Page 121 of The Black Trilogy

“On a plane. We’ve got a data issue at the LA office, and she had to fly there pronto. Something about a drive failure.”

Oh, marvellous. “How about Nate? Is he there?”

Nate—Mr. Gadget himself—came a close second in the hacking stakes. A few seconds later, he picked up, and I didn’t waste time with small talk.

“I’ve got a lead. I need to find a woman called Fiona with a son born around the same time as Luke.”

“Do you have any idea how many women called Fiona there are in England?”

“Narrow it down to South London.”

“That doesn’t help much, Em. Why couldn’t you have a suspect called Esmeralda or Persephone?”

“I’ll bear that in mind next time I go after a kidnapper. Could you just start looking?”

Keys clicked in the background. “Already am.”

“Thanks, Nate. I’ll get back to you when we have something more.”

Next, I called the incident room and asked Nye to cross-reference the name Fiona and the approximate age of her son with the records in our database. Could the name have popped up somewhere previously?

As Dan crunched through the gears, I was so deep in thought I barely cringed. How could we find one Fiona in thousands? I began to fear Nate was right and this was a lost cause. Should I change the plan and go to the drop site instead?

Traffic ground to a halt, and I grumbled under my breath. Flipping road works. Six men in hi-vis standing around drinking tea, and not a shovel in sight.

The car lurched forwards and Dan stomped on the brake, stopping mere inches from the car in front. Why had I let her behind the wheel again?

“Don’t kill my car. I love this car.”

She jerked her head sideways. “At least we’re in the right place for a funeral.”

I stared past her at the old church, complete with grimacing gargoyles glowering down from its grey stone walls. Such a contrast in London beside the glass-fronted office buildings and blocks of flats. The graveyard formed a tiny green oasis in the sea of concrete, and for a brief moment, I envied the dead their tranquillity.

Then it hit me.

The dead.

I called Nate again, drumming my fingers on the dash as the phone rang on speaker. Pick up.

“Missing me already?”

“Nate, try dead Fionas.”

“What? Start from the beginning.”

“I reckon Fiona might be dead.”

“What? How’d you work that one out?”

Beside me, Dan let out a whoop. “Of course! The son’s got to be Luke’s age, and why start this campaign when he’s in his thirties? Why not five years ago? Ten, even. Something triggered it.”

I gave Dan a high-five. “And that something might have been the death of his mother. They had to have been close for her to tell him who his real father was.”

Nate gave a low whistle. “You know, you could be right. I’m on it.”

The second I got back into the office, I began putting a team of my own together. If we found an address, the best time to pay a visit would be this evening when we knew the kidnapper would be out leading Nick, Luke, and the rest of their gang on a merry dance.

I chose Dan, of course, plus another four men from the UK office to assist. Six would be enough to search a building. Now all we needed to do was locate the property.

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