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Meanwhile, the man in her lap nestled down, an approving sigh escaping him as he settled in against her for the journey. She looked down at him, matching his warm smile with those words that echoed around her mind. This man knew so much about her.
With one hand, he stroked her arm, affectionately. His actions told her exactly how intimate her online relationship with him had been and she pressed her lips together, trying to steady her confused emotions after all that had happened.
Just then she caught sight of a road sign. They were headed west. Where? He’d mentioned a safe house. Wherever the hell they were going, it looked as if she was stuck with the pair of them—one bloke who she’d revealed all her intimate sexual fantasies to online, and another who she’d come on to before she even knew who he was.
Great, just great.
Her cheeks heated and she turned away, focusing on the flickering lights outside the window as the car sped on, headed out of the city.
Chapter Four
When Seth saw the big old house up ahead on the hillside, he slowed the car to a crawl, flicking his headlights down from full beam to sidelights. He didn’t want to attract the attention of the neighbours. The nearest house was a good half a mile away, but on a clear night the lights could be spotted across the valley floor.
The lane that led up to the place where he had grown up was bumpy and Adrian woke up as they approached. “Where are we?” he asked as he sat up. “This doesn’t look like ‘an average Midlands housing estate’ to me.”
Seth noticed there was no lack of sharpness to Adrian’s thinking. He’d remembered where they were supposed to be going. It was a safe bet that possible head injury could be ruled out.
“Wales,” the woman responded, with a terse edge to her voice, “North Wales.”
She hadn’t rested for a moment. Watchful and alert, she’d pouted thoughtfully—and provocatively—all the way from London. Seth had felt her attention on him over the course of the journey, attention that was mutual. What was her role in this? She could be one of Carlisle’s people. That was part of the reason he’d kept her close. He didn’t want to think that, but he had to, because that was his job. Whatever their connection was, he wanted her under his watch so that he could monitor her.
“Wales?” Adrian repeated, and moved around in the back seat as he peered out of the window.
“Change of location,” Seth said.
Adrian didn’t respond.
Seth was relieved. He didn’t want to explain why he had changed the plan. The less the witnesses knew, the safer they would be. The less anyone knew, in fact. Out there on that fire escape outside of Adrian’s office, he’d caught sight of the assailant, and he’d recognised him. It was Emery Lavonne, a fellow officer in the force. That distinctive blond hair of his gave it away. Seth had just about kept a lid on his anger, but it had enraged him. He’d heard of good policeman being bought out, but he didn’t understand that. Never would. Whatever, he needed time to think and he couldn’t risk taking the primary witness to the designated safe house when Lavonne might already have got his hands on that address.
Instead he had brought them to Hafod Y Coed, a country hotel nestled in a wood in North Wales, the place where he had grown up.
Adrian attempted to read the sign as they passed, stumbling with the Welsh word structure. “What does it mean?”
“Summer woods,” Seth responded. “It’s a small private hotel, out of the way, and it’s currently closed up for the winter season. We’ll be using it as our safe house.” Out of the way, that’s why he’d opted for it. They didn’t usually take witnesses into Wales, and it had seemed safer than booking into a regular hotel where the staff would be curious about who they were.
He pulled the Land Rover up in front of the building and wondered what his parents would say if they were in residence and he turned up with two strangers in tow, two people who were under his witness protection. Thankfully his parents were in Spain for their winter break. He switched off the ignition, then reached for the keys at his belt and sought out the one he hadn’t yet used, the key his mother had given him.
“You never know when you might need to pop home,” she’d said. They knew what sort of work he did. Maybe they thought someone would be on his back, one day, and he’d need to hide. “Keep it,” she insisted, when he tried to tell her it wasn’t necessary. “The alarm code is always the same, your birth date.”
He’d never had to use it before. She’d always been at the door to greet him when he arrived on a visit.
Two minutes later he had the alarm switched off, and both his witnesses together with all the supplies from the car were in the hall. He walked to the system’s control panel box and flicked on all the alarms and the heating. If he housed them in the rooms on this floor and at the back of the house, there would be less chance of the lights being seen by their distant neighbours.
When he turned back he saw that Adrian had sat down in the tall leather porter’s chair—a much loved piece that his mother had found at a furniture auction—that stood in the reception area. The woman was peering up at the framed accommodation certificates on the wall and the brass plate that listed his parent’s names as the license holders of the premises. When Adrian pulled up his trouser leg and groaned, the woman dropped to her knees beside him. “Oh my god, your leg is badly swollen.”
“It’s an old injury, a cartilage problem, but I think I’ve given it a jolt it as I went down.”
Seth watched her tending Adrian. Once again he wondered what the hell the story was with these two. He’d been trying to figure it out all the way from London—that, and what the hell a cop was doing moonlighting for a lowlife like Carlisle.
“Do you have a first aid kit, with bandages?” The woman looked at Seth as she eased Adrian’s shoe off. “This needs to be strapped for support.”
Seth was already on it. He headed for the kitchen and was back a moment later, first aid case in hand. Setting the case down on the floor beside the porter’s chair, he nodded at the woman. “You should find everything you need in there. I’ll secure the place while you do so.”
She was about to speak—and she looked pretty snippy—but he turned away before she had the chance to get started. Securing the place was his first priority. He checked the ground floor rooms, drawing closed the heavy curtains after he’d made sure the windows were locked. He lit the gas flamed log-fire in the residents’ lounge and then headed into his stepfather’s office, where he disconnected the phone and locked it in a drawer, pocketing the key.
Jogging up the stairs, he thought back over what action he’d taken, as he went—as he had done several times on the journey from London. He’d had to act on instinct back there, because the normal avenues were no longer an option. Even though it had been the best thing to do, he had to be sure. He always played by the rules, but when it had come to the crunch he had to step outside the boundaries. He’d taken the option he’d been trained to do: always protect the witness. Their chief, Stephen Ward, had always been adamant about that. But Seth had to take action fast, and those actions were all beyond his remit.
He checked the rooms on the first floor, assessing the security. The rooms were all dark and quiet. Taking them to the original safe house had no longer been an option. Lavonne would have access to the address. They could have gone to a hotel, but that involved other members of the public. That would have put more innocent people in danger, and every single person who knew where they were opened up a potential risks. He paused and scanned the road from a window, he saw no lights. Lavonne wouldn’t find them here. He squinted into the darkness. They had not been tailed, and he had no intention of using a phone that could be tracked by sat. His job –and his nature—didn’t let him rest easy though, not yet.
