Page 71 of Savage Protector

He passes me his mobile and hits a key to play back a voicemail message. The voice on the phone is not that of a nine-year-old kid.

“Mr Savage? I’m sorry to bother you. It’s me, Bilal Malik, from Edinburgh. You…you helped us before, so I thought, maybe… I have to go.” The message cuts out there.

“Is that it?” I demand. “What did he ring for? What’s happened?”

“That’s all I have.” Ethan pockets the device. “I want you to go and see him, find out what prompted that call and is there anything he needs from me? Or us?”

“Do we know where he phoned from? They went to Birmingham, didn’t they?”

“I have Frankie working on that. Bilal used a burner phone, so not easy to trace. Quite possibly the same one I gave him back then.”

“He might phone back,” I suggest. “It sounded as though he was interrupted.”

“True. There again, he might not. Which is where you come in. The boy knows you, and as I recall, he seemed to like you.”

“We got on,” I concede. “I was working mostly, but we had a bit of quality time.”

“Rome drove them to Birmingham, so he’ll go with you, back to where he left them. You can ask around, do what you can to locate Bilal, Shahida, or… what was the little girl called?”

“Sarah. She’ll be about ten by now. You know, they probably don’t even use the same names anymore.”

“I realise that, though Bilal did use his old name on the phone. You have Frankie on standby for the digital searches. Might be a good idea to have two or three more men go with you, as backup.”

“I’ll go, boss.” Tony has been listening with interest. “Is it possible to get any further calls from Bilal’s burner transferred to us as well?”

Ethan nods. “Good idea. I’ll sort that. Anything else?”

“Do we have any pictures of any of them?” I ask, already knowing the answer. “The more recent the better.”

Ethan and Tony shake their heads.

“No matter, we can get Frankie on that as well. With an image we can get an ID easily enough.”

Ethan claps me between the shoulder blades. “I knew you were the man for the job. Thanks, both of you. How soon can you get away?”

Tony checks his watch. “About an hour all right, boss?”

Ethan gets to his feet. “Keep me informed. Good luck.”

“I need to leave.”I march into my apartment and start digging in drawers for a couple of changes of clothes. Not much is where I left it, now that she’s moved in and shifted my stuff around to make room for hers.

Leila sets aside her pen and watches my efforts for a moment or two. “Leave? Where are you going?”

“Birmingham, at least to start with. It’s a job for Ethan. Where are my black jeans?”

“In the bottom of the wardrobe, I moved them. Why are you going to Birmingham? Can I come?”

I turn to regard her, hair still damp from the shower and wearing one of my spare shirts and nothing else as far as I can tell. No time to check, more’s the pity. My dick expresses its opinion with an unhelpful little twitch. “I wish you could, sweetheart, but this is business. Hopefully, it won’t be for long, just a day to two.”

“Days? Oh… As long as that?”

I grin. “You’ll miss me?”

“Maybe. A little bit. But I suppose I can get in with revising for toxicology. I might even be in with a chance of passing without all these…distractions.”

“There you go. Look on the bright side.” I cradle her face between my hands. “I’ll miss you, too,may-ri-jaan.And I bet you kill toxicology.”

We meetup outside the mansion exactly an hour later. Tony has conscripted Beck Maloney, a fairly new recruit to our ranks, to join us for the trip. Beck, or Beckett to give him his full title, seems to be a decent all-rounder, but his particular ‘super talent’ is martial arts. He grew up in one of the more upmarket suburbs in New York; his dad was a stockbroker, and his mother did the usual social rounds of tennis clubs, brunches, and organising raffles for worthy causes. Young Beckett didn’t care much for school, and the feeling was mutual, much to his parents’ disappointment, but he excelled at sports. He was a black belt in karate, kick boxing, and taekwondo by the time he was ten.

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