Hunter Hunted by Jack Gatland (best romantic books to read .TXT) 📕

‘Not picking up, or the phone’s going straight to voicemail?’

‘What’s the difference?’ Lizzie was angry now, and her voice was rising.

‘If it’s the latter, she could be in a place where the signal’s not good,’ Declan replied calmly. ‘She might not even realise.’

‘And if it’s the former?’

‘Look, Liz,’ Declan leaned back against the bed’s headboard. ‘She’s a smart, intelligent girl, and she’s had self-defence classes given to her by the best police instructors since she was six. She knows how to look after herself. There’s probably a simple explanation to this.’

‘The simple explanation is that she’s bloody well grounded.’

‘That’s your right as a mum, but just remember, when you yell at her, you did far worse at her age.’

There was a pause.

‘I’m scared, Dec.’

‘And I understand that.’ Declan looked at the time on the phone. ‘Listen. If Jess doesn’t return by eleven, call me again. I’ll get the entire bloody police force out looking for her. But if you don’t give her some rope, she’ll always pull against what she has. She’ll probably come back in half an hour and she’ll have an explanation that answers everything.’

Lizzie reluctantly agreed and ended the call. Declan laid back in the bed and turned off the light, but couldn’t sleep, waiting for a second call that confirmed the worst; that Jessica Walsh was missing, and it was all Declan’s fault.

But the phone call never came; Jessica had obviously come home late and faced her mother’s wrath; and happy to stay out of that particular family squabble Declan eventually slept fitfully through the night, waking up just before seven in the morning. He’d showered, shaved and dressed, grabbed some toast for breakfast and was on his second coffee, preparing to leave when the doorbell went.

Nobody called at seven thirty in the morning.

Suspicious and walking to the door, Declan stopped.

What if this was the same person who attacked Monroe, now attacking Declan?

He paused by the door, peering through the fisheye peephole. Surprised, he opened the door.

Trix was standing on the doorstep.

‘Alright, Declan?’ she asked.

9

Surprise Visitors

Declan stared at the young woman standing on his front doorstep.

‘You’re bloody kidding me,’ he said, looking around to see if anyone else was around who could have seen this early morning visitor. ‘I thought you’d be locked away by now.’

Trix shook her head. ‘I was being forced to do those things,’ she said. ‘But, when it all ended, they gave me a lifeline, a way out.’

‘So what, you want your old job back?’ Declan almost laughed. ‘Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to happen.’

Trix stood on the doorstep silent for a moment.

‘So, we can do this,’ she said. ‘You can be a prick and be all holier than thou, or you can get off your bloody high horse, let me in and we can talk about Monroe.’

Now it was Declan’s turn to stand silently.

‘What do you know about Monroe?’ he eventually asked.

‘Ask me inside.’

‘What are you, a bloody Vampire? Get in,’ Declan moved to the side of the doorway, allowing Trix to enter past him. ’So what do you know?’

‘More than you might think. I’ve been keeping tabs on you,’ Trix explained. ‘For someone in Whitehall.’

‘Charles Baker,’ Declan answered for her. ‘Let me guess, he’s the one who sorted your sentence out?’

Trix paused, as if unwilling to confirm this, before nodding. ‘Like him, I was being forced to do things by Pearce. But unlike him, I didn’t get away with things, so rather than going to prison, I’m working off a debt,’ she said. ‘Surveillance. Similar to what I was doing when I was under Pearce, to be honest, but I’m Security Service now.’

‘MI5?’

‘More a bastard offshoot. I was listening to you all the way through the Angela Martin case, and—‘

‘You can’t have been,’ Declan interrupted. ‘Jo Davey swept the office for bugs every day. We found all of them.’

‘Yeah, you found the bugs, but I wasn’t talking about those,’ Trix sat down on the sofa. ‘Any chance of a coffee? I’m parched.’

Declan looked as if he was going to shout, but eventually, after a silent count to ten in his head, he nodded and walked into the kitchen. Trix carried on, speaking through the doorway.

‘You’ve got laptops and computers in your office, and they all have webcams, microphones, yeah?’ she said. ‘Before you found me out, I’d put a backdoor into the server and executed a command that allowed me to operate any of these remotely.’

‘That’ll piss Billy off,’ Declan shouted back. ‘The server’s like his bastard child.’

‘I know,’ Trix grinned. ‘It’s why I did it. I wanted a challenge, and the Met and City Police systems are usually so shit.’ She stretched her arms. ‘I couldn’t turn the cameras, like physically move them, and I could only hear through the laptops and webcams when you were near one of them, but I could pretty much get the gist of most things.’

Declan emerged from the kitchen, a black coffee in his hand.

‘You watching last night?’

Trix took the mug. ‘Got any milk and sugar?’

’No.’

‘Fair dues,’ Trix leaned back. ‘And yeah, I was.’

‘Why?’ Declan sat in an armchair facing her. ‘Nothing on TV?’

‘I told you, I was working off the debt,’ Trix leaned forward, sipping at the coffee. ‘I was told to upload a file. And, because of that I was online, so to speak.’

‘What do you mean, upload a file?’ Declan leaned in to match Trix, his tone of voice darkening. ‘Was it you? The file that Monroe had?’

Trix pulled back at this accusation.

‘Yes, but hear me out,’ she cautiously replied, reaching into her pocket and withdrawing a phone. Showing it to Declan, there was a single text message on it.

flick the switch

‘That’s the go order,’ she explained. ‘I was told by my boss that when this message arrived, I was to remotely ping a file to Monroe’s laptop. No idea who created it, and I didn’t see what the contents of the file were, just the name. Kendis Taylor dot pdf.’

‘Was it supposed to