Death in the Black Wood, Oliver Davies [short story to read TXT] 📗

my stealthy little spies should be back to full power and ready to go again. Meanwhile, I needed to carefully consider my options and figure out the best way to handle the situation.

Our house was a good fifteen miles from Balloch. It took half an hour for my big drone to fly over there. I found her shelter in a crumbling shed about half a mile from the target property and sent a scout out to have a look around. Two downstairs windows were lit behind their curtains.

Someone was home.

The big garage attached to the house was locked up, doors tightly shut. I flew around it, looking for any little openings or cracks that would give me a view inside. One of the grated air vents, high on the walls, soon turned out to be my only option so I positioned my drone to hover as close to one as I dared fly it. I’d chosen the wall on the far side from the house and there was no light coming from inside the garage. The little LED light on the drone wasn’t able to show me anything from there, even when I rotated the camera up and down. If there was a blue van in that garage, I wasn’t going to get a look at it this way.

There was a car parked outside in the yard though and reading the number plate on that wasn’t a problem. I set my drone down in a tree, facing the front door and looked the plate up in the DVLA. It was a match for the car it was on, which was owned by a local car leasing company. That gave me a way to find out what identity Brady was currently using, if it was him in that house, but that wasn’t something I urgently needed to know just now either. I was still mulling over the two main options I’d pared my list down to.

Option one: Tell Conall everything. He might agree to let me go in there alone, but the chances of that were extremely low. At the very least, he’d want to come with me, even if he didn’t feel compelled to inform McKinnon, which he probably would. There was no chance I’d let my cousin risk himself like that. Besides, what I had in mind wouldn’t work if I wasn’t alone.

Option two: Go in alone, but leave everything set up to make sure my cousin received all the information I now possessed at a predetermined time.

Jimmy’s chances of surviving were significantly higher if I went with option two. My little drone hadn’t caused any reaction from inside the house, but I had seen a couple of security cameras as I circled the place at a distance. There could be pressure sensors and motion detectors and who knew what else too. Our man was paranoid. I’d be very surprised if there weren’t. That meant that I wouldn’t be able to catch him off guard, any more than an entire tactical team would. So, unless he left that house again, I’d be risking getting caught myself. Was I prepared to do that? And, if so, how long should I allow myself in there before the information went to Conall?

Logically, option one was my best choice. I should write Jimmy Stewart off as dead right now. At least there was a chance that he’d die quickly if a tactical team burst into that house. I’d seen what had been done to Detective Sergeant Jackie Gibson. If he’d had more time, her killer would probably have kept her alive for a lot longer. Plus, if I was right about the Dissociative Identity Disorder, the next time the Alter took control, it wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation of a target like Jimmy Stewart to play with. Kids were easily scared, and he fed off fear and pain.

How secure was the place where he’d been holding his captives? There were safe rooms that could take hours for a team to cut or break their way into. If that was the case, young Jimmy was certainly going to go through hell before he died. Could I live with myself if I didn’t at least give option two a chance?

I had no illusions about what my chances of succeeding were. I knew my own capabilities, but I had no way of knowing what kind of restraints might be imposed on me. What could I do to increase the odds of those being workable rather than an insurmountable obstacle?

I was still thinking about that when Conall came in a little after ten.

“Hungry?” I asked as he sat down at the other end of the couch and leaned back wearily.

He just shook his head. “I don’t want anything tonight. I ate some pizza at the station earlier. We ordered in when everyone decided to keep working.”

“How’s McKinnon holding up?”

“About as well as anyone in his position could. He knows we’ll find Brady O’Hara soon. He also knows that if his grandson isn’t dead already, he’ll be killed the minute we go near the man. June and Gary don’t know anything yet, apart from the fact that an unknown abductor has taken their boy.”

“That seems best.” Telling them what we knew wouldn’t have served any purpose. “You going to bed?” He looked exhausted.

“Yeah. That seems like the best thing I can do just now. You’re staying up?”

“I have things I need to keep an eye on at the moment. I’ll grab some sleep later. It probably means I won’t come in with you in the morning though.”

“You might as well go back to working from home, anyway. Our man has clearly been busy elsewhere. Even if he saw you, it looks like he’s not interested. It was worth a shot though. It’s a bloody pity he didn’t bite too, or Jimmy Stewart might be safely home in bed now and Brady O’Hara locked away where he couldn’t do any further harm.” He pushed himself back to