Fifth Victim

It made her regroup rather than retreat, a temporary respite that lasted until after the waiter had cleared away our plates and brought large tall glasses of iced coffee in place of dessert.

‘Don’t you miss him – this Sean? Doesn’t he mind you being away from home all this time?’

I didn’t point out it had been less than a fortnight. ‘Yes, I do miss him,’ I said honestly. ‘But he’s in no position to argue.’

‘I guess not,’ she said slowly, forming her own conclusions. Then her face cleared. ‘Hey, why don’t you and Sean double-date with me and Tor for the charity auction? That would be so cool!’

‘Dina—’

‘And it will look much less suspicious than you tagging along with us all on your own,’ she pointed out fast. It was an entirely logical suggestion, spoilt only by her eager but slightly self-satisfied expression. ‘What d’you say?’

I let my breath out hard, as much because I disliked being backed into a corner as because of the insurmountable difficulties.

‘He can’t,’ I said, flatly enough to stop any protests she might have been about to make. ‘Even if he could … Well, he just can’t. Don’t push me on this, Dina. It’s not going to happen.’

Dina took in my set face and was uncharacteristically silent for a moment. Then she said carefully, ‘OK, but … can I meet him?’

The denial was on my lips. I expected it. If Dina’s disappointed air was anything to go by, she expected it, too.

‘Sure,’ I said. You asked for this. ‘Why not?’

CHAPTER NINETEEN

When we reached his hospital room, Sean was lying on his back with his head tilted towards the door as if awaiting our arrival.

We paused in the doorway. Dina because this was the last thing she had expected, and I was mean enough – or pissed off enough – not to have warned her what to expect. And me because I had a sudden recall of Parker’s report on Sean’s last CT scan.

‘… his physical therapist has been growing kinda concerned about some of his responses … His brain activity … they think it may be slowing down …’

Dina had asked plenty of questions on the ride over, but I’d been non-committal, thoroughly regretting the impulse which had made me suggest this meeting in the first place. After all, what the hell did I hope to achieve? My stubborn silence had only served to intrigue her further.

Now, I took a breath and stepped into the room. ‘Sean, Dina. Dina – this is Sean,’ I said over my shoulder. We’d stopped briefly to pick up coffee on the way in and now I flipped off the lid and put the cup down on the cabinet near to his head. There was no reaction.

When I turned back I found Dina had remained frozen, startled, in the open doorway.

‘Maybe – if he’s sleeping – we, um, shouldn’t disturb him?’ she whispered, too awkward to know where to put her hands.

‘If you can do anything to wake him, Dina, be my guest,’ I said. I smoothed back the hair from his face, exposing the livid scar, and knew she still hadn’t moved. ‘It’s not contagious,’ I added roughly, aware I was being cruel to the girl and unable to stop myself. ‘He’s been in a coma for three months.’

She advanced a few steps, eyes huge and everywhere at once, and asked in a small voice, ‘What happened?’

I could have dressed it up for her, but I didn’t. ‘He was shot in the head.’

She flinched. ‘Did he … was it, um, while he was protecting someone?’

I nodded.

She swallowed. ‘And were they OK?’ She saw my face, went scarlet and then pale in waves. ‘I mean, did he succeed? Or was it …?’ She stumbled to a halt, but I could finish that one for her.

Was it all for nothing?

‘Yes, Sean succeeded.’

She flicked me a quick nervous glance from under her lashes. ‘You sound like you resent that.’

‘No,’ I said, giving it thought before I answered. ‘It was part of the job. Sean was unlucky, that’s all. You can’t be a soldier and ignore the part luck plays. Half an inch one way and the bullet would have killed him stone dead. Half an inch the other and it would have missed him altogether.’ I shrugged. ‘Luck of the draw.’

Something trembled around the corner of her mouth. ‘You still sound like you resent it.’

‘I resent the circumstances that led up to it,’ I admitted, my eyes on Sean’s face. ‘They call us bullet catchers, but that is close protection in its crudest form. You get to the stage of having to put your own body between a principal and a bullet, it’s a last-ditch, desperate effort.’ I skimmed over her whitened features. ‘We spend our lives avoiding that moment.’

‘But you’re prepared to do it anyway,’ she said. ‘For a stranger. For someone you’ve only known a few hours, or a few days. Even though you’ve seen what might happen.’

I heard the strain splitting the edges of her voice. ‘Yes.’

She shook her head, bit her lower lip as if to keep from crying. ‘Why?’

It was a good question. I’d asked myself the same thing and never come up with an answer that didn’t sound trite. I glanced at Sean again. He hadn’t moved a muscle since we’d walked in, our voices rolling over him without eliciting any of the involuntary responses I’d come to hope for.

Would he rather have burnt hot and bright and fierce, and been snuffed out quick like a wet flame? Would he consider it good luck or bad, I wondered, the half an inch of life that he’d been left with? Survival was a long way from living.

I turned away, leaving the coffee on the bedside cabinet, putting up gentle sensory smoke signals into that sterile room. As I drew level with Dina she still hadn’t taken her eyes off Sean, hadn’t moved any closer.

‘Why don’t you want go to Europe to stay with your father?’ I asked in return. ‘Why be so stubborn? Why increase the risk?’

For both of us …

‘Because …’ she began, and her voice trailed away. She swallowed. ‘Because Mother wants me to go and hide until all this trouble is over, but how long will that take? Why should I put my life on hold and give up riding my horses every day, for something that might never happen?’

There was bravado in her words, but I caught the flare of fear in her voice, her face. Whatever she might say or do to prove otherwise, Dina was scared. She must have guessed that I’d seen it, because her chin lifted, defiant. ‘I guess running away just feels like cowardice.’

I nodded. ‘Then you understand how I feel.’

It wasn’t much of an answer, but I reckoned I’d bared my soul enough for one day.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The charity auction, I soon discovered, was one of the highlights of the Long Island social calendar, and was being held at a sumptuous country club on the North Shore. There were so many VIP guests attending that the club had assigned a frighteningly efficient elderly woman called Harling, whose sole job was to liaise with the numerous close-protection personnel. Or, as she saw it, to stop us gorillas from tripping over our own bootlaces and stealing the silver.

I went up there and met her the day before. She was wearing a long narrow skirt and white blouse with a high ruffled collar, the overall effect vaguely Edwardian. I, in contrast, had come on the Buell to cut down the time I was away from Dina, and had on a bike jacket over a T-shirt and Kevlar-reinforced jeans. Until I stated my business at the reception desk, I think they were planning on showing me the door with all haste.

As it was, the indomitable Ms Harling quick-marched me around the place, firing facts and specs back over her shoulder in time with the machine-gun rat-a-tat of her sensible heels. From having a paramedic team on standby, to knowing off the top of her head the local police response times, to having already cleared an emergency exfil route from the grand ballroom through the kitchens to the rear parking area, she seemed to have everything pretty well mapped out. When I told her as much, she unbent enough to bestow a fractional smile.

‘We certainly do our best,’ she said. Her tour had brought us neatly back to the front entrance and she glanced at her PDA – not quite as pointed as checking her watch. ‘Now, unless you have any questions …?’

‘Just one,’ I said. ‘If anything goes down, what means do the various close-protection teams have of ID’ing each other? I’d hate to be in a situation where I draw my weapon, only to be mistaken for one of the bad guys.’ I thought it best not to mention the words ‘friendly fire’.

Her plucked and carefully redrawn eyebrows rose slightly. ‘I will point out in the briefing packs that there are female protection personnel present,’ she said at last. ‘Although we have never encountered any problems in the past.’

‘Really?’ I murmured.

Her mouth relaxed a little more as her eyes drifted over my appearance, and this time I thought I detected the merest hint of a twinkle. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Most of the time, my dear, bodyguards look like … bodyguards.’

It took Dina all afternoon to prepare for the big night, from a facial and massage to a visit to her hairdresser and nail salon. She changed her mind at least three times about her outfit, despite having bought a selection specially for the occasion.

Eventually, I managed to talk her out of something I felt was trying much too hard and into a bold but simple bronze sheath of a dress that showed off her figure and hair to best effect. She teamed it with the pearl drop earrings she’d worn that first day I’d met her, out riding Cerdo on the beach. They had been her grandmother’s, she told me.

When I finally left her hovering indecisively in front of the mirror, I had barely half an hour to grab a quick shower and scramble into my own posh frock.

I had been planning to drag out my all-purpose stretchy dress for a return match, but Dina had flatly refused to be seen out with me in the same thing twice, and insisted on treating me to something new. I tried to say no, but she would not be deflected. In the end it was easier not to put up a fight.

I found what I was looking for in a designer outlet store, much to her dismay, on the marked-down rack. It was another black dress, although the silky material flipped almost to silver according to the light, like pearl lacquer on paint. It was a little crumpled, but nothing a night under my mattress hadn’t cured.

The dress was almost floor length, but had a split up the left thigh to give me mobility, and a bolero jacket that was sufficient to conceal the SIG.

The other advantage of the jacket was it had a high collar that largely hid the scar around the base of my neck. There were days now when I looked in the mirror and it wasn’t immediately obvious to me that someone had once tried to cut my throat. I’d learnt to cover it, partly with make-up and partly by how I dressed, and tonight a string of graduated pearls – fake, of course – did the rest.

I stashed some essentials into a small evening bag and headed out, only to find that I’d still beaten Dina to the living area where Caroline Willner waited in flattering dowager pale blue, glittering with diamonds. Alongside her, looking very suave in a well-fitting tuxedo, was Parker. He automatically got to his feet when I walked in, gave me a slow appraisal.

‘Charlie. You look … wonderful.’

‘Thank you. I do scrub up on occasion,’ I returned with a wry grin. ‘You look none too shabby yourself, Parker,’ but he didn’t smile back. I saw Caroline Willner flick us a shrewd glance and realised belatedly that I’d probably been a touch too flippant towards my boss in front of a woman who was not only a client, but one who also used to be a countess.

Fortunately, I was saved from having to stumble through an apology, or awkward silence, by Dina’s dramatic entrance. Parker made gallant and appreciative noises, which Dina coyly accepted. Almost on cue, the arrival of the limo was announced, and we trooped out into the blood-warm night.

As Parker passed me he murmured a quick, ‘Sorry’, which only served to confuse me. Sorry for what?

Outside, Torquil stood by the open rear door of a stretch Cadillac CTS, waiting impatiently for us to emerge. His usual pair of bodyguards were ranged behind him. Both wore boxy evening dress that had been chosen more for ease of movement than for flattery of fit, like a conscript’s uniform. Ms Harling of the country club, I considered, definitely had a point.

Caroline Willner sailed down the stairs first, with Dina behind her. Torquil managed to play the gentleman enough to greet his date’s mother with civility and hand her into the limo, although his manner didn’t alter noticeably with Dina. I wondered if she was disappointed that all the effort over her appearance seemed to have gone unnoticed.

As he ducked into the car, Parker nodded to the troops, who stiffened as if suddenly realising they were raw recruits in the presence of a veteran. One hopped in smartly behind us, the other took the front seat next to the driver.

Inside, the Cadillac was cavernous in a slightly tacky way, with inset LED lighting everywhere, mirrors on the ceiling, flat screen TVs, and champagne on ice. It could seat ten in squishy cream-leather comfort, three abreast at the front and rear of the huge rear cabin, and along one side on a four-seater sofa that would have been too big to fit most British living rooms.

When the door clunked shut behind us, I saw there were two other passengers already in occupation. One was a statuesque red-haired woman in a charcoal silk tuxedo, who was clearly security. The other, lounging at the far end with his back to the raised privacy screen behind the driver, was a thin man in his sixties. He cut a striking figure, with a shock of white hair and Colonel Sanders-style moustache and narrow strip of a beard. So, this was Eisenberg Senior, Torquil’s gazillionaire father. Physically, they were not much alike, but in manner they mirrored one another. Of Torquil’s mother, there was no sign.

Parker and I took the rear seats, with the security man who’d climbed in last alongside us. It was the same guy I’d seen shadowing Torquil at the riding club, rather than the lurker who’d stayed in the car. He glanced at me once, without a flicker of reaction in his face, then muttered an instruction into his radio that we were ready to roll out.

I guessed from the snatches of radio traffic I caught that two generations of Eisenberg men travelling together warranted at least two chase cars. They were not difficult to spot.

Torquil’s cellphone rang twice before we’d made it half a mile. The first time was some kind of message that he glanced at briefly, but when the Mission: Impossible theme began its second run, his father gave him a hard stare that made him pointedly turn off the device – or at least put it on silent.

Meanwhile, Eisenberg Senior greeted Caroline Willner with a distant familiarity. Where Torquil came across as precocious and occasionally arrogant, Brandon Eisenberg had perfected this manner into a certain straight-talking charm, backed by obvious savvy. And he’d done his homework.

As he leant forwards to shake Dina’s hand, he said smoothly, ‘I understand you’re turning into quite the talented equestrienne, young lady. I have a few horses myself, so I appreciate the skills involved to handle them well.’

Dina flushed at the praise, and self-consciously congratulated him on his recent winner in the Kentucky Derby.

‘Well, we sure were lucky this time out,’ Eisenberg said modestly. Duty done, he turned his attention to those of us in the rear of the bus as we began to pick up speed. ‘Mr Armstrong, I understand. Your reputation precedes you.’

‘As does yours, sir,’ Parker returned in that entirely neutral voice he used to such effect.

Eisenberg nodded in acknowledgement, and his gaze slid sideways onto me. ‘And you must be Miss Fox,’ he said. ‘According to my boy, you put up quite a show the other day.’

‘I told you – those guys were total dumb-asses, Dad,’ Torquil put in sharply. ‘If they’d taken a swing at her first, instead of the riding club guy, who knows how it would have gone down.’

Beside me, the bodyguard didn’t quite heave a sigh, but his chest definitely gave a quick rise and fall outside its normal rhythm. I didn’t need to suppose whose expert opinions Torquil had hijacked as his own.

Dina, sitting next to Torquil on the sofa, gave him a nudge in the ribs that was only half playful. ‘Hey, that’s my personal bodyguard you’re talking about,’ she protested, flashing me a smile. ‘Charlie was just great. A real action heroine!’

But Eisenberg was silent for a moment, as if giving his son’s words due consideration. Or maybe he was simply wondering – as I was – why Torquil sounded so annoyed about the inept performance by Dina’s potential kidnappers.

It bothered me – Torquil’s response to the incident. Dina had told me he was a risk-taker and a thrill-seeker in the extreme sports in which he regularly engaged. Did that mean he now fancied himself in the role of bodyguard, with all the inherent dangers that fantasy entailed? If so, he could well cause me some major headaches. Not to mention exposing Dina to possible harm.

I thought back to Orlando’s comments at the riding club, just before the attack. She’d told me that Torquil had been hanging around her shortly before she was taken. Was his interest purely academic, or did he have some other, more sinister, involvement?

I glanced sideways at Parker, caught his brief frown and knew his thought processes had travelled a similar path to my own. Either way, Torquil needed to have his wings clipped before he got any of us into a situation where his proverbial wax melted.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

As we all climbed out of the limo outside the grand front entrance of the country club, Brandon Eisenberg turned, buttoning his immaculate dinner jacket, and said casually, ‘I have a table reserved. You’ll be my guests, of course.’

Caroline Willner smiled at him with every appearance of pleasure and said we would all be delighted. I dredged up one of the facts and figures that the ultra-efficient Ms Harling had flung my way the day before, and recalled that reserving an entire table, which seated twelve, could be had for an outrageous price running into thousands of dollars.

There were few limits, it seemed, to what you could get away with in the name of charity.

Before the dinner and auction took place in the Grand Ballroom, there was a cocktail reception in one of the smaller function rooms. Always a difficult occasion to manage from a security standpoint, because of the general crowding and the liquid nature of people’s movements.

It was fortunate that Dina seemed keen to have me alongside her, otherwise I would have struggled to keep her fully covered once the place really began to heat up. Maybe she just wanted the company. Torquil appeared more interested in making inroads into the complimentary champagne than taking care of his date. There was playing it cool, I decided, and then there was being positively chilly.

As we circulated I ran into plenty of other minders, and was on nodding terms with some of them from previous jobs. There were enough actors and celebrities attending to make casual lunatics alone a possibility, never mind specific targeted threats. The close-protection guys all looked tense as a result.

It was a relief to finally be rallied through to the ballroom to take our seats for the gala dinner. Brandon Eisenberg’s table was one of the best, front and centre. Not where I would have chosen to stash my principal if I’d had a choice.

We were directly in front of the stage where the compère would later attempt to whip up his audience into a frenzy of generous bidding. Eisenberg was first to take his seat, at right angles to the stage, where he could keep an eye on the room as well, without craning his neck. His own bodyguard, the red-headed woman, claimed the chair to his right. I’d learnt from Parker that she was ex-Secret Service, called Gleason.

Gleason had not returned my smile of greeting, but turned on the charm as far as Parker was concerned, and was now attempting to impress him with her professional attention to duty. I assumed she was after a job. In this business, having the name Armstrong-Meyer on your CV looked good to anyone.

Caroline Willner sat next to Brandon Eisenberg and, practised in the social graces, immediately engaged him in quiet and earnest conversation. The rest of us sat down and spread out. Even with Torquil’s own bodyguard, we were still only eight instead of twelve, which gave everybody a bit more elbow room.

I had Dina on one side of me and the security man from the back seat of the limo on the other. He had not developed his conversational skills during the ride in, and I’d privately nicknamed him Lurch as a result, but I was happy to people-watch and keep an eye on the flow through the ballroom as the late arrivals made their entrance. Dina was chatting stiltedly with Torquil. The elaborate table displays made it difficult to hold a conversation with the person sitting opposite.

From our vantage point, I spotted Benedict Benelli looking moody in all black, with his damaged right hand thrust into his pocket as usual. Manda Dempsey was on his arm in a white dress that showed the extent of her all-over tan and was causing many a double take from the male guests. Possibly they were all wondering how she managed to keep anything so skimpy to stay the right side of decent. I reckoned double-sided sticky tape had a lot to do with it.

It wasn’t long before Orlando and Hunt also turned up, in a party that also consisted of several security guys and an older couple who looked to be Orlando’s parents. None of them looked particularly happy to be there. The three former kidnap victims did not, I noticed, make any efforts to sit together, despite their apparent pally behaviour at the birthday party.

Dinner was served and cleared with inconspicuous efficiency and the auction began as soon as the coffee and mints were on the tables, leaving the staff to scurry about between the guests, trying not to be mistaken for bidders.

I was staggered at the lots on offer and the prices they fetched, from trips to the British Virgin Islands on the Eisenberg yacht, to a kiss for a rich man’s daughter from the latest teen sensation heart-throb actor.

The auction took about an hour, after which the dancing started, more ballroom than disco, which at least meant the noise stayed at a comfortable level. The country club had employed live musicians to provide the accompaniment, including a Korean girl in a long red dress who, if I was any judge, played classical guitar to a far higher standard than the gig should have demanded.

Those who didn’t dance took the opportunity to circulate and network, or simply to chat. Manda floated across and exchanged air kisses with Dina.

‘Honey, I heard about what happened at the riding club,’ she said, hand still on Dina’s arm. ‘That must have been horrible. How are you?’

‘She’s fine,’ Torquil said, leaning back in his chair to talk around Dina before she had a chance to speak. ‘After all, it wasn’t much of an attempt.’

Dina threw him a sharp look. ‘Well I was terrified, but Charlie was terrific,’ she said, sliding me another of those little sideways glances. ‘And I don’t know how you can say that, Tor. Poor Raleigh’s arm was bust up really bad.’

Manda looked confused. ‘Raleigh?’

‘My horse-riding instructor,’ Dina said. ‘He was walking us to the trailer when these guys appeared out of nowhere and just whaled in on the poor guy.’

Torquil drowned a ‘humph’ into his glass as he took a swig of his drink. Some people just like being argumentative for the sake of it.

Manda frowned at him. ‘Poor guy,’ she repeated. ‘Well, at least you’re OK, honey. That’s something.’ And with a vague smile, she drifted on.

I watched her go, noting that her return to the Benelli table seemed to spark a quiet disagreement between her and Benedict, who was in a worse temper than Torquil and was being stiffly ignored by the rest of his party.

Why, I wondered, amid all this luxury and excess, were all of them so determined not to have a good time tonight?

I turned back and met Caroline Willner’s eye. She gave me a fractional smile as if she’d read my thoughts with accuracy.

‘I should very much like to dance,’ she announced firmly, causing Torquil to bury his nose in his drink again, just in case she had him in mind as a partner.

His father had a more mature way of declining, patting what had seemed to be a perfectly healthy knee and shrugging apologetically. ‘I made it a policy a long time ago to dance in public only with my wife,’ he said with a smile, carefully not looking at his red-headed bodyguard as he spoke. ‘Causes less scandal that way.’

‘In that case,’ Parker said, rising politely and offering his hand. ‘May I?’

Caroline Willner inclined her head, her expression announcing, in a subtle kind of way, that this was the outcome for which she’d been aiming. ‘You may.’

They moved out onto the floor. Dina fidgeted in her chair and stared pointedly at Torquil until he gave an ungracious sigh and pushed his chair back. What was eating him, I wondered?

‘You wanna dance?’

Dina nodded and got to her feet quickly, in case he changed his mind. I glanced across at Parker, saw him pick up Dina’s movement and give me a slight nod, knew he’d have her covered while she and Torquil were out on the floor. Torquil’s bodyguard, Lurch, had been busy folding the silver foil from the coffee mints into mini origami shapes that looked far too delicate for his oversize fingers. Although he didn’t seem to be paying attention, it was deceptive. He was on his feet before Torquil, and was heading for the dance floor.

‘Do me a favour and help him to blend a little, would you?’ Brandon Eisenberg said. For a moment I thought he was speaking to me, but when I looked up, Eisenberg’s eyes were on his own bodyguard, Gleason. When she hesitated, he said, ‘I’m sure Miss Fox will keep me company until you return.’

Gleason didn’t like that at all, but there wasn’t much she could do. She gave a curt nod and stepped onto the floor, holding herself rigidly away from her partner by way of protest, her eyes fixed on Torquil and Dina.

Eisenberg patted Caroline Willner’s empty chair alongside him and, having no good reason to refuse, I moved round, keeping my own eyes on the dance floor as I took my seat.

Parker, I saw, had casually manoeuvred himself close to Dina and Torquil, without it being obvious to anyone, least of all the couple concerned. He was an excellent, fluid dancer. Caroline Willner looked like she was having a good time in his arms.

‘That bother you?’ Eisenberg asked. ‘Mrs Willner dancing with your boss?’

I looked at him in surprise, found him watching me with disconcerting pale-blue eyes.

‘Excuse me?’ I bit out, and remembered belatedly Parker’s warning that Eisenberg was not someone to get on the wrong side of. I swallowed my temper and said in measured tones, ‘Mr Armstrong is my boss. Why does everybody assume there’s more to our relationship than that?’

Eisenberg chuckled. In a flash I knew that Gleason’s duties towards guarding his body went a little further than they should. I stood up again.

‘Sit down, Miss Fox, I’m not done talking with you,’ Eisenberg said, his voice still pleasant even if his eyes had turned cold. ‘I’d heard you were … otherwise attached, shall we say, to Armstrong’s partner, but he got himself shot a few months back and word is his condition may be permanent. That reaction just told me my information is correct, and you haven’t transferred your affections.’

I felt my facial muscles lock in an effort not to scream, or cry, or punch his nasal bone straight up through his frontal lobe. So, he’d had us checked out long before we’d climbed into his limo earlier tonight. No surprises there.

I kept my voice lethally calm. ‘And why would my relationships – imagined or otherwise – be of the slightest interest to you?’

He sat back looking vaguely satisfied, as if he took my trying to find a reason not to deck him as some kind of piqued interest.

‘Because I want to offer you a job.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I stared at Eisenberg for a moment with nothing in my eyes. After ten seconds, even someone with his monstrously thick skin began to realise he might have made a mistake. A flicker of unease appeared in his face.

I stood up again, remembering my manners, though it grieved me to waste them on someone without any of his own. ‘Thanks for the charmingly worded offer, but – no thanks.’

Eisenberg sighed loud enough to be heard over the music, as if I were being deliberately difficult. ‘Don’t you even want to hear what the job is?’

I twisted, gripping the back of a chair to give my hands something to choke. ‘Considering you apparently assume the only way I acquired my present job was by sleeping with Sean, and the only way I’ve kept it since is by sleeping with Parker,’ I said with icy precision, ‘I think I’d rather remain blissfully ignorant of the details, thanks.’

‘Clearly you’re a woman of loyalty and principle, Miss Fox,’ he said. ‘I find those qualities admirable. Foolish, but admirable.’ He smiled, revealing a lot of expensive dental work that I had a sudden urge to ruin. ‘I’m not a man who apologises often, but I see I’ve offended you and for that I do most humbly apologise.’

I doubted his sincerity, but it would have been churlish to call him on it. ‘I’m in a job that demands absolute loyalty to principals of a different kind,’ I said instead. ‘Without it, I’d be no use to anyone.’

He raised his glass slightly, conceding the point. ‘I like to find out what makes people tick,’ he said, eyes roaming the dance floor briefly before returning to me. ‘In your case, I believe it’s loyalty to Mr Meyer. The medical facility where he’s presently undergoing treatment is one of the finest in the country, as I understand, but not the finest in the world.’ He paused. ‘I could arrange his transfer to the one that is.’

I let my eyebrow rise. ‘For someone you’ve heard may not recover anyway?’ I said coolly. ‘Why?’

‘Because I’m prepared to offer certain of my employees benefits tailored to their … specific needs, shall we say.’

Despite myself, and blunt in my reluctance, a question forced its way out. ‘What’s the job?’

He smiled more fully then, just for a moment before his face grew serious. He looked towards the dance floor again.

‘My son,’ he said. ‘I want you to take over guarding my son.’

Later, Caroline Willner moved to take her daughter’s vacant chair while Dina danced with Parker, looking very self-conscious about it. Torquil had persuaded Manda onto the floor with him, while Benedict still sat in sulky silence at his family’s table. Orlando and Hunt danced together nearby. Orlando seemed to be doing her best to climb into her boyfriend’s lap, even though he wasn’t sitting down.

‘So,’ Caroline Willner said, settling herself next to me and leaning close enough not to be overheard, ‘I assume the ever charming Mr Eisenberg took the opportunity to offer you some kind of employment earlier.’

I glanced at her. ‘And why would you assume that?’

‘Because, in coming to Dina’s rescue, you reacted with instinct and initiative. That’s sure to have been reported to him. From what I know of his business dealings, he has a knack for spotting talent and snapping it up,’ she said with candour. ‘Although I gather from your reaction that he misjudged your response.’

‘You could say that,’ I agreed. ‘I told him no.’

‘Well, I’m glad, my dear,’ she said, patting my hand. ‘He’s a louse and a lecher. Never an appealing combination.’

‘I thought he danced only with his wife,’ I said, smiling.

‘In public, yes. What they get up to in private is quite another matter. Mrs Eisenberg is currently cruising the Bahamas on the family yacht, surrounded by an attractive, young, all-male crew, I believe.’

I managed to swallow my laughter along with a mouthful of sparkling water. ‘I’m beginning to think the boy Torquil actually turned out remarkably well balanced, considering his home life.’

‘He records his parents’ infidelities,’ Caroline Willner said, as if reporting on a mildly inferior play. ‘Dreadful habit. One can’t be seen to disapprove of him, of course, but it might be wise if you were to warn Dina that if she really must sleep with the boy, then to do it at a place of her choosing, otherwise she might find herself somewhat exposed on YouTube.’

I nearly choked at that and had to put my glass down quickly, reaching for a napkin to blot my mouth. When I could speak again, I grinned at her, wondering if my mother had ever remotely considered handing out such practical and down-to-earth advice. ‘You wouldn’t care to adopt me, by any chance?’

She gave me a slight smile. ‘You’re very good for Dina,’ she said. ‘You’ve given her focus, confidence, shown her what’s important.’

My eyebrows went up again. ‘I’ve known her a matter of days.’

‘Nevertheless. You took her to see your young man – Sean, is it?’

‘Ah, yes,’ I admitted. ‘Yes I did.’ Parker had not approved, citing a variety of reasons from scaring my principal to involving her in my private life, neither of which he recommended. These people, he’d reminded me, were not my friends. I should not take them into my confidence and expect them to care. ‘I’m sorry if you disapprove—’

‘Quite the contrary,’ she said briskly. ‘It demonstrated beyond all doubt that the matter of her personal safety is not a game, and should not be treated as such, however lightly her friends seem to take their own experiences.’

‘I would have thought that Benedict’s missing finger would be a permanent reminder,’ I said.

Over to my left, the Korean guitarist was engrossed in the piece she was playing, head down and eyes closed as her fingers caressed the strings of her instrument. I wondered if she was the cause of Benedict’s enduring bad mood this evening. Or part of it, at least.

Caroline Willner followed my gaze and passed me a shrewd look. ‘Benedict Benelli was never as keen on becoming a classical musician as his family were on pushing him in that direction,’ she said. ‘And he could still pursue that path, if he so chose.’

‘With a missing finger?’ I queried. ‘Wouldn’t that be a little difficult?’

‘He lost the little finger of his right hand,’ Caroline Willner said, dismissive. ‘Unless he was planning to take up flamenco, that’s the one finger a classical guitarist does not use.’ She gestured towards the stage. ‘If you watch the girl’s hands carefully, you’ll see for yourself.’

For a few moments I did, and although it was sometimes hard to tell, with the angle the Korean girl held her wrist, and the incredible dexterity of her fingers, I realised that Caroline Willner was entirely correct. I’d watched classical guitarists play before and it had always seemed like they had about ten extra fingers on each hand, never mind failing to utilise all the ones they had. It was the kind of snippet Sean would find interesting. I suppressed the instant twinge of associated thoughts and simply made a mental note to tell him about it, the next time I visited.

Out on the dance floor, Hunt had managed to disentangle himself from Orlando and cut in on Parker, although with great courtesy. If Dina showed a faint flicker of disappointment to have her dance with my boss cut short, Hunt soon proved adequate compensation. Parker headed back to the table and gave me a slight bow.

‘I’ve been rejected,’ he said gravely. ‘Can I rely on you to bolster my flagging ego, Charlie?’

I knew he was only asking in order for us to be nearer to Dina, but it was a nice way of asking. I glanced at Caroline, feeling rude to abandon her in mid conversation, but she waved me up. As we walked back towards the other dancers, though, I could feel her watching the pair of us with that astute gaze.

I had learnt the basics of not treading on my partner’s toes to music while I was still at school, at the urging of my mother. I think she had more or less despaired of me turning into a young lady by then, but that didn’t mean I had to entirely lack the social graces.

Ironically, I’d brushed up my rusty skills more since going into close protection than I ever had before. Nothing allows you to stick close to a principal at a formal party than being able to dance right next to them, I’d found. Particularly if you can do it without looking like an elephant in evening dress. I caught sight of Torquil’s bodyguard blundering around the floor with a long-suffering Gleason in tow, and was suddenly thankful for my mother’s stubborn insistence.

Parker caught the direction of my gaze and smiled. ‘Yeah, it’s not hard to see why Eisenberg offered you a job.’

I stared. There hadn’t yet been an opportunity to give my boss the gist of that conversation when I hadn’t been able to feel Brandon Eisenberg’s eyes boring into the back of my neck. ‘Did he hire a skywriter?’ I demanded sourly. ‘How the hell did you know that?’

‘Because when I came back to the table after that dance with Mrs Willner, you looked like you wanted to rip off his head and spit down his neck,’ Parker said wryly. ‘And it’s what I would have done.’

And I thought I’d hidden it so well. ‘What – ripped his head off?’

Another smile, one that crinkled his eyes. ‘No, offered you a job.’

‘You wouldn’t have been quite so crass about it.’

‘Thank you – I guess,’ he said. He paused. ‘Mrs Willner thinks you’re a positive influence on her daughter, by the way.’

‘I’m doing my best,’ I said. ‘According to Dina, her mother’s the one trying to hustle her over to Europe.’

Parker nodded. ‘Uh-huh, and did she say why she’s refusing?’

‘Pig-headedness, mainly. Disguised as not wanting to give in and run away from danger.’

He sighed. ‘It’s never the cowards who get us killed,’ he said, then seemed to realise the implications of that. I felt his back stiffen under my resting hand.

‘Don’t say it,’ I said lightly. ‘You’ll lose concentration and trample on me.’

His muscles eased a fraction. ‘Just be careful. In a lot of ways, Dina’s younger than she looks. Don’t let her put you on a pedestal.’

‘Don’t worry, I keep putting my foot in it too frequently for that.’

‘I don’t know – you seem pretty light on your feet to me.’ He smiled again. ‘You dance well. Another of your talents.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, and recalled his earlier compliment, and my reaction to it. ‘Look, Parker, back at the Willners’ place, you said—’

‘That I was sorry?’ he said. ‘I … embarrassed you, in front of a client. That was out of line.’

‘Embarrassed me?’ I shrugged, eyes over his shoulder to keep a watch on Dina, but her body language was perfectly relaxed. ‘All you did was tell me I looked nice.’

‘No, I said you looked wonderful. There’s a difference.’

My gaze snapped back to his. ‘Yes, you did,’ I murmured, feeling my skin heat, my mouth dry. Almost with shock, I recognised the signs of my own arousal. ‘Parker, I’m—’

‘I know,’ he said softly. ‘I know. Just dance, Charlie.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

It was a while before either of us spoke after that. Why Parker kept his own counsel, I can only guess. Me, because I couldn’t think of a damn thing to say that wouldn’t make things ten times worse – for both of us.

Parker was my boss, Sean’s partner, our friend. He’d been a shoulder to lean on. More than that, he’d been a rock in a storm-lashed sea, and I’d clung to the support he’d offered since Sean’s injury. But I’d never expected for a moment that I’d start to fall for him, with all the emotional turmoil that entailed.

The music eventually segued into another number and Hunt, with gallant reluctance, led Dina back to her table. Parker and I followed suit. Torquil, laughing, declined to release Manda and swept her into another dance. He’d lost his miserable air, but I think that had more to do with making Gleason stay on the floor with Lurch. Torquil’s bodyguard had long since exhausted his repertoire of dance steps and the pair of them were looking increasingly uncomfortable.

If Torquil wasn’t careful, I thought, his own team would knock him off just to be rid of him.

He only tortured them for a few minutes longer, however, then handed Manda back to Benedict and swaggered off towards the restrooms. I saw Lurch move to follow him, leaving Gleason to finally hurry back to our table and plonk herself down next to Eisenberg like she was determined not to get up again.

Torquil, however, had no intention of being followed everywhere by his bodyguard. I saw him whirl and plant a determined finger in the guy’s chest. He was close enough for me to hear the exchange, which basically ran along the lines that Torquil felt he was old enough to take a leak unaided.

Lurch glanced over at Torquil’s father for guidance, which only served to infuriate the son even more. He gave the bodyguard’s face a light slap to bring it back to face him. I sucked in an involuntary breath, but Lurch had heroic self-control and didn’t punch the little brat’s lights out.

‘Don’t you look to him for orders!’ Torquil growled. ‘You work for me, OK?’

Surreptitiously, I leant closer to Parker and, with minimal movement of my lips, murmured, ‘When you said Eisenberg had all kinds of influence I did not want to tangle with, did you mean he was connected to the Mob?’

Parker’s lips quirked. ‘We don’t think so. Why?’

‘I just wondered why Torquil’s behaving like something out of a bad junior version of The Godfather,’ I said, still keeping my voice low. ‘Perhaps this might be a good chance to find out?’

‘Just be careful,’ he warned, almost into my hair. ‘After all, the Willners have horses – you do not want to wake up in bed with part of one of them.’

I pulled a face and got to my feet as casually as I could manage, collecting my evening bag to add a touch of authenticity to the exercise. And just when Torquil’s bodyguard might have overridden his principal’s wishes, I heard Parker’s voice behind me ask him some seemingly loaded question about his experience in the business.

I glanced behind me long enough to see Lurch torn between a possible job opportunity and disobeying a direct order. I think Gleason’s scowl finally swayed him, like she thought he’d been chosen over her. Lurch hesitated a moment, then turned back and took the seat I’d just vacated next to my boss. I could have told him that – by doing so – he’d just lost any chance he might have had of being offered employment with Armstrong-Meyer.

Beyond Torquil’s obvious charms, what was it about working for the Eisenbergs, I wondered as I headed for the restrooms, that made people so desperate to get away from them? But Brandon Eisenberg had offered to find a place for Sean in the best neurological rehab centre in the world. Despite the obvious drawbacks, was that temptation enough?

No, I decided. It wasn’t. Because if Sean came out of his coma and discovered what I’d done, there would be hell to pay.

Not ‘if’, dammit – ‘when’!

I excuse-me’d my way out of the ballroom, through a set of double doors and down a plushly carpeted hallway, punctuated by spotlit marble busts of what I think were supposed to be Greek gods, although one bore an uncanny resemblance to Brad Pitt in laurel wreath and artfully draped toga.

I paused by the door to the men’s room, undecided. The music was more muted here, so that the piercing notes of the Mission: Impossible theme ringtone was easily recognisable from within. It hadn’t taken Torquil long, I realised, to reboot his phone once he was out of his father’s earshot.

I hesitated a moment longer. Parker had told me to tread carefully around Torquil, so I pushed open the outer door to the men’s room with great care. Like the ladies’, it had a little vestibule which I assumed was supposed to operate as a kind of airlock as well as a modesty screen.

Not that it smelt in there. The country club did not permit that kind of thing. When I cracked the inner door a fraction and peered through the gap, the overwhelming odour was of expensive perfumed hand soap. It could have been a lot worse.

Inside was an extravagance of marble tiles and subdued lighting, which made the usual row of urinals seem more out of place than usual. Torquil was the only occupant, something he had evidently been told to verify, judging by the way he was nudging each of the cubicle doors open with his foot, the phone tucked against his shoulder as he did so.

‘Yeah, yeah, so there’s no one here,’ he said into it then, his voice impatient. ‘Why the cloak-and-dagger stuff? Why couldn’t you just …? Oh, OK, I get it …’ Then his voice rose, almost jubilant. ‘Cool, man!’ And then he seemed to realise how gauche he sounded and made an attempt to play it down. ‘Hey, listen. Just make sure they make a better job of it this time, OK? I’m not fooling around—’

Suddenly, the outer door behind me swung open and I was faced with a startled man in a tuxedo.

Unable to think of any reasonable explanation, I beamed stupidly at him and lurched against the nearest wall, putting as much slur into my voice as I could manage. ‘Hey, buddy, I guess one of ush ish inda wrong placesh, huh?’

‘Yeah, lady, and I think maybe it’s you.’ He gave a nervous laugh and steered me towards the outer door, edging around me. ‘Try down the hall.’

‘Oh, OK,’ I said with false brightness. ‘’Cause I need to pee-pee real bad.’

Any thoughts he might have had of lecturing me to be more careful where I headed in future died instantly. He shoved me back out into the corridor and disappeared towards the inner sanctum.

I quickly nipped behind Brad Pitt’s marble effigy. The startled man reappeared shortly afterwards and headed back for the ballroom without checking the rest of the corridor. So, at least I knew he wasn’t security of any kind. I debated briefly on whether he’d had time to do what he needed to and wash his hands. On balance, probably not.

Torquil emerged a minute or so later, still looking at the display on his phone. He looked up with a jerk as I fell into step alongside him.

‘Hey, Tor, who’s on the phone?’

‘That’s for me to know and you … not to know,’ he said, but his voice didn’t have its usual brusque edge. However the call had finished, it had done so to his liking.

‘If it concerns Dina’s safety,’ I said quietly, ‘it is my business.’

He just stared at me oddly for a moment. ‘Why? So’s you can look good by “rescuing” her again, that it?’ he demanded, drawing little quote marks in the air with his fingers.

‘What is that supposed to mean?’ I put a hand on his arm when he would have brushed past me. He glanced down and I stepped in, speaking more urgently. ‘Talk to me. Please. You saw what happens when people get in the way – Raleigh’s going to need surgery to use that arm again.’

It was a slight exaggeration, but it seemed appropriate under the circumstances. Encouraged by his silence, I tried again. ‘If someone gets killed next time, even your father’s money and power won’t be able to save you from the consequences.’

But I’d overreached, and if the stubborn expression that stiffened his face was anything to go by, he knew it. His self-doubt collapsed and he yanked himself out of my grasp.

One of the doors to the ballroom swung open and Lurch loomed in the gap.

‘You got trouble there, boss?’

‘No,’ Torquil said, stowing his cellphone into his pocket and putting all his superiority into a single dismissive glance. ‘No trouble at all.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

And, for three days after the charity auction, no trouble was exactly what we got.

Despite her lack of actual employment, no one could accuse Dina of being inactive. Between her tennis lessons, and her lunches, and her personal shopper, and her personal trainer, there was barely a minute when her time wasn’t organised with something or other. And if I had my doubts about whether it was all worthwhile, I kept those opinions firmly to myself.

But despite the trappings of wealth, the only time Dina seemed to be completely relaxed and happy was when she was out with her horse. Cerdo was possibly the only one who didn’t make any allowances for how rich or influential his owner might be. He still tanked off with her along the beach if he was that way inclined, but equally he could behave like a gracious prince. I think his variable moods provided an area of rare uncertainty in Dina’s life that she genuinely looked forward to.

Other areas of uncertainty were my concern. As soon as I’d got back to our table that night at the country club, I’d reported the content of Torquil’s eavesdropped phone call in the restroom to Parker.

‘But there was no concrete threat,’ he pointed out at last, keeping his voice low. ‘Not specific enough to warrant pulling her out of here.’

‘Still …’

He sat back. ‘You’re the one in the hot seat, so it’s your call, Charlie, you know that.’ He paused. ‘But if Torquil is involved, do you think he’d be dumb enough to do anything here? Look around you – the close-protection teams outnumber the guests, and however many corners Brandon Eisenberg may have cut in order to make his money, these days he keeps his hands pristine.’

‘Whereas,’ I said slowly, ‘if I call in alternative transport and whisk Dina home separately – not in the limo with him – who knows what might happen en route.’

Parker simply smiled.

We stayed.

But on the ride back to the Willners’ place in the stretch Cadillac, Torquil’s attitude towards Dina had definitely changed – and I didn’t think that was solely down to the amount of alcohol he’d consumed during the evening. He swayed in his seat as the limo rolled along, smirking like he was in on the world’s best private joke, and it was all on us.

If I hadn’t known for a fact that Dina had never been alone with him anywhere private, I might even have suspected he’d got his leg over. He still might’ve, I conceded – just not with Dina.

When we’d pulled up in the driveway, Torquil’s father politely declined Caroline Willner’s offer of a nightcap. Perhaps it was as clear to him as to me that she had not wanted him to accept. But they nodded to each other, honour satisfied.

Torquil cocked an eyebrow towards Dina. ‘What about you?’ he said. ‘Wanna go find a nightclub or something?’

Dina, in the process of shifting forwards in her seat to rise, hesitated, glancing at me as if for advice. I kept my face professionally blank, even though I was willing her to make the right response.

‘I … um, I guess I’m pretty tired, so—’

‘No problem-o,’ Torquil said with insulting speed. He was still sprawled in his seat, making no moves to help her out. ‘I’ll call you,’ he added with a carelessness that meant the opposite.

Dina flushed, eyes rigidly focused on him so she wouldn’t have to meet anyone’s embarrassed stares. He might show flashes of charm, but underneath Torquil was still a spoilt brat, I decided.

‘Fine,’ Dina snapped, and faced his father with some small measure of bravado. ‘Goodnight, Mr Eisenberg. Thanks so much for the ride.’

Torquil coloured up himself at that, opened his mouth and shut it again just as fast, scowling. I ducked out of the limo and slammed the door after Dina before I allowed the smile to form on my face.

‘Nicely done,’ I murmured as we climbed the front steps behind her mother and Parker.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said stiffly.

I let it go, but it was interesting that she had accurately pinpointed one of Torquil’s Achilles’ heels – that he was beholden to his father for everything, even down to transport for the evening.

Needless to say, Torquil had not called the following day, nor the day after that, and Dina’s reaction was a difficult one to fathom out. At first, I thought it was her pride that had been hurt, but there seemed to be more to it. I couldn’t believe she’d fallen for him, but being dropped had clearly sent her into the doldrums more than I would have expected.

And now, walking the horses side by side along the damp sand, there was still a trace of mournfulness about her.

‘He’s not worth it, Dina,’ I said quietly.

For a moment I thought she hadn’t heard me. Her eyes were fixed on a squadron of brown pelicans cruising the incoming wave crests in single file, ungainly birds on the ground who achieved an unexpected agile beauty as soon as they took to the air.

‘I know.’

‘O … K,’ I said slowly, twitching the reins as Geronimo ducked his head to snort at a wading bird who’d almost nipped between his front feet. ‘So, why have you spent the last couple of days looking like you’ve lost a million quid and found tuppence?’

She twisted in her saddle. ‘Excuse me?’

I sighed. ‘Why the long face?’

She shrugged, turning away again, and when she spoke her voice had a brittle quality. ‘And how, exactly, is that relevant to your job?’

That sent my eyebrows rising silently. It was the first time she’d played the ‘lowly employee’ card with me, although it tended to come with the territory on this kind of job. Back during the brief spell when I’d been assigned to the Dempsey family, I remembered suddenly, the young Amanda had reminded me on a regular basis that she considered me barely at a level with the gardeners. Still, at least she’d been consistent about it.

‘Look, Dina—’

‘Let it go, Charlie,’ she snapped, her tension making Cerdo break into an uneasy sidle. ‘For God’s sake! Do I have to fire you?’

It would do me no good, I reasoned, to point out that it was actually her mother who had that privilege. Instead, I waited until she’d got the white horse to settle, and pushed Geronimo into a longer stride to catch up.

‘We think Torquil Eisenberg is in on the kidnaps,’ I said then, conversational.

Cerdo bounced again, snatching at the bridle as he reacted to the slight contraction of her hands. It was as though Dina was sitting on a giant lie detector. Perhaps she realised that, because the abrupt way she grabbed at his mouth made him try to spring forward in response, and gave her an excuse to fuss for maybe half a minute persuading him to calm down to a walk again. Then she looked back at me.

‘How do you know?’

It took me a moment to work out what was wrong about that – not just the question, but the way she asked it.

For a start, where was the instant denial? Where was the protestation that surely nobody she knew could possibly have been responsible for any of it, and especially not chopping off a victim’s finger – albeit a largely redundant one? Where was the instinctive laughter, scorn even?

And, more than that, the emphasis was wrong. If she’d stressed the ‘you’ part, it would have seemed more dismissive, but she didn’t. If anything, the taut little sentence was weighted towards the ‘how’. So instead of expressing doubt at my deductive powers, it became somehow almost an admission of her own guilt.

If she’d been thinking coolly, logically, she would have asked a rake of questions I had no answers to. We had no proof other than an overheard phone call, a suspicion, a gut instinct.

Instead, more than anything she sounded scared. As scared as she had done the day I’d taken her to see Sean and she’d refused to run away from danger. What did she have to prove?

‘Dina—’

‘Hey, there!’

The voice came from up in the dunes to our right. I wheeled Geronimo round to put him between Dina’s horse and the shout, grateful for his quick responses.

Dina leant past me for a better view, shading her eyes with her hand. She stared at the figure who was now approaching in long sliding steps through the ankle-deep sand, and her agitation communicated itself clearly to Cerdo who began to stamp and fidget.

‘Tor?’ Dina’s own voice was incredulous. ‘But … what are you doing here?’

Torquil made a show of cupping a hand behind his ear until he was less than five metres away. Then he spread his hands wide and grinned at us both.

‘What?’ he demanded. ‘C’mon, you’re acting like you’re surprised to see me, babe.’

I assumed that question was aimed at Dina. She flushed as if he’d made an accusation.

‘I am,’ she said blankly. ‘What are you doing here, Tor?’

‘You asked me to come,’ he said, the big smile diminishing just a notch as the first trace of annoyance began to creep in. He checked both our faces, as if this was a practical joke at his expense that was being carried on just a little too far. But still he clung to the hope that, sooner or later, one of us would be unable to hold back the laughter and confess. All he saw was confusion. ‘You sent me an email … didn’t you?’

‘No, of course I didn’t!’

I checked up and down the beach quickly in both directions. There were the usual joggers and power-walkers carving a path along the harder packed sand just above the waterline, a couple of quad bikers in the distance, the sound of more in the dunes, but it wasn’t the kind of beach where you got crowds. It all looked quiet, normal.

Nevertheless, something at the back of my scalp began to prickle.

‘What did it say, this supposed email?’ I asked.

Torquil glanced at me with a knowing smile just flicking at the corner of his mouth.

‘Oh, OK, I get it,’ he said. He sighed, as if being forced to go through the details when it was obvious that we all knew them. ‘The message said to meet Dina – here, this morning,’ he said, adding with a leer, ‘That she’d come alone and so should I.’

‘Why?’

‘Whaddya mean, why?’ He gave a splutter of full laughter that died when he realised that he was the only one laughing. His face twitched. ‘She knows what it said.’

I glanced at Dina, found her white-faced. She met my eyes, mutely pleading.

I don’t! I didn’t!

I believed her. And from over the dunes I heard the sound of another engine approaching. Bigger than the higher-pitched quads that had masked it to this point, the note rising and falling as it ploughed across the soft ground.

‘Torquil,’ I said, aware that my own anxiety was making even the placid Geronimo start to skitter a little underneath me, ‘where are your guys?’

‘My what?’

I wanted to shake him. ‘Your bodyguards,’ I said, louder now. ‘Where are they?’

He didn’t like my tone. It made him stubborn about replying, which wasted valuable time. ‘I told them to stay with the car,’ he said at last, grudging, jerking his head back the way he’d come.

‘Call them in.’

‘Why?’

It was a good question, one I didn’t have the time nor the inclination to answer. Every instinct told me this set-up stank, and, in that case, I wanted witnesses. If Torquil’s bodyguards were in on whatever games he was playing, he wouldn’t have needed to ditch them before that phone call at the country club, and he wouldn’t have come alone now. They worked for his father, I recalled. Did that make a difference?

‘Charlie, what’s going on?’ If Dina was sounding worried before, it had stepped up a level.

‘We need to get out of here,’ I said, eyes on the dunes, straining to get a bearing on direction. The acoustics of the sand made it hard to judge exactly where the vehicle was going to pop out. ‘Just be ready.’

‘But, why?’ she demanded, the timbre of her voice high and cracked. ‘Charlie, talk to me! What’s happening?’

But at that moment an old Jeep Wrangler, its red body streaked with dust, came bowling over the top of the nearest dune and hurtled down the beach towards the three of us, kicking up a plume of sand and spray.

I yanked Geronimo in a tight circle, crowding Dina and Cerdo into the same urgent manoeuvre. I don’t know what made me flick my eyes towards Torquil as I did so. And I don’t know what I was expecting to see there in return. Reproach, regret, resentment – who knows? Maybe anger, like last time, or even some sense of growing alarm.

But what I wasn’t expecting was a gleeful, wanton excitement.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

‘Go! GO!’ I yelled at Dina, but Cerdo was way ahead of her. The white horse catapulted forwards with such violence that she was left scrabbling to stay with him. The two animals stretched into a full gallop, their eager rivalry compounded by the fact we were heading for home.

I kept Geronimo as close alongside as I could, holding back slightly into the line of fire as the red Jeep swerved down onto the flat sand behind us.

And in my head, the calculations swirled and formed like ice. A fit horse can gallop flat out at twenty-five to thirty miles an hour for maybe a mile before it’s blown – two miles at the most. It was a shame Cerdo wasn’t a Quarter Horse, too, because that particular breed has been clocked at closer to fifty-five over its namesake distance.

An off-road vehicle, on the other hand, can keep going until it runs out of fuel in the tank. The beach was firm, the ridged sand even enough to make fifty or sixty miles an hour feasible if the occupants didn’t mind losing a few fillings in the process.

There was no escaping the fact we were not going to be able to run from this one. I was wearing the SIG on my right hip. This time, regardless of whether the horses were gun-shy or not, I knew I might have to use it.

As I urged Geronimo on, I checked back over my shoulder, fully expecting to see the Jeep gaining on us with every stride. To my intense surprise, it did not even seem to be giving chase. I yelled to Dina and sat up abruptly, managing to slow Geronimo’s headlong flight. Fortunately, the initial burst of speed had taken enough out of him for the old Quarter Horse to be glad of the excuse to drop back to a shambling trot, head low. Dina went for the easy way of stopping, which was simply to steer Cerdo into the sea and let the water act as a drogue chute.

And without the jostling vibration, I could see the Jeep had never come after us at all. It had bounced down onto the sand and carved a sweeping turn around Torquil. Just for a moment, I thought it must be some friend of his, and that would explain his reaction when the Jeep had first appeared.

But the Jeep continued to circle, tightening in until it was literally kicking sand into the boy’s face. Still he stood his ground, hand up to shield his eyes, not realising that the Jeep had neatly cut off his escape route back towards the car where his bodyguards waited, out of sight and earshot, oblivious.

‘Run,’ I muttered under my breath. ‘Run, dammit.’

But Torquil didn’t run, didn’t move at all until the Jeep swerved towards him suddenly, as though intending to mow him down. Only then did he take a couple of fast steps back, stumbled and went sprawling. The Jeep slewed to a halt just ahead of him.

As I pulled up, I saw a dark-clad figure jump out, pointing something at Torquil with his arm outstretched. I saw the boy paddle backwards, panic in every line of him now as he tried to scrabble away on all fours. The man – the outline was definitely male – stood his ground easily. He maybe even took a moment so the full import of what was about to happen to his victim really hit home.

Then the weapon in his hand jerked and Torquil lurched backwards into the sand, his body convulsing.

‘Oh my God!’ Dina cried, urging Cerdo back out of the surf, fighting for control. ‘They shot him! Torquil’s shot.’

I barged Geronimo in front of her when she would have gone barrelling back towards the Jeep, blocking her path.

‘It’s a Taser,’ I said, earning a furious look. I’d been hit with them enough to know.

‘So what?’ She pulled at her reins, trying to disentangle the two horses, and only succeeded in flustering the pair of them. I grabbed Cerdo’s bridle and held on for grim death.

A hundred metres away, the driver of the Jeep had jumped out and helped his passenger load a largely insensible Torquil into the back of the vehicle. They took an end each and more or less threw him in, the way you’d toss a long heavy bag over the edge of a cliff. I heard the thump of his body landing, even from there. The two men jumped back into the front.

‘Charlie, for God’s sake, let go,’ Dina wailed, close to tears now. ‘Do something!’

‘Leave it, Dina!’ I snapped and, more quietly as the Jeep picked up speed and revved out of sight into the dunes, ‘Don’t you understand? There’s nothing I can do.’

But there was one thing – the only thing. I checked my watch out of habit. It was 09.23. I grabbed my cellphone out of my pocket, started to punch in the emergency number.

‘Don’t!’ If anything, Dina’s voice was more stricken than before.

‘What? Dina, I have to call this in, right now.’

‘No,’ she said, pale, her lips bloodless as a corpse, eyes huge. ‘Please. If it’s the same people … you’re the one who doesn’t understand. You can’t go to the police.’

I eyed her for a moment in exasperation, then remembered the conversation I’d had with Manda at Torquil’s birthday party. How she’d told me they’d threatened to kill her, slowly and painfully, if the authorities were called in. And Benedict, too. Despite the threats to their son, Benedict’s parents had hesitated, and they’d mutilated him. I snapped my phone shut and shoved it back in my jacket.

‘Let’s go find his protection team,’ I said shortly. ‘After that, it’s up to them who they call.’

I didn’t wait for her to answer, just nudged Geronimo forwards, heading for the spot where Torquil had been abducted. The horse seemed reluctant to approach, acting spooked as if he could sense that something bad had happened. Or maybe he just didn’t like the whiff of exhaust smoke that still hung in the air.

‘What’s that?’ Dina asked suddenly from behind me, pointing into the churned-up sand. I followed her arm and spotted something gleaming darkly. Jumping down, I discovered Torquil’s expensive PDA. It must have dropped out of his pocket when he fell. So much for the thought that Torquil might be able to call for help.

I picked it up automatically, shoved it in my pocket, and climbed back into the saddle.

The two of us rode up into the dunes until we spotted Torquil’s big gold Bentley, with his two bodyguards sitting inside. They got out as soon as they saw us, alerted by something that all was not well with their absent principal. I saw a familiar dread in the way they carried themselves.

The shit, I reasoned, was just about to hit the fan in a very big way.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

‘As soon as I’d informed Eisenberg’s team of the situation, I got Dina out of there,’ I said.

Parker nodded. ‘Good work, Charlie.’ He paused. ‘How’s she taking it?’

‘Badly,’ I said flatly. ‘I think she blames me for not stepping in and saving him.’

He put his hand on my arm, gave it a quick squeeze. ‘You did your job and protected your principal without distraction,’ he said. ‘Nobody can argue with that.’

‘I know.’ I shrugged, gave him a weary smile. ‘It’s not much compensation somehow.’

We were back at the Willners’ house, which was more or less on a security lockdown. Dina had held it together until we’d got the horses back into the stable yard below the house, then had just about collapsed, weeping. The cynical part of me wondered if her fit of the vapours was a convenient way of avoiding the questions she must have known I was about to ask.

She was currently lying down in her room with the blinds drawn, being tended by her mother and their family doctor, with another of Parker’s guys, Joe McGregor, on guard outside her door.

Parker and I stood in the living area, staring out at the relentless ocean, muted by the glass. I was still in my riding clothes and smelt distinctly of sweaty horse. Parker contrasted sharply in a dark business suit and sober tie. It was half past noon. Almost exactly three hours since Torquil’s abduction.

‘What the hell is going on with this kid, Charlie?’ he murmured, eyes narrowed.

‘I wish I knew,’ I said. ‘The other night, at the country club, I would have sworn Torquil was in on the attempt made to grab Dina, but in that case, today’s developments don’t make any sense. If he’s involved, why have himself kidnapped?’

‘Professional assessment – did it look real or fake to you?’

I considered for a moment, eyes focused back in memory, replaying the whole scene, from the moment the Jeep had leapt into view over the top of the dunes, to Torquil being unceremoniously tossed into the back of it.

‘I suppose I would have to say … real,’ I said slowly. ‘Nobody willingly agrees to have himself hit with a Taser – not when he could just have been threatened with it.’

‘He might not have been expecting them to go to quite that level of authenticity,’ Parker pointed out. ‘And if it’s the same people who took the others, they did chop off Benedict Benelli’s finger, don’t forget.’

‘Still, there was something about it … I don’t know.’ I frowned. ‘When the Jeep first appeared, he looked surprised but happy to see it – excited, even. And only when it came after him instead of Dina did he seem to panic, as if he’d been expecting to watch, not actively take part.’

‘Maybe he realised from what you said to him at the country club the other night that you were onto him, and he wanted to make it look good,’ Parker said. ‘Hence claiming he’d gotten an email from Dina asking for the meet.’

‘Ah, and there we might have a slight problem. He did get an email.’

Parker stilled at the implications. ‘So … Dina set this up?’

‘Not exactly, and that’s the problem,’ I said. ‘I found this on the beach.’

I handed Parker Torquil’s PDA. He’d seen the boy using it in the limo on the way to the charity auction, so he didn’t waste time asking whose it was. Instead, he scrolled through the menu and opened up the in-box, just as I had done as soon as I’d got back to the house.

And there was the message, clearly identifying Dina – or her email address – as the sender.

‘Meet me on the beach near the dunes in an HOUR. It’s VITAL we talk about what’s been going on before the truth comes out! Come ALONE and so will I. Tell NO ONE!!’

‘Looks kinda clear to me,’ Parker said. He glanced at me with a cool assessing gaze. ‘But you have doubts.’

‘I was with Dina all morning. She never had a chance to send an email, either from her laptop or her cellphone.’

‘You sure? It doesn’t take more than a half minute.’

I remembered again her shock when Torquil first appeared. If she’d been expecting him – expecting anyone – she was a far better actress than I’d given her credit for. Even if she’d been able to conceal her genuine reaction from me, Cerdo would have known.

‘I’m sure,’ I said. ‘But I can appreciate this raises questions. Like, if she didn’t send it, who did?’ I watched him hesitate. ‘My job is to protect her, Parker. Just how far am I supposed to go in order to do that?’

Parker was silent for a moment, eyes on the rolling breakers although I was pretty sure he didn’t see anything of the view outside the windows.

‘My laptop’s down in the Navigator,’ he said at last. He nodded to the PDA. ‘I can download the contents and we’ll see if we can trace exactly where that email came from.’ He checked his watch, added grimly, ‘And, with any luck, I’ll be able to do it before they get here.’

‘Who?’ I demanded. ‘I told you what they said about calling in the cops—’

‘No, Eisenberg’s people,’ he cut in, already heading for the door, where he paused just long enough to send me a wry smile. ‘You think they haven’t been tracking that thing since the moment the kid was taken?’

I didn’t move from the window while he was gone. Without knowing about the supposed email that had lured Torquil into the ambush, I hadn’t shown the fallen PDA to his bodyguards, hadn’t mentioned it in fact. Not that they’d stopped to ask a lot of unnecessary questions. Or one or two I would have said were pretty bloody vital.

Still, it should have occurred to me that the first thing they’d do was attempt to track him via the GPS chip. In fact, I was amazed they hadn’t bust the door down already.

Parker was back a minute or so later, without actually appearing to hurry. There was an economy of movement to him that inspired confidence. He was already opening up a case containing a slim laptop and setting it up on a side table that was probably not intended to hold more than an elaborate arrangement of flowers. He plugged in a USB lead, tapped a few keys, and coerced the PDA into opening up a dialogue with its temporary host. In moments, it was spilling its secrets.

In the midst of this operation, Caroline Willner came into the living area and sank into a chair. Her posture was still very upright, but she moved slowly, as though it physically hurt her to do so. For the first time, she looked like an old lady rather than a matriarch.

I would have asked her if she was OK, but something told me she would hate that weakness being so obvious, more than she hated the weakness itself. Instead, I rang for a pot of tea, and when one of the maids, Silvana, smilingly answered my summons, I politely asked if she could dig out something sweet to go with it, just as an excuse to bring some sugar into the equation.

When Silvana left, Caroline Willner flashed me a brief glance that told me she understood what I was doing, and was not ungrateful for it.

‘How’s Dina?’ I asked. Safer ground.

‘Still very shocked,’ Caroline Willner said. ‘They’ve given her a light sedative. She’ll sleep for a while.’

Parker met my eye briefly. ‘Probably for the best,’ he said much more soothingly than I would have managed. The PDA finished disgorging its content and he carefully unplugged it, coiling up the short lead and slipping it into his pocket, out of sight, before he began scanning through the captured files with the laptop’s screen canted away from us.

But I knew he’d found something by his sudden immobility, the hardening around his mouth. He glanced up, caught me watching him.

‘You better see this.’

I moved round to stand alongside him, leaning over the laptop so I could see the screen too. It was a video clip of an interior scene, a bedroom. There were three occupants, engaged in activity that was as athletic as it was inventive.

Two thirds of the trio were uniformly muscular young men, one blond, one dark, tanned and tattooed. The woman was older, paler, but she had the well-preserved look that comes with surgery and stringent maintenance. Her haircut – and what was left of her lingerie after the young studs had removed much of it with their teeth – was expensive in cut and colour.

I raised my eyebrows at Parker. ‘Torquil wouldn’t be the first immature male to download porn off the Internet.’

‘I don’t think this is a straightforward download,’ Parker murmured, calling up file names and root directories and a whole load of other stuff I had no clue about. ‘This was a direct feed from someplace.’

I looked again. The picture was surprisingly high quality, all things considered, but the camera position never altered, even when the players’ antics took them half out of the range of the lens. Never once did they seem aware of being filmed. There were no coy little smiles or knowing glances.

‘Hidden camera?’ I said.

Parker nodded. ‘That would be my guess.’

I blanked the cavorting on the bed and focused beyond them, out into the room itself. Where had I seen that decor, those furnishings, that giant plasma screen TV hanging dark on the far wall, the oval detail in the ceiling …?

‘Oh my God,’ I said faintly. ‘That’s Eisenberg’s yacht. One of the main staterooms.’

And not just any of the staterooms, but the same one where Dina had gone for her private chat with Orlando and Benedict on the night of Torquil’s party. I flicked my eyes to Parker’s. ‘Is there sound with this?’

By way of answer, he dragged the cursor across a small sound bar in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. The laptop’s small internal speakers struggled to accurately reproduce the grunts and groans and squeals of the audio track for a few moments, before he quickly lowered the volume again, looking ever so slightly embarrassed.

The maid, Silvana, returned with a teapot and cups and various highly calorific snacks on a large tray. She put the tray down on the low table in front of Caroline Willner, and obeyed her instruction that we would pour.

It was only when she’d left us again that Caroline Willner rose and said calmly to Parker, ‘I think you’d better let me see.’

It was the first time I think I’ve ever seen Parker look flustered. ‘Ma’am, it’s not the kinda thing you ought to—’

‘For pleasure, no,’ she agreed gravely. ‘But it’s entirely obvious what the boy was looking at, and I may be able to identify the, ah … participants, shall we say?’

‘Ah,’ Parker said, still with a touch of pink across his cheekbones. He turned the laptop towards her and tried to studiously ignore the way she peered closer at the screen, reaching for her reading glasses, which hung on an ornate chain around her neck.

‘My, my,’ she murmured after a few moments. ‘Well one has to admire their limber qualities, if nothing else …’

I grinned at her and she wrinkled her nose in brief response, before straightening.

‘Anyone you know?’ I asked.

‘The young men, I haven’t had the pleasure of making their acquaintance, and I’m quite sure I would remember. But the woman is undoubtedly Nicola Eisenberg – Torquil’s mother.’ She frowned thoughtfully. ‘I shall view her power yoga classes in a whole new light.’

Parker, old-fashioned in some ways more than others, looked in serious danger of spontaneously combusting with associated shame. He busied himself with the laptop again while Caroline Willner calmly went back to the table and, without a flicker, dealt with the tea.

‘It looks like this video stream came in a few days ago, right about the time we were headed to the charity auction,’ he said.

‘Torquil received a couple of incoming messages while we were in the limo,’ I recalled, ‘and he looked pretty smug about them at the time.’

‘Hardly surprising,’ Caroline Willner put in. ‘Brandon Eisenberg makes such an unseemly fuss about being faithful to his wife, when just about everyone knows he’s sleeping with that red-headed bodyguard of his.’

‘So, how big a scandal would it cause if it came out that Eisenberg’s wife was sleeping with half the crew on his yacht?’ I asked, and out of the corner of my eye saw Parker wince slightly.

‘Oh, I don’t suppose it would ever have come out,’ Caroline Willner said, sounding surprised that I didn’t know how this game was played. ‘I’m sure Brandon would have found a suitable financial incentive to prevent his son ever showing that video to anyone.’ She took a sip of her tea. ‘After all, he always has done in the past.’

Now when I glanced at Parker, his gaze had lost any trace of self-consciousness and turned calculating.

‘Maybe this time he got tired of paying,’ he said, reaching into his jacket for his cellphone. ‘How about I call him and find out?’

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

‘Hey, um, Charlie? There’s folks here to see Miss Willner.’

Joe McGregor’s face appeared round the cracked edge of the bedroom door after a perfunctory knock, looking discomfited. I should have guessed why.

‘Who is it?’ I asked.

I was fully expecting a contingent from Eisenberg’s security personnel, come to interrogate the pair of us about what we’d witnessed on the beach the previous morning. Instead, it was Manda Dempsey who insinuated herself through the gap and hurried forwards into the room with a dramatic cry of, ‘Oh, honey, we heard the news! How are you taking it? Are you all right?’

Directly behind her was Orlando, and through the open doorway I caught a glimpse of a guy in a suit who’d taken up station on the other side of the corridor with his back to the wall. He had the build of a rugby player, complete with broken nose. I didn’t need to check the bulge under his arm to know he was security.

I glanced at Dina, sitting propped up against a heap of pillows, clutching the bedclothes tightly around her body as if suffering from a chill. She’d slept for most of the previous afternoon, after Parker’s departure, and all through the night. It was now the following morning, and she’d turned away three or four trays of elaborate delicacies before being coaxed into eating half a bowl of fresh fruit for breakfast.

She’d asked for me when she’d woken, and I’d been sitting with her for around half an hour when Manda and Orlando arrived. I’d managed, by approaching the subject as you would a potential suicide on a high ledge, to find out that she denied categorically sending an email to Torquil the morning before.

I’d also got the distinct impression she might just be working her way up to telling me something important – something that scared her – and hadn’t tried to hurry things. Now – with this interruption – I began to wish I’d pressed harder.

It was just after 10 a.m. Torquil Eisenberg had been missing a little over twenty-four hours with no ransom demand being made.

So far, we’d drawn one big blank when it came to answers. Parker had not managed to talk directly to Torquil’s father the previous day. A man like that is not freely available at the end of a phone to anyone but his closest friends.

Parker had argued and cajoled his way up the food chain as far as one of Eisenberg’s personal assistants before he met his match. By the sound of their one-sided conversation, she couldn’t have blocked him any more effectively if she’d been in goal at an ice hockey match.

Ever discreet, my boss would only say that we had picked up Torquil’s PDA, which he must have mislaid on the beach. I entirely understood Parker’s reasons for being so circumspect but, put like that, it hardly shrieked of urgency, and was dismissed accordingly.

Eventually, he ended the call and shrugged. ‘I’ve done what I can at this point,’ he said, and only because I knew him well did I see the frustrated weariness beneath his controlled tone. ‘My instinct is to call in the FBI, but I can’t do that without the family’s say-so. It could be putting the kid at serious risk.’

He left Joe McGregor on station as backup, which was no hardship. I’d worked with McGregor numerous times. A young black Canadian, his cheerful attitude belied solid combat experience and very good instincts.

Parker promised to keep us updated as soon as he had news, but we heard nothing for the rest of the afternoon and into the next day.

Now, the two girls came rushing in to offer Dina comfort, amid much fluttering and high voices. Orlando perched on the edge of Dina’s bed, taking the girl’s hands in hers and giving them a quick squeeze. I nodded to McGregor, who took one look at Dina’s face and realised there was likely to be an outpouring of excessive female emotion. He flashed me a look that said, ‘All yours!’ and went gratefully back to guard duty.

I stayed back and watched the three of the girls together for a moment, but it was difficult to read any new tension in Dina. She was already quivering like the wires of a suspension bridge in high wind. I wondered why. She hadn’t responded this badly when the attempt on her at the riding club had failed. Why the dramatic reaction now? Unless she had been a party to the deception that had lured Torquil to his fate?

Manda was fussing round Dina, straightening the covers, talking nineteen to the dozen without giving Dina much of a chance to say anything in return. Manda looked as well groomed as I’d come to expect, but there was something about the butter-soft suede jacket she slipped out of and held carelessly in my direction – like she’d chosen it in a bit more of a hurry than usual. But I suppose that, for them, ten in the morning counted as being up at the crack of dawn.

I took the jacket without comment and dumped it across the back of an armchair. If she was expecting valet service, she was out of luck.

‘I saw them coming and I … I thought they were coming for me,’ Dina said, her gaze unfocused, voice slightly reedy. ‘And I was frightened, after what happened to Raleigh, I—’

‘Hush now,’ Orlando said, soothing. ‘You’ve had a shock. Try not to think about it. It’s all gonna be OK. Tor’s father and his people will do everything they can to get him back safe, you hear me?’

Dina moved her head in her direction, almost as though she was working on sound alone. ‘It could have been me,’ she whispered.

‘Not with Charlie here to look after you, honey,’ Manda said, giving me a meaningful look to back her up on this one.

‘I don’t want to be taken,’ Dina said.

‘You won’t be,’ I told her.

‘I—’

‘Hush now, honey,’ Manda said firmly, leaning forwards and making sure Dina established and sustained eye contact. ‘You’ll be quite safe. Nothing bad will happen to you, I promise.’

Dina hesitated, then nodded, a fractional movement of her head. Orlando leant forwards and gently tucked a stray strand of hair out of Dina’s eyes, smiling almost shyly.

Feeling like an intruder, I shifted my gaze to the window and the stunning view beyond it. The room was at the back of the house, overlooking the beach, but Dina rarely had the blinds pulled back to appreciate the view. I wondered if living with something beautiful all the time made you weary of it more quickly.

I’d been unable to offer this kind of sisterly comfort to Dina, and I doubted it was what she wanted of me. My instinct had been to tell her to pull herself together. She hadn’t been physically injured, wasn’t sick, so why hide herself away like an invalid?

But I hadn’t voiced such thoughts. I could still remember a time when all I’d wanted to do was burrow long and deep. And hope, when I finally surfaced, the world as I knew it had simply gone away. It hadn’t worked.

Behind me, Orlando was saying how they didn’t want to tire her, that they’d just stopped by to see how Dina was doing. She gave her hands another quick squeeze and stood up.

‘Get some rest, honey,’ Manda said, picking up her jacket. They kissed her cheek, headed for the door. I followed them out, collecting the silent bodyguard, and led the little party through the lower levels of the house. Manda and Orlando talked critically about how shaky Dina had looked, as if it never occurred to them that I might repeat their comments to her.

We emerged through the garages to the driveway where a big silver BMW sat at a rakish angle on the gravel, the driver still behind the wheel. He hopped out when he saw us approaching and opened the rear doors. The engine was already running to maintain the climate control – either for his passengers’ benefit or his own.

‘How did you hear about Torquil?’ I asked before they could climb inside.

Orlando froze in the middle of digging in her handbag for her sunglasses, glanced at Manda. ‘His father called, asked if I knew where he was. He called all of us, I think,’ she said carelessly, and Manda nodded in agreement.

I tilted my head to take in the pair of them. ‘Is Torquil playing some kind of game with his father?’

‘What do you mean by that?’ Orlando demanded, flipping the designer shades in place. They were huge and very dark, with such ornate side arms it must have been like walking around in blinkers.

‘It’s not a difficult question,’ I said coolly, moving sideways so she’d have to step round me to get into the car. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the bodyguard shift his position, caught the way Manda gave a tiny shake of her head to prevent him intervening, then asked with reluctance, as if she didn’t really want to know the answer, ‘What kinda game?’

‘The kind that might get taken too far.’

‘You don’t think—?’ Manda began, stopped and tried again. ‘You think he had something to do with his own kidnapping? That’s crazy.’

‘Maybe it is.’ I shrugged. ‘But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t someone close to him.’

‘But … why?’

There was something just a little off about her responses, but I couldn’t entirely put my finger on what exactly. Maybe it was just down to the fact that we’d never had the kind of relationship that involved exchanged views or confidences, and it was proving an awkward fit now.

Orlando gave a heavy sigh, tipping the glasses up onto the top of her head so she could confront me with a naked gaze.

‘Look, Charlie, Tor’s a weird kid. Life is just one big game to him,’ she snapped. ‘Who knows?’

‘But you do know, of course,’ I said carefully, ‘that he likes to record what goes on aboard his father’s yacht?’

That got a reaction I wasn’t quite expecting. Orlando turned white then flushed scarlet. Her eyes darted sideways, as if looking for a viable escape route, or maybe just hoping for intervention from her friend. It wasn’t forthcoming.

Orlando didn’t quite scramble her way into the Bee-Em’s rear seat, but it was as close as you could get without entirely abandoning her composure. Heedless of the danger to her manicured and painted nails, she grabbed at the interior door handle and yanked the door shut. If I’d been any nearer, I would have lost fingers.

The bodyguard with the broken nose didn’t say anything, but made it clear that opening the door to speak to her further was not an option. I glanced at Manda. She shrugged and calmly walked around to the other side. The bodyguard waited a moment longer, just to make sure I got the hands-off message, then took the front passenger seat.

I stepped back as the car pulled away faster than it needed to, leaving little divots in the gravel. I watched the brake lights flare briefly before it turned out onto the street, then it was gone.

‘Oh yeah,’ I murmured. ‘You know about that all right, don’t you, Orlando?’

‘Hey, Charlie!’

I turned. McGregor was standing in the open garage doorway, one hand on the frame and his cellphone open in his hand. ‘It’s the boss,’ he said. ‘He wants you back at the office, a-sap.’

I started to walk back towards the house. ‘Fine. What’s the rush?’

‘Apparently Mr Eisenberg’s en route to the office. He wants to talk to you and Mr Armstrong,’ McGregor said, handing me the phone. ‘The kidnappers made contact.’

It was nearly 10.30 a.m. The kidnapping was almost exactly twenty-five hours old.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Brandon Eisenberg swept into Parker’s office three-quarters of an hour after his appointed time, with an entourage in double figures.

This included an icy blond woman in a lace-edged cream designer suit that seemed to emphasise all her hard edges rather than soften them. I had to look twice to recognise her as Nicola Eisenberg from the video clip Parker had siphoned off Torquil’s PDA. It was tempting to mention the fact she looked different with her clothes on, just to see if the barb would penetrate that cool facade. Somehow, I doubted it.

Of the others, I noted the red-haired Gleason, still standing protectively close to her principal, but wearing a slightly less possessive face than she had done the night of the charity auction, when Eisenberg’s wife was not in attendance.

Nicola Eisenberg had come with her own personal bodyguard, too. A solid-looking older guy who, I guessed, Eisenberg had selected as much for his middle-age and bland looks as for his experience.

The remainder of the party were assistants, and assistants to the assistants, and extremely high-priced legal people in handmade shoes. The latter were easy to spot by the way they mentally priced up the fittings through narrowed eyes as soon as they came in.

Leaving McGregor on guard with Dina, I’d travelled into Manhattan from Long Island by the fastest means possible after Parker’s summons. That meant I’d used the Buell. Fortunately, it was a house rule to keep a spare business suit at the office, so while I couldn’t remotely compete with the power couture on show as they all trooped in, I was at least no longer in my bug-splattered bike leathers.

Parker rose to greet them, urbane and radiating competent composure. Brief, forgettable introductions were made and he gestured the Eisenbergs to the low client chairs, clustered around a coffee table in the centre of the room.

There was seating for six in comfort, and hierarchy was quickly established by who got a seat and who was forced to stand. Eisenberg seemed slightly bored by the jockeying for position, as if people behaved like this around him all the time and he’d learnt simply to let them get on with it.

Nicola Eisenberg pretended not to notice. I understood she’d just flown in from Nassau, no doubt utilising the Lear 85 Torquil had mentioned so artlessly that day at the riding club. Maybe she was just suffering from executive-jet lag.

‘So,’ Parker said once the dust had settled. ‘You wanna read us in?’

To my surprise, it was Eisenberg himself who took a long inward breath. He glanced momentarily towards the most senior-looking of the lawyers, sitting bald-headed and gaunt-featured to his left. The man stared back, inscrutable, which didn’t seem to afford much by way of sound legal advice.

‘I trust I can speak frankly and in complete confidence, Mr Armstrong?’ Eisenberg said then.

Parker’s eyebrow twitched at the implied slur to his reputation, that the man opposite had felt the need to ask. ‘Of course,’ was all he said, voice neutral.

‘As you are no doubt aware, it seems that our son, Torquil, was kidnapped yesterday morning from a beach on Long Island.’

‘“It seems”?’ Parker repeated. ‘An interesting choice of words, sir, considering one of my people witnessed the abduction.’

The lawyers frowned collectively. Eisenberg ducked his head a little. ‘Relax, Mr Armstrong. I was not doubting that Miss Fox saw what she says she did, nor was I insinuating that the kidnap did not take place.’

His gaze swept over me, standing behind Parker’s desk where the light from the nearest window fell over my shoulder into the room. ‘I’m sure Miss Fox is aware of how highly I … value her skills,’ he added, and there was a tinge of regret and reproof in his tone, as if all this could have been avoided if only I’d accepted his job offer.

‘You think he arranged his own abduction as some kind of prank,’ I said, just to watch the lawyers squirm. They didn’t disappoint me. Nicola Eisenberg continued to look detached from the whole experience.

Eisenberg pursed his lips. ‘I can’t say it didn’t cross my mind at first.’

As much to see if I could get a reaction out of his wife as anything else, I said, ‘What possible reason could he have for doing that?’

‘I get my thrills from corporate finance, Miss Fox. Torquil? He’s hooked on thrills, period. Like I say, at first I thought this might be his idea of another one.’

Well, that explained their lack of urgency or action so far. ‘What’s happened to make you change your mind now?’

‘We received a package earlier today,’ he said, reaching into an inside pocket of his jacket and bringing out a clear case containing a recordable CD or DVD. He held it up over his shoulder and there was an unseemly scuffle behind him as two of the assistants hurried forwards to whisk it from his outstretched hand. The most senior – or the one with the sharpest elbows – took possession and carried the prize round the desk to Parker.

My boss eyed the unbagged evidence with concern, making no immediate moves to touch it. ‘How many people have handled this?’

‘My security people have already checked it out thoroughly for prints, trace elements, biological or digital viruses – just about every damn thing you could think of, and a few more besides,’ Eisenberg said gravely, flicking his gaze briefly to Gleason. ‘They tell me it’s clean. An ordinary DVD-R, the kind you can get at any office supply store across the state.’

Parker nodded, and didn’t ask the obvious question. If we wanted to know what was on the disk, clearly we were going to have to see for ourselves. He moved back around his desk and slotted the DVD into his laptop, his movements economical and precise.

It took a moment to load, then went straight into a video clip like the one from Torquil’s PDA I’d watched the day before, but this was no sexual adventure. Not unless you were catering for a very specific and twisted audience.

I only recognised Torquil because that’s who I was expecting to see. He was sitting on a steel-framed chair, ankles tightly bound to the front legs with wire. By the awkward hunch of his shoulders, his arms were secured behind him. He was wearing the same clothes he’d been taken in, now as torn and bloodied as their owner.

Someone with a professional interest in the job had worked him over very thoroughly indeed, I saw, falling back on detached clinical judgement to avoid a connection with the victim I could not afford to feel.

It took me back too easily to a time when I’d been the one taking punishment and, although they hadn’t tied me down, in the end they hadn’t needed to.

I swallowed, kept my face dispassionate, glanced across at Parker and found he was doing the same.

They’d paid particular attention to Torquil’s face, probably knowing that would prove the most effective emotional lever against his parents. His nose had been broken and possibly a cheekbone, but it was hard to tell under all the discoloured swelling. One eye was puffed shut, the other open a mere slit. His hair was matted with blood. From the rigid way he held himself, the rapid shallow breaths, I guessed at busted ribs, too.

I looked up abruptly, found Eisenberg watching me as if in condemnation. Because I hadn’t taken on the job of protecting his son, or hadn’t stepped in yesterday, regardless of formal contract? It was hard to tell.

After maybe thirty seconds of silence, Torquil’s head lifted slightly at some off-camera prompt. He swallowed with effort, running his tongue carefully over split lips before he spoke. Even with the volume cranked up, it was hard to catch his mumbled words clearly.

‘Mom … Dad, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m … real sorry. For everything, I guess. I—’ He broke off, cowered as if subjected to a sudden additional threat.

I glanced at the clock high on the far wall. It was now reading a few minutes after 12.30. Torquil was twenty-seven hours gone. For this recording to have been made and delivered by this morning, they’d worked on him hard and fast. It was a measure of what had been done that wasn’t visible, that they’d broken him so utterly in so short a space of time. It must have been relentless.

On screen, Torquil hung his head, unable to continue for a moment. I strained to see past his battered figure into the room itself, but they’d spotlit the chair brightly. Beyond him were only dark shadows. Maybe Bill Rendelson, who’d become Parker’s electronic surveillance expert, could finesse more detail from the background …

And that led to a rapid cascade of other thoughts and realisations, not least of which was why we were being shown this footage in the first place. My gaze flicked to Parker again, filled with questions I didn’t need to ask aloud. He shifted the cursor to pause the clip, straightened.

‘Mr Eisenberg—?’ he began, but Eisenberg was ready for him.

‘Just watch the damn tape,’ he said quietly. ‘Watch it and then you’ll know.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Parker didn’t immediately respond to that, just stared at Eisenberg across the expanse of desk and office. It was an interesting silent confrontation.

Here were two men, both with power and minutely aware of its extent, but Eisenberg’s authority seemed wholly exterior by comparison to my boss. Parker was a natural leader, an intangible quality that came from something inside himself. Eisenberg, on the other hand, seemed to need the constant presence of his retinue as reassurance of his potency. I scanned their bland expressions and wondered if he knew how quickly they would desert him, should his fortunes ever wane.

We would have followed Parker anywhere without hesitation, but Eisenberg had to buy such loyalty. I hoped he kept the receipts.

At last, Parker lowered his gaze and clicked the mouse to resume the playback. Torquil’s desperate gasps and murmurs filled the room again, eclipsing all other considerations.

‘They say … you go to the cops … they kill me. You call in the FBI … they kill me. You delay … or try to double-cross them … or don’t do exactly as they say … they kill me, and you won’t never find my b-body. Please – Mom … Dad – I’m sorry. I … just do what they want, OK?’

For the first time, I thought I saw Nicola Eisenberg close her eyes briefly.

The picture faded out to black, and the sound of Torquil’s laboured breathing died away, replaced by an electronically synthesised voice.

‘Listen very carefully, Mr Eisenberg. The price for returning your son intact is that fancy string of beads your wife flashes in public every chance she gets, to be delivered to a location of our choosing. You have until six-thirty tomorrow morning to make the arrangements. If you fail to comply, or involve the cops, you will start receiving body parts in the mail. There will be no negotiation and no second chances.’ There was a pause, then the cold mechanical voice added with a distinct sneer, ‘Oh, and one more thing – tell the Willners’ little bitch of a bodyguard she makes the ransom drop. Nobody else. We’ll be in touch.’

I let out a long breath, slowly enough for it not to be audible. Nevertheless, Parker shot me a fast glance.

No!

What other options are there?

The clip had ended with the usual invitation from the software for a replay. We would replay it, I knew, over and over, looking for anything to suggest identity or location, but I didn’t think any of us were ready for that quite yet.

‘OK.’ I shrugged. ‘I’ll make the drop.’

Eisenberg’s chief lawyer brightened at the prospect of a third party to shed some blame onto. Parker held up a hand that cut him off more successfully than any high court judge.

‘Mr Eisenberg, just so’s we’re clear on this, what exactly is it you expect from us?’

Eisenberg made a gesture of tempered impatience. It was, no doubt, a question he himself would have asked, if the positions had been reversed. ‘It’s simple – all we want is for Miss Fox to deliver the ransom.’ He gave us both a bleak stare. ‘I’ll pay her what I have to, naturally.’

‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here,’ Parker said quickly, before I could chuck that one back in Eisenberg’s face. ‘How do you intend to handle this demand? Do you mean to negotiate?’

That got our first reaction from Nicola Eisenberg. She gave an explosive snort and threw up her hands, glaring at the entourage as if they’d forcibly gagged her up to that point.

‘Negotiate?’ she demanded. ‘You saw what was on that disk! You heard! You tell me, Mr Armstrong, if it was your son, how exactly would you plan to negotiate?’

Parker paused, as if making sure she was finished. ‘You rush into this, ma’am, and you’ll surely regret it,’ he said. ‘But, you let them control things from the get-go, and you’ll regret that all the more. In this kind of situation, paying up too fast can be as dangerous for the hostage as dragging your feet. How much is the Eisenberg Rainbow worth?’

‘As a piece, it’s priceless,’ Eisenberg said without modesty. ‘And too renowned to sell as a whole. But, if they broke it down into the individual stones they’d probably realise about five million on the black market.’

I watched the slight wince as he spoke about the necklace being stripped for its parts. Interesting that the kidnappers had asked for something more than money, I thought. They’d picked something it would hurt him to give up, and that could not easily be replaced – like the boy himself.

‘You think we give a damn about the money? Five million?’ Nicola Eisenberg flicked her fingers as if at a troublesome mosquito. ‘That’s just noise in the accounts for people like us.’

That was about the time I decided I really didn’t care for Mrs Eisenberg.

‘But not for the kidnappers,’ Parker said quietly, his voice pleasant even though I could tell he shared my instant impression. ‘For them, it’s a starting point. An amount so far out of reach they don’t think they’ve a chance in hell of getting anywhere near it. You agree to pay without hesitation, without negotiation, and before long they start to wonder if they should have asked for more – a lot more. And that makes them angry. Who do you think they’ll take that anger out on, ma’am?’

When she paled but didn’t reply, I said, ‘If these are the same people who took the others, they accepted half their initial demand in the first two cases and the hostages were released unharmed. The problem came when the Benelli family dug their heels in too far, and the kidnappers cut off Benedict’s finger as a means of persuasion. Handling this successfully is a very delicate game, and Parker is an expert.’

Had they made Benedict choose which one? Was that why he’d lost the finger that mattered least to his musical career, or was it purely down to luck?

I didn’t mention the fact that although Manda reported rough treatment during her own captivity, the beating had not gone anywhere near as far as the one delivered to Torquil. The level of violence seemed to be increasing as the perpetrators went on, perhaps as they grew bolder with each successful kidnap. Or had Torquil done something special that the others hadn’t? Despite his unlikely physique, he was into extreme sports, I recalled, and no coward. Had he tried to escape?

The experts reckoned that the best time to get away from potential kidnap was in the first few moments. At that point, you are an object of high value to your captors. They may ultimately kill you if the risk, or the fear of exposure, becomes too great, or they realise they aren’t going to get their money. But at the point of contact they need you demonstrably alive.

After the initial window of opportunity has passed, the recommendation is that you should remain calm and compliant. Resistance is likely to earn punishment, just to keep you manageable. I could not imagine Torquil had taken easily to the concept of absolute obedience.

For most victims, their ultimate survival depends on the skill of the negotiator. Parker was patient and implacable, and had a growing reputation as one of the best. He had even, on occasion, managed to arrange the return of those kidnapped without any money changing hands. According to the statistics, only eleven per cent of hostages are released under those circumstances, and in the last year Armstrong-Meyer had been responsible for more than their share.

If their people had done their homework, the Eisenbergs would be well aware of those figures.

‘Advise us,’ she said at last, shaping it as a command rather than a plea. Her eyes slid to her husband’s stony face and when he offered no immediate objections, she added, ‘Hypothetically speaking, naturally. How would you handle this situation?’

Parker’s expression clearly said he knew there was nothing hypothetical about it, but he answered anyway in an even tone. ‘When they next contact you, it will be by phone—’

‘What makes you so sure?’ butted in the chief lawyer, as if justifying his existence.

Parker nailed him with a studied glance. ‘Experience,’ he said, succinct. ‘They need to gauge your attitude, how far they can push, and they can’t do that any other way. When they make contact,’ he went on, leaving a pointed gap in case the lawyer felt the need to jump in again, ‘you need to tell them you can’t get your hands on the piece in time. You send it to London to be cleaned, I understand?’ There were surprised nods. ‘Don’t be afraid to sound stressed, worried. It’s what they want. You need to make them feel you’re doing everything you can to resolve this, but events are beyond your control. They need to be assured that they have you worried enough to comply in the end, even if they don’t get everything they initially ask for.’

Eisenberg pursed his lips, considering. ‘I have to admit, I hate the idea of giving in to these kind of threats,’ he allowed.

His wife snorted again. I was reminded of Dina’s arrogant white horse, with half the elegance and none of the charm. ‘If it was some damned company takeover, you’d sure as hell manage to pay up with a smile on your face,’ she said in a bitter growl.

‘Offer them a lesser piece from Mrs Eisenberg’s extensive jewellery collection. Something with a value of say, one million, max,’ Parker said, doing his best to ignore the bickering. ‘Tell them it’s a good offer for a couple of days’ work. They know that the longer they have him, the greater the risk they take.’

To an outsider, it must have sounded like Parker was being cheap for the sake of it, but there was a lot more to it than that, even if Nicola Eisenberg’s reaction was one of outrage.

‘You’re suggesting we bargain for my son’s life?’ she said, her tone rising like etched glass.

Parker sighed. ‘Mrs Eisenberg, suppose you were … buying a property? You go in with a crazy low offer, expecting the owners to throw it right back at you. Instead, they fall over themselves to sign the contract. First reaction?’

Nicola Eisenberg frowned for a moment, but I could hear her brain whirring from across the room. ‘That there must be a catch,’ she admitted at length. ‘That maybe there was something wrong with the place that we’d missed.’

‘And if there’s nothing wrong with it?’

‘I guess I’d assume the vendors were in a hole financially, and we could have gotten a better deal,’ she said, sliding a sideways look at the lawyers. ‘I’d stall, look for legal loopholes that would allow us to revise our offer, then nail their balls to the wall.’

The lawyers, all male, shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

Parker waited, his expression bland, for the penny to finally drop, saw the second that it did. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’m not suggesting a bargain just for the sake of it, or because I have any intention of saving you money. I’ve had a lot of experience. I know how these people think and react. And, trust me, paying up their full initial demand, without a flicker, will not be a wise decision for your son’s safety.’

Eisenberg, however, merely glared at his wife. ‘You think I can’t handle this?’ he demanded. ‘I handle multimillion-dollar deals every day of the week. All we need is for the damn girl to make the drop.’

‘Oh, I know precisely what you handle—’

‘Mr Eisenberg!’ Parker cleared his throat. ‘You’re an acknowledged expert in your field,’ he went on. ‘If I was looking to buy out one of my competitors, I’d want you on my team, but this, sir, is a whole different ball game …’

He didn’t need to finish.

Eisenberg looked like he was still going to argue, but his wife put a hand on his arm, suddenly, squeezing the cloth of his six-thousand-dollar suit with impossibly long fingernails painted blood-red. He glanced at her, the taut lines of her face, and a short silent battle of wills ensued. When it was over, his shoulders seemed more rounded than before. Nicola Eisenberg frowned, as if she’d rather fight with him in public than see him slouch.

‘OK, OK,’ he said hollowly. ‘In that case, Mr Armstrong, I’d like to retain your professional services.’ He made a kind of general see-to-it gesture to the lawyers, who ducked their heads. He spread his hands in a gesture of submission, or maybe he was just trying to shake off his wife. ‘What do we do now?’

‘We’ll see what information can be gleaned from the DVD,’ Parker said. ‘See if we can get any leads as to where your son is being held and formulate a recovery plan, just in case.’

‘I will not sanction any action that might endanger him,’ Nicola Eisenberg said.

‘It would be a last resort only,’ Parker agreed. ‘I assume you’ve considered calling in the FBI?’

That gained him a firm head shake. ‘You heard what they said. How could we be certain there’d be no leaks, in an organisation that size?’

Parker ignored the slur to the Bureau’s integrity, asking instead, ‘Have you interviewed your son’s security personnel?’

Eisenberg grunted. ‘Only to fire their asses,’ he said sharply. ‘Why – you think they might have had a hand in all this?’

‘If they did, then keeping them on the payroll, where you can keep an eye on them – apply a certain amount of pressure if it came to that – might have been useful.’ Parker gave a grim smile. ‘And, if they turn out to be innocent, you could be assured of one thing – they would never let anything happen to the boy again.’

CHAPTER THIRTY

Parker’s office seemed very empty after Eisenberg’s hordes had departed. I watched the door close behind the last of the assistants’ assistants and noted the way Parker’s own shoulders dropped a little.

‘They’re the kind of high-profile clients we want to attract,’ he said ruefully, then shook his head. ‘But I don’t mind admitting there’s a lot about this job makes my spine itch.’

Me, too.

‘Hey, look on the bright side,’ I said, aiming for a light tone. ‘At least they’re not likely to haggle over the fees.’

Parker rubbed the side of his temple and gave me a weary smile. ‘You’d be amazed. These people didn’t get to be rich by letting go of their money too easy.’

I waited a beat, then asked, ‘Why didn’t you give them Torquil’s PDA?’

He let his arm drop. ‘I guess it’s partly because I don’t entirely trust them,’ he murmured, ‘and partly because I have a vested interest in making sure they don’t try and screw us around on this one.’ And there was something abruptly intense and intent in his eyes. ‘Sean’s relying on me to look out for you.’

But I remembered that last dance, the night of the charity auction, and swallowed, suddenly uncomfortable, gauche, and unable to find anything remotely useful to do with my hands. I busied them collecting up some of the discarded coffee cups from the centre table, putting them on a tray next to the coffee pot. And either because my heart or my hands were clattering, I didn’t hear Parker cross the room until he was very close behind me.

‘Have you been to see him?’ he asked.

I turned round too fast, found him too close. ‘I was going to slip over now, before I go back and take over from McGregor,’ I said. ‘Why – have you?’

‘Yesterday.’ He hesitated. ‘Charlie, I’ve been talking to the hospital, and we may have some tough decisions to make, real soon, concerning Sean—’

I held up my hands, tried to keep the desperation out of my voice. ‘Parker, I know. I do. But … does it have to be now – while we’re in the middle of all this?’

His lips twisted but there was no humour in them. ‘I seem to remember having a conversation very like this with you, one time before.’

‘I remember,’ I said softly. ‘And the same answer fits then and now – when this is over.’

Gallantly, he didn’t remind me how badly that decision had turned out. Instead, he nodded, stepped back, and I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or not when he let the subject go – for the moment, anyway.

‘I don’t like the fact the kidnappers asked for you specifically,’ he said. His tone was businesslike again, but he was frowning. ‘It smacks of vendetta.’

‘If it’s the same crew who tried for Dina at the riding club, maybe I pissed them off more than I realised by getting in their way,’ I suggested.

‘But you said yourself they were amateurs,’ Parker argued. ‘Everything about this one – the timing, the fake email – speaks of professional involvement.’

‘The guy with the Taser did not look as though this was his first time out, that’s for sure.’

‘It’s unfortunate Eisenberg got rid of Torquil’s close-protection guys so fast,’ Parker said. ‘Whoever took the kid must have been watching him for days, maybe weeks beforehand. One of the team might have remembered a face, a vehicle, that didn’t seem to be an overt threat at the time, but in retrospect …?’

‘I would have sworn Dina wasn’t being watched, either, but somebody still made a play for her, even if they did make a mess of it.’

‘Seems they’ve gotten better with practice.’

‘Yeah,’ I muttered. I moved away, restless, gathered up the last of the cups. Parker lifted them out of my hands with an impatient sigh.

‘C’mon, Charlie, there is no way you are to blame for any of this,’ he said, his voice quiet but sharp, like the snapping of a twig in dry air. ‘Eisenberg’s guys let the kid go down onto the beach unprotected. You did your job, but they sure as hell didn’t do theirs. You could not have prevented Torquil being taken without leaving Dina vulnerable. For all you knew at the time, that’s exactly what the kidnappers were hoping for.’

I stepped round him and sank into one of the client chairs. ‘I know,’ I said, staring down at my hands. ‘But still …’

My train of thought trailed off as I caught sight of something pale cream stuffed down the side of the leather seat cushion. I pulled it out, found a gossamer-fine scarf that matched Nicola Eisenberg’s suit, and realised this was where she’d been sitting.

Parker raised an eyebrow, and almost on cue came a knock on the door. He called for the visitor to come in, and the door was opened by Nicola Eisenberg’s bland bodyguard. His principal walked through and gave him a meaningful nod. He stepped back outside the door and shut it again behind him.

‘Ah,’ she said, seeing the scarf dangling from my hand. ‘I see you found it.’

‘What can we do for you, Mrs Eisenberg?’ Parker asked, with no loading in his voice, but at the same time making it clear that he knew she’d engineered this excuse to return.

She had the grace to look momentarily disconcerted, but it was quickly replaced by her more familiar imperious manner.

‘I want you to keep me informed of the negotiations – separately from my husband,’ she said, taking the proffered scarf without looking at me directly, and tucking it into her handbag.

Parker gave her a calm stare. She stared back.

‘That is a somewhat unusual request,’ he said at last. ‘May I ask the reason for it?’

Her chin lifted, still haughty. ‘No, you may not.’

‘In that case, ma’am, I regret that as it’s your husband who has engaged the services of this agency, he is officially our client. I report to him. I’m sure—’

She scowled, unused to being thwarted. ‘I’m concerned he may not have my son’s best interests at heart,’ she cut in.

Parker’s eyes flicked to mine. With every appearance of innocence, I asked, ‘This wouldn’t have anything to do with Torquil’s skills as a budding … cinematographer, would it?’

‘What?’ Her response held frustrated confusion rather than outrage. ‘What are you talking about?’

Parker walked back to his desk, slid open the central drawer, and took out Torquil’s PDA. He powered it up, went through the menu, hit ‘Play’ and put the PDA down on the desktop, swivelling it round so Nicola Eisenberg had no doubts about the content of the video clip. I was relieved that he’d turned off the sound.

Watching her face, I saw recognition of the device, and from the way she leant over, squinting at the small screen, that she was too vain to admit to a need for reading glasses. Perhaps that was why it took her a moment longer than it should have done to identify the who, what, where, but if I was expecting shame, I was disappointed.

Instead, she looked rather self-satisfied, as if we were seeing her at her athletic best. I got the feeling she would have found it far more embarrassing to have been snapped without make-up, in old workout sweats, than indulging in an energetic threesome in such luxurious surroundings.

‘Well, it’s nice to see all that damned exercise pays off,’ she said, reminding me all of a sudden of Caroline Willner.

‘It would seem that your son made this recording while you were on your recent vacation in the Bahamas,’ Parker said. ‘It was sent to his PDA by remote feed, on the night of the charity auction at the country club.’

‘Ah … yes,’ Nicola Eisenberg said, as if, had he not narrowed down the precise date, she would have struggled to remember the experience among many others. Her gaze sharpened. ‘How did you get this?’

‘Torquil dropped it – yesterday morning on the beach,’ I said, and explained about the messages Parker had left in his attempts to return it. ‘Your husband didn’t ask for it, so it … slipped our mind,’ I said mildly, receiving a surreptitious wink from my boss by way of response.

‘We understand that Torquil may also have been recording your husband’s … activities on board the yacht,’ Parker said. ‘How would he react if Torquil threatened to go public with the footage?’

She laughed, a high brittle note. ‘Oh, my dear Mr Armstrong, it would never have come to that. Brandon would most likely have patted him on the head, praised his ingenuity, and given him a raise in his allowance.’

‘Really?’ Parker said. ‘And yet Mr Eisenberg seems to set such store by his … reputation.’

‘We have an understanding, my husband and I,’ she said, letting her eyes trail up and down Parker’s lean suited figure with insolent appraisal. ‘He doesn’t interfere in my life and I don’t interfere in his.’ She moved round the desk towards him, ran a predatory finger under his lapel and murmured throatily, ‘Perhaps that’s something we could discuss – say, over dinner.’

‘Mrs Eisenberg,’ Parker said easily, standing his ground, ‘right now it would seem you are the one who does not have your son’s best interests at heart.’

When she looked startled, I leant over and said helpfully, ‘What he means is, if you keep that up he’ll tell both you and your husband to get stuffed – you can deliver the ransom yourself.’

She threw me a vicious glare, face tightening unattractively, but snatched her hand back and whirled away.

Parker’s face remained neutral, but I saw the flat-out amusement in his eyes. He let her take three or four huffy strides towards the door.

‘When you said your husband would reward your son’s blackmail attempts, is that because he’s always done so in the past?’ he asked, coolly objective. ‘Is that why he took this kidnapping so lightly at first?’

The questions stopped her dead. She turned slowly. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Torquil has a generous allowance, but you know how kids are these days. He always wanted more.’

I thought of the elaborate and extravagant birthday party, the Bentley, the use of the family yacht and the executive jet, and wondered what ‘more’ was out there to be had.

‘So, you let him blackmail you,’ I said slowly. ‘And when his security reported that he’d been kidnapped, you assumed this was a variation on that theme.’

‘I know this looks bad.’ For the first time, she hesitated slightly. ‘We can’t afford for the media to get a hold of the story,’ she added, flattening any hopes I might have had that this was a sign of surfacing maternal instinct.

‘We are not in the habit of revealing details of our clients’ private lives,’ Parker said stiffly, more insulted by that, I think, than by the pass she’d made at him. ‘Unless they’re engaged in illegal activities, we’ll protect them any way we can.’

She paused at that, shifted her stance. ‘May I be totally honest with you, Mr Armstrong?’

I doubt she knows how. I didn’t say the words out loud, but from the look on Parker’s face, I didn’t have to.

He inclined his head politely. ‘Of course.’

She took a breath, flicked her hair back, then said baldly, ‘I am not convinced that my husband will go the extra mile to ensure my son’s safe return. I want to be kept appraised of the situation so I can … step in, if I see the need. Whether you believe me or not, I do have my son’s best interests at heart. Like I said, I’m not convinced Brandon feels the same way.’

‘He said he hates giving in to threats – is that all there is to it?’ Parker asked, hitching his hip onto the corner of his desk and folding his arms. ‘Or does he have financial problems?’

She laughed at that. ‘Oh, no, Mr Armstrong. His only problem is that he really doesn’t want to give it away to a bunch of crooks. Not for—’

She broke off suddenly. Honesty, it seemed, only went so far. The lines around her mouth deepened as she frowned.

‘Not for what?’ Parker asked. He sighed. ‘Mrs Eisenberg, you’re asking my operative to risk her life making this ransom drop for you. I’m willing to let her do that, but only if you level with us,’ he said, his voice gentle, persuasive. ‘If you know something that affects how far your husband – or you – are prepared to go to ensure your son’s safety, we need to know, and we need to know right now.’

She brought her chin up, arrogant, defiant. ‘Torquil is not my husband’s son,’ she said. ‘He wanted an heir but couldn’t give me a child, so I made … alternative arrangements.’ She waited, furious, for our condemnation. When we stayed silent, she went on, clear and bitter, ‘And knowing it would not be his genes that carried on, he had that damned necklace commissioned in a bid for immortality – the Eisenberg Rainbow.’ Her lips twisted, derisive over the name. ‘Let’s just say, given a straight choice between that and Torquil, Brandon wouldn’t be heartbroken if he ended up with the jewels.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Two hours later, just as I was leaving the rehab centre, my cellphone buzzed in the inside pocket of my leather jacket. As I pulled it out, I checked the display and saw the number for Parker’s office line.

‘Boss,’ I said, hanging my bike helmet on the mirror of the Buell while I dug for my keys. ‘Any news?’

‘Our new clients are fools of the highest order,’ he said, and even filtered through layers of traffic in the background and the deficiencies of the phone’s tiny speaker, I heard the anger tightly compressed into his voice.

I stilled, a cold pool forming at the base of my skull.

‘What have they done?’

‘The … vendors just called them about the sale,’ Parker said, knowing I would catch exactly what he meant and highly sensitive to electronic eavesdropping on an open line. We could have been talking about anything from property to shares in a racehorse. ‘They agreed to pay the asking price.’

‘Shit,’ I muttered. ‘In full? Just like that?’

‘Apparently, things got a little heated during the negotiations, and there was some screaming and shouting down the phone,’ Parker said in a matter-of-fact tone that made all the hairs riffle along my arms. I could guess exactly what kind of screaming he was talking about. ‘They reckoned they couldn’t afford to lose the sale, so … they caved.’

‘That’s … unfortunate,’ I said, struggling to stick to the same neutral language. Completely on autopilot, I stuck the Buell’s key in the ignition, turned it far enough to release the steering lock. ‘Where does it leave us?’

He sighed. ‘They went directly against my advice, Charlie, and put the whole deal in mortal jeopardy. I had no choice but to withdraw the agency’s services.’ I heard the forced lightness in his voice. ‘Can’t win ’em all, I guess.’

‘Oh,’ I murmured. Mortal jeopardy. Not words chosen lightly, I knew, and I could feel his anger and anguish at the risks they were taking with Torquil’s life.

‘My gut tells me this whole thing is gonna fall apart real fast,’ he said. ‘And when it does we can’t afford to be anywhere near it if they’re not prepared to work with us.’

‘I do understand – completely,’ I said. ‘All they want you to do is stick around to take the blame for their cock-ups. I suppose I would have made the same decision, for what it’s worth.’

‘Thanks, Charlie, I appreciate that.’

‘What about … taking this further?’ I asked carefully, knowing Parker would realise I meant the authorities, the police and FBI.

I could almost hear his head shake. ‘Considering the direction things are moving, nothing would make me happier, but you know as well as I do that we can’t betray confidentiality like that.’ He paused. ‘I do need you to stop by the office on your way back, though,’ he said, apparently casual, but there was something off in his voice that caught at my senses.

‘Of course. Problem?’ Even as I spoke I knew, with a rising sense of dread, what he was going to say.

Oh, you have to be kidding me …

‘They still want for you to handle the … exchange of contracts,’ he said, ‘but it’s been arranged for tomorrow morning. I have explained to them you may not be available at that notice—’

‘No, I’ll do it.’

Another sigh, a long pause, anguish. ‘They don’t deserve such loyalty, Charlie. Like you just said, all they want is a scapegoat.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ I agreed. ‘But I’m not doing it for them.’

As I snapped the phone shut, I checked my watch. It was two-thirty in the afternoon. Torquil had been at his kidnappers’ tender mercies for twenty-nine hours.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

By 6.00 a.m. the following morning, after a restless and largely sleepless night, I was beginning to question the wisdom of my decision.

Parker and I were sitting in the large office suite in the basement of Brandon Eisenberg’s gothic mansion just outside Southampton, up towards the eastern end of Long Island, drinking coffee with Gleason, who turned out not simply to be Eisenberg’s bodyguard, but also his head of security.

Gleason’s attitude did not seem to have softened towards me since the night of the charity auction. I don’t think she’d forgiven her boss for offering me a job, or Parker for failing to extend the same courtesy towards her. But, she was professional and polite, dressed in a mannish dark-blue suit with wide lapels. To me, the outfit screamed authority and insecurity in equal measure.

Now, Gleason ran us through the detailed instructions the kidnappers had left, including playing the recording made of their last telephone conversation with Eisenberg.

She played the whole thing in full, including the part where they brought Torquil to the phone and persuaded him to speak. As I listened to the boy’s gargled screams, I felt Gleason’s cool gaze soaking up my reaction. I was careful to show her nothing more than a frown of concentration. It took effort to hold it in place. Parker’s expression, I noticed, was a mirror of my own.

‘We’ll call again at six-thirty tomorrow morning,’ said the mechanised voice. ‘Have the girl ready to answer. She’ll be given precise instructions on where to go first. She comes alone and I hope she’s in shape, because if she misses one single rendezvous by more than half a minute, the kid’s dead.’ Then, with a click of finality, the line followed suit.

Gleason sat back in her executive swivel chair, rocking slightly, and regarded me over the steam rising from her insulated coffee mug. ‘So, Charlie, you in good shape?’

‘I manage,’ I returned equably. ‘And besides, there’s the Buell.’

The only bit of personal information the security chief had shared with us was that she was from East Troy, Wisconsin, where Erik Buell had his motorcycle factory and, in Gleason’s voiced opinion, it was a damned shame they didn’t make them anymore.

At that moment my Buell Firebolt sat in one of the garages that lined the motor court to one side of the house, rubbing shoulders with two Lamborghinis, three Aston Martins, a Ferrari, a classic Morgan, and a Bugatti Veyron. I could see the lowly little Buell among them on one of the many monitors Gleason’s people were watching down here.

Parker wasn’t happy about me using the bike, but there were a lot of arguments in favour, not least of which was the time restriction the kidnappers had stressed. Logically, it was the only way to guarantee cutting through traffic to make what promised to be the first of many rendezvous points. Keeping me constantly on the defensive and operating at full stretch was standard procedure for these people.

The Buell’s engine was warmed through and it had a full tank of fuel. Sean’s Glock 21 was taped securely behind the front fairing, just as a backup.

I’d hesitated, when I’d gone to the gun safe in the apartment, about taking Sean’s gun. Apart from cleaning it, unloading it, and putting it away, the last time I’d handled it in anger was three months ago, when I’d taken it from his hand and come within a hair’s breadth of using it to kill the man who’d shot him. When I’d lifted the Glock out of its case yesterday evening, an echo of that time and place had shivered through me.

Forsaking my usual line of sober suits when coming into contact with clients, this morning I’d put on my leather bike jacket and Kevlar-reinforced jeans, which would be easier to move in than full leathers if I had to run. Under the jacket, in place of its winter lining, I wore the latest covert body armour, complete with thin polycarbonate sheets for an extra layer of protection. For the sake of mobility and stealth, I had rejected the optional ceramic trauma plates front and back. If we were up against weaponry of a calibre heavy enough to warrant them, I was probably fucked anyway.

For weaponry of my own, I had my usual SIG 9 mm in the small of my back, and a KA-BAR combat utility knife taped, hilt downwards, to the outside of my boot. The kidnappers had not specified that I should go unarmed, and I intended to make full use of that oversight.

Gleason had already explained to me how their comms system worked, but I’d taken in no more than I needed to in order to operate it on the fly. The dual in-ear earpieces fitted neatly underneath my helmet, small and comfortable, and she produced a tactical throat mic to go with them. This had the advantage that I could use it hands-free on the bike, and it would stay with me if I was forced to go walkabout.

The throat mics I’d used in the past had all sat high and tight under my jaw, but we checked this one would pick up acceptably when it was placed down nearer my collarbone instead. At first glance it would be hidden there by the tube scarf I usually wore on the bike to prevent both wind and wildlife from disappearing down the neck of my jacket.

It was high-grade ’ware and they reckoned the range was plenty good enough to reach back to the situation room here, unless the kidnappers were planning on taking me practically out of state. Gleason had assigned four mobile teams. This would allow them to track me while hanging back far enough not to make themselves too obvious.

Gleason fitted my gear herself, under Parker’s watchful eye. I saw the security chief’s eyes flick over the last remnants of the scar around the base of my throat as she was adjusting the mic, but if she recognised the old knife wound for what it was, she wisely passed no comment.

‘OK, you’re all set,’ she said when she was done.

I checked the clock again. ‘So, where’s the glitter?’

‘Here.’

I turned, found Brandon Eisenberg standing in the doorway. The billionaire looked a lot less urbane than he had done on the night of the charity auction, but I couldn’t hold that against him under the circumstances. He did seem genuinely scared for the boy who bore his name, if nothing else. Gripped tightly in his fist was an expensive-looking rucksack, as though he couldn’t bear even to deliver a ransom in some cheap tourist luggage.

‘It’s in there,’ he said, his voice an unhappy mix of defiance and strain.

From the way Gleason stared at her boss, I assumed there had been words between them about the wisdom of paying what they asked for, and that she hadn’t approved this tactic. I suppose that Eisenberg had succeeded for so long by throwing money at a problem until it went away, that he now couldn’t conceive of any other course of action.

For a moment, I thought he was going to say something profound to all of us, but in the end he just handed over the rucksack, turned on his heel, and departed.

Gleason unzipped the bag and checked inside. The Eisenberg Rainbow was in a flat padded box, lined with black velvet that separated the individual strands and set off the stones to their most alluring sparkle. It still looked like paste to me. It seemed a very small box to be worth so much money.

The sudden buzz of the designated phone on the nearest desk made me start, even though we’d been expecting it. I waited a couple of rings, took a deep breath, and picked it up.

‘Hello?’

‘You the English bitch?’

You better believe it, sunshine. ‘Oh, hell yes.’

The laugh sounded like two rough metal plates grinding together. I winced. He mentioned somewhere called Turtle Cove at Montauk Point. ‘Just south of the lighthouse. You know how to get there?’

I glanced at Gleason. She nodded. ‘I’ll find it.’

That unnatural laugh again. ‘You better. You’ve got thirty minutes.’

Click.

As I put the phone down and hit the stopwatch on my wrist, I was already on my feet, reaching for my helmet. Parker was by my elbow all the way. He didn’t speak, but he didn’t have to. It was, I realised, enough to have him there. Gleason was on the other side, giving me immediate instructions and telling me they’d guide me to my location.

I glanced at her. ‘GPS tracker in with the necklace?’

She nodded. ‘And another in your comms gear, just in case the two of you become … separated.’

‘I thought that was the whole idea?’

‘The teams will keep station in a rolling diamond formation around you,’ she said, ignoring the question. ‘They’ll stay at least a half mile from your position at all times.’

I shrugged. ‘Just make sure they don’t scare this guy off.’

‘They won’t.’

Parker helped me into the rucksack and tightened the shoulder straps in place. I checked I could still access the SIG beneath it.

‘Good luck, Charlie,’ he said softly.

I grinned at him, threw my leg over the bike, twisted the key and hit the starter. ‘Just be ready to intervene if some bloody traffic copper decides to pull me over for speeding,’ I said, and toed the Buell into gear.

I rolled out through the open garage door and down the driveway, taking a moment to settle myself, then hit the street and caned it.

Torquil had been taken forty-five hours, just short of two full days. With any luck, we’d have him back before that milestone was reached.

Through the earpieces, I could hear the tense comms traffic, the brief relayed instructions to the chase teams, who had started out wide and were now converging on the location we’d been given as the first rendezvous point. Gleason’s directions were calm, clear and concise, to keep straight or turn, as one set of traffic lights or another flashed past. The four teams had to hustle to keep pace and maintain the gap around me. Well, that was their problem. I wasn’t going to miss a deadline waiting for them to play catch-up.

I was moving through the middle of Southampton village, the leafy streets lined with upmarket boutiques and bistro cafés. I even passed a sign warning all persons they were required to wear proper attire on the streets. I had two guns, a knife, body armour and a bike helmet. That sounded like proper attire to me.

Ahead of me, a set of traffic lights at an intersection hopped up to amber, then red. The street was still quiet at this hour, but I eased off anyway.

‘We have you slowing down, Charlie,’ Gleason’s voice said in my ear. ‘Problem?’

‘Just traffic lights, just traffic lights,’ I said, making sure the voice-activated mic caught my words. ‘If you want me to jump them, you’re going to have to pay my tickets.’

‘No need to attract any unwanted attention if you don’t need to,’ Gleason said. ‘You’re looking good on time. Just—’

A voice I didn’t recognise cut straight across whatever she’d been about to say, louder in my earpieces. ‘All teams, hang back. Repeat, hang back!’

‘Who gave that order?’ Gleason snapped. ‘Identify yourself!’

I heard an engine turning lazily along the street behind me, glanced over my left shoulder and saw a big four-door family Dodge roll up slowly towards the lights, which were still on stop.

I turned back facing front, toed the Buell into first gear with the clutch in, ready to make a clean getaway as soon as red dropped to green.

Come on, come on! What’s taking so long?

And then all hell broke loose in the form of high-frequency white noise flooding the comms network. I let go of the clutch and the bike lurched and stalled under me, but that was the least of my worries. I was too busy scrabbling for my helmet strap, my only thought to get the pain out of my head.

Even above the horrendous volume in my earpieces, though, I heard the rising howl of the Dodge’s engine, felt the rumble through the road surface. I opened my eyes and jerked my head round, just in time to see the car pick up speed and swerve straight for me.

‘Ambush, ambush!’ I yelled into my useless radio. Then all I could do was hope to survive.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

A moment before impact, I yanked my left leg upwards. The front end of the Dodge hit the side of the bike’s frame just about where my knee would have been, and kept on coming.

The Buell was whipped viciously sideways by the force of the collision. Weighing less than one of the car’s axles, it never stood a chance. As I hiked my leg up over the tank, the bike started to disintegrate under me, scattering aluminium and plastic like shrapnel. And all the time, the dreadful screeching noise drilled into my brain.

I never had a second’s suspicion that this was a simple traffic accident. I didn’t need to flick my eyes to the two occupants and see the ski masks covering their faces, but I did it anyway, just to be sure.

Then I was hitting the ground hard enough to jolt the air out of my lungs, the bike partially on top of my right leg as we skated across the asphalt. The Dodge’s horns were locked into the tangled machine that had once been my pride and joy and it wasn’t letting go.

Bastards, bastards, bastards!

There was nothing I could do to stop being ploughed across the deserted intersection, so I kept my arms and head tucked in as much as I could to avoid injury and waited until they deemed I’d gone far enough. There wasn’t a whole hell of a lot else I could do.

Fortunately, the jacket and jeans and boots I was wearing had been designed with just this kind of road contact in mind. They kept skin and bone intact, so when we finally slid to a stop almost at the far kerb, the only damage was to my nerves and my temper.

My right foot was still pinned by the bike, which itself was half underneath one of the vehicle’s front wheels. I kicked at it with my left leg, but I was totally trapped. Heart pounding, hands suddenly cold as fear squirted adrenaline into my system and primed my body to run, the only course left to me was to fight. I scrabbled for the SIG, but I was lying awkwardly, sprawled on my back, and the way the rucksack had been dragged underneath me as I’d been scraped along the asphalt meant I couldn’t quite get my fingers to the gun. I reached for the KA-BAR instead, ripping it free of the tape that held it in place to my boot.

The car doors slammed and two figures converged from either side, looming over me. The driver raised his arms, hands clasped. I had a flash image of Torquil’s paralysed fall on the beach, and instinctively knew what was coming.

Oh shit – not again …

The last time I’d suffered direct contact with a Taser I had not enjoyed the experience. It was only as the driver’s hands tightened that I realised he had something altogether more permanent in mind.

And then he shot me.

Even with body armour, taking a round to the chest at close range hurts like a bitch. I dropped the knife and doubled around the point of impact, gasping. The second man stepped over the ruined tail of the bike, kicking the KA-BAR away as he did so, and slashed through the straps of the rucksack, dragging it off my shoulders roughly. They backed away.

Ironically, removing the rucksack freed up my access to the SIG. Still panting, I snaked a hand behind me and freed the weapon, but the two men were already out of eyeline beyond the car’s bonnet, climbing back inside. I couldn’t even see the windscreen from down there, so I went for the softest available target, putting four rounds straight through the front grille.

The engine was hot, the coolant system under pressure. The rounds punctured the radiator and sweet yellow-green antifreeze sprayed out like blood. As the Dodge reversed rapidly, bumping down off the mangled remains of the Buell, at least I had the satisfaction of knowing the wounds I’d just inflicted on the car in return were mortal.

I tracked its retreat with the SIG, firing into the glass as soon as it became visible. The vehicle lurched into a messy J-turn and gained speed. I kept firing until the slide locked back on an empty mag, then snatched up the Glock from behind the broken front fairing, but stayed my hand.

The Dodge was too far for legitimate damage, and even though the street had been deserted when the ambush began, the sound of gunfire had brought people to windows and doorways. The chance of hitting bystanders was too great.

I let the muzzle of the Glock drop, dumped it into my lap and finally wrenched off my helmet and dragged the screaming earpieces out. The whining buzz continued, but at least my ears weren’t actually bleeding. Neither was my chest, although it felt like they’d hit me with a damn truck. I took a deep breath and satisfied myself that, whatever the undoubted bruises, the armour had absorbed the impact without cracking any bones in the process.

The bike didn’t want to release me. My boot was staked by some part of the frame underneath, and from that angle I couldn’t lift it off me single-handed. I stretched across to turn off the ignition and patted the tank, regretful. Like a faithful warhorse who’d seen its last battle, it lay tangled on top and around me, bleeding fuel and lubricant in a slimy trail into the gutter as it died. Now I thought about it, I was bloody lucky I hadn’t ignited any of it.

I was still lying like that ninety seconds later, when the first of Gleason’s chase teams reached me.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Long before the cops arrived, Gleason’s men scooped me – and what was left of the Buell – off the road, but that didn’t mean they had my best interests at heart. In fact, once I was back in the situation room at Eisenberg’s place, the whole thing turned into more of another hostile interrogation. I supposed, with something worth a minimum of five million in play, they had every right, but I was glad of Parker’s presence more than ever.

As if in response to my quip about his lack of faith, made that day at the Willners’ place, he stayed close while Eisenberg’s in-house medic checked me over and pronounced me remarkably fit, under the circumstances. When they peeled me out of the body armour, I collected the stopped round from the lining. It was a .380 with a light load behind it, if the relatively minor dent in the inner polycarbonate sheet was anything to go by. Anything heavier calibre, or higher grain, and I would have cracked a rib at the very least.

Of course, to begin with this seemed to Gleason’s suspicious mind less like a lucky escape and more like complicity with the kidnappers on my part. I went over every second of what happened for her, again and again, from the moment the traffic lights at the intersection turned against me, to the Dodge’s slightly limping departure.

It was hard to keep my temper while all this was going on. There was a large digital clock on the wall above the bank of monitors, and I watched the minutes flip over, one after another, while Gleason and I went round in combative circles.

Meanwhile, Torquil’s period of captivity stretched past forty-eight hours and into its third day. Still they were refusing to call in the authorities, despite my and Parker’s urging. I don’t know if Gleason was truly protecting her employers’ privacy and interests, or if she was hoping she could present the FBI with a fait accompli – one which included me in the bag.

And then the CCTV footage came in.

I’ve no idea how Gleason managed to get hold of it ahead of the police, but could only guess it was a measure of how far Eisenberg’s influence stretched. Even Parker allowed himself to raise an impressed eyebrow.

The footage was not high quality, but considering the whole of Eisenberg’s supposedly secure comms system had been effectively jammed from the instant the white noise kicked in, it was the only proof I’d got that things had gone down the way I’d claimed.

The camera had been mounted high, looking into the mouth of the intersection with both sets of traffic lights clearly visible, so anyone who jumped the lights could be shown irrefutable proof of their guilt. It couldn’t have been better placed to capture everything that happened.

Gleason’s techs had already isolated the relevant segment. It began just as the lights flicked to amber and then red ahead of me, and the Buell came into view a few seconds later. I watched myself cruise to a halt in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen and put my feet down. I was obviously tense, head ducking to check my mirrors as I heard the vehicle behind me. I saw me put the bike into gear, ready, just as the nose of the Dodge came into view at the extreme edge of the picture.

‘Stop it there, please,’ Parker said suddenly. He stood, moved closer to the screen and turned back. ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’

Gleason shrugged. ‘You tell me.’

‘The lights,’ Parker said. ‘They’ve gone to red for Charlie, but they haven’t changed at the cross-street. See – still on red. Whoever did this had control of the lights.’

Gleason’s eyes narrowed, but then she nodded slowly, reluctantly. She pressed the remote and I could spot the instant the jammer kicked in, even without the sudden spike to the video that must have coincided with it.

On the screen, my body jerked and went rigid. I let go of the bars and barely kept the bike upright as it stalled, wrestling unsuccessfully with my helmet as if it had suddenly melted red-hot to my head. The Dodge’s bonnet soared as the driver floored the throttle to ramming speed, and ran it full tilt into the side of me.

From up there, it looked impossible that I’d got my leg out of the way in time. The bike was hurled sideways, skittering halfway across the intersection with me first tumbling off backwards and then underneath it. I heard a quiet intake of breath from Parker as the Dodge seemed to be doing its best to climb on top of both of us.

The way the car drove me down was nasty for being so obviously deliberate. They must have kept going until I’d disappeared from view under the front end. The only thing that stopped them then was probably the fear they might not be able to separate me from the jewels.

On screen, I was struggling for the SIG, then reached for the KA-BAR knife as the men leapt out. And I saw the totally calm way the driver shot me as the passenger scuttled round to retrieve the rucksack.

Parker waved again and Gleason stopped the tape without needing to be asked. ‘This was a very well-timed operation,’ Parker said, face taut. ‘They must have had the jammer with them in the car to have reacted so fast. They were moving almost before the interference began.’ He picked up the remote himself, ran the footage back a little to watch my shooting again, his gaze hard and coolly objective.

‘The driver is the one in charge. He showed no doubts, no hesitation. He can’t have known Charlie was wearing a vest, and yet he went for a body-mass shot without hesitation.’ His eyes slid to me. ‘I think, if you’d managed to get your helmet off before they hit you, he probably would have gone for a head shot instead. He didn’t want to miss.’

‘But the passenger flinches when the gun fires,’ Gleason said, not to be outdone. ‘And everything about his body language says he’s afraid of the guy with the gun. Like, if he gets out of line, he’ll get a bullet, too.’

Parker nodded and pressed the remote again.

I was mildly gratified to see that I had my own weapon out before the men had managed to get back into the Dodge, that I was pouring shots into the front end of the car as it reversed off the wreckage of the Buell, the action of the SIG cycling rapidly, gases spurting the dead brass out alongside me. I saw the spreading dark pool from the Buell’s ruptured fuel system, and realised again how lucky I’d been not to catch fire.

The car swerved round to roar away into one of the cross-streets. The passenger side was closest and, cynically, I wondered if the cold and calculating driver had deliberately put himself furthest away from the gunfire.

‘You got him, Charlie,’ Parker said with grim satisfaction as the car disappeared. ‘If we run it back a few seconds you’ll see that jerk – there. Just as the side glass disintegrates. I think that was a hit.’

‘Can we zoom in on the car a second?’ Gleason said over her shoulder to one of the techs.

The picture froze, rewound again, and jumped to close-up, focusing on the passenger side window as the glass blew in from the first shot. In slow motion, I saw the passenger flinch back twice. Once from the shock of the flying glass, lifting his arms to protect his masked head, and the second time with the distinct involuntary snap as a round caught him.

I had another rapid full-colour flashback. The way Sean had jerked as the bullet struck the side of his head. That same dancing twitch.

‘Oh yeah, she got him,’ Gleason murmured with a satisfaction that sickened me. She paused, eyes flicking me up and down. ‘Good job.’

‘No, it wasn’t,’ I said tiredly, getting to my feet and discovering I ached from my ears downwards. ‘If we’d got the kid back, kept hold of the Eisenberg Rainbow, and caught the bastards, that would have been a good job. This was just a bloody disaster.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

By the time I climbed stiffly into the front passenger seat of one of the agency Navigators alongside Parker, I was feeling thoroughly beaten up.

It was five-thirty in the evening. Torquil had been missing fifty-six hours and counting.

When we left the house, there had still been no word from the kidnappers with the boy’s location. Nicola Eisenberg had thrown a fit of hysterics and had to be sedated. Her husband didn’t look in much better shape.

The GPS tracker had led the chase teams to the still-burning wreck of the Dodge, two miles from the scene of the ambush. It was highly unlikely that the men responsible had gone to all that trouble to grab the necklace, only to set it alight shortly afterwards. We had to assume they’d found the tracker and abandoned it with the car.

‘They’re not going to release him, are they?’ I said as Parker steered us out onto the main road.

He glanced over at me quickly, as if to judge how badly I was likely to take it.

‘No,’ he said, voice flat. ‘I don’t think so.’

I absorbed that one in bitter silence for a moment, then asked, ‘Who knew about the ransom arrangements?’

Parker shrugged. ‘Gleason, her staff, the Eisenbergs, possibly their household staff, too. Hell, apparently Mrs Eisenberg kept her appointment with the pro at the tennis club yesterday afternoon, just so’s no one suspected there was anything out of the ordinary going on. For all we know, she could have let it slip to half the membership.’ He put out a gush of breath, frustrated to be involved in such a peripheral role, with no influence over major decisions. ‘Just about everyone at the meeting yesterday knew you’d agreed to be the courier. Doesn’t take much to work out you’d be leaving the house with a priceless object.’

‘They went to a lot of trouble – so why didn’t they disable the traffic cameras?’

‘Pride, would be my guess,’ Parker said. ‘They thought they could get away with it, quick and slick, and they didn’t care who knew about it after the fact. They both had masks on, the car was stolen and on fake plates. I reckon they planned on torching it when they were done anyhow, even before you shot out the coolant system.’

‘For all the good it did,’ I murmured with a sigh. ‘I think you’re right, but I get the feeling it goes deeper than that. It’s not quite that they didn’t care who saw it. I think they actually wanted Eisenberg to watch them walking away with his money, easy as pie. There was something … I don’t know … almost gloating about the whole thing.’

His eyes slid away from the road ahead for a moment. ‘Didn’t count on you running interference, though, did they?’

I gave a hollow laugh. ‘I rather think that you calling my going down under their front wheels “interference” is on a level with trying to bruise someone’s knuckles in a fight by repeatedly thumping them with soft parts of your body,’ I said dryly.

‘These people were pros.’ Parker shook his head. ‘Which doesn’t square with the guys who tried for Dina at the riding club. You said yourself they were amateurs. Not the kinda guys who would know how to manipulate the lights at an intersection, or jam Gleason’s comms network.’

‘So, maybe they’ve called in reinforcements. The guy with the gun definitely wasn’t one of the two at the riding club.’ I rubbed my eyes. ‘And if they’re such pros, why haven’t they released the boy?’ I demanded wearily. ‘I can’t help believing they never really intended to let him go, just like they never intended to run me ragged all over Long Island this morning. I think they were always planning to hit me hard and fast, the first opportunity they got, and it worked like a charm.’

‘Don’t second-guess it,’ Parker cut across me, savage in his softness. ‘If you’d put up more of a fight, you’d have more holes in you now, and some of them might even have gone right through.’

‘I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if I’d avoided the ambush, and the chase teams had closed on my last-known position, and I’d made it to Montauk Point inside the time. I mean, had they even bothered to lay in another rendezvous point from there, or was it all a con from the start? What was so special about the place, by the way?’

Parker opened his mouth to respond, then shut it again, frowning. Before I could go on, he’d thrown the Navigator into an abrupt U-turn. I held onto the door pull and waited until the unwieldy vehicle had wallowed back onto an even course before I risked a question.

‘Jesus, Parker! What the hell are you doing?’

But my boss had his foot hard down on the accelerator, weaving through the sparse traffic like he was on the last lap of a Grand Prix. ‘You asked what would have happened if you’d got to Montauk Point,’ he said, jaw tight with a mix of concentration and anger. ‘But the answer is we don’t know, because after you were hit, Gleason didn’t bother sending anyone there to find out.’

That cold feeling of fear came over me again. ‘Please tell me you’re kidding.’

Parker shook his head, and after that I didn’t ask any more stupid questions, just left him to drive.

Getting to Montauk Point proved easier said than done. Most of the road out there was single-lane in each direction, crowded with trees, and undulating enough to make overtaking almost impossible.

‘There’s no way I could have made it out here in thirty minutes, even on a bike,’ I said, remembering the kidnappers’ deadline. ‘They must have known that.’

Parker nodded. ‘In a perverse kinda way, that should make you feel a little better,’ he said. ‘Knowing this was a set-up from the start.’

It didn’t.

Eventually, we hit the dead-end loop at Montauk, marked by an old-fashioned white lighthouse with a strange brown band round the middle of it. Parker jerked the Navigator to a stop at the base of the shallow incline that led up to the lighthouse itself, ignoring the half-empty parking lot on the other side of the road.

‘What’s here?’ I demanded, aware of an elevated heart rate, a dry mouth. ‘What was I supposed to do when I got here?’

‘Maybe there was no afterward,’ Parker said, his voice grim. ‘Maybe this is where you were supposed to find Torquil.’

I snapped him a fierce glance. ‘Was that before or after I disentangled myself from what was left of my bike?’

He didn’t respond to that, just reached for the door. ‘There are two beaches on either side of the point,’ he said. ‘You want north or south?’

I shrugged, still unconvinced. ‘South.’

We parted company. I jogged back along the edge of the road to a path that led through a wooded area, where a sign promised I would find Turtle Cove. It sounded a lot more picturesque than it was, turning out to be a small crescent-shaped beach with a stony shoreline below golden sand.

I stood for a moment, shading my eyes with a hand. The breeze was brisk, crashing the ocean onto the rocks that surrounded the base of the lighthouse. There were a few hardy souls fishing from them, casting out into the surf like they were trying to whip back the sea. Apart from that, I had the beach to myself.

I tried to jog along the beach, but the sand was soft and heavy. I justified my lack of energy with the excuse that I’d crashed and been shot already today.

I only found the bucket because I was looking at the shoreline and I damn near tripped over it. A child’s red plastic bucket, like they use for sandcastles, upturned high above the tideline. It rattled against something when I kicked it, and when I bent and lifted it up, I found a length of grey pipe sticking out of the sand beneath.

‘Oh shit,’ I whispered, fumbling for my cellphone. Parker answered almost before it had time to ring out, and when I spoke, my lips seemed numb. ‘Parker, get over here. I think I’ve found something …’

I snapped the phone shut again without waiting for his reply, grabbed a piece of nearby driftwood, and began to dig.

It was just after six-fifteen, the evening warm but with a sharpening wind. Almost fifty-seven hours after Torquil had been kidnapped.

Dig, twist, throw …

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

‘Torquil’s dead,’ I said.

The words sounded curiously flat and emotionless, even to my own ears. I had just walked into the living area at the Willners’ house, soiled and ragged from hours spent with numerous cops and medics and crime scene techs. If the Eisenbergs had tried to avoid the authorities before, they were neck-deep in them now.

The local and state police had been quickly followed by men in aggressive suits with aggressive haircuts and equally aggressive personalities, who were probably FBI agents or something similar. They’d told me, no doubt, but after a while the IDs they waved under my nose all began to blur together.

Not for the first time, I was glad of Parker’s calm presence. When it came to dealing with people like that, he had played the game for a long time.

I needed a very long, very hot shower, and to crawl straight from there into bed, but by the looks of it I was a long way from either.

Now, a small collective intake of breath greeted my news, but by then they must have been expecting the worst. By the time I reached the Willners’ place, with every outside light blazing, it was dark – way on the wrong side of midnight and almost back round into morning again.

I confess I’d harboured a vain hope that the household would be safe asleep by the time I got in, and I could put off the whole wretched business of explanations until the morning. I was so tired my vision had started to shimmer around the edges, and it was easier to list the parts of my body that didn’t hurt, rather than those that did. I should have known I was onto a losing streak.

Parker had tried to convince me to go back to Manhattan with him for what remained of the night, make the return trip out to Long Island when I’d had a few hours’ sleep – maybe even take a day to myself. Reading between the lines, I knew he was trying to save me from having to be the one who broke it to Dina, and though I appreciated the gesture, I couldn’t shirk that responsibility.

As it was, I ended up with everyone else’s share of it, too.

Dina wasn’t alone in the living room. She was sitting in the chair her mother favoured with its back to the view. After today, I might be joining her in not wanting to face that expanse of sandy beach.

Opposite Dina, on the leather sofa Parker and I had shared during our first visit, was Manda Dempsey, with Benedict sprawled alongside her. Hunt and Orlando were together on another sofa, which had been arranged at rightangles to make chatting easier. They didn’t look like they’d been doing much of that.

So, the gang’s all here.

As soon as I came in, everybody got to their feet and watched me approach with varying degrees of apprehension. Perhaps there was a little disgust thrown in there, too. I was filthy and I stank, and I recognised that I was not likely to be at my tactful best. Hence my opening statement, and their reaction to it.

Maybe I should have taken Parker’s advice after all.

Nevertheless, I skimmed their faces out of habit, seeing expressions of shock and surprise, but there was something just a little off about them. Maybe, if I hadn’t been so bloody tired, I might have worked out what that was.

The security personnel who habitually accompanied the various members of this group had positioned themselves in the outer reaches of the room, maintaining a perimeter. They eyed me, coldly assessing, judging my abilities purely on the results I had obviously failed to achieve.

Over in the far corner by the edge of the windows, Joe McGregor stood quietly, inconspicuous and self-contained. He appeared to be taking absolutely no notice of whatever stilted conversation had been going on in that room before I turned up, but I knew I’d get the full rundown from him later. He made eye contact and gave me a fractional nod – of condolence or support, I wasn’t sure which.

Right now, I’d take whatever I could get.

‘Did he—?’ Dina began, and swallowed, hands to her face. ‘I mean … what did they do to him, Charlie?’

I glanced down at my sweat-stained, dirty clothing. ‘They buried him.’

Dina’s face spiked in horror. ‘Alive?’

I hesitated. From what I’d been able to glean by the line of questioning I’d faced, there was some doubt about the time and manner of Torquil’s death. That could just have been me projecting my own fears onto it.

If Torquil was alive when he went into that box, then if I’d been quicker, or we’d put it together faster, he might still be alive. But the moment Parker and I had wrenched that lid loose, had seen the boy’s arms slack by his sides and no sign that he’d tried to scrape his way out through the timber that encased him, I hadn’t needed to wait for a pathologist’s report.

He might have been drugged, I supposed, but in my heart I knew that he’d been dead when they put him into the ground. The plastic pipe – the one I’d mistakenly thought was to provide an air supply – turned out to be little more than a marker post, unconnected to the inside of the box. With a bitter anger, I remembered the care I’d taken digging round it.

But the bottom line was that the sole purpose of this morning’s exercise had been to ambush me for the Eisenberg Rainbow, at a point where the chase teams would be able to do damn all about it. It had taken timing that was military in both conception and execution, and although none of these rich kids had seen service, they were surrounded by people who had.

So, why had it been such a pair of amateurs who’d tried to ambush Dina at the riding club? I recalled again, from the CCTV footage Gleason had shown us, the way the passenger from the Dodge – the one who’d grabbed the rucksack – had flinched when the driver shot me. Had they realised their past mistakes and recruited a real pro in time to snatch Torquil?

And if he was such a professional, why had he killed his victim instead of returning him in exchange for the necklace?

I glanced at the faces again, realised I didn’t trust any of them with these speculations, but wasn’t sure why. I shrugged, said dully, ‘Who knows if he was alive or dead when he went into the ground?’

Dina sank back into her chair as if her legs had suddenly ceased to support her weight. Manda threw me a dark look and moved across to perch on the arm to put a comforting arm across Dina’s shoulders.

‘You might show a little compassion, Charlie,’ she said, eyes filled with reproach. ‘You must know how claustrophobic Dina is.’

There was no right way to answer that, especially to admit I hadn’t known. She’d never mentioned it, and the subject of phobias had not come up. When I thought back, I realised that she’d always taken the stairs or escalator in the department stores we’d visited, if there was a choice, but I’d assumed that was more about personal fitness than fear.

‘Oh, poor Tor,’ Orlando murmured, turning her face into Hunt’s shoulder. He put his arms around her and favoured me a mildly reproving look, also.

So, suddenly he’s your best friend …?

It was left to Benedict to voice my cynical thoughts out loud. He made a gesture of bored annoyance and flung himself back onto the sofa.

‘Oh, come on, Orlando, don’t go soft on us now,’ he said, almost jeering. ‘It’s not as if you ever liked the guy.’ But there was a little too much studied bravado in his tone. I wondered who he was trying to convince.

Orlando yanked herself out of Hunt’s embrace and whirled on Benedict, tilted forwards, arms rigid and her tiny hands clenched into fists.

‘How could you?’ she shouted. ‘He might not have been our friend, but he’s still dead, isn’t he? Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’

Benedict looked momentarily shocked at her outburst, but he recovered his sullen poise quickly enough. ‘No,’ he said with an arrogant stare. ‘It doesn’t. People die every day. That’s life.’

I thought Orlando was going to fly at him, all claws and fury, and was glad it wasn’t my job to intervene. Fortunately, it was Hunt who gently took hold of her arms, turned her so he was between the two of them with his back to Benedict, as if preventing them seeing each other would dispel the anger. If the way Orlando wilted in his grasp was anything to go by, he was right.

He spent a moment simply holding her. When he seemed to be sure she wasn’t going to let rip again, he put her away from him and nudged her chin up with his curled forefinger, smiling into her eyes.

‘This isn’t just “people”, is it, Benedict?’ Hunt said quietly then, over his shoulder. ‘Torquil may not have been someone you liked, but he was someone you knew, and he’s died going through an experience that you’ve been through personally. That alone should have given you both some kind of connection, so show a little humanity for once. There but for the grace of God, eh?’

I silently applauded, keeping my face neutral. I knew if I’d said half that, Manda would have jumped straight down my throat, but she just looked grateful – if not a little admiring – that Hunt had headed off a possible slanging match.

Fed up with the lot of them, I started to turn away. ‘Look, it’s been a hell of a day. I’m tired and dirty and I’m going to bed. If you want to ask anything else, you’ll have to come back in the morning.’ I paused, turned back. ‘Speaking of which, how come you’re all here in the first place?’

They glanced at each other, not quite furtive but not far off it.

Eventually, it was Manda who admitted, ‘Ben-Ben ran into Mrs Eisenberg at the tennis club and asked if there was any news.’ She shrugged. ‘Sorry, but she kinda mentioned you were … helping them, so we thought Dina might know something.’

So much for security.

Dina gave me a defiant stare, but I was too weary to get into it with her right now. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘She doesn’t. Go home.’

It was only ten minutes later, standing with my hands braced against the tiles in the shower, letting the spray pound onto my back, that I realised all the things I should have asked.

Like why had Benedict bothered to ask Nicola Eisenberg for news of her kidnapped son, when he claimed to hold Torquil in such contempt? And, for that matter, why had Manda bothered to explain his actions, when she’d never given a damn in the past what I might think of her, let alone apologised to me?

I shook the water out of my eyes and, with marked reluctance, shut off the water, grabbing a towel off the rack as I stepped out of the cubicle. If there was one upside to looking after wealthy people, at least they always had nice bathrooms with constant hot water and plenty of fluffy towels.

I quickly blotted the water away from my body, wrapped one towel around me and was roughly drying my hair with another as I moved through into the bedroom that had been allocated to me.

Dina was sitting on the corner of the queen-sized double bed, facing the bathroom door and waiting for me to emerge. She was nervously plaiting her fingers in her lap. My heart sank.

‘Where are the others?’

A minor shrug. ‘They’ve gone home, like you said.’

‘And McGregor?’

She nodded to the doorway leading out into the corridor. ‘I’m sorry, Charlie, I know you just want to go to bed and I promise I won’t stay long, but I just won’t be able to sleep unless I know what really happened to Tor,’ she said all in a rush, eyes suddenly jittery with a fear she had almost managed to hide while she was upstairs. ‘Please. I … really need to know.’

I leant against the door-frame, aware that being wrapped in a bath towel that only covers you from armpit to mid thigh is not the best way to retain any authority over a situation. Ah well, at least I wasn’t naked.

‘Why?’ I demanded.

She blinked at the staccato question, looking small and lost as she fumbled her way into speech.

‘Because, it’s all my fault,’ she said mournfully, tears gathering in her eyes.

Give me strength!

I sighed, dragged a hand across my gritty eyes and tried for a gentler tone. ‘How is any of this your fault, Dina?’

It seemed that sympathy was her undoing. The tears fell freely then. ‘Because I know who arranged for Tor to be kidnapped.’

That woke me up better than a pint of espresso. I moved forward and crouched in front of her, trying not to lose the towel in the process.

‘Dina, listen to me. If you know who these people are, you’ve got to tell the police. You can’t let them get away with murder.’

‘I kn-know,’ she sobbed. ‘Don’t you think I don’t know that?’

‘Then what’s stopping you—?’

‘It was us!’ The words burst out of her, a wailing cry full of rage and pain and utter remorse. ‘Don’t you understand? We did it!’

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

‘You better start at the beginning, Dina,’ I said heavily. ‘Tell me everything, and don’t skimp on the details.’

I was dressed again, and we were sitting in the silent kitchen, drinking coffee. It was very much a staff environment rather than a family room. The kitchen was set on the side of the house that didn’t get any direct sun, and was clean and uncluttered rather than stylish, its appliances picked for utility and not just because they bore the right badge.

Dina hadn’t really seemed to know where to find the ingredients for coffee, and had dithered a little over putting them together in the right order. Considering the state she was in, I suppose I couldn’t hold that against her.

‘You must think I’m a really horrible person,’ she said now, flicking her eyes sideways at me, as if hoping for an instant knee-jerk denial. As if hoping for my approval even.

I had just been hit by a car, shot in the chest, had my bike trashed, dug up a corpse, and come as close to having my fingernails pulled out under interrogation as the Feds thought they could get away with. I had nothing approving to say to her.

As if realising that fact, Dina flushed, cradling her coffee mug with both hands and staring miserably into the creamy liquid. After a moment, she lifted her head briefly to mutter the age-old excuse so often trotted out by those who find themselves sucked into violence and suddenly way out of their depth.

‘Nobody was supposed to get hurt!’

I managed to suppress a snort of outright disbelief at her naivety, and shook my head wearily instead. Not hard under the circumstances.

We sat in a pool of subdued light from the fitting that hung low over the kitchen table. The rest of the room was in shadow. I thought it might encourage Dina to spill her secrets if the atmosphere was less bright and harsh, and I had positioned myself across the corner of the table from her rather than directly opposite, keeping it less adversarial. All friendly – for now.

‘Dina, even before what happened to Torquil today, Benedict lost a finger. Was that part of the plan?’ I asked, trying for coaxing rather than exasperated. ‘And what about Raleigh? Your poor old riding instructor will be left with an arm he can use to predict changes in the weather. If it knits well enough for him ever to work again to full capacity. Did he sign on for that?’

I’d once had my arm broken in a similar way, I reflected, and could now use it as my own personal barometer.

‘Of course not,’ she said, her voice genuinely wretched. ‘It’s just that I never—’

‘—thought anyone would get hurt. Yeah. You said.’

She glanced at me, dropped her eyes again. ‘They told me it was like … a game,’ she said eventually, choosing her words with care now. ‘That’s all. Just a game.’

‘Yeah,’ I said again. ‘So is Russian roulette.’

If Dina’s head hung any further, she was going to have her nose actually resting in her drink.

I sighed. ‘Tell me.’

She looked straight at me then, her face fierce and focused. ‘You have to promise me, Charlie, that you won’t say anything to anyone about this. Promise me!’

‘Torquil’s dead,’ I said quietly. ‘This is not a game anymore, if it ever really was. You know I can’t make that promise. But,’ I added quickly, seeing her suddenly stricken expression, ‘if I can help you, I will. You’ll just have to trust me to make that decision. Take it or leave it.’

If she noticed the word ‘help’ rather than ‘protect’, she didn’t comment on the distinction.

I rubbed a tired hand across my face and said, ‘When you said it was “us” who was behind the kidnappings, who were you talking about, exactly?’ just to try and get her started before I fell asleep in my chair.

I saw her face twitch, identified a brief flicker of shame and guilt.

‘We are,’ she muttered, almost too low to hear.

‘“We” being …?’

She bit her lip, stubborn. ‘The group of us,’ she insisted.

‘O … K.’ I let that one pass for the moment. ‘Why?’

‘What do you mean?’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘Why did you decide to do it? I mean, were you just all sitting around one day, bored, and someone came up with …’ My voice trailed off. ‘Oh, no. Please don’t tell me I’ve got that bit right.’

‘The way they all talked, it was glamorous and exciting,’ she cried. ‘Being snatched and held to ransom. It was like something out of a movie. None of it was real.’ She realised what she’d said, dropped her gaze again. ‘None of it was supposed to be real.’

‘So, the pair who tried for you at the riding club, they were actors or something?’ I demanded. ‘Because they certainly weren’t professional crooks.’

‘I don’t know who they were. I don’t! I don’t know how they knew where to find me, even. That’s how the whole thing was explained – that I would never know the details.’

‘Wait a minute. If you were arranging to have yourself kidnapped, why go to the trouble of hiring a bodyguard? Was I just window dressing?’

‘Of course not, it’s just—’ She broke off suddenly, swallowed. ‘You were great that day at the riding club. Honestly, Charlie. Just terrific.’

‘I hear a “but” …’

‘You were too good. That was what they told me. They said they didn’t think they could get past you easily. Too many risks.’

‘They were amateurs,’ I murmured, remembering all too easily. ‘And who told you that?’

She flushed again, one shoulder lifting. ‘The others,’ she said, evasive again. There was something else there, too. It took me a moment to put my finger on it.

‘You’re angry,’ I realised. ‘What did you expect me to do, Dina? You can’t get a guard dog and then be upset when it bites people.’

‘I know, but getting a guard dog, as you put it, wasn’t exactly my idea.’

That made sense, at least. ‘Ah – your mother.’ I paused. ‘You didn’t have to accept me. But when we met, that first day on the beach, you seemed … pleased.’

‘You were a girl.’ She had the grace to blush. ‘I didn’t think—’

If I’d had more energy, I would have laughed. I shook my head sadly instead. ‘So, you did think I was window dressing.’

‘Sort of.’ Another flush, embarrassment and shame. ‘But then when we went to Tor’s party on the yacht, and Manda recognised you, she told me you were … good.’

I did laugh then, short and bitter. ‘Yeah, I’ll bet that’s how she put it.’

‘“One scary, hard-faced bitch” I believe were her exact words,’ Dina admitted.

So, Manda Dempsey was involved. No surprises there.

‘But not scary enough to put them off having a go?’

‘You don’t understand, Charlie. They were talking about maybe a million! I … talked them into going through with it.’

‘A million?’ I repeated flatly. ‘That’s probably a fraction of what this house is worth. So, it’s all about squeezing cash out of your mother, is that it?’

Dina was silent for a long time after that, playing with her empty mug, turning it round and round so the unglazed rim of the base grated against the tabletop.

‘You must think I’m so lucky, living someplace like this,’ she said at last, jerking her head to indicate the house, the town, or maybe Long Island itself.

‘And you think you’re not?’

‘Oh, I know I’m lucky, but once you’ve had it, it makes losing it all so much harder to bear.’

That surprised me. Parker would have checked out Caroline Willner very carefully, as he did with all potential clients. If he’d found anything untoward in her finances, he hadn’t mentioned it.

‘And you believe you might be in danger of losing it?’

She shrugged, an unhappy bunch of one shoulder. ‘Mother came from money, and she’s forged a successful career, but my father spends it as fast as she can make it.’

‘I thought they divorced years ago.’ I took a sip of my coffee. It was weak and tepid. Dina needed practice at the domestic arts if she was facing a life without staff. ‘The financial side of it should have been settled then.’

‘It was,’ Dina said. Her lips twisted. ‘But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t talked her into investing in a half-dozen crazy schemes. His family have some kind of castle, I guess you’d call it. A few years ago he wanted to renovate the place and open it as an upmarket health spa. Like that was ever going to work. Then he wanted to buy into some stupid old vineyard. And just because he had fancy ideas about seeing his precious family crest on some stupid bottle of wine, Mother had to foot the bill.’ She flushed again. ‘It’s like her business sense goes straight out the window every time he comes begging.’

‘Is that why you didn’t want to go to stay with him?’

Dina nodded. ‘Mother was desperate to get me away from Long Island, and I guess she thought I might be able to talk him out of some of his more hare-brained schemes …’ Her voice faded away as she saw my expression freeze. ‘What? What did I say?’

‘Mother was desperate to get me away from Long Island …’

‘She knows, doesn’t she?’ I said. ‘What you’ve been up to, I mean.’

‘No! Of course not. I—’

‘Of course I know,’ said Caroline Willner from the gloomy doorway. ‘A mother always knows.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Caroline Willner took the high-backed chair at the head of the kitchen table. She was in her nightgown with a matching robe over the top, belted tightly at the waist. Her face, devoid of its usual subtle make-up, looked almost as tired as I felt. She settled herself with the air of a presiding judge about to pass sentence. If the pale horror on her daughter’s face was anything to go by, she probably was.

Dina seemed frozen with shock, so I was the one who made a pot of Earl Grey while the two of them faced each other in silence.

The staff were used to their employer’s liking for real tea, served hot rather than over ice. There was an electric kettle on the wiped-down worktop – something of a rarity in an American kitchen.

Caroline Willner inclined her head slightly in thanks as I put cup and saucer down near her right hand. I resumed my seat on the table’s long side, where I could referee if it became necessary.

‘So, Dina, I expect the courtesy of an explanation.’

Not quite the cajoling start I might have hoped for, but I recognised that Caroline Willner, despite appearances, was as hurt and bewildered as any parent would be under similar circumstances. She just hid it well behind a haughty mask and icily precise diction.

Dina flushed immediately. ‘How can I hope to expect you might understand what it’s like?’ she demanded. ‘Watching him bleeding you? You’ve been divorced for years, and still he comes crawling back—’

‘Dina, this is not going to get you anywhere,’ I broke in quietly, before she could get into full flow. ‘If anything, you should be happy that your mother still has some kind of fondness for your father. You were a product of that marriage, after all. Would you prefer there only to be bitter memories?’

Both of them looked taken aback at that, even a little insulted that I should presume to comment. Dina resumed a slightly sulky air, gaze firmly fixed on the tabletop.

‘I think you better just tell me,’ Caroline Willner said then, but her tone was more conciliatory this time. ‘What were you afraid of?’

Dina’s head came up. ‘Losing Cerdo,’ she blurted out. ‘I don’t care about the rest of it, but I couldn’t bear to lose my horses.’