Princess: A Private Novel

by James Patterson

  “We’ll let them get out in front,” Morgan told her. “We need to trap them, but we can’t do it until we’ve got help on the way.”

  “No telling how much ammo they’ve got,” Lewis agreed.

  Up ahead, Morgan saw a figure loom large in the window of the Defender’s passenger seat.

  “Down!” he shouted as a pistol’s muzzle flashed and the first of three shots thumped like a hammer strike against the Range Rover’s hood.

  “Down!” he ordered again, this time because Lewis was making to stand up on her chair, pushing upward as she retracted the Range Rover’s sunroof.

  Two more shots cracked. The driver’s-side mirror shattered, its electrics hanging like spilled guts as a warning to Morgan.

  “Lewis! Get back in here!” he shouted, but the police markswoman was already firing steady single shots, Morgan chancing to look from the track as sparks flew from the Defender’s metal.

  Lewis’s fourth shot smashed into the passenger window.

  “I think I got him!” she shouted, her triumph cut short as Morgan pulled hard on her belt, yanking her down savagely as a low branch swiped hard across the Range Rover’s roof.

  “Thanks.” She grinned, knowing that she had been a second from death.

  “I think you did get him,” Morgan replied—no more fire was coming from the Land Rover, and it pulled ahead of Morgan, both four-by-fours now on the same narrow track. Outside, the rain began to pour harder, cascading through the Range Rover’s open roof and lashing against its windshield.

  “Can you get a plate?” Morgan asked the officer.

  “I can’t. I can’t see a bloody thing.”

  He was about to say that it was likely covered up anyway, when Cook’s voice came from the back seat—she had found a signal. She was straight onto Private London, coordinating the police’s response. “Pass me the map,” she told Lewis, who retrieved it from the dirty footwell. “I need to send them grid references.”

  Confident that there were reinforcements on the way, Morgan knew it was time to play the endgame.

  “Next time the track splits, we get ahead of them and box them in.”

  “Can’t we just follow them out to the main roads?” Lewis asked. “Let the uniforms take over?”

  Morgan shook his head. “They’re armed, and the last thing these roads can handle is a high-speed pursuit. People will get hurt.”

  Lewis nodded her head, understanding. Those people would be innocent, unwitting of the game they had been caught up in. Their families would lose loved ones, and never understand the reasons why.

  Not so Morgan, Lewis and Cook. Each had made a decision to serve, be it the Marine Corps, police force or army. Each had chosen a life that put others’ needs before their own. Each had chosen a job where the possibility of sacrificing yourself for the good of strangers was a well-known requirement. Cook and Morgan were out of uniform now, but such things were embedded in their characters.

  “We’ll keep them bottled up until the cavalry gets here,” Lewis said, accepting what could happen to them in that attempt.

  “The next break in the track,” Morgan confirmed.

  “They’re scrambling the police helicopter,” Cook told them from the back, the map in her hand. “Jack, the track breaks left in a hundred meters.”

  Through the rain and the dirt kicked up by the speeding Defender’s tires, Morgan saw it. He let the shooters pull further ahead, waiting for them to choose their path. They stuck to the trail, so Morgan gunned the engine hard and turned up onto the parallel track. Within moments, they were pulling abreast, separated by nothing but trees and rain.

  “Shoot across me!” Morgan commanded.

  Lewis pushed the weapon out in front of the American, snapping a double tap, the empty cases hitting Morgan’s jaw. He had no idea what impact Lewis’s shooting was having, but the passenger in the Defender showed themself to be alive, rounds beating the Range Rover’s skin like a drum. Cook barely covered her eyes in time as shards of glass shattered inward.

  “Get ahead, Jack, get ahead!” she shouted, and Morgan pushed the Range Rover harder, throwing a backward glance at the Land Rover, desperate to see the faces of the shooters—the faces of the people that wanted him dead.

  “Jack!” Cook cried.

  “Are you hit?” he called.

  But his eyes saw the reason for her shout as his eyes turned back to the track, and the piled logs that lay across it.

  “Jack!” Cook shouted again as Morgan hit the brakes hard. The Range Rover slid forward into the wood. Timber went bouncing and breaking into the air as Morgan and his team were slammed into the steering wheel, dashboard and seats.

  Morgan’s first instinct was to bail out of the car, certain that at any second bullets would begin to rip into his flesh as the shooters stopped to finish the job.

  But the danger passed by them—the shooters were not firing, and the Land Rover was gone.

  Chapter 34

  FURIOUS THAT THE shooters had escaped, Morgan thumped his fist against the Range Rover’s mud-splattered bonnet. “What’s the ETA on the police helicopter?”

  “It will get to the point where the main road meets the forest track in ten minutes,” Cook told him.

  Morgan shook his head. “Not fast enough. They’ll hit it in less than five, and that’s if they use the same point into the forest that we did. There could be others. They could even dump the vehicle and make it out on foot.”

  “They could,” Cook agreed, downcast.

  Rain pattered from Morgan’s shadowed face as he made his decision. “You two will go back in the Range Rover and secure the scene until the police arrive.”

  “We can’t split up, Jack,” Cook pleaded. “They could still be out here, setting up a second ambush.”

  “All the more reason for me to be on foot,” he replied. “I can stay off the tracks. It’s not thick forest. I’ll make quick time.”

  “But—”

  “Jane, thank you, but remember who we are and what the hierarchy is. This is my call.”

  “Of course,” she managed, taking a half-step backward.

  “She’s right though, Morgan,” Lewis added from the passenger seat. “No offence to the girl, but Sophie doesn’t know if she has company or not. Don’t risk the living for the dead.”

  “The crime scene needs preserving,” Morgan insisted, pulling tight his laces.

  Lewis put her hand out of the window and into the pouring rain. “The crime scene is bollocksed, and the local bobbies will be here in well under an hour.”

  “We should stick together, Jack,” Cook ventured again.

  It was her eyes more than her words that convinced Morgan. It had nothing to do with tactics, he admitted to himself, and everything to do with not wanting her to be out of his sight.

  “OK,” he conceded. “Find us a new route out of here, Jane, just in case there’s another surprise on the route that we came in on.”

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “The Princess hired us to find Sophie,” Morgan said, grim-faced. “We need to be the ones to tell her what happened to her.”

  Cook nodded solemnly. “And then what?”

  It was a moment before Morgan answered. He was prying something out from the shattered windshield with his fingers. “And then,” he told Cook, holding up the dull shape of a flattened bullet, “then we find the connection to two bodies. We find Eliza Lightwood.”

  Chapter 35

  PETER KNIGHT STOOD in his office, hands on his head, his eyes burning into a map of the United Kingdom that he had taped to the office wall. Brightly colored pins had been jabbed into various towns and villages with Post-it notes attached. These were places with known connections to Eliza Lightwood—grandparents, cousins, ex-boyfriends, favorite getaway locations. Hooligan had laughed out loud at Knight’s low-tech methods, but Knight was a man who liked something tangible to work with, and in front of him was the map of what his Private employees had bee
n able to piece together through Eliza’s records, social media and character profiling.

  She could be anywhere, he thought, staring at the array of pins that stretched across the map.

  But she was not.

  “Peter,” a familiar voice said at the door, with a gentle knock.

  Knight turned. His hands dropped from his head. His jaw dropped to the floor.

  “Eliza,” he gasped.

  “I heard you’ve been looking for me. I went to the coast to think,” she explained, taking the chair Knight offered her.

  “You went to the coast?” he gently pushed.

  “Just to drive, and think. There’s been so much bloody noise since my dad died. Some of it of my own creation, but then there’s his businesses, bloody lawyers, relatives who want a handout. He’s not even in his grave and they’re after his money.”

  “That must be hard.”

  “It is hard. I just needed a break from it. I just wanted to drive and listen to music. No phone. No arseholes trying to call me. Present company excepted, of course.” She gave a weak smile.

  “There were some things I needed to talk with you about.” He spoke gently, finding himself convinced by Eliza’s words and manner. “Do you know a woman by the name of Sophie Edwards?”

  A look of bewilderment passed over her face. “I know a Sophie Edwards,” she explained. “But I imagine there would be more than a few people by that name in London.”

  “This Sophie was at LSE with you.”

  “Then yes. Why are you asking?”

  “Actually,” Knight smiled, anxious that Eliza was becoming too defensive, “it’s for another case Private is working. I saw your name on her class records.”

  “Oh.” Eliza relaxed a little. “Small world, isn’t it? But yes, we were in the same class at LSE. We kept in touch, but we aren’t particularly close.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “The weekend before last. She came to one of my bigger dinner parties with her boyfriend.”

  “She has a boyfriend?” Knight asked, hiding his surprise.

  “Sort of. I don’t know how serious they are exactly, but it’s London. His name’s Mayoor Patel; he’s a hedge fund manager that I work with pretty often. Great guy. Very funny.”

  “Does he come to all of your dinner parties?”

  It was a moment before Eliza replied. “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he brings Sophie,” she admitted, breaking her gaze from Peter.

  “And Sophie had a thing for your father?” Knight guessed, seeing his torpedo strike.

  “Two types of people go to LSE, Peter. Those who want to make money, and those who want to take it.”

  “And which one was Sophie?”

  Eliza smiled, but there was no happiness in it. Only malice and resentment. “She looked at my dad like he was a five-star meal ticket. Why are you asking me all this, Peter? And don’t bullshit me about other investigations. I’m not stupid, so spit it out.”

  Private’s agent met her wild stare. “I think Sophie Edwards was the one blackmailing your father.”

  Chapter 36

  THE STATE OF the battered and shot-up Range Rover drew stares from the two plain-clothed guards at Llwynywermod’s gate, the two men emerging from a four-by-four of their own and into the rain. “Are you all right?” they asked their colleague Lewis.

  “I’m good,” she beamed. “Got one of them through a passenger window.”

  “You ally bastard,” one of the guards grinned. Jane Cook recognized the army slang for “cool.”

  “We need to see the Princess,” Lewis followed up. “Like, now.”

  “She’s not here, mate.” The evident soldier shook his head. “Chopper took her out earlier. Got an event on in London.”

  “Opening a school, I think it was,” his partner added.

  “Shit,” Lewis sighed.

  Jack Morgan was not so deflated—Princess Caroline wasn’t the only one with access to helicopters, and on Morgan’s instructions, Private dispatched one to Wales.

  “Go on up,” one of the armed men told Lewis. “And enjoy your paperwork.”

  “Piss off.” She laughed as Morgan put the vehicle into gear, and they wound their way up to the royal residence.

  “He’s right though.” The police officer shook her head. “If you survive a shooting they just try and drown you in paperwork instead. I’d better get inside and put in an after-action report. I’m afraid I’ll be no use to you now, either.”

  “What do you mean?” Morgan asked.

  “I mean I’ve got to hand in my weapon once I report this shooting. Then I’ll be placed on leave, pending the results of the investigation.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” the American gasped.

  “That’s ridiculous!” Cook exclaimed from the back seat.

  Lewis shrugged her shoulders. “Well, there it is. I got to do what I always wanted to do. Now I’ve got to take it in the arse from the desk jockeys.” She gathered her few possessions from the Range Rover and made to leave. “I enjoyed working with you guys.”

  Morgan smiled. He knew that sentiment was a lie, at least for the most part, but there was nothing like the shared danger of being shot at to bring a team together.

  “Thank you, Lewis.” Cook put out her hand. “Without you we’d be dead.”

  “We would,” Morgan agreed. “You ever need anything, you call me.”

  “We’ll see each other again,” Lewis promised. “In court, probably.”

  “Goodbye, Lewis.” Morgan watched the brave woman he’d once suspected as his would-be assassin walk through the rain and into the residence.

  “I got to like her,” Cook admitted. “Some balls on her.”

  “Brass ones,” Morgan agreed.

  “So we’ll go back to London?” she asked.

  There was a second’s delay before Morgan replied, “I will.” He saw the slightest slump in Cook’s shoulders, unable to hide her disappointment.

  “Lewis is right,” he explained. “There’s going to be a paperwork circus after today. I’ve sent for our legal team, but until they get here, I need you to hold the fort. Make sure the transition to the police goes smoothly.”

  “I can do that,” she told him, professionalism overcoming her desire to be close to Jack Morgan. “Will I see you back in London?” she asked.

  Something in her eyes, something in her words, made the investigator in Morgan question what he had been told.

  “You’re not in a relationship, are you, Jane?” he asked her.

  “I’m not,” she confessed.

  “Then why—”

  “Because I didn’t want to be the woman sleeping with the boss,” Cook blurted out. “I didn’t want people talking behind my back. But more than that, I needed to know how Jack Morgan would treat me if we were colleagues, and not lovers.”

  Morgan let the words sink in. “Well, now you know.” He stepped in closer, less than a foot between the two of them as the rain pattered against Cook’s upturned face.

  “Now I know,” she agreed.

  He put out his hands, and pushed back the wet hair from her face, tucking it behind her ears. She was beautiful. No matter how he had tried to suppress his feelings, they had not diminished. Now Morgan looked deeply into Cook’s eyes.

  “We’re close to finishing this,” he promised.

  She understood that he meant their absence as lovers as well as the case.

  “And when we are, we’ll go away. No work. No cases. Just us.”

  “Sounds perfect.” Cook smiled. “Where?”

  “Hawaii,” Morgan told her, picturing the blissful image of big waves, blue skies and Jane in his arms. Despite the cold Welsh rain, he felt as though he was already there. Only the sound of helicopter blades broke him from his reverie.

  “You have to go,” she almost whispered.

  “I’ll send it back for you,” he promised. “Hand over to the legal team,
and I’ll take care of the Princess.” Morgan turned to watch as the helicopter touched down a hundred yards from the house, the mountains behind it ominous and dark beneath the thick cloud.

  It was time for Morgan to leave Wales. There was only one more thing for him to do.

  He took Cook’s hands in his, the touch full of the spark and promise of what was to come. “I’ll see you in London.”

  And then he kissed her.

  Chapter 37

  PETER KNIGHT LOOKED at what had become of his office. His map of the United Kingdom and the carefully placed pins lay crumpled and torn on the floor. A chair lay on its side by the door. The pens, photos and paperwork from his desk had been tossed like confetti.

  “Are you calm now?” he asked the woman who had trashed his office. Fearing for Eliza Lightwood’s safety more than his own, Knight had taken her down with a self-defense move and was now sitting on top of her, exerting just enough pressure to keep the woman pinned.

  “I’m sorry,” Eliza wheezed out.

  “I know you’ve had a shock, Eliza, but I can’t let you up if you’re going to do that again.”

  “I’m good, Peter, honestly. I’m sorry. That just all came as a shock. It… it really threw me. I’m sorry. I just lost it for a moment.”

  Knight could understand why: hearing that your friend was responsible for blackmailing your father into suicide was not something that could be taken lightly. Still, it gave Knight pause for thought. If Eliza’s temper was as violent as this…

  He hadn’t revealed to her that Sophie’s body had been found, but could Eliza already know that the blackmailer was hanging in a Welsh forest? Could she have been the one to put her there, during her absence that she claimed was a drive to the south coast?

  He had more questions than answers. He expected he wouldn’t learn much more by keeping Eliza pinned to his office floor.

  He stood.

  She got up slowly, red with embarrassment and exertion as she took in the devastation she had caused. “My God, Peter… Send me the bill. Whatever it is. Redecorate the entire floor of this building and I’ll pay for it. I’m so, so sorry.”