Cuthbert's Way (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #17)(65)
She fought.
“ANNA!” she screamed to warn the girl, and made a grab for the vase of flowers on the hallway table.
Two of them came for her, dark, faceless figures who saw her not as a person, but as a number.
She swung at them—a glancing blow that missed its mark.
Seconds later, she hit the floor, knocked down by a single, brutal blow to her face.
*
Anna heard Eve’s warning shout, and knew immediately.
They had come.
Adrenaline surged through her body, and she heard the quick tread of footsteps climbing the stairs. There were four rooms to search before they reached her study, and she needed to make sure they didn’t get that far.
Thinking quickly, she knew there was only one thing to do.
Hands shaking, she fumbled for the emergency dummy she kept in the pocket of her jacket, and slid it into Emma’s mouth.
“Shh,” she said, and walked quickly to the tall storage cupboards they used for spare jackets and coats.
Down the corridor, she heard the crash and bang of cupboards being searched.
Struggling out of her coat, knowing it would have her comforting scent, she spread it as a makeshift bed and laid the baby on top of it.
“Shh, baby girl, shh,” she said, tapping a finger to her lips.
With one last, loving look, she closed the cupboard door and hurried out of the room and into the corridor, in time to intercept the two men who were on the cusp of searching the final room on that floor.
Anna held her arms aloft, in a gesture of surrender.
The two men might have admired her grit, if they had the capacity to feel any empathy at all.
Her wrists were tied behind her back, her mouth was gagged, and a dark hood placed over her head.
“Stay smart, and nobody needs to get hurt,” one of them said, in a voice entirely without emotion. “Now, walk.”
CHAPTER 33
Charles was on his way back up the hill towards the house when the van came hurtling in the opposite direction, and he knew instantly what had happened.
What he had allowed to happen.
Viciously shoving aside his feelings, he swerved towards the front of the van, trying to force it into the hedge, but its driver anticipated the move and increased his speed even further to avoid it.
Charles turned quickly to catch the number plate of the van, but it was smeared with mud, in a trick as old as the hills.
He gunned the engine of his vehicle and reversed with precision and speed back down the hill, but he was too late; the van had already disappeared.
Beside himself with guilt and grief, Charles raced back up the hill, swerving into the driveway with a squeal of tyres. He threw open the car door and made a grab for the weapon he had in the back, covering the ground at speed.
He saw the door hanging limply on its broken hinges and, beyond it, his wife, the mother of his children, lying face down on the hard, stone floor.
“Eve,” he whispered.
He was with her in seconds, placing two fingers on the side of her neck as felt for a pulse.
Weak, but still there.
He turned her, and let out a gasp of pain as he caught sight of her face, bloodied and torn.
Ruthlessly banking down all the hurt and the anger that threatened to overwhelm him, Charles reached for his mobile phone with unsteady hands.
He called the ambulance, first.
Once he had been assured they were on their way, he was on the cusp of making the difficult call to his son, when a sound stopped him.
The distant sound of a baby’s cry.
Ears cocked, half thinking he’d imagined it, Charles listened intently.
There it was again.
“Emma,” he said, with a sob.
He placed a coat over Eve, to keep her warm, and then took the stairs two at a time, searching every room, following the sound of her cries. Finally, he reached Anna’s study, where the cries came loudly from the direction of a tall built-in cupboard in the corner.
Charles crossed the room in three long strides and snatched open the door, to find his granddaughter’s face staring up at him. She’d been crying, but not too long, if he was any judge, and his trained eye spotted Anna’s coat tucked around her, as well as the dummy lying discarded beside it.
She’d done her very best, protecting her child.
Overcome, Charles lifted Emma into his arms and held her close, blinking away tears.
“Grandad’s got you, darling. Shh, now, don’t cry. Grandad’s here.”
*
Ryan was nearing the junction that would take him off the A1 southbound and onto the A19 dual carriageway towards the east end of the city of Newcastle, where Northumbria Police Headquarters was now based, on Middle Engine Lane in an area known as Wallsend. It was a journey he took most days on roads he knew like the back of his hand.
He was approaching a roundabout, when the call came through from his father.
I’m sorry…
Anna has been taken…
Ryan said very little; he couldn’t have found the words to express what he felt in that moment.
He could only act.
His body took over, shifting the car into another lane and then accelerating around the roundabout to return to the A1 and retrace his journey, this time at the kind of speed he’d been trained to use in emergency scenarios, such as this.
He switched on his blue lights, and rang the office.