Cuthbert's Way (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #17)(67)

“She needs you,” Ryan said softly, and held his arms out for the baby.

Charles looked down at the child, then at his son, and wondered if she might be the one to help him, as a kind of talisman to ward off more of the evil that had already tainted their lives.

He transferred Emma into her father’s arms and took his son’s advice, knowing that Eve would be suffering from shock and needed him beside her.

He’d never felt more torn.

Then, a kind of miracle happened.

Charles looked back to see Emma reach up her little hand to touch her father’s face, and something thawed inside him, breaching the defences Ryan had erected in order to make the journey home. He held her close, rocking her as they waited for his team to arrive.

Before he left, Charles needed to tell Ryan one more thing.

“Anna was the one who protected her,” he said. “Not me. Not us. It was Anna who hid her inside the cupboard in the study, so they wouldn’t find her. She wrapped Emma inside her coat, so she wouldn’t catch cold.”

Ryan didn’t turn around.

He couldn’t.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he said, because he felt it was important. “It was mine.”

Charles shook his head. “No—”

“The ambulance is waiting, Dad.”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Charles said, and turned away, having aged ten years in the space of an hour.

*

“Say that again, Frank.”

“The bastards have taken Anna,” Phillips said, as he reached for his coat. “Fifteen minutes ago, from their house in Elsdon.”

Morrison prided herself on being one of the coolest customers around, but this was too much, even for her.

She turned away to stare blindly out of the window, trying to imagine what Ryan must have been feeling in that moment, but failing.

“Control—?”

“Squad cars are on the way,” Phillips told her. “Ambulance has been and gone, and the docs are taking care of Ryan’s mum, who suffered facial injuries and is probably concussed.”

“The baby?”

“Safe and well,” Phillips replied. “I spoke directly with Ryan’s father, Charles, who wants me to get up there as quick as I can. I hope you don’t mind, ma’am, but I authorised the CSIs to attend the scene—”

“Don’t insult me, Frank. I’m authorising a full search. Anything and everything you need.”

That Ryan needs, Morrison amended, privately. It was the least she could do for him.

“Thank you,” Phillips said. “I’m going to make my way up there now, so he’s not left alone for too long.”

Morrison drew herself up to her full height, sufficiently in command of her emotions to turn around again. “Lowerson, Yates? I want you both firing on full cylinders to push ahead and find this son of a bitch. Call in all the help you need from neighbouring command units, and freeze all other non-urgent business. I want APW’s for all vehicles matching the description of the van and I want CCTV from all ANPR and other cameras in the vicinity.”

Lowerson and Yates nodded, their eyes over-bright with unspoken emotion.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“MacKenzie? You go with Frank, and stay there as long as you need to. Pass over anything useful to Jack and Mel, and be with your friend.”

Denise nodded, and gained a new level of respect for the woman standing before her.

As they turned to leave, Morrison threw a final remark over her shoulder.

“Man the phones,” she said. “They’ve taken her for a reason, and we’ll find out what that reason is, soon enough.”





CHAPTER 35


“What do I say to him? What can I tell him, to make this better?”

MacKenzie looked across at Phillips from the driver’s seat of their car, and then back at the road.

“What did he say to you, when I was taken?” she asked him, softly.

Phillips’ chin wobbled, and he turned to look out at the passing landscape.

“He told me we’d find you, together.”

“He was right.”

Phillips nodded, swallowing tears. “We were dealing with a different kind of animal, back then. We knew what the Hacker was, and that was terrifying, but there was a level of understanding. This is a walk into the unknown.”

“Then, we’ll learn,” she said, firmly. “We’ll do whatever it takes, because that’s what he did for us, Frank.”

She sucked in a tremulous breath.

“If we think, even for a moment, that Anna won’t survive this—or, if we let Ryan believe that—she’s as good as dead. Do you understand me, Frank? She’s alive, and she’s going to stay that way.”

Anna was her friend, and MacKenzie wasn’t about to lose the woman who’d been a sister to her, for the past five years.

“She’s alive,” Phillips repeated.

“That’s right. We’re nearly there, so put your game face on.”

Phillips would later recall his wife’s unshakable conviction, and think of it as a defining moment in the hours that followed.

Forty minutes after leaving Police Headquarters, they climbed the hill leading up to Ryan and Anna’s home, where they found Tom Faulkner had arrived just ahead of them with several members of his team. The Senior CSI was already in the process of tucking his hair into a hairnet before tipping up the elasticated hood on his polypropylene suit. A squad car was parked nearby, its officers already inside taking statements from Ryan and his parents—his mother having refused, point blank, to remain at the hospital in the nearby town of Rothbury.