Private Royals (Private 12.50)

‘You’re in the artillery, right?’ he said. He moved off, Cook following on his shoulder. ‘When you’re sending forward observers behind enemy lines to spot your targets, do you send the entire unit, or a small team?’

‘A small team,’ she conceded. ‘And they call in the heavy stuff.’

‘There you go.’ Morgan smiled.

‘OK. But who are our big guns?’

‘SCO19,’ he answered – the Metropolitan Police’s firearms unit. ‘If we find Abbie, and there’s no way we can safely pull her out of there, then we’ll call them in.’

Carrying the wheel brace from the breakdown kit, Morgan led Cook to a stretch of fence that was hidden from the haulage yard?

?s Portakabin by a line of wheeled bins. Cutting a hole through took moments, then the pair ran low across the open ground to the cabin. The curtains were open. Morgan took a cautious glance through the window. The cabin was empty.

‘We’ll check the trucks,’ he whispered.

The company’s lorries were arranged in a single row, a mixture of flat-panel and dump trucks. Morgan and Cook made their way slowly around the dozen vehicles, looking into the cabs and listening for any trace of sound.

‘Jack,’ Cook whispered. ‘Over here.’

Morgan came to her side and found himself looking at a truck-sized space between two other vehicles. It was the only one missing from the neatly arranged line.

‘The ground’s dry,’ he declared, looking up to the sky and thinking of the recent shower. ‘We just missed them. Damn it!’

‘You don’t know that,’ Cook said, trying to be positive, but Morgan pointed to a rusty-coloured patch at the edge of the dry ground.

‘That’s blood. Probably Grace’s blood. They held Abbie in a truck here, and now they’re moving closer to the parade.’

Cook tried, but could find no flaw in the logic.

‘It’s nine forty,’ she told him, looking at her watch. ‘Twenty minutes until they call to arrange the drop. Will the Duke have the money?’

Morgan shook his head. ‘He was never supposed to pay, but Waldron heard “Duke” and thought “billionaire”.’

‘So what now?’

Morgan’s eyes narrowed. ‘We’ve got an hour to find that truck, or Abbie dies.’

CHAPTER 27

IN THE LAB of Private HQ, Hooligan turned in his chair to watch Knight pacing the room like a caged animal. ‘You want to be out there, mate,’ he stated to his friend and superior.

Knight shrugged. Of course he did, but he also knew that the Duke was their only tangible link to Abbie and her kidnapper, and Morgan had wanted him to be on hand to handle the next and final ransom call that was expected in nineteen minutes’ time. Knight was also the head of Private London, and sometimes – as much as he hated to admit it to himself – that meant delegating the tasks on the ground to others.

He told Hooligan as much.

‘Bollocks.’ The Londoner laughed, his tone quickly becoming serious as he saw the incoming call from Jack Morgan. ‘Go ahead, boss,’ Hooligan told him, patching Morgan through the lab’s speakers. ‘Peter’s with me.’

‘Peter,’ Morgan said, the Range Rover’s revving engine audible in the background, ‘he’s been holding Abbie in a flat-panel truck. The company is Jones Brothers, but he’s probably pulled off the decals or painted over them. I think he’s moving Abbie closer to Horse Guards before he makes the last call.’

‘Where are you?’ Knight asked.

Hooligan pulled up a GPS tracking screen to show him as Morgan answered.

‘Heading for Westminster Bridge,’ said Morgan, ‘but the traffic is packed. We need the police’s help on this now, Peter. But low-key. Can you make the call to Elaine?’

‘I can.’

‘Put out a description of the van. See if we can get a location, but no intervention.’