“The next break in the track,” Morgan confirmed.
“They’re scrambling the police helicopter,” Cook told them from the back, the map in her hand. “Jack, the track breaks left in a hundred meters.”
Through the rain and the dirt kicked up by the speeding Defender’s tires, Morgan saw it. He let the shooters pull further ahead, waiting for them to choose their path. They stuck to the trail, so Morgan gunned the engine hard and turned up onto the parallel track. Within moments, they were pulling abreast, separated by nothing but trees and rain.
“Shoot across me!” Morgan commanded.
Lewis pushed the weapon out in front of the American, snapping a double tap, the empty cases hitting Morgan’s jaw. He had no idea what impact Lewis’s shooting was having, but the passenger in the Defender showed themself to be alive, rounds beating the Range Rover’s skin like a drum. Cook barely covered her eyes in time as shards of glass shattered inward.
“Get ahead, Jack, get ahead!” she shouted, and Morgan pushed the Range Rover harder, throwing a backward glance at the Land Rover, desperate to see the faces of the shooters—the faces of the people that wanted him dead.
“Jack!” Cook cried.
“Are you hit?” he called.
But his eyes saw the reason for her shout as his eyes turned back to the track, and the piled logs that lay across it.
“Jack!” Cook shouted again as Morgan hit the brakes hard. The Range Rover slid forward into the wood. Timber went bouncing and breaking into the air as Morgan and his team were slammed into the steering wheel, dashboard and seats.
Morgan’s first instinct was to bail out of the car, certain that at any second bullets would begin to rip into his flesh as the shooters stopped to finish the job.
But the danger passed by them—the shooters were not firing, and the Land Rover was gone.
Chapter 34
FURIOUS THAT THE shooters had escaped, Morgan thumped his fist against the Range Rover’s mud-splattered bonnet. “What’s the ETA on the police helicopter?”
“It will get to the point where the main road meets the forest track in ten minutes,” Cook told him.
Morgan shook his head. “Not fast enough. They’ll hit it in less than five, and that’s if they use the same point into the forest that we did. There could be others. They could even dump the vehicle and make it out on foot.”
“They could,” Cook agreed, downcast.
Rain pattered from Morgan’s shadowed face as he made his decision. “You two will go back in the Range Rover and secure the scene until the police arrive.”
“We can’t split up, Jack,” Cook pleaded. “They could still be out here, setting up a second ambush.”
“All the more reason for me to be on foot,” he replied. “I can stay off the tracks. It’s not thick forest. I’ll make quick time.”
“But—”
“Jane, thank you, but remember who we are and what the hierarchy is. This is my call.”
“Of course,” she managed, taking a half-step backward.
“She’s right though, Morgan,” Lewis added from the passenger seat. “No offence to the girl, but Sophie doesn’t know if she has company or not. Don’t risk the living for the dead.”
“The crime scene needs preserving,” Morgan insisted, pulling tight his laces.
Lewis put her hand out of the window and into the pouring rain. “The crime scene is bollocksed, and the local bobbies will be here in well under an hour.”
“We should stick together, Jack,” Cook ventured again.
It was her eyes more than her words that convinced Morgan. It had nothing to do with tactics, he admitted to himself, and everything to do with not wanting her to be out of his sight.
“OK,” he conceded. “Find us a new route out of here, Jane, just in case there’s another surprise on the route that we came in on.”
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“The Princess hired us to find Sophie,” Morgan said, grim-faced. “We need to be the ones to tell her what happened to her.”
Cook nodded solemnly. “And then what?”
It was a moment before Morgan answered. He was prying something out from the shattered windshield with his fingers. “And then,” he told Cook, holding up the dull shape of a flattened bullet, “then we find the connection to two bodies. We find Eliza Lightwood.”
Chapter 35
PETER KNIGHT STOOD in his office, hands on his head, his eyes burning into a map of the United Kingdom that he had taped to the office wall. Brightly colored pins had been jabbed into various towns and villages with Post-it notes attached. These were places with known connections to Eliza Lightwood—grandparents, cousins, ex-boyfriends, favorite getaway locations. Hooligan had laughed out loud at Knight’s low-tech methods, but Knight was a man who liked something tangible to work with, and in front of him was the map of what his Private employees had been able to piece together through Eliza’s records, social media and character profiling.
She could be anywhere, he thought, staring at the array of pins that stretched across the map.
But she was not.
“Peter,” a familiar voice said at the door, with a gentle knock.
Knight turned. His hands dropped from his head. His jaw dropped to the floor.
“Eliza,” he gasped.
“I heard you’ve been looking for me. I went to the coast to think,” she explained, taking the chair Knight offered her.
“You went to the coast?” he gently pushed.
“Just to drive, and think. There’s been so much bloody noise since my dad died. Some of it of my own creation, but then there’s his businesses, bloody lawyers, relatives who want a handout. He’s not even in his grave and they’re after his money.”
“That must be hard.”
“It is hard. I just needed a break from it. I just wanted to drive and listen to music. No phone. No arseholes trying to call me. Present company excepted, of course.” She gave a weak smile.
“There were some things I needed to talk with you about.” He spoke gently, finding himself convinced by Eliza’s words and manner. “Do you know a woman by the name of Sophie Edwards?”
A look of bewilderment passed over her face. “I know a Sophie Edwards,” she explained. “But I imagine there would be more than a few people by that name in London.”
“This Sophie was at LSE with you.”
“Then yes. Why are you asking?”
“Actually,” Knight smiled, anxious that Eliza was becoming too defensive, “it’s for another case Private is working. I saw your name on her class records.”
“Oh.” Eliza relaxed a little. “Small world, isn’t it? But yes, we were in the same class at LSE. We kept in touch, but we aren’t particularly close.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“The weekend before last. She came to one of my bigger dinner parties with her boyfriend.”
“She has a boyfriend?” Knight asked, hiding his surprise.
“Sort of. I don’t know how serious they are exactly, but it’s London. His name’s Mayoor Patel; he’s a hedge fund manager that I work with pretty often. Great guy. Very funny.”
“Does he come to all of your dinner parties?”
It was a moment before Eliza replied. “No.”
“Why?”
“Because he brings Sophie,” she admitted, breaking her gaze from Peter.
“And Sophie had a thing for your father?” Knight guessed, seeing his torpedo strike.
“Two types of people go to LSE, Peter. Those who want to make money, and those who want to take it.”
“And which one was Sophie?”
Eliza smiled, but there was no happiness in it. Only malice and resentment. “She looked at my dad like he was a five-star meal ticket. Why are you asking me all this, Peter? And don’t bullshit me about other investigations. I’m not stupid, so spit it out.”
Private’s agent met her wild stare. “I think Sophie Edwards was the one blackmailing your father.”
Chapter 36
THE STATE OF the battered and shot-up Range Rover drew stares from the two plain-clothed guards at Llwynywermod’s gate, the two men emerging from a four-by-four of their own and into the rain. “Are you all right?” they asked their colleague Lewis.