Джеймс Паттерсон - Private Princess

Morgan looked to the window. The hotel was privately owned, and unlike with the big chains, the windows were not held almost shut to prevent suicides. He could make it out, he knew, but if the assassin had a partner, that’s where they would be waiting.

He looked above him at the ceiling panels. The time from the gunshots to his decision took mere seconds. Morgan pushed away a tile and hauled himself up into the cavity. Dust cascaded onto the bed, where it fell alongside pieces of splintered furniture that had flown across the room. Pressed in between floors like a coal miner in a seam, he scuttled backward, pushing by cabling that snagged at his feet. In moments, he had pulled the tile back into place.

And then Morgan held still.

If he made any noise he knew he would be an easy target through the thin ceiling panels. And so he waited as quietly as he could.

But there was no crash of the door being kicked off its hinges. No more gunshots. There was only the sound of terrified screams from other rooms in the hotel, and then a fire alarm. Morgan held his breath and held his position.

He waited.

He waited, and then he heard her.

“Jack?”

Morgan dropped down onto the bed. He saw a rush of relief wash over Jane Cook as she realized he was uninjured.

“We need to go,” he told her. “Now.”

“The police are here,” she replied.

“That doesn’t mean we’re safe.”

“They’re armed. At least, she is.”

Morgan followed Cook’s eyes to the doorway. There was a woman standing there wearing dark jeans and a hoody, and in her hand by her side was a Glock 17.

He tensed.

The magazine of that weapon held seventeen rounds. The same number of bullets that had cut apart his hotel room.

“Who are you?” Morgan asked, wondering if she had reloaded, and if he could cover the distance to the woman before she could raise the weapon.

“I’m PC Sharon Lewis. I’m on Princess Caroline’s protection team. De Villiers sent me.”

“Call De Villiers,” Morgan instructed Cook.

Lewis laughed. “I’ve got a gun and you’re standing around half naked.” Her Welsh accent was thick to the point where Morgan almost struggled to understand her. “If I wanted you dead, well...”

Morgan said nothing. The words made sense on the surface, but he was ruling nothing out. Until he knew more, he would treat this woman as suspect.

Cook hung up her phone call. “De Villiers didn’t send her. The Princess did.”

“She sent me to see if there’s anything I can help you with,” Lewis explained, toying with the broken crockery of the tea set. “My guess is, that would be a place to sleep that isn’t a shooting range?”

Morgan allowed himself a wry smile. “It would be nice to go to sleep without wondering if I’ll wake up dead.”

“Get your stuff,” Lewis told them. “We’ll leave now.”

“Where are we going?” Cook asked her.

“You wouldn’t be able to say it even if I told you.” The Welshwoman grinned, pausing in the corridor to allow Morgan to finish dressing, and for Cook to grab her rucksack. “All ready?”

They were, and as the riddled door swung shut behind Morgan, one thought was clear in his mind.

Someone did not want Sophie Edwards to be found.

Cook brought their rented Range Rover to a stop. Ahead of them, the red brake lights of Lewis’s car were bright as she stopped at a gate and spoke to a pair of men who stood guard beside it.

After a moment of conversation, Lewis stepped from her car and walked over to Morgan’s window. She was followed by one of the men, who held a dog by a leash.

“Step out, please,” Lewis instructed. “He’s going to search you both, and the car.”

The Private agents complied, both watching with respect as the search was carried out with expert skill.

“Go ahead,” the man told them, and the pair climbed back into the vehicle. They set off again, following Lewis along a winding drive that was only one car-width wide.

“Wouldn’t want to run into a car coming the other way,” Cook noted. It was an attempt at small talk to break a long silence. The atmosphere in the car had been tense, but that had less to do with sexual chemistry than with the attempt on Jack Morgan’s life. As they had driven from Brecon, Morgan’s mind had been churning over why someone would be willing to kill to prevent Sophie Edwards from being found. Knowing as little as he did, he could form no solid motives, only wide-ranging theories, and such a lack of concrete intelligence had pushed him into a simmering silence.

“I doubt they get many visitors here,” he made himself say, not wanting Cook to feel isolated after such an evening.

“Here” was the royal residence of Llwynywermod. Morgan had been expecting a castle when Lewis had told him of their destination, but what he found instead was a rectangular barn and farmhouse conversion painted white, its profile low against the dark shape of brooding hillsides that surrounded it.

The place was barely lit, the hour now late, but Morgan had no doubt that thermal imaging cameras would be filming their arrival with the clarity of daylight — Lewis had assured him that security at the residence was high tech, and lethal. Morgan saw no reason not to believe her, but he was not about to trust her — Lewis’s choice of sidearm and timing had raised the hairs on the back of his neck, and Jack Morgan was still alive today because he had learned to heed those instincts. For her part, Lewis seemed equally as cautious as Morgan.

“You go where I say, when I say,” Lewis told the pair as they exited the Range Rover. “Your rooms have bathrooms, and I’ve had some snacks and drinks put in there, so there’s no reason for you to go wandering. If you try it, the security detail will shove a taser up your arse. We’ve got a competition going to see who can zap the most dickheads in a year, so don’t tempt us.”

Morgan said nothing, but he caught Cook giving the slightest roll of her eyes at Lewis’s bluster.

“Right. Time to turn in,” Lewis told them. “We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

“We?” Morgan asked.

“Yes. We.”

Private’s investigation team had grown by one.

Jack Morgan couldn’t sleep. The image of the splintered door and the suppressed thwacking sound of the bullets were still fresh in his mind. So too was the picture of Jane Cook as they had lingered outside the hotel room.

Morgan was alone in his bedroom, a quaint space decorated in the typical fashion of a farmhouse — the furniture plain and practical, wooden beams crossing the ceiling and climbing the walls. The structure reminded him of prison, and that was how he felt — trapped. Trapped with no clear leads and his head seemingly in a noose that he could not see.

Thirty minutes of press-ups and crunches did something to clear his mood, his skin slicked with sweat, muscles pumped with blood. He looked to the Rolex on his wrist, seeing the hands creep delicately onto the hour. It was 6 a.m., and time to call Peter Knight.

“Jack,” Knight answered. “The rest of the night was quiet?” Morgan had briefed him about the attack the moment they had left the hotel.

“Security is tight,” Morgan assured his friend, “but we’re useless while we’re here. We need to get back to Brecon, and find out what’s worth killing me over.”

“I’m sure there are a few things,” Knight replied, trying to lift Morgan’s mood. “Do you think they’ll call off the hunt?”

Morgan had asked himself the same question. Princess Caroline hiring an investigation agency to find her friend was one thing. Having one of the agents killed in that search was another. The whole point of hiring Private was to avoid public knowledge and scandal, and Morgan’s brains on his bed sheet could hardly get buried in the back pages.