Private Princess

Chapter 61

Jack Morgan and Peter Knight stepped from the ambulance, the paramedic pulling the doors closed behind them. The vehicle’s lights and siren started up and police officers hurriedly cleared a lane for it to pull away. Given the severity and nature of the attack, a police car followed in the ambulance’s wake to ride shotgun. Morgan noticed the precaution, and gave his thanks to the police sergeant.

“She’s one of ours,” the woman said.

“She saved my life,” Morgan told her. “Please look after her.”

“We will,” the sergeant promised. “I’m sorry that we can’t let you inside. If it was up to me...”

“You’ve done enough,” he assured her. In truth, it killed him that he could not run to Cook’s side, even in death, but if he was to be denied that proximity to the woman he loved, then he would take himself where he was needed. He would take himself to where her killer was hiding, and there, he would deliver justice.

“We need to go,” he told Knight.

“Our car will be here any second,” said Knight, and sure enough, a black Range Rover appeared in that moment at the end of the street. “But that’s not ours,” Knight wondered, ready at any moment to shove Morgan into cover should the occupants prove hostile.

At the behest of a waving officer, the vehicle slowed to a stop ten meters short of the cordon. There the passenger door opened, and Knight felt his body relax as a familiar figure stepped into the street and beckoned toward them.

“Over here!” Colonel Marcus De Villiers waved, and after a final thank you to the police sergeant, Morgan and Knight slipped under the cordon to join him.

“Have you seen Lewis?” asked the Guards officer.

Morgan nodded. “We have. She’s badly beaten, but alive.”

“Thank God,” De Villiers sighed. As head of royal security, Lewis fell under his command, and there was no doubt in the Private agents’ minds that De Villiers truly cared for Lewis’s well-being.

“And Cook?” the man asked hopefully.

Morgan said nothing. Knight shook his head.

“Morgan, I’m so sorry.”

Morgan’s mind was miles from sympathies. A million miles from them. It was only concerned with retribution.

Perhaps De Villiers saw as much.

“Get into the car, Morgan,” he ordered as if to a soldier. “Not you,” he said to Knight as he tried to follow. “I need to speak with Morgan alone.”