Page 85 of The Black Trilogy

The deadbolts shot back with a muffled thunk, and I pushed my way inside.

One minute gone. I flicked the lights on and ran straight to the study on the ground floor, pulling back the mirror on the wall to reveal a hidden door. A sixteen-digit code punched into the recessed keypad got me through it and into the basement. Two minutes gone.

The basement contained a carefully amassed arsenal of everything one could possibly desire to either start a small war or prevent one, all neatly arranged in racks and lockers. The really good stuff was hidden in an armoured room at the back, but I didn’t need any of that today.

I grabbed a couple of bags and filled them with equipment. Bugs, tracking devices, a spare phone, night vision goggles, infrared goggles, a parabolic microphone, and a handy little scanner that would detect the transmissions of any wireless cameras or listening devices. I was a kid in a candy store, one who’d been living on muesli for months.

Should I take a gun? Decisions, decisions... I opted against it. They were illegal to carry in the UK, and the drawbacks of getting caught with one would outweigh the benefits. I picked up an extra knife, though.

Thankfully, I insisted on everything being kept in its proper place, and it only took me three minutes to find the equipment I wanted. I removed more cash from one of the safes, gave my perfectly ordered playroom one last wistful glance, re-locked the basement, secured the mirror back over the door, and ran through to the kitchen. Five minutes gone.

Food. I needed food. Luckily, Toby had left a pile of compost-flavoured protein bars in the cupboard, and I grabbed a handful. They tasted like sawdust, but I wouldn’t starve. Those and some bottled water went into my bag.

Six and a half minutes gone.

The phone on the kitchen wall rang. The moment my eye was scanned, alarms would have blared in the control room. That call was someone wanting to find out what on earth I was playing at, and I bet I knew who. I could just picture the scowl on his face as I ignored him.

The noise was driving me nuts, and I stared into the hidden camera.

“Pack it in!” I shouted at Nate. The house was wired for sound as well.

The phone stopped, but five seconds later, it started up again.

I didn’t have time to deal with this. I’d been thrown into this situation, and despite having three months to think of what to say to my friends about my breakdown, I hadn’t got around to it. Now wasn’t the right time, not with my head all over the place.

The phone didn’t stop. Nate would be pacing the control room in Richmond now, an earpiece wedged into each ear.

“Nate, you’ll wear a hole in the floor.”

He didn’t answer. He couldn’t—the house only contained microphones, not speakers. Although I bet myself $100 that next time I set foot in there, he’d have wired one in.

I dashed up the stairs, trying to block out the ringing, and grabbed some warm clothes and a blanket. A quick glance at my watch told me my time was almost up. I ran to the other side of the house and took the stairs to the underground garage.

Eight minutes.

What was in there? A BMW X5, an Audi A4, a sporty Yamaha motorcycle, and my latest toy, a shiny black Aston Martin V12 Vantage tucked up under a cover in the corner. I’d been hoping for the Land Rover Discovery I’d driven on my last visit to the UK in case I needed to go off-road, but no such luck. The X5 would have to do.

I liberated the keys from the lockbox in the corner and bleeped open the car. The bags got slung in the back, then I popped the bonnet. Twenty seconds later, I’d disabled the tracker hidden in the engine bay.

As I hopped into the front seat, I hoped I remembered how to drive. I had no idea who the BMW belonged to—my friends had a tendency to abandon their cars in my garage—so I kept my fingers crossed I wouldn’t break it. Breaking cars was Dan’s job.

I aimed the key fob at the garage door and tapped my fingernails on the steering wheel as it slowly rolled up. At the end of the driveway, the gates creaked open.

Nine minutes and fifty-seven seconds. Nice.

Back behind the wheel at last, I took the odd liberty at traffic lights but drove sensibly enough that I didn’t attract attention. The response unit would be coming from the opposite direction, although the chances were they’d called off the dogs when they saw me leave. They weren’t about to chase me through the streets of London, not when they knew they didn’t have a hope of catching me.

Once I was sure I hadn’t picked up a tail, I pulled into a lay-by, savouring the adrenaline rush. Oh, I’d missed this. I’d missed the challenges and the danger and the risk.

But I was back now.

I smiled to myself.

I was back. And I had a kidnapper to catch.

Seeing as I’d missed dinner, I gulped down a protein bar and took a slug of water. Midnight was fast approaching when I punched Luke’s postcode into the SatNav and headed back to Lower Foxford.

As I drove, guilt chewed away at me. I owed my friends and colleagues an explanation for what I’d just done, but I didn’t know how to put it into words. The calm, rational part of my brain was still suffering from a serious malfunction. Every time I tried to think, my head filled with fuzz, like static from an old television.

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