The chef marched into the room and slammed the door shut. “Get dressed. We need to move quickly.”
Damian pushed himself off her and leaped to his feet. “What the hell? Where’s James-David?”
“I don’t know,” Jean-Baptiste said in a distinct American drawl, “that’s the problem.”
“What have you done with my son?” Muireann let the cover drop and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “And what happened to your French accent?”
The man slipped a wallet from the pocket of his black utility pants and flipped it open.
Muireann’s eyes widened as she examined the identity card. “What the hell is this? Who’s Liam Ryan?”
“I am.” He jerked a finger at the photo. “Shave off the beard, remove the eyebrows, and that’s me.”
Damian grabbed the card. “Why in the name of fuck is a Navy SEAL masquerading as my chef?”
“Former Navy SEAL. I can’t tell you who I’m working for, but I wouldn’t have blown my cover if the situation wasn’t serious.” The man flung open Damian’s wardrobe and tossed a shirt at Muireann. “Get dressed. We need to move fast. I used my own satellite phone to contact the authorities, but it’ll take them a while to get here.”
My baby.
Ignoring the man’s shout of protest, Muireann darted past him and out into the corridor. She thundered down the stairs to the room she shared with her son. The door was wide open and she charged in. “James-David?”
The cot was empty. As was the wardrobe, the bathroom, the space behind the sofa, and every other nook an eighteen-month-old might use to hide. A strangled gasp caught in her throat. “Where’s my baby?”
Damian ran into the room and caught her up in his arms. “We’ll find him, Muireann. I promise.” His voice broke with emotion. “I swear to you we’ll find him.”
From the doorway, Liam cleared his throat. He was holding a pile of clothes in his arms. “You two gonna get dressed sometime this century? If we wanna venture out in the storm to find the kid, clothes would help.”
Under any other circumstance, the idea of the two of them running around naked would have been hilarious. In the present situation, Muireann’s humor chip was missing.
Damian rounded on the American and jabbed a finger in his chest. “What the fuck is going on?”
“I’ll tell you on the way.” Jean-Baptiste—or Liam—deftly maneuvered out of Damian’s way and headed for the door. “I’ve already woken Alan and Peters. They’re waiting downstairs.
Muireann and Damian locked eyes. After a second, he nodded. “We’d better hurry.”
She dressed with trembling hands, not caring that Liam hadn’t bothered to bring her underwear. By the time she was ready, Damian had thrown on his clothes and extracted an impressive array of handguns from the safe in his room. He pressed a revolver into her hands. “It’s easy to use, even for a novice. And take this pocket flashlight in case you need it.”
They followed Liam down to the ground floor and found a tense-looking Alan and Peters hovering by the door. When Muireann scanned the open plan, her stomach clenched. A man wearing a security guard’s uniform was face down in a pool of blood. Beside him, Bran lay motionless.
“Jackson,” Liam said, following the direction of her gaze. “The dog was drugged but should be okay. There are two more dead guards outside the front door, and three at the back. I’m assuming the two missing guards are responsible.”
Her breathing came in shallow gasps. “Those bastards. What have they done to my son?”
“When it was my turn to check on him, he’d disappeared from his cot,” Alan said in a quavering voice. “I rushed downstairs to tell the others and met Jean-Baptiste—or whatever he calls himself—running up.”
Liam nodded. “I informed Alan I’d found Jackson dead and that Peters was checking on the other guards.”
“And Peters found all but two of the eight guards dead,” Damian finished. His lips formed a hard line. “What are we dealing with here? Why were you sent to the island?”
“Long story short, the people I work for got a tip that a Romanian human trafficking band was using islands in the Celtic Sea to swap victims. They take girls from the Ivory Coast and transport them here by boat. Then they’re passed on to handlers who take them to their next destination—Northern Europe or America. Mention of Inish Glas kept coming up in our reports, but we had no concrete evidence.”
“So that’s why you were so keen to get a job on an island in the middle of nowhere,” Alan said. “Where did you learn to cook?”
“And speak such good French,” Damian added.
“From my mother. She grew up in France and trained as a cook in Paris. She taught me everything I know.”
“What happened here tonight?” Muireann demanded. “And why did they snatch my son.”
“Read this note.” Liam held out a piece of paper.
Muireann snatched it from him and read aloud. “’Give us the girls or the baby dies. Lighthouse, 23:00.’ What girls? I’m the only female on the island.”
Damian’s eyes met hers. “Apparently not.”
“I guess a couple of the girls they were trafficking must have escaped. Might have something to do with the dead guy in the tub.”
Damian pointed to his watch. “It’s twenty past ten now. We don’t have much time.”
“I’ve armed Alan and Peters,” Liam said briskly, and shoved a box of grenades at Damian. “You have a military background. Surround the lighthouse and cause a distraction. I’ll break in and look for the baby.”
Damian jutted his jaw. “James-David is my son. I’ll break in and look for him.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Muireann snapped. “Save the macho posing for another day. I don’t care which of you goes in as long as we get moving now.”
Peters thrust winter coats at them, efficient even at a moment of crisis. “It’s rather chilly tonight.”
Rather chilly was an understatement. Outside, the storm was in full force. Lighting cracked across the sky and thundered rolled. Heavy sheets of rain beat down, forming deep puddles in the courtyard.
At the bottom of the steps, Muireann tripped over the body of a dead guard. Bile surged up her throat. She swallowed hard, willing herself to keep calm. Was James-David warm? His winter suit was still hanging in the hall closet. Had they even bothered to wrap him in a blanket? She shivered inside her warm winter coat and blinked back tears.
Damian put his arm around her and guided her to the golf cart. “It’ll be a squash, but we’ll fit somehow.”
‘Fit’ apparently meant Damian, Muireann and Peters squashed into the front, with Alan and Liam hanging off the back.
Within seconds, Damian had eased the vehicle into motion. They whizzed down the path and past the guesthouses, splashing water in their wake.
“Can’t this bloody thing go any faster?” Muireann shouted over the wind.
“I’m going as fast as I can,” Damian yelled back. “It’ll do us no good if I cra—”
He broke off and swerved to the side. “What the fuck was that?”
“I saw someone in the headlights,” Muireann said, her heart in her throat. “Back there on the path.”
Damian turned the cart around and angled the headlights.
A shape emerged from the shadows, running toward them at full speed.
EIGHTEEN
Darko aimed his pistol. “Stay where you are.”
The shape froze. “Ne tirez pas! J’ai pas d’arme.”
“It’s a girl,” Muireann gasped. “And she’s soaked to the skin.”
Darko leaped out of the vehicle. Away from the glare of the headlights, he saw that she was a pretty girl in her midteens with huge eyes and dark skin. Her thin body trembled, either from cold, fear, or both.
A burning rage surged through his body. When he got his hands on the men who’d traumatized this girl and snatched James-David, he’d kill them. He shrugged off his coat and wrapped it around her shoulders. The girl flinched a
t his touch and took a step back, but she didn’t remove the coat.
Liam hopped off the back of the golf cart and peppered the girl with questions. Her answers were too rapid for Darko’s mediocre school French to decipher. He did pick out a reference to a tattoo and a mention of a cave.
“Oh my God.” Muireann’s face was deathly pale. “She says her little sister is trapped in a cave. They were hiding there after the security team arrived and it was no longer safe to stay at the lighthouse. When the storm began, the cave started to flood. They tried to climb up the cliff, but her sister fell and broke her leg. We have to help her.”
“There’s no time to loose,” Liam said grimly. “I have experience scaling cliffs. I’ll help the girl, and you get James-David. I can cut through the woods on foot and reach the cave within ten minutes.”
Darko slapped him on the back. “Good luck, mate.”
With a wry smile, Liam made a mock salute and melted into the darkness.
“Everyone get back into the cart,” Darko ordered. “You have good French, don’t you, Muireann?”
She nodded. “I spent a year in Paris after leaving school.”
“Then you can question the girl while we drive to the lighthouse. We can’t afford to waste any more time.”
They piled back into the golf cart, Alan and Peters taking the back. The wet girl sat in the front, wedged between Darko and Muireann.
“What about the tattoo?” Darko demanded once they were in motion. “I heard her mention a tattoo.”
“It’s a gang symbol,” Muireann said. “That’s why both the drowned man and the dead man in the tub had identical tattoos.”
“Fuck me.” Darko shook his head. “So who was the guy in the tub?”
“Grigore, one of the men who kidnapped them. The girl—Lucille—says she strangled him with the rope they’d used to bind her wrists. He’d dragged Lucille and her eleven-year-old sister, Melanie, to the guesthouse to rape them. She and her sister have been living rough on the island ever since.”
“What about the man who drowned?” Darko asked, the pieces of the puzzle slotting into place.
Muireann turned to the girl and fired off a few more questions. “She says he was called Nicu and he was Grigore’s accomplice. They belong to a Romanian gang that specializes in human trafficking girls from the Ivory Coast to Europe and America. Lucille and her sister were kidnapped at a market in Abidjan and thrown onto a boat with twenty-six other girls. They arrived on Inish Glas last week, and were hidden in the basement of the old asylum.” Muireann clutched Darko’s arm. “See? I told you there were trapdoors in the grounds of the asylum.”
He shook his head. “Why did they come to Inish Glas? Wasn’t doing a tradeoff on an inhabited island taking a hell of a risk?”
“Grigore and Nicu fucked up. It was their first trafficking run since you moved to Inish Glas. They didn’t get the memo that they were supposed to head to a different island—Inish Dubh from her description. The gang members who arrived to collect the girls last Sunday included the leader. He was furious at the fuck-up because it put them all at risk of capture. These guys are ruthless. After they threw Nicu into the sea, Grigore fled. In the confusion, Lucille and her little sister ran away, hoping to reach the main house and beg for help.”
“But they never made it,” Darko said in a low voice. “Those poor girls.”
“Grigore caught up with them before they could reach us. There was a bad storm that night, if you recall. Nicu had been the better sailor, so Grigore decided to wait until the storm blew over to steal one of our boats and head to the mainland.”
“And took advantage of my state-of-the-art one-way windows,” Darko added bitterly, his gut twisting at the thought of what those poor kids must have endured. “We never noticed lights on in the guesthouse because we couldn’t see them.”
“Precisely. Grigore helped himself to champagne from the guest refrigerator.”
“And a pair of my sunglasses,” Darko interjected dryly.
“Apparently,” Muireann said. “When Grigore tried to rape her little sister, Lucille acted on instinct. She put the discarded rope from her wrists around his neck and strangled him. When she realized what she’d done, she panicked and was too afraid to come to the main house. So she and her sister took refuge in the caves. The rest of the gang left before daylight, taking their boats and all the other girls with them. When Lucille saw us leave on the yacht, she and Melanie weren’t aware we’d already found the body. They snuck back to the guesthouse and dragged the man’s corpse outside, doing a thorough clean before they left. Using the golf cart, they transported the body through the woods to the edge of the cliffs and tossed him into the sea.”
“So Lucille and Melanie were still hiding in the caves while the police searched the island on Sunday afternoon?” Darko asked.
Muireann nodded. “They moved into the lighthouse for a couple of nights and were working up their courage to steal a boat. Then the new security team showed up and they recognized two of the men from the gang. They’ve been hiding in the caves ever since.”
“So the gang leader is afraid the girls know too much—” Darko began.
“And they snatched James-David because they suspect we know where the girls are,” Muireann finished.
“Damn.” Darko slammed his hand on the wheel. “One of the Romanians was in the courtyard earlier when I asked Jackson for his satellite phone. He must have realized I was lying about James-David needing a doctor and jumped to the conclusion that I’d contacted the police.”
“Which you did,” Muireann said with an ironic laugh, “just not to summon them to the island.”
“Sergeant Glenn is due to come over tomorrow afternoon, but a lot can happen between now and then. And even if Liam has alerted the authorities, they’ll never make it over before eleven o’clock.” Darko’s fingers tensed around the wheel. “We’re James-David’s only hope.”
NINETEEN
We’re James-David’s only hope. Icy fear froze Muireann’s limbs. “How many men are we dealing with?” she asked through chattering teeth.
“We know two of the security guards are involved,” Damian said, swerving to avoid a deep puddle.
Peters cleared his throat “I checked the surveillance footage after Jean—Liam—and I found the dead guards. It cuts off after a while, but I did see a large trawler dock at the pier. Four men disembarked and they were heavily armed.”
“So we’re dealing with six guys in total?” Muireann shivered and pulled her winter coat close around her. “If this gang is willing to go to extreme lengths to ensure the girls keep silent, they’re not going to let us live.”
A grim silence descended over the vehicle. After a moment, Darko squeezed her shoulder. “Let’s focus on getting James-David back. Liam said he’d contacted emergency services. They must be on the way by now.”
In the distance, the lighthouse loomed. Each second of the bumpy ride brought them closer to their destination. “Do we have a plan of action for when we reach the lighthouse?” Muireann asked. “I want to be prepared.”
“They’ll have the lighthouse surrounded,” Damian predicted. “And they have the advantage of being able to see farther than we can. Alan and Peters can back us up, but this one is on you and me. We’re James-David’s parents and they’ll expect us to come to get him. We’ll bring Lucille far enough that they can see her, but not close enough for one of them to take an easy shot.”
“Wait. What’s that noise?” She paused for a moment, straining her ears. Then her eyes flew to Darko’s. “They have a car.”
“A truck,” he corrected grimly. “And it’s driving straight at us.”
Muireann’s pulse quickened. The girl beside her whimpered and leaned closer. Muireann put an arm around her. “It’ll be okay,” she whispered in French, not believing her own platitude.
The noise was soon accompanied by large headlights. She shielded her eyes from the blinding light.
Damian swo
re and swerved out of the truck’s path. To no avail. The truck followed his movements and roared after them. The little golf cart was no match for a truck.
“Everyone out,” Damian shouted. “Jump. Run as far away from the vehicles as you can.”
Lucille, Peters, and Alan obeyed, and sprinted toward the relative safety of the woods.
Damian stayed in the cart, fiddling with something under the seat. Was he mad?
“Get out,” Muireann shouted. “They’re about to—“
In that instant he leaped over the side of the truck, grabbed her by the waist and ran.
Seconds later, the gang’s truck crashed into the cart, smashing it to smithereens. A massive explosion ripped through the truck.
“What the—?” Muireann started to ask but Damian kept running.
“We have to move. The tank will blow next.”
Sure enough, a second explosion made the earth shake. Muireann didn’t dare look back until they’d reached the others at the edge of the woods.
Alan whistled. “Nice work, Darko. Set off a few grenades, did you?”
“Only one. The petrol tanks caused the second explosion.” He checked his pockets. “The only grenades we have left are the few I managed to stuff into my pockets before I abandoned the cart.”
“The gang is two men down,” Muireann said. “I saw them in the front of the truck, just before the crash.”
“After seeing their pals blown up, the remaining gang members are going to be very wary when we approach the lighthouse,” Damian said. “We take it slowly, hands in the air. We’ll leave Lucille at a distance with Alan and Peters.”
“Why not take her with you?” Alan asked. “She’s the one they want.”
“If we bring her with us, they’ll gun us down on sight and force Lucille to reveal where Melanie is hiding. With Lucille at a distance, they still won’t know where her sister is and will be more inclined to negotiate.”
“I’m not convinced,” Muireann said. “They went to great lengths to infiltrate the security team and search for the girls. Snatching James-David smells of desperation. They don’t want the girls to talk to the police, and they aren’t sure how much we know and could share with the authorities.”
BANGED: Rock Stars, Bad Boys & Dirty Deeds Page 20
