Page 126 of The Black Trilogy

How many times had Luke been told to do that? He hated being kept out of the loop like this. It was his sister in trouble, for goodness’ sake.

A car pulled up, and they both climbed in, Luke on his own in the back while Nick sat up front with the driver. Luke hadn’t felt so alone since his father died, or so scared.

Nick put in an earpiece and spoke to someone, presumably a colleague. “Patch me into the feed from the control room, would you?”

A giant’s fist squeezed Luke’s chest, and he struggled to breathe. Outside the window, dark streets passed by, and his head filled with “what ifs?” What if he’d spent more time with Tia? What if he’d insisted she didn’t go out alone? What if they’d lived in an area that wasn’t so isolated?

Luke had never advocated violence, but sitting alone, impotent when it came to saving his sister, he dreamed of throttling the kidnapper with his bare hands. His fingers tightened around his thigh, imagining it was the man’s neck. No, that wouldn’t bring Tia back, but it would stop the guy doing the same to another girl. What if she didn’t come home? What was he supposed to tell their mother? She’d have another breakdown, wouldn’t she?

“We’ve got her,” Nick said.

“What?”

“Tia. The other team’s got her.”

“Is she alive?”

“She was tied up and dehydrated, but the only damage seems to be to her fingernail.”

Tension seeped out of Luke like water from a sponge.

“Can I see her?” He wanted to confirm the news with his own eyes.

“Give it a few minutes. They’re not fully extracted from the scene, and I don’t know where they’re taking her yet.”

Nick put the audio from the control room onto the car speakers so Luke could listen too. The first voice he heard was Dan’s, her harsh New York accent crystal clear.

“Are you staying behind?”

“No point.” This voice was female too, but English and softer. “There were cameras everywhere, transmitting wirelessly. A hundred bucks says he knows we’ve found her and he won’t be coming back. I’d also bet money on him being pretty cross.”

“I’d tend to agree with you,” came a man’s voice, American this time. “Leave one team, and we’ll start planning the next phase.”

“Next phase?” Luke whispered.

“We still need to find the man,” Nick said.

The soft voice spoke again. “In that case, I’m gonna take Tia home—it’s where she said she wants to go. Nye, can you arrange for an ambulance to meet us there? She could do with a check over.”

“Will do. Do you want the police involved now?”

“I’ll call Jason. Might as well utilise our tax dollars and get them to look for Mr. Howard too, even if all they’ve managed to do so far is prove they can’t fill in the details on a witness statement properly.”

What witness statement? And who was Mr. Howard? Luke had a lot of questions, but right now, his first concern was getting to Tia.

“Any chance of a lift home?” he asked Nick.

“No problem, buddy.”

They weren’t sharing in the rest of the team’s luck, and ten minutes after they got on the M25, the motorway came to a standstill.

“There’s a lorry crash up ahead,” their driver said.

“Can we go around it?” Nick asked.

“They’ve closed the motorway. We’ll have to wait it out.”

An hour passed before they reached an exit, but Tia was safely back in Lower Foxford, complete with a team of bodyguards, and that was all that mattered. They were crawling along in a never-ending line of cars when Nick’s phone rang. A few muttered words, and he held it out to Luke.

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