Stolen Lives

by Jassy Mackenzie

  “Your daughter?”

  “Tamsin’s grown up.” A small smile softened Pamela’s taut expression. Jade had noticed no such warmth when she’d mentioned her husband.

  “She doesn’t live at home anymore,” Pamela continued. “She doesn’t even know Terence—my husband—is missing yet. But she works for him, and if something’s happened to him then I’m worried for her.” She twisted her manicured fingers together, then stopped and adjusted one of her rings. Jade wondered whether the big diamond had been digging into her hand. “I’ve never had anything like this go wrong before, but we are involved in an industry where these things have been … well … known to happen.”

  “What industry is that?” Jade asked.

  “One that has a rather unsavoury reputation, I’m afraid. Adult entertainment.” In response to Jade’s questioning glance, she continued. “Terence owns a chain of strip clubs. You might have heard of them. They’re called Heads & Tails. They’re upmarket, totally legitimate and above board. He offers his patrons good, clean fun.”

  “I’ve heard of them.” Jade gave a small nod, struggling to keep her expression carefully noncommittal. Good, clean fun at Heads & Tails? But of course. Bring along the whole family for a jolly evening’s entertainment. Even Granny would approve.

  “The problem isn’t Terence’s business. The problem is the industry itself. It attracts more than its share of ne’er-do-wells; people looking to make quick money or who are simply obsessed by sleaze,” Pamela said.

  Jade nodded again. She couldn’t remember the last time anybody had actually used the term “ne’er-do-well”.

  “Tamsin’s not a dancer, of course,” Pamela added hurriedly. “She runs the admin office at the Midrand branch. But I’m still worried for her.”

  “I can see why you would be.” Jade nodded for a third and final time.

  Given the nature of their business, she could now understand why Pamela might feel more comfortable hiring a female bodyguard to look after herself and her daughter.

  “I operate on my own,” Jade told her. “So if you’re looking for full-time, round-the-clock protection for yourself and Tamsin, I can’t help. You’ll need to contact one of the big firms and get a team of guards.”

  “No, no, I don’t think I’ll need that. Just somebody to be with us when we’re out and about, and to check on security wherever we stay.”

  “Will that be in Jo’burg, or are you planning on travelling?”

  “In Jo’burg, I should imagine.”

  “And have you or your daughter had any other problems with security recently? Any reason for you to feel in personal danger?”

  Pamela gazed out of the window for a few moments, then shook her head. “I don’t think there’s been anything,” she said.

  Jade nodded. This sounded like a low-to medium-risk job. She’d worked a few of those in the past, one-on-one with an employer who could not afford, or did not think it was necessary, to hire a team. Sometimes Jade had been stood down during her employer’s working hours, but more commonly she had guarded the client during the day and gone home at night, leaving her employer’s safety in the hands of the local police or home security company until the next morning.

  In a job like this, it was common for the bodyguard to be asked to do other, unrelated tasks. Jade knew one close protection officer who had survived a two-year stint in Iraq, but had quit after a week when the spoilt Beverly Hills heiress who had hired him on his return assigned him “gardening” duties—walking the dog, scooping poo, mowing the lawn.

  Although she’d spent innumerable hours waiting outside fitting rooms in clothing boutiques, Jade had never been asked to mow the lawn, but she had walked quite a few dogs in her time.

  “I usually agree on a set period of time with the client in advance,” she said. “Given the circumstances, though, I think it would be better if we take it day by day, and wait to see whether there’s any news on your husband.”

  “Thank you.”

  In spite of her reassurances that there had been no problems with her own security, Pamela still looked tense—she was perched on the edge of the squishy sofa as if poised for flight. Her body language puzzled Jade. In her experience, disappearing spouses were usually a cause for anxiety rather than fear.

  As if making a concerted effort to relax, Pamela let out a loud sigh, rifled through her white Gucci handbag and produced an orange emery board. She stared distractedly at the brightly painted nails on her left hand, then started filing the nail on her index finger.

  There was silence, apart from the erratic scrape of the emery board. Then Pamela turned her head towards the door and asked, “What’s that? I can hear something.”

  Jade listened too. She heard a low, drumming noise. It was the sound of a car approaching fast, its tyres hammering over the deeply rutted road. She got up, hurried over to the kitchen window and looked out. The car shot past the cottage without slowing. She thought she recognised her landlady’s white Isuzu, but the clouds of dust made it difficult to tell.

  “Just a local resident,” she said. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “Oh.” Pamela didn’t stop watching the door.

  “You’d like me to start right away, I take it?” Jade told Pamela her rate for full-time close protection and the blonde woman nodded in a distracted way, as if money was so completely irrelevant she didn’t want to be bothered by it.

  “I’d like us to go past my house first, so that I can check that everything’s secure there,” Pamela said. “Then we must go straight to my daughter’s flat and pick her up. I’ve already left her a message to say I’ll be coming.”

  She brushed distractedly at an invisible speck of dust on the leg of her cream-coloured trousers. They were worn with a belt with a logo on the buckle that Jade didn’t recognise, but which she was sure she would have been impressed by if she had.

  Jade tugged her now-clammy running shirt away from her skin.

  “Give me a minute to change, and we can go.”

  She emerged from the bathroom five minutes later, showered and wearing black jeans and a dark jacket that concealed the gun on her belt.

  Pamela was still busy with her manicure, but when she saw Jade, she put the nail file back in her designer tote and stood up. Then she opened her purse and handed Jade a thick wad of banknotes.

  “This is your fee for the next three days.”

  Surprised that Pamela was carrying so much cash with her, Jade took the money. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been paid this way. She decided not to count it in front of her new client. The wad of hundreds felt thick enough to her. In fact, the bundle of notes barely fitted into her small leather wallet, making it chunky and uncomfortable when she stuffed it into her back pocket.

  By the time Jade had locked up the cottage, Pamela was already in her car and revving the engine, her hard, crimson nails tapping out a rhythm on the steering wheel.

  5

  Jade had done her official close protection training in London. Her course lecturer had been a Scottish woman, who as far as Jade had known didn’t seem to have a first name. They’d simply called her Stewart.

  Stewart was built like a tank, as broad and solid as she was tall, with a voice to match her physique, and a thick Aberdeen accent. She had striking green eyes, a jutting chin, and a rough grasp that felt a lot like a donkey bite. One from a very large, foul-tempered donkey.

  Would Jade have felt safe with Stewart guarding her? Absolutely. She’d have felt safe from armed assailants, a rebel invasion, even a meteor strike. She would certainly have felt a lot safer than she did with Stewart as her teacher; the muscle-bound instructor had inspired equal amounts of terror and respect.

  Jade had been the only woman in the class, but she knew the lads felt the same way, because none of them had laughed or joked about their indomitable teacher.

  There were guidelines to be followed when protecting a client, Stewart had explained. First, you will assess the leve
l of threat and risk to the principal. Then you will plan and prepare in order to minimise it as much as possible.

  She’d taken them through every page of the rule book, step by thorough step. She’d explained the different levels of security that existed in response to the various levels of threat, and she’d explained the difference between providing overt and unobtrusive security.

  Then she’d told them that the rule book was as good as useless in certain circumstances; that bodyguarding was often about making the best of a bad situation and relying on your own instinct and gut feeling to know when things were about to go bad. And, when they did go bad, that was when a bodyguard would truly earn their fee.

  “If it came tae the crunch, wud ye be prepared tae take a bullet fo’ yer principal?” She’d stabbed her finger into the chest of the largest and most macho lad in the class, an American who’d told Jade in hushed tones the day before that he really wished his teacher could come with subtitles, because he couldn’t understand half of what she said. The man had stumbled backwards, away from Stewart’s prodding finger, with an expression on his face that Jade could only describe as panic.

  “Well? Wud ye or no?”

  Jade opened the Corvette’s passenger door and got in. The car smelled new, of expensive leather and finely tuned engine. If wealth had a smell, Jade was sure it would be something like this.

  It was common practice for bodyguards to do the driving, but since Pamela had hired her as a precaution and did not seem to be in any direct personal danger, Jade did not insist on taking the wheel herself.

  Assess the threat …

  Pamela’s husband had disappeared yesterday evening. Where could he have gone? She could think of a few obvious possibilities. He could be with another woman. He could have been a victim of an opportunistic robber or hijacker. He could have driven off a stretch of lonely road and be lying in the wreckage of his car, unconscious or dead, but still undiscovered. There was no reason to panic yet—at least not as far as Pamela’s own safety was concerned.

  Or so Jade thought.

  The Corvette was brutally powerful. It was built for speed, and Pamela drove it that way. When she reached the main road she pressed the sports mode button and put her foot down. Its big engine responded instantly with a throaty roar. The car shot forward, leaving the other drivers in their heavier four-wheel drives and luxury sedans gasping in its wake.

  Jade tried to fasten her seatbelt discreetly, but the damn thing kept locking whenever Pamela accelerated, and Jade ended up having a tug-of-war with it. Lady, I can’t protect you from a collision, she thought, gritting her teeth as Pamela shot past a taxi pulling out onto the main road, missing its front bumper by the width of an acrylic fingernail.

  She’d been a nervous passenger with David at the wheel, too, but he just laughed when she complained and called her a control freak.

  Perhaps she was. Perhaps that was why he’d moved back to Turffontein.

  Forcing thoughts of David out of her mind, Jade focused on the task at hand, checking the wing mirrors carefully, watching as Pamela zig-zagged in and out of the slower-moving streams of traffic on William Nicol Drive. Cars behind them, cars beside them, cars, for a short time at least, in front.

  Pamela turned left into Sandton Drive and then left again. They passed a sign for Sandown with an advertisement for gourmet catering services below it.

  This narrow, two-lane road was also busy. Above the noisy traffic, Jade picked up the drone of a motorbike engine approaching fast behind them.

  Pamela glanced into the rear-view mirror when she heard the bike, and gripped the wheel harder.

  “Jade, I think——”

  Jade never found out what Pamela thought, because at that exact moment the whiplash crack of a gunshot split the air.

  She felt the bullet’s deadly breath as it sped past her. A small, round hole appeared in the driver’s window, surrounded by a milky web of cracks, and then Jade found herself staring at another neat little hole on the left-hand side of the windscreen.

  The motorbike, Jade realised in horror.

  Its rider had shot at their car. Shot at a woman whom she had considered to be a low-risk client, on a public street, in broad daylight.

  Pamela’s handbag tipped sideways and the contents scattered over the carpet as she swerved violently and started screaming. “Dear God! Help! I’m going to be killed!”

  There are three stages to every attack. Stewart had counted them off on her thick, stubby fingers time and time again. Surprise, control, and escape.

  Always act during the surprise stage, she’d growled. Because when they’ve got control of your client, it will be too late.

  The roar of the bike, louder again, pulling alongside them. It was a red Ducati, and she could see the black leathers and dark-visored helmet of its rider. Tall and strong-legged. Definitely a man. A man gripping a black Beretta in his left hand.

  “Keep calm,” Jade yelled. “And keep still. I’m going to try and get a shot at him.”

  She wrestled her Glock out of the holster and leaned forward, trying to get a clear line of sight, but in the confined space of the car’s compact interior, there simply wasn’t enough room to manoeuvre.

  Pamela was driving, and Pamela was also panicking. She ducked down, right into Jade’s line of fire, screaming and shoving at Jade’s gun hand as if she were the criminal. Then she flattened the accelerator and the car surged forward on a weaving, erratic path. Jade felt her stomach lag behind the motion in a queasy twist of terror.

  An oncoming Land Rover flashed its lights at them, swerving violently as the Corvette veered over the white line. The blare of its horn faded into the distance behind them.

  Jade looked over her shoulder. The bike had dropped back, but she saw to her dismay that it was catching up with them again. The only reason the rider wasn’t shooting now, she guessed, was that he wasn’t close enough to the rear window of Pamela’s convertible to get a clear enough line of sight.

  But she could see him.

  Jade raised her gun before realising the shot was impossible. With Pamela’s poor driving, she couldn’t be sure of hitting him, and there was a minibus taxi right behind him. A large, vulnerable target crammed with innocent passengers.

  She couldn’t do it.

  The motorbike pulled alongside them once again. It was close now, so close that Jade could almost feel the throb of its engine.

  “Listen to me!” Jade shouted, wishing she was in the driver’s seat. It was too late for that, and she’d made a critical error there. She should have insisted, even though the threat level had seemed low. “Drive into him, Pamela. Use your car as a weapon. Try and knock him off his bike.”

  “Help!” Pamela cried again, ignoring Jade’s advice completely. As Jade made a grab for the steering wheel, Pamela floored the accelerator and the Corvette surged forward once more.

  Another gunshot, followed by a whistling noise that told Jade this bullet had gone wide and shattered the side window.

  A large white van clattered past in the opposite direction, forcing the motorbike driver to drop back.

  “Watch the road!” A grinding scream as the Corvette’s bumper made contact with the raised kerb. Hysterical, Pamela snatched at the wheel. Tyres screeched as she overcorrected the steering, then braked hard to avoid rear-ending a slow-moving car ahead of them. A stately old Mercedes, the driver’s white head barely visible above the seat, oblivious to the commotion behind him.

  With a sick sense of doom, Jade realised they were pretty much trapped. The elderly driver was blocking the road in front of them, and there was a solid stream of traffic coming from the other direction.

  How close was their pursuer?

  She looked back again.

  The biker was directly behind them, aiming more carefully this time as he prepared to take another shot.

  Behind him, the taxi. Approaching fast, showing no signs of slowing down. What in God’s name was the driver thinking?

>   In an instant, Jade realised he must have seen what was happening, and he was coming to their rescue. As she watched, the accelerating taxi clipped the back wheel of the motorbike.

  The bike skidded violently, leaving black slashes of rubber on the tarmac, its engine screaming as the rider fought to regain control. Going more slowly now, the taxi nudged the motorbike a second time. Again it skittered sideways, wobbling dangerously, and this time Jade really did think it was going to hit the ground.

  Somehow the rider managed to right his machine and swung away, heading for a side street, but as he did he opened fire on the Corvette. Two ear-splitting shots in swift succession. One bullet smashed through the centre of the windscreen, and Pamela screamed, making a sound of pure terror.

  “Pamela, it’s ok, he’s … ”

  But Jade’s words were too late. Pamela twisted the wheel violently and, before Jade had time to react, the car had mounted the kerb with a bang and a smash. They careered along the uneven pavement, ploughing through grass and bouncing over driveways.

  Trapped in an out-of-control car; this was Jade’s worst nightmare.

  “Slow down!” she yelled. “He’s gone!” She braced herself sideways, clutching her seat with one hand and pushing against the dashboard with the other, preparing for the inevitable crash.

  The wing mirror hit a lamppost and snapped off instantly. Then, with a bang as loud as a gunshot, the Corvette cannoned into the metal struts of another sign.

  The impact was hard and searing. As the passenger airbag exploded onto Jade’s forehead and her seatbelt cut into her shoulder, Pamela, hurled forward without the protection of a belt, landed half on top of the deploying driver’s airbag. Her head connected with the windscreen with a terrible smacking sound.

  The car spun through 360 degrees, rocking violently, before finally coming to a standstill just beyond the mangled sign.

  Steam hissed from the engine.