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Alicia had selected a brilliant location—remote yet accessible, with plenty of options for concealment and escape.
It was the perfect place to dump a body.
It had been nearly forty-five minutes since Sylvia’s last text, but he had to put that fact away. Because if he focused on that rather than the task at hand, he’d act rashly, recklessly—fear and worry driving him rather than reason and logic.
They didn’t have a search team, so a grid search of the dunes was out of the question. The massive truck engine wasn’t quiet, so continuing to drive rather than go on foot was a calculated risk.
“Pull over here,” Oscar said. Sylvia’s brother seemed so different when he was out of his house and away from his mad scientist tech lab. Lancelot had thought him a suspicious arsehole the first time he’d met him, but this guy…this guy spoke to his kick-arse-take-names-later heart.
Oscar had been rattling around in the backseat ever since they’d made the turn onto this access road. Glancing through the rearview mirror, he noticed Oscar had pulled the large bag containing his drone up onto the seat.
Suddenly the drone made perfect sense, and Lancelot realized Sylvia’s brother wouldn’t just make an amazing security officer, he’d have Lennon Giles unseated as security minister within days.
He pulled the car off the road, tires sinking slightly into the sand.
Who needed a search team when they had a drone?
“Ah, this is brilliant,” Hugo murmured next to him when he realized Oscar’s plan.
Oscar climbed out and they followed suit.
“Eyes in the sky,” Hugo said to Lancelot as Oscar quickly prepared the drone for takeoff.
“The camera feed will show up here?” Lancelot asked, studying Oscar’s laptop.
Sylvia’s brother merely nodded, too busy setting up the quadcopter.
Lancelot saw when the video camera was turned on, the feed showing on Oscar’s computer. The right side of Oscar’s face came into view. It was impressive quality.
Lancelot had drone envy. He was going to have to convince his boss to outfit him with one of these bad boys.
“What’s your flight time on this?” Lancelot asked. “And your range? Do we need to get to higher ground? Does this thing have infrared?”
Oscar never looked in his direction. “Do you want me to answer questions or find Sylvia?”
Hugo shot him a shut-the-hell-up look and Lancelot closed his mouth, letting Oscar do his work.
“Okay. It’s ready.”
Hugo picked up Oscar’s laptop when he silently nodded to it, then the three of them climbed to the top of the sloping dune in front of them. Oscar launched the drone, using the transmitter to control its path.
Oscar directed the drone in a sweeping route, somehow managing to section the land, dunes and oceans into equal, organized quadrants that would have made Lancelot’s SAS counterintelligence training officer proud.
The three of them watched the laptop screen carefully, searching for any sign of the two women or the car or—
“There!” Hugo said loudly, pointing to the computer screen. “A car.”
Oscar turned his drone in that direction as they all leaned closer. A car was parked on the narrow strip of flat beach between the sand dunes and the water. The end of a small wooden pier was anchored in the sand not far from the car.
Oscar added elevation, zooming out the picture so they could see the end of the pier. “Is that…”
“A boat,” Lancelot said, his pulse picking up. “Get in the car. If Alicia gets that thing away from the pier, we have no chance of catching them, finding Sylvia.”
Hugo cradled the laptop, and he and Oscar ran to the truck, jumping into the backseat together. Lancelot hopped in the driver’s side as Oscar rolled down the back window. Hugo kept an eye on the laptop, directing Oscar, who continued to keep the drone focused on the boat.
Lancelot shot back onto the narrow road that paralleled the coastline, racing toward the spot where the drone hovered and keeping his eye out for a break in the dunes large enough for them to drive through.
“Merde,” Hugo said, as they sped down the road.
