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Monitoring one woman in the hope she’d lead to the other?
I got it together enough to perform a fast check of the scene, just to be sure she wasn’t lying across the back seat or in a ditch, but then I was taking action.
I snapped up my phone, pacing back to my Toyota.
“Group call, urgent,” I ordered. “Ben, Raphael, Valentine.”
I had a second to make a decision, but it had already been taken.
I was new to the bodyguard job, but not to dealing with sick men. That was ingrained in me.
“Ben,” my boss announced, joining the comms line.
“Valentine,” reported the newest recruit to our team.
“Raphael here,” Ariel’s brother said. My friend. He didn’t work for the bodyguard service yet as he was in pilot training, but he would soon. “I just touched down. What’s happening?”
“Backup needed,” I snapped. “I’m out on the road by the village.”
Movement sounded at their ends of the line where the men were hustling.
My boss was first to speak. “Halfway to my car. What’s going on?”
“It’s Ariel. Her car’s abandoned by the roadside. It’s been hit in the past few minutes. There’s signs of a struggle. I think she’s been taken.” I glowered at the icy road lit by my headlights, black night and the surrounding hills swallowing any taillights ahead.
No other sign of life haunted the road.
After I’d passed the Mini, another car had driven my way. I’d barely paid it any attention, but had that been her attacker? Were they on the move or hidden nearby? Had she fought or was she playing it calm?
“Fuck,” gritted out Raphael.
I knew his pain.
Had felt it when it wasmysister as the subject of a report. The anxiety and panic steeled my muscles and sharpened my mind for all that was to come.
But this time would be different.
History was not going to repeat itself.
If it killed me, I’d find her.
Chapter 2
Ariel
An icy wind blasted me, sweeping down the foothills to where I trudged through the snow. If my stupid car hadn’t broken down, I would’ve driven this in minutes, delivered the warning message I had to give, and been on my way home. My cosy tower apartment called to me, with a hot shower after a hard day at work, but I had no choice in what I needed to do.
The telling-off I had to give to one of my students.
At the end of my final lesson this afternoon, a boy in my class had sidled up to me outside the snowboarding centre’s slope entrance. With a sheepish expression, he’d asked if I’d seen the video with my name on it.
I hadn’t.
He’d shown me.
For six years, since I’d been in hiding in Scotland, I’d kept a low profile, never putting my face online. Not all risk could be eliminated, but phones were banned on the slopes, and the kids in my class knew me as Ari, rather than Ariel, apart from a few who lived nearby.
Like Bridgette, the menace I was on my way to see.
