy, but look what happened to him in the end.”

  “Good point, Fox. What do you suggest?”

  At his feet, Kincaid had stopped struggling, but the sweat was beading on his forehead. “He’s a big boy,” I said. “Let him make his own decisions.”

  “Easy for you to say when you’re not the one responsible for his safety.”

  “Very easy for me to say,” I agreed placidly, then added, “when I’m not the one trying to break his arm.”

  Schade glanced down at Kincaid as if he wasn’t sure how they’d ended up in that position. He released him and stepped back.

  It took a moment for Kincaid to get to his feet, but he spoke without heat. “When this is over, remind me to fire your ass, Schade.”

  Schade made no reply, just gave him a feral smile and headed for the door.

  Outside the front entrance, we climbed into the same Range Rover we’d used earlier. Kincaid got behind the wheel. Schade took the front passenger seat, with another of the security men—my old mate Chatty—in the back alongside me. Chatty slid a bundle of reloaded M4s butt-down into the rear footwell between us. The headlights of a second vehicle curved around the side of the house and slotted in behind. The driver pulled up sharply enough to make the front suspension bounce.

  As we moved out from beneath the shelter of the portico, the rain hammered down onto the roof of the Range Rover. Visibility was maybe twenty metres. Kincaid leaned closer to the windscreen, as if that might help him see better. Schade took the assault rifle Chatty handed to him. He checked it over with movements that seemed almost entirely muscle memory—a kind of calming ritual, if he needed one.

  I did the same with my own weapon, head cocked to look between the front seats as the main gate came into view. Most fences and gateways in the area were wooden, I’d noted, occasionally adorned with an old wagon wheel or plough.

  The Kincaids lived behind a high brick wall. Substantial gateposts with iron gates slung between them. A pair of ornate lamps shed high-intensity illumination onto the semi-circular apron in front of the drive, where cars could turn off the road and stop for inspection by the hidden cameras before being admitted.

  A dark panel-van sat in the centre of the space, throwing out twin shadows on both sides from the lights shining down. The rain rebounded a good six inches from the asphalt around it. The van’s engine was running, its headlights on, making it impossible to see who might be sitting inside. I lowered my window a little to give my ears a chance.

  Kincaid rolled to a slow stop before he reached the gates themselves. The chase car pulled up to the side of us. Nobody moved to get out of the van. The rain continued to sluice down onto all three vehicles. Schade reached up and pressed a switch in the headlining. It took me a moment to realise he’d done it to stop the courtesy lights coming on automatically when the doors were opened. Nice to be working with professionals.

  Kincaid had not taken his eyes off the van on the other side of the gates. “OK, you got my attention,” he murmured. “Now what?”

  “One way to find out,” Schade said, and operated the electric gates. They parted silently in the centre and began to swing inwards. As soon as they did so, I opened my door a crack and slipped out onto the driveway, keeping below the level of the Range Rover’s glass. Not only less visible to the occupants of the van, but it also put something slightly more solid between me and any incoming rounds.

  Moving away from the sound of our own engines, I caught a metallic scrape as the van’s side door was thrown back. It was on the opposite side to the gates—the side facing away from us. No doubt a calculated move on their part.

  I ducked, trying to scan the darkened space underneath the chassis for feet, legs—signs of people getting out. I could see nothing. The beams of the lights didn’t reach that far into the shadows.

  The van’s engine note rose to a sudden howl as a foot stamped down hard on the accelerator. By the time it began to move, tyres scrabbling for grip on the slick surface, I was already running. I skated through the narrow gap between the opening gates and out onto the apron with the M4 pulled up into my shoulder ready. My eyes strained to make out even one digit of the rapidly disappearing licence plate through the deluge. Zilch.

  Shouts from the gateway had me spinning. Where the van had stood, there was now a crumpled shape on the ground. In the dark, and the rain, it was almost impossible to identify it, but gut instinct outlined it as the body of a woman.

  And she wasn’t moving.

  21

  Helena was alive.

  Against my better judgement, we loaded her into the back of the Range Rover and took her up to the house. She was in a deeply unconscious state—chemical rather than natural, if I was any judge—and soaked to the skin, her body like ice.

  I drove the return journey while Kincaid crouched awkwardly beside his wife in the rear. Schade, having instructed his guys, retook his place in the passenger seat. He made a series of calls on his smartphone, his demeanour very cool and unemotional. The first was to someone who was obviously a doctor, casually asking him to stop by the house when he was next passing.

  As he ended the call and caught my eye, he said, “I say ‘when you’re next passing’ but what I mean is ‘get your butt over here right now or I will come around to your house and drag you out by your balls’. It’s kinda shorthand. You never know who’s listening in at his end, huh?”

  “Is this the same guy who treated Illya?”

  He nodded. “He’s the best in the business, he’s fast, and he knows how to keep his mouth shut. For what he’s making on the side, he ought to.”

  Mo Heedles was waiting for us at the front entrance as Kincaid strode in carrying his wife. Helena looked small and bedraggled in his arms, her hair ratted and plastered to her face and her evening dress a ruin. They left a dripping trail behind them across the tiles. Kincaid headed, not for the staircase leading up to the master bedroom, but towards the more utilitarian area at the rear of the house. I knew they had rooms back there kitted out as a medical suite, and all the gear needed for a full examination.

  Including, no doubt, a rape kit.

  I would have followed, but Schade barred my way.

  “Let them take care of her,” he said quietly.

  “We don’t know what they did—”

  “No, we don’t. And finding out now—or finding out tomorrow, or the day after—won’t make a deal of difference to what happens next,” he said. “But it will make a difference to her. Leave her to the people she knows. People she trusts.”

  I winced at the last bit. “That’s below the belt, isn’t it?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, what can I tell you? I never did play well with others.”

  My eyes followed Kincaid as he disappeared through a doorway, careful not to catch Helena’s head or limbs, and Mo Heedles closed the door firmly behind them. Then I let out a long, exasperated breath, glanced sideways at Schade.

  “Just what the fuck is going on here?”

  “You took the words right outta my mouth.”

  “What now? You don’t honestly think I had anything to do with what happened tonight?” I waited, temper rising, but he stared me out. “Seriously?”

  “Talk me through it again—you and the dummy wa
iter.”

  “I’ve been over this. I followed him through the doors to the side of the stage.” On your orders. I didn’t voice the thought. It would have come across as too defensive, as though I was trying to dodge the blame. “He tried to jump me. We fought. I put him down, then heard the shots. Sorry if I was a bit more concerned with backing you guys up than handcuffing him to a bloody radiator.”

  “Oh, I believe you,” Schade said. “But I’m not the one you have to be worried about convincing.”

  It was the following morning before I was allowed to see Helena. By that time, she’d been given the all-clear by Kincaid’s tame doctor and moved from the in-house medical facility up to their suite.

  The same man who’d treated Illya had arrived, less than half an hour after Schade’s apparently casual invitation, with a jacket thrown on straight over his pyjamas. A part of me rather envied Schade this fearsome reputation. It appeared to allow him to speak very softly while everyone assumed he also carried a big stick. With nails in it.

  When Mo Heedles let me into the suite, not long after breakfast, I half expected to find Helena still in bed. Instead, she was on a foam mat out on the terrace, dressed in yoga gear and working through a series of advanced stretches. Last night’s rain had gone and the early sun was burning through what was left of the cloud. She’d already built up a sweat.

  Kincaid sat on a cane sofa nearby. After Schade’s comments of the previous night, I eyed him warily. He had a thick folder of documents beside him, but his eyes were on his wife.

  She didn’t acknowledge my arrival right away. I didn’t try to hurry her. I’d been focused on seeing her for most of the night but, now I was here, I’d no idea what to say.

  Did I apologise to her? Or wait for her to apologise to me?

  Eventually, she unfolded herself and came upright, breathing hard. Kincaid rose and handed her a towel from the back of the sofa. She draped it around her neck, using the ends to wipe her face.