Princess: A Private Novel Read online

  Knight could see why. If she was this composed in the days following her father’s death, how cool must she be when handling hedge funds?

  “I’m about to offend you,” Eliza said suddenly, almost startling him, “because I don’t think you’ve come to the right conclusion, Mr. Knight. I know you’re a pro—that’s why I came to you—but… my father wouldn’t kill himself. He just wouldn’t.”

  For a moment Knight said nothing. He wondered if this would be the point where the dam holding back Eliza’s emotions would burst, but there was nothing. Just the face of a woman who had the utmost certainty in her words.

  “You’re going to tell me that everyone feels that way,” Eliza pre-empted. “I understand that. If I say that this is different, you’ll tell me that they all say that, too.”

  There was no hostility in the words, only a cool understanding of human nature and the desire to believe that one’s loved ones were not so unhappy as to wish to take their own lives. “I can’t imagine how hard it must be for the families, wondering if they could have done something. Stopped it. Have you ever lost someone close to you, Peter?”

  “My wife,” Knight said solemnly, picturing the face of his true love and mother of his two children.

  “My mother died of cancer.” Eliza sighed. “My father was always a huge supporter of cancer research and charities for people suffering the disease.”

  “As are you,” Knight noted, paying the woman her dues for her incredibly generous donations.

  “You looked into me?” She almost smiled.

  “I look into everyone. That’s why you brought us in. And I’m sorry to say, Eliza, that your father killed himself.”

  Slowly, as if breaking the news to a child that Santa is a myth, Eliza explained why Knight was wrong. “You know, this is the first Sunday in months that he hasn’t spent here. He was as much my friend as my dad. We’d always have guests over—sometimes a lot—and we would laugh so much. If Dad drank too much wine, he’d stay over, and we’d watch Blackadder together. He even has—had—his own room here. That was how close we were, Peter. I’d know if he was planning suicide.”

  “He had a room here?” Knight asked, interested, and a little chastened for not having known earlier. Never assume, he cautioned himself.

  “You want to look at it?” Eliza guessed. “I haven’t touched it since he was last here.”

  Knight followed her through the apartment.

  “I’ll be in the kitchen,” she told him, opening the door.

  Knight stepped inside. Unlike the rest of the modern apartment, the bedroom reflected Sir Tony’s style, gaudy and opulent—this truly was his room.

  He set to work as he had done in the Eaton Square home, covering every inch, looking for clues or evidence that would set off an alarm in his investigative mind.

  He was back on his hands and knees when he found it.

  Taped beneath the bed was a USB thumb drive.

  Chapter 10

  IT WAS EVENING by the time Jack Morgan and Jane Cook had landed at Cardiff airport, collected their four-by-four rental and driven to the small town of Sophie’s childhood. Brecon nestled amongst the spectacular scenery of the Brecon Beacons mountain range, and Morgan marveled at the beauty.

  He was also impressed that Cook navigated the winding roads without any need for a GPS.

  “The army does a lot of its training down here,” she explained. “See that peak over there? That’s Pen y Fan. One of the toughest tests we do—did—is the Fan Dance.”

  Morgan smiled inwardly at Cook’s use of “we.” No one who had served was ever truly a civilian once they left. Morgan felt the same way about the Marine Corps.

  “Pen y Fan?” he asked, butchering the Welsh pronunciation.

  The former soldier laughed. “And that’s one of the easy ones to say.”

  She was not wrong. Morgan saw tongue-twisting place names like Caerphilly, Merthyr Tydfil and Llangadog as they drove past roadside signs.

  “There’s a Cardiff in San Diego,” he told his driving partner.

  “I’ve never been to California,” Cook hinted.

  “Are you still surfing?”

  “When I can. Not many spots for it in London.”

  Morgan smiled, and forced his mind away from the image of Cook on a Californian beach.

  “We’ll split up tomorrow,” he told her. “I’ll go to the family, you canvass the town and try friends. Sophie’s social media has been quiet for days, and most of her circle seems London-based, but Brecon looks like a small place. If you ask the right questions to the right people, you might be able to dig something up.”

  Cook nodded. She didn’t need to ask what those questions would be, or who those people were. She had proven herself to be an excellent investigator during her first year at Private. She was still a rookie, but one with a bright future in her new field.

  “This is it.” She smiled, pulling the car to a stop outside a quaint hotel that brandished three gold stars above its doorway. “Probably not the luxury Jack Morgan is used to, but there’s no Shangri-La hotel in Brecon.”

  Morgan smiled. “Check us in. I’ll get the gear out the trunk.”

  “It’s called a boot.”

  “These are boots.” Morgan pointed to his feet. “I’ll see you inside.”

  After a few minutes to check in with Private HQ and carry their bags inside, Morgan joined Cook and followed her up the stairs. His heart beat faster as he walked, and it had nothing to do with the heavy baggage. The attraction to Cook today had been magnetic, and it had taken all his focus to keep his mind on the task and his hands off her body.

  They stopped outside Jack’s room.

  Cook turned to face him and he could sense she felt exactly the same.

  He leaned to kiss her, but she turned away.

  “I’m sorry. I misread the situation,” he said.

  Cook shook her head. “You didn’t, Jack. But I’m with someone now.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know.”

  “It wouldn’t be right.”

  “It wouldn’t.”

  “I should have told you sooner.”

  “There’s no harm done. You’re a good person, Jane, that’s why we hired you.”

  Cook nodded. Clearly there was a part of her that, in this moment at least, did not want to be a good person.

  “Good night, Jane.”

  Morgan opened the door and stepped inside his room, closing the door without looking back.

  Chapter 11

  AFTER A LONG day of travel, Jack Morgan needed a shower. After his moment with Cook, he made it a cold one.

  Looking in the mirror, he told himself that it was for the best that nothing could happen with Jane. Last time they had been together, they were civilian and soldier, not boss and employee. With a sudden stab of emotional pain, Morgan remembered other affairs that had ended in more than a little heartbreak—they had ended in death.

  There was a knock at the door.

  Morgan’s heart pumped instantaneously—she’d come back.

  “Who is it?” he called as he picked up his jeans from the bathroom floor and pulled them on.

  The delay saved Morgan’s life.

  Bullets pumped through the hotel room’s wooden door, sending splinters flying, the rounds chewing into the desk, biting pieces from the television and carefully laid-out refreshments. The sound of the shots was muffled, almost like a heavy tutting—whoever was out there was using a silencer. Morgan subconsciously counted the blasted rounds. They stopped at seventeen.

  He took his chance and bolted from the bathroom. There was just a split second to take in the riddled doorway before he twisted behind the wall that separated bed from bathroom. He was out of the line of fire, but he expected the door to be kicked open at any moment. Whoever had fired would come through to finish the job.

  Morgan looked to the window. The hotel was privately owned, and unlike with the big chains, the windows were not held almost shut to prevent suic
ides. He could make it out, he knew, but if the assassin had a partner, that’s where they would be waiting.

  He looked above him at the ceiling panels. The time from the gunshots to his decision took mere seconds. Morgan pushed away a tile and hauled himself up into the cavity. Dust cascaded onto the bed, where it fell alongside pieces of splintered furniture that had flown across the room. Pressed in between floors like a coal miner in a seam, he scuttled backward, pushing by cabling that snagged at his feet. In moments, he had pulled the tile back into place.

  And then Morgan held still.

  If he made any noise he knew he would be an easy target through the thin ceiling panels. And so he waited as quietly as he could.

  But there was no crash of the door being kicked off its hinges. No more gunshots. There was only the sound of terrified screams from other rooms in the hotel, and then a fire alarm. Morgan held his breath and held his position.

  He waited.

  He waited, and then he heard her.

  “Jack?”

  Chapter 12

  MORGAN DROPPED DOWN onto the bed. He saw a rush of relief wash over Jane Cook as she realized he was uninjured.

  “We need to go,” he told her. “Now.”

  “The police are here,” she replied.

  “That doesn’t mean we’re safe.”

  “They’re armed. At least, she is.”

  Morgan followed Cook’s eyes to the doorway. There was a woman standing there wearing dark jeans and a hoody, and in her hand by her side was a Glock 17.

  He tensed.

  The magazine of that weapon held seventeen rounds. The same number of bullets that had cut apart his hotel room.

  “Who are you?” Morgan asked, wondering if she had reloaded, and if he could cover the distance to the woman before she could raise the weapon.

  “I’m PC Sharon Lewis. I’m on Princess Caroline’s protection team. De Villiers sent me.”

  “Call De Villiers,” Morgan instructed Cook.

  Lewis laughed. “I’ve got a gun and you’re standing around half naked.” Her Welsh accent was thick to the point where Morgan almost struggled to understand her. “If I wanted you dead, well…”

  Morgan said nothing. The words made sense on the surface, but he was ruling nothing out. Until he knew more, he would treat this woman as suspect.

  Cook hung up her phone call. “De Villiers didn’t send her. The Princess did.”

  “She sent me to see if there’s anything I can help you with,” Lewis explained, toying with the broken crockery of the tea set. “My guess is, that would be a place to sleep that isn’t a shooting range?”

  Morgan allowed himself a wry smile. “It would be nice to go to sleep without wondering if I’ll wake up dead.”

  “Get your stuff,” Lewis told them. “We’ll leave now.”

  “Where are we going?” Cook asked her.

  “You wouldn’t be able to say it even if I told you.” The Welshwoman grinned, pausing in the corridor to allow Morgan to finish dressing, and for Cook to grab her rucksack. “All ready?”

  They were, and as the riddled door swung shut behind Morgan, one thought was clear in his mind.

  Someone did not want Sophie Edwards to be found.

  Chapter 13

  COOK BROUGHT THEIR rented Range Rover to a stop. Ahead of them, the red brake lights of Lewis’s car were bright as she stopped at a gate and spoke to a pair of men who stood guard beside it.

  After a moment of conversation, Lewis stepped from her car and walked over to Morgan’s window. She was followed by one of the men, who held a dog by a leash.

  “Step out, please,” Lewis instructed. “He’s going to search you both, and the car.”

  The Private agents complied, both watching with respect as the search was carried out with expert skill.

  “Go ahead,” the man told them, and the pair climbed back into the vehicle. They set off again, following Lewis along a winding drive that was only one car-width wide.

  “Wouldn’t want to run into a car coming the other way,” Cook noted. It was an attempt at small talk to break a long silence. The atmosphere in the car had been tense, but that had less to do with sexual chemistry than with the attempt on Jack Morgan’s life. As they had driven from Brecon, Morgan’s mind had been churning over why someone would be willing to kill to prevent Sophie Edwards from being found. Knowing as little as he did, he could form no solid motives, only wide-ranging theories, and such a lack of concrete intelligence had pushed him into a simmering silence.

  “I doubt they get many visitors here,” he made himself say, not wanting Cook to feel isolated after such an evening.

  “Here” was the royal residence of Llwynywermod. Morgan had been expecting a castle when Lewis had told him of their destination, but what he found instead was a rectangular barn and farmhouse conversion painted white, its profile low against the dark shape of brooding hillsides that surrounded it.

  The place was barely lit, the hour now late, but Morgan had no doubt that thermal imaging cameras would be filming their arrival with the clarity of daylight—Lewis had assured him that security at the residence was high tech, and lethal. Morgan saw no reason not to believe her, but he was not about to trust her—Lewis’s choice of sidearm and timing had raised the hairs on the back of his neck, and Jack Morgan was still alive today because he had learned to heed those instincts. For her part, Lewis seemed equally as cautious as Morgan.

  “You go where I say, when I say,” Lewis told the pair as they exited the Range Rover. “Your rooms have bathrooms, and I’ve had some snacks and drinks put in there, so there’s no reason for you to go wandering. If you try it, the security detail will shove a taser up your arse. We’ve got a competition going to see who can zap the most dickheads in a year, so don’t tempt us.”

  Morgan said nothing, but he caught Cook giving the slightest roll of her eyes at Lewis’s bluster.

  “Right. Time to turn in,” Lewis told them. “We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

  “We?” Morgan asked.

  “Yes. We.”

  Private’s investigation team had grown by one.

  Chapter 14

  JACK MORGAN COULDN’T sleep. The image of the splintered door and the suppressed thwacking sound of the bullets were still fresh in his mind. So too was the picture of Jane Cook as they had lingered outside the hotel room.

  Morgan was alone in his bedroom, a quaint space decorated in the typical fashion of a farmhouse—the furniture plain and practical, wooden beams crossing the ceiling and climbing the walls. The structure reminded him of prison, and that was how he felt—trapped. Trapped with no clear leads and his head seemingly in a noose that he could not see.

  Thirty minutes of press-ups and crunches did something to clear his mood, his skin slicked with sweat, muscles pumped with blood. He looked to the Rolex on his wrist, seeing the hands creep delicately onto the hour. It was 6 a.m., and time to call Peter Knight.

  “Jack,” Knight answered. “The rest of the night was quiet?” Morgan had briefed him about the attack the moment they had left the hotel.

  “Security is tight,” Morgan assured his friend, “but we’re useless while we’re here. We need to get back to Brecon, and find out what’s worth killing me over.”

  “I’m sure there are a few things,” Knight replied, trying to lift Morgan’s mood. “Do you think they’ll call off the hunt?”

  Morgan had asked himself the same question. Princess Caroline hiring an investigation agency to find her friend was one thing. Having one of the agents killed in that search was another. The whole point of hiring Private was to avoid public knowledge and scandal, and Morgan’s brains on his bed sheet could hardly get buried in the back pages.

  “If they don’t, I’ll need more manpower,” he told Knight.

  “I can be there in a few hours.”

  “Thanks, but no,” Morgan said, abreast of Knight’s own investigation. “Stick with Sir Tony. Has Hooligan cracked the USB’s encryptio
n yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then you have to stay with it. If someone’s gone to that much trouble to hide what’s on that USB, then there must be a good reason.”

  “Or a bad one,” Knight added.

  Morgan heard footsteps and turned to the bedroom’s door. This time it was knuckles against the wood, not bullets. “Come in.”

  It was Sharon Lewis.

  She took in the sight of the sweat-shined American. If she was attracted to the man, she showed no sign. “Take a shower, Morgan. You’ve been invited to breakfast with a princess.”

  Chapter 15

  PETER KNIGHT PUT his phone away and poured himself another coffee. Despite having a major investigation under way, he was still responsible for the running of Private London, and so he was casting his eye over the agency’s ongoing tasks when a call came through from Hooligan’s lab. He let it go unanswered. Instead, he ran down to the facility.

  “You cracked it?” he asked as he entered the lab, certain the call would be to signal the successful decoding of the USB drive.

  “Cracked it?” Hooligan replied. “I’m a delicate instrument, Peter, not a hammer. I slipped inside that code like a Navy SEAL.”

  Knight listened patiently as Hooligan spent the next two minutes telling him that the encryption would have collapsed in on itself and wiped the data clean had he come at it like “a bone-headed Neanderthal.”

  “Nothing but class and finesse here,” Hooligan concluded.

  “You have stains on your shirt,” Knight smirked, proud of his technician.

  “That was Perkins’ fault!” Hooligan shouted. “He told me Millwall would win the FA Cup this year and I spat me brew out!”