Private Royals

Chapter 22

The Duke’s office door opened so violently that it almost came off its hinges.

Morgan was the cause, his handsome face darkened with a snarl as he stormed in with Knight and Cook behind him.

The Duke’s grey face showed no sign of alarm as Morgan slammed a piece of paper onto the mahogany desk.

‘This is for you, Your Grace,’ he growled.

The Duke looked from the note to Morgan. Then tears began to roll down his sallow cheeks.

‘I don’t want to read it,’ he choked.

‘Then I will,’ Morgan declared and snatched up the paper. ‘It’s pretty concise, because Sadie Wilkinson was in a hurry to take her own life.’

A groan from the Duke confirmed that this had been his fear.

‘That’s right,’ Morgan told him. ‘Wilkinson is dead, and so is Grace Beckit. Now we know why.’

As the eyes of Knight and Cook burned into the Duke, Morgan went on to read Wilkinson’s confession. Desperate to salvage Abbie’s image in the public eye, the Duke and Wilkinson had dreamed up the idea of a staged kidnapping. It had been Wilkinson’s suggestion that the young royal would have been released during the Trooping the Colour parade for maximum exposure, the contrast of a dishevelled and abused young woman against a strong and regimented military force a stroke of PR genius. Abbie had been ignorant of the plot, just as Wilkinson had been ignorant of the true danger of the stunt. She’d had no idea how Grace had become involved, but seeing her body had been too much for her. Wilkinson had not been able to live with the guilt.

‘I couldn’t do anything for her,’ Knight growled, approaching the Duke. ‘She was dead when I found her.’

‘Three deaths,’ Morgan spat, throwing the suicide note into the Duke’s lap, then leaning across the desk so that his own face was in the older man’s. ‘Why?’ he roared.

‘They’ve gone rogue,’ the Duke whined, tears still falling.

It was too much for the soldier Cook, who stepped up and drilled her fist into the ex-military man’s jaw.

‘Hold yourself like a bloody soldier, you coward, and tell us what we need to know!’

The blow brought some composure back to the Duke. ‘Shaw,’ he said. ‘Shaw was handling it.’ A trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth.

‘Shaw’s dead,’ Knight stated.

‘He brought in someone else. Shaw must have lost control of him,’ the Duke told them, confirming Morgan’s suspicions that Shaw had been killed by someone he trusted.

‘Who?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know! I don’t know! Shaw organised it all, and Sadie took care of the money!’

Morgan cursed, knowing that their two best leads to Abbie were now dead. Before he could press the Duke further, his phone began to vibrate in his pocket.

So too did the phones of Cook and Knight.

‘Watch him,’ Morgan instructed the pair, stepping away. ‘Morgan,’ he answered.

‘Boss, it’s Hooligan. I matched the isolated blood I found at the apartment with Grace. She was there at the time of the kidnap.’

‘Is there more?’ Morgan asked, hearing the excitement in Hooligan’s voice and expecting that there was.

He was right.

‘I inspected the wound to her throat, and I think I’ve come up with the kind of blade that was used to kill her. It would also be consistent with what I thought cut the strands of fibre I found in the blood.’

‘A hunting knife?’ Morgan asked.

‘A very specific one,’ Hooligan confirmed. ‘It’s called a KA-BAR. You know it?’

But Morgan didn’t reply. Instead, he hung up the phone and left the room, needing to be alone, needing to breathe.

Because the kidnapper wasn’t only a killer.

He was a United States Marine.