“We’re here,” Georgios announced from the driver’s seat. Jack tensed in the back seat as the car glided to a stop. He hated not being able to see. “Take these bloody blindfolds off, then.”
“Not yet, Mr Hawkins. Once we’re inside, your blindfold – and Gemma’s – will be removed, so you can see that your niece is safe. Until then…they stay on.”
Jack felt Gemma’s leg tremble against his, and he longed to reach over and squeeze her knee reassuringly. But like her, his hands were tied and he couldn’t see or touch her.
“Listen to me,” he murmured to her as the sound of a garage door raising covered the sound of his voice. “I need you to create a distraction.”
“How the hell am I supposed to do that?” she hissed.
“No talking back there,” Nikkos said sharply.
The car pulled forward, most likely into a garage bay, and the overhead door closed behind them. Jack heard two slams as the car’s front doors opened and shut. There was a brief conference between the two men, then the door nearest Jack was flung open.
“You and your girlfriend, get out.”
A hand grasped Jack roughly by his upper arm and dragged him out of the car. Gemma was handed out in a similar fashion behind him. Nikkos ordered their blindfolds be removed; at once, Georgios complied, and Jack and Gemma blinked as their eyes adjusted to the dimly lit garage.
“What about untying our hands?” Jack demanded.
Again, there was a brief conference, and Nikkos grunted his assent. “Very well. Untie them. But my men have guns, Jakkos…and they’ll shoot to kill. My instructions, you understand.”
“Oh, I have no doubt of that.” Jack’s voice was laced with contempt. “You’re real Father of the Year material, you are.”
Gemma glanced over at Jack in shock. “Did he just call you Jakkos? And did you just call him… your father?”
“I’ll explain it all later,” he muttered as they untied his wrists. “Bit of a long story.”
“Can’t wait to hear it,” she snapped.
Jack was profoundly relieved that Gemma was unharmed and her temper still intact. He took her arm as the two of them were herded up a short flight of steps to a service door. He followed after Nikkos with Georgios and another man behind them, and his eyes took in the hallway that stretched out before them and the faded but expensive Persian rug that silenced their footsteps. He heard, faintly, the distant crashing of the sea.
Was I right? Jack wondered suddenly as he remembered the abandoned van. Has Jools been in Brighton all along?
He glanced over his shoulder at Georgios. He needed to get word to Devon – and to his solicitor – as quickly as possible. But without a mobile phone, and with the bald eagle behind them and Nikkos squarely in front, how was he to do it?
Gemma suddenly came to a stop. “Where’s my bag?” she demanded. “I’m not taking another step until I have that bag back.”
Georgios exchanged a glance with Nikkos. “It’s still at the nightclub. You’ll get it back later.”
“Later, my arse!” she snapped. “That bag’s an Anya Hindmarch and it’s bloody expensive!”
Georgios shrugged dismissively. “It’s only a purse.”
“Only a purse…?” Gemma stared at him, then launched herself at Georgios in a fury. “That ‘purse’ cost me two months’ salary, you knob! But I wouldn’t expect someone like you to understand something like that, would I…?”
Nikkos’ mobile rang and he turned away to take the call. “Subdue her!” he barked, and turned away to answer the call. “Yes?” he grunted as he disappeared around the corner.
Grateful for the distraction, Jack took advantage of Georgios’s inattention as he tried to contain Gemma’s flailing arms and legs, and eased the man’s mobile from his back pocket. Jack knew he didn’t have long; maybe thirty or forty seconds, at most.
He quickly typed out a text to Devon: “999 – Jack” and pressed “send”. After making sure the phone’s satnav was enabled – it was – he slipped the mobile back into Georgios’s pocket and caught Gemma’s eye.
He nodded slightly, and Gemma calmed down just as Nikkos returned.
“Enough nonsense from you, Ms Heath,” the Greek snapped as he put his phone away. “Another outburst like that, and you won’t see your rock-star husband again. And your boyfriend Jack won’t see his niece.”
Gemma glared back at him but held her tongue. She glanced enquiringly at Jack, satisfied when he gave her a nearly imperceptible nod.
Nikkos scowled and led them to a door at the end of the hall. Muttering something about crazy Englishwomen and ungrateful sons, he flung the door open. Jack, Gemma and Georgios crowded in behind him.
“Where is she?” Jack demanded hoarsely as his eyes swept over the room. “Where’s Jools?”
But Nikkos could only stare in mute surprise at the empty room before him.
Jools – as well as his son, Alexios – were gone.
“I don’t have that much money to hand, Tony.” Christa met her former boyfriend’s narrowed gaze calmly, despite the acceleration of her heart and the fury that simmered inside her. The bruise on the side of her mum’s face attested that Tony had hit her recently, and hard. She wanted to kill him.
“Then find it,” he bit off. “I don’t care where, I don’t care how. I need that money!”
“And I’ll get it for you,” she assured him, remembering what Devon had told her about staying calm and keeping her head, “but it’ll take time. You’re asking for a quarter of a million pounds! I’ll need to make a phone call to the bank, arrange a money transfer—”
“I don’t give a shit what you do,” Tony snarled, “just fucking do it!”
With unsteady fingers Christa picked up her mobile and scrolled to the bank’s number. As she waited for the call to go through, she glanced at her mother reassuringly. Deepa’s eyes were wide with fear.
Fifteen minutes later, it was done. She’d had to put the townhouse up as collateral; she had no idea how, or if, she could pay the money back. But she’d worry about that later.
“The money will be in my account in an hour,” Christa told him. “It has to be transferred.”
“Good. Then you can write me out a nice cheque and I’ll be on my way. In the meantime,” he added, “make me a cup of tea, why don’t you? And I could do with a sandwich.”
“Of course,” she murmured, thankful that she could finally make her way into the kitchen and unlatch the door for Devon and the surveillance men.
Soon, she told herself, this nightmare would all be over.