The Alex King Series, A BATEMAN [good books for high schoolers .TXT] 📗

she paused. “Perhaps she genuinely thought I needed help,” she said, but she did not sound all that convincing. “But she will have seen me as a way to get to him. Helena is always five moves ahead of everyone else.”

“We’ll see,” said King. But he had already called her and set her on her way. He was wounded and needed medical attention. He took out his phone and made two calls. When he had finished, he closed the boot-lid, hearing Catherine’s screaming become quieter as he walked away.

72

Helena Milankovitch was seething. She had been attempting to contact King, but he had not replied to either texts or calls. She had put her plans into escape and evasion. She had lost. She knew it. She had shut down the farm, paid off her workers and hastily sent the girls destined for the sex industry to her contacts, accepting a reduced rate for the inconvenience of the short notice. The baby-farming enterprise had been moved to another location, with several of her workforce assuming the role in her absence. Helena, meanwhile would be relocating and organising by phone until she was satisfied the heat had died down, and that she could regroup with her contacts and organise a base from which to work. She was planning a period of laying low in Chechnya. Nobody bothered with Chechnya.

But King’s call had halted that. With Romanovitch dead and his organisation in chaos, she had what she wanted. She could assume her role as head of the Bratva and had paid off – with money or promises of power and influence – enough people who could otherwise have stood in her way.

And now she had the key.

Catherine.

The bitch sister who had ignored her efforts to keep her away from that life and married her tormentor and rapist and pimp instead. But also, the same sister who knew Romanovitch’s most intimate secrets. His accounts, his holdings, his inner workings. Catherine would come around. And if she didn’t, then she would tell Helena anyway. Helena knew the sort of people who could get anybody talking.

She had ordered King to bring Catherine to her, but King had said no and told her to listen. He had told her where and when and he had hung up on her when she had refused. He had not answered her call when she returned it. Twice more she had rung the number before he eventually picked up. He had told her how it would work and reiterated both where and when. And then he had hung up again.

But he had told her to bring Caroline.

She was still in with a chance.

King had not been aware of Caroline’s escape. She still had a card to play, and she would bluff her hand until she won.

Because she always won.

73

 

“I can’t let him go through with this,” Caroline said emphatically. “We can’t let him go through with this.”

Ramsay glanced at his watch. He took the next winding section of mountain road, slowed for the hairpin bend, and accelerated the modest Skoda as he exited the corner, and the section of road unfolded to another long straight. “Try him again,” he said, concentrating on the road ahead.

Caroline knew that King would hear her first voice message and return her call. There was no question about that. But she no longer had a mobile phone of her own and was calling from Ramsay’s number. Better to text, hope he saw the opening message on the locked screen. The annoyance of iPhone’s lack of privacy feature - often a curse for leaving the phone in front of her at meetings to have King text an intimate or downright rude message - may actually play into her hands. She couldn’t think what else to text, having sent a handful of messages already, but decided on:

Caroline is with us! – call ASAP – danger ahead!

She pressed the send icon then cursed loudly.

“What?” Ramsay snapped.

“No signal.”

“Wait one,” Marnie said, holding onto the hand-loop in the rear seat, bracing herself for another hairpin. She rummaged through her bag, retrieved a satellite phone with an antenna that looked like a child had fashioned it out of thirty Lego bricks. She twisted the antenna and handed it to her. “You’ll have to program in his number.”

“Bugger!” Caroline snapped. She looked back at her phone and saw that the message had not been sent. She re-sent it, watched the blue line trundle slowly across the screen, the signal indicator hover around one to two bars. She watched the blue line get close to the end and the signal bar dropped to no service. She cursed again, snatched the large phone off Marnie and set about typing in the number.

Ramsay wound the car around the bend, then slammed on the brakes, a lorry in their path and nowhere to go. The car skidded, then gripped as the traction control cut in and the ABS did its thing, but too late. He swung the car into the mountain face, sparks raining on the windows as the car scraped down the rock. Caroline screamed and Marnie, who had been leaning forwards, ended up thrown between the seats and head first into Caroline’s footwell. The lorry impacted on the front quarter with a glancing blow, but enough to fire off the airbags, throwing Marnie back the way she had come, where she slumped onto the rear seat. The lorry scraped down the side and the glass shattered. Caroline dropped the phones and rested back in her seat, shocked and confused. Her ears were ringing from the explosion of the airbags and the car had stalled, its hot and overworked engine ticking in the silence.

The lorry had carried on around the bend as if nothing had happened and was out of sight.

74