Джеймс Паттерсон - Private Princess

“It’s not a big school, Jack. There’s a good chance they could have known each other.”

“Is she with you?” Morgan asked.

“No. Her phone’s going straight to voicemail. I’ve tried her offices, and she’s not there either.”

Morgan ran a hand through his hair as he worked through it. “Sophie and Eliza were blackmailing him together,” Morgan concluded. “Where do you think she is now, Peter?”

But there was no answer.

The line was dead.

“Dammit,” Morgan cursed, looking at his phone screen. “I’ve lost all service. Do you have anything on yours?” he asked the two women with him in the Range Rover.

“Nothing,” Lewis replied. “We’re deep in the forest now, Morgan. Not LA.”

Morgan held his reply.

“I don’t know what you’re expecting to find here,” the Welshwoman said to no one in particular. “Needle in a bloody haystack.”

“You could have stayed behind,” Cook answered, getting frustrated with the other woman’s negativity. “Or I can stop the car, and you can walk back?”

“Someone has to look after you.”

Something in Lewis’s reply put Morgan on edge. Unconsciously, he checked the knife that still resided in his boot, working it upward a little so that it was loose. It would take a second to draw it, and another second to use it. He wondered how fast Sharon Lewis was with the pistol, and if she had a round already chambered. If she was forced to draw back on the pistol’s top-slide first, he was certain that split second would cost the officer the fight.

“We’re almost there,” Lewis said. “Pull up in that clearing.”

Cook did as she was told, then opened the door. The sound of rushing water was stark against the otherwise still forest, and the ticking of the Range Rover’s cooling engine. As they exited the vehicle, Morgan made sure he mirrored Lewis’s movements, sliding from the back seat on the passenger side so that he was behind her, and close. Outside the car, the smell in the air was thick with the scent of damp earth.

“Bloody perfect timing,” Lewis complained as thick blobs of rain began to penetrate the forest’s canopy. “Let’s get this over with before we get soaked.”

“You’ve got the map,” Cook told her. “Lead on.”

The police officer sighed, and made her way across the clearing to where a worn pathway led through the trees.

The roar of water was growing louder. The sound of the waterfall was the only waypoint needed now.

“I bloody hate the rain,” Lewis grumbled as she folded the map away, placing it inside her jacket. The shower had become a downpour, the rain bouncing from the forest floor and slapping at the leaves. What had been a quiet haven was fast becoming a cacophony — the rain even drowned out the sound of the waterfall. It made it hard for Morgan to gauge how close they were drawing, and so the cascading white waters were almost something of a surprise as they turned a corner of rocks and shrubs and saw nature’s marvel revealed ahead of them.

But Jack Morgan was not looking at the waterfall, no matter how beautiful.

He was looking at the body that was hanged beside it.

Sophie Edwards’ body hung bloated and purple from a rope tied to a tree branch.

“That’s her,” Lewis confirmed, without having been asked. “Looks like her tricks caught up with her.”

Morgan turned to look at the police officer. “Her tricks?” he said evenly. “So you did know who she was, and what she was doing?”

“Of course I did.”

“And Sir Tony?”

“Who?” the woman asked, her look convincing Morgan that she was either ignorant of the man and his connection to Sophie Edwards, or that she was an excellent liar.

Cook was about to walk forward when Morgan gently grasped her elbow. “We need to leave the police a good crime scene. Or whatever’s left of one after this rain.”

Cook nodded, understanding. “Such a waste,” she said, shaking her head. “She had so much going for her.”

Morgan looked to his phone: there was no reception.

“We should go back to the car,” Cook suggested. “Head back down the track until we get service.”

“You go and call this in,” Morgan told her. “I’ll watch over the body.”

But as Cook turned to go back up the trail, the crack of bullets crashed through the trees.

Morgan, Cook and Lewis threw themselves to the ground within a half second of hearing the first round crack by. By the sound of the round’s low buzz, Morgan knew that the bullets were subsonic, and from a pistol. The fire was accurate, and so the firer must be extremely lucky, or within fifty meters.

No — firers , Morgan corrected himself, hearing overlapping shots as broken branches and splinters fell down onto his head.

“They’re over there!” Morgan said, calculating the location by observing the strike marks as the bullets thwacked into the trees.

Lewis sprang up and half stumbled behind a small boulder, her feet slipping on the wet soil. The shooters saw her move and sparks flew up from the rock as rounds ricocheted from its surface.

Morgan watched, heart in mouth, as Lewis raised herself into that fire and began to shoot double taps at their assailants. Thinking that her fire would distract them, he took the chance to bound into better cover, grabbing Cook by her jacket and pulling her with him as she scrabbled along on her hands.

“Are you hit?” Morgan asked her.

“I’m good,” she told him. Morgan felt his chest sag in relief.

“Change position!” he shouted to Lewis, and the police officer ducked. Sure enough, a few rounds smacked just behind where her head had been.

“Give me the gun!” Morgan called to her, crawling forward.

“Fuck off!” Lewis snarled back, rising from her new cover to deliver two double taps, before dropping down again and scuttling into a new position. “This isn’t Hollywood — I don’t need the Americans to save me.”

“Christ, she’s enjoying this.” Cook shook her head, crawling beside Morgan — without a weapon herself, the former soldier had never felt more vulnerable, or useless.

“Bloody right I am!” Lewis shouted. “Fuck off back home!” she shouted over the rocks at the attackers.

And perhaps they listened, because the echo of gunshots through the trees was steadily giving way to the hammer of the rain. Morgan looked through a hand-width gap between rocks and saw two silhouettes moving a hundred meters away through the foliage. They were not firing now, but one shape moved as the other held position and took aim. Either they’re military , Morgan thought, or they took the time to learn a killer’s profession .

Lewis was looking over the sights of her pistol as Morgan reached her side.

“This is gonna be a lot of bloody paperwork,” the police officer said, panting for breath.

“Thank you,” Morgan told her, feeling guilty that he had ever doubted the woman. “And now, if it’s all right with you, officer, I’d like to go get these bastards.”

Jack Morgan’s boots thumped into the wet dirt of the path as he ran back to the Range Rover. He was wary of an ambush, but the shooters had moved off in a different direction — Morgan reasoned that the angle meant they would reach the vehicle first. Cook was warning him that there could be a second group of shooters waiting at the vehicle, but Morgan was willing to take that risk — he had to. He had made sure that he was at the front, ahead of the only armed person in their team — if Morgan was wrong and there was a second ambush, then he would be the first one into it. It was a gamble, but every second bought the shooters time to escape.