Private Princess

Chapter 34

Furious that the shooters had escaped, Morgan thumped his fist against the Range Rover’s mud-splattered bonnet. “What’s the ETA on the police helicopter?”

“It will get to the point where the main road meets the forest track in ten minutes,” Cook told him.

Morgan shook his head. “Not fast enough. They’ll hit it in less than five, and that’s if they use the same point into the forest that we did. There could be others. They could even dump the vehicle and make it out on foot.”

“They could,” Cook agreed, downcast.

Rain pattered from Morgan’s shadowed face as he made his decision. “You two will go back in the Range Rover and secure the scene until the police arrive.”

“We can’t split up, Jack,” Cook pleaded. “They could still be out here, setting up a second ambush.”

“All the more reason for me to be on foot,” he replied. “I can stay off the tracks. It’s not thick forest. I’ll make quick time.”

“But—”

“Jane, thank you, but remember who we are and what the hierarchy is. This is my call.”

“Of course,” she managed, taking a half-step backward.

“She’s right though, Morgan,” Lewis added from the passenger seat. “No offence to the girl, but Sophie doesn’t know if she has company or not. Don’t risk the living for the dead.”

“The crime scene needs preserving,” Morgan insisted, pulling tight his laces.

Lewis put her hand out of the window and into the pouring rain. “The crime scene is bollocksed, and the local bobbies will be here in well under an hour.”

“We should stick together, Jack,” Cook ventured again.

It was her eyes more than her words that convinced Morgan. It had nothing to do with tactics, he admitted to himself, and everything to do with not wanting her to be out of his sight.

“OK,” he conceded. “Find us a new route out of here, Jane, just in case there’s another surprise on the route that we came in on.”

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“The Princess hired us to find Sophie,” Morgan said, grim-faced. “We need to be the ones to tell her what happened to her.”

Cook nodded solemnly. “And then what?”

It was a moment before Morgan answered. He was prying something out from the shattered windshield with his fingers. “And then,” he told Cook, holding up the dull shape of a flattened bullet, “then we find the connection to two bodies. We find Eliza Lightwood.”