Run Girl: Ingrid Skyberg FBI Thrillers Prequel Novella (7 page)

Ingrid felt a little guilty she’d been so quick to assume the woman was incompetent. “And how did he respond?”

“He told me the house belongs to his parents. It was his grandmother’s. He seemed very young to be living there all by himself.”

“You didn’t see anyone else at the property?”

“We had the conversation on the doorstep, so I can’t really say one way or the other. I just got the impression he was alone. He looked a bit… unkempt.”

“Thank you so much for your help. It’s greatly appreciated.” Ingrid hung up. “I forgot to mention before—the lawyers will be invoicing your company for her time,” she told Angelis. She decided not to mention the amount.

Angelis gulped down the last of his dessert, something called Eton Mess—a mixture of strawberries, meringue and cream all squished up in a dish. “So, swift visit to Bicknacre for us then.”

“How about you make a quick call to your tech guys? See if they’ve uncovered any more promising leads for us.”

Angelis shrugged. “Not necessary. They’d call me if they found anything.”

Ingrid was acutely aware time was ticking down. Angelis seemed far too relaxed about everything. They had less than ten hours to locate Rachel Whitticker and pick her up. As far as Ingrid was concerned, they were nowhere near that objective. “But we can travel via helicopter?”

“If I can swing it with the powers that be. Leave it with me.” Over coffee Angelis made several calls, each conversation more heated than the one before. Despite her better judgment, Ingrid was actually impressed by his powers of persuasion.

A half hour later they were ducking their heads beneath the downdraft of the rotor blades of the Eurocopter EC120 at a helipad just south of the River Thames in Battersea.

“You’ve got to admit,” Angelis hollered as they boarded, “I do know how to travel in style.”

Ingrid buckled up and prepared herself for what the pilot promised would be a bumpy ride.

The journey was mercifully without incident and the helicopter touched down in a farmer’s field near the village of Bicknacre just twenty-five minutes later. A taxi was waiting with its engine running in the dirt track that ran along one side of the field.

“Mr Oxley better bloody well be there when we arrive,” Angelis said as the cab bumped along the track.

“Let’s hope his beautiful new girlfriend is with him.”

The taxi pulled in toward the curb twenty or so yards from the dinky little cottage. After giving the driver strict instructions to stay exactly where he was if he expected to get paid, Ingrid and Angelis climbed out and made their way down the narrow road.

The cottage was set apart from the other properties on the street, on its own little patch of land. Even though the day was gloomy, there were no lights on inside.

“You think the woman from the lawyers office spooked him so much he fled?” Ingrid asked as they pushed through the blue painted wooden gate.

“One way to find out.” Angelis strode up the brick-paved snaking path and lifted a fist toward the front door.

Ingrid grabbed his arm before he made contact. “Maybe we shouldn’t announce our arrival.”

“What are you suggesting? Picking the lock?”

“Can you?”

“I have many skills, but I’m afraid that isn’t one of them.”

Ingrid peered toward the right hand edge of the cottage. “The path probably goes all the way around to the backyard. I’ll find a way in through the rear door.” She started to move off, but Angelis tugged on her jacket.

“I’ll take the back door. Don’t even think about arguing with me. I absolutely insist. Give me a couple of minutes.”

Ingrid watched Angelis disappear around the side of the building. A few moments later she heard the crash of breaking glass. A moment or two after that she heard what sounded like the thump of footsteps coming down a flight of stairs. The front door swung wide open. Ingrid was suddenly face to face with a skinny boy dressed in low slung jeans and a hooded sweat top. He looked at her through big round glasses, his floppy dark hair falling over his eyes. He glanced left then right.

“If you’re thinking of trying to get past me, I suggest you think again.” She took a step forward. “I can’t let that happen.” She lifted a foot over the threshold, forcing the young man further back inside the house.

“Shit!” Oxley turned quickly and started to run.

Straight into the open arms of Nick Angelis.

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“Careful,” Angelis said, grabbing the youth’s shoulders and pushing him away a few inches to focus more closely on his face. “You might do yourself an injury.” He smiled. “And we wouldn’t want that, would we? At least, not yet.” He forcibly turned Oxley around, slipping a restraining arm across his shoulders, then guided him down the narrow, dark hall to an open door at the other end.

Ingrid pushed open the only other door on the lower floor. It led into a small, gloomy, sparsely furnished living room. No sign of Rachel Whitticker. She then bounded up a flight of creaking wooden stairs to the upper floor. One by one, she kicked open the three doors leading off the hall. Both bedrooms and the bathroom were empty. Rachel had never set foot inside.

Ingrid trundled back downstairs and hurried along the dark hallway. Beyond the door at the other end was a small kitchen. Adam Oxley was sitting on a hard wooden chair next to a table covered in an incongruously cheerful red and white check tablecloth. Angelis was leaning over him, one hand resting on the table. He glanced up at Ingrid, who shook her head.

“Now,” Angelis said, “I wouldn’t want to keep you for any longer than necessary. Certainly I don’t want to waste more of my own time on this… matter. So I have one simple question for you.”

Adam Oxley, his eyes wide, stared intensely up at Angelis. He gulped noisily.

“Tell me where your online friend, Sophie, has taken herself off to.”

Oxley dropped his gaze to the table. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know anyone called Sophie.”

“I do hope you’re not planning to continue in this vein. I’ll tire of it very rapidly. You really don’t want to piss me off.” He grabbed the boy’s hair and yanked back his head. “Shall we try that again?”

Ingrid was just a few feet away. She leaned forward. Angelis must have sensed her movement, because he quickly let go of the boy’s head. She was happy to let him continue with the interrogation, but she’d step in as soon as he crossed the line. Right now she hadn’t decided exactly where that line was.

“Where is your little friend, Sophie?” Angelis asked again.

“Who are you?” Oxley tried to get to his feet. Angelis quickly clamped a hand on each of the boy’s narrow shoulders and forced him back down.

“It doesn’t matter who I am.”

“You have no right to trespass like this. It’s a private property. You broke in.” Oxley swiveled in his seat and turned toward Ingrid. “You’ve no right to be here. I’m going to call the police.”

“Feisty little bastard, aren’t you?” Angelis swiped a hand close to the boy’s head.

Oxley jumped violently in his seat.

“Right, this may be the very last time I ask you nicely. “Where is she?”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about!”

Without another word, Angelis marched across the room and opened a wooden cabinet beneath the sink. He crouched low and peered inside. Then quickly stood up and spun around. “You do know we have the power to arrest you? Keep you in custody indefinitely, using America’s Patriot Act. The US really doesn’t like anyone messing with their citizens.” Angelis turned back to the cabinet, pulled out a large orange bucket and shoved it in the sink. “Or I could cut to the chase and bring alleged US interrogation techniques right here into your late departed grandmother’s kitchen.” He turned on the faucet, water spluttered and gushed into the bucket.

“What are you doing?” the boy asked and attempted to stand again.

“Sit down!” Angelis barked.

Oxley slumped back into his seat.

As Ingrid watched the bucket fill, she wondered just how far Nick Angelis would be prepared to go to get the information he wanted. After all, she didn’t even know the man. He had to be bluffing. Didn’t he?

Angelis glanced over his shoulder at Oxley. “You’re a mathematician, you must know all about odds and probabilities. Right now, I’m increasing the likelihood of you giving me what I need.” He shot a warning glance in Ingrid’s direction, clearly letting her know she shouldn’t interfere. “Perhaps I should give you a brief resumé, Adam. Let you know what my credentials are in this… area of expertise.” He turned off the faucet and heaved the overflowing bucket out of the sink. In two strides he reached the table and slammed down the bucket, water slopping over the edge, soaking the red and white check tablecloth. “I was once in the army. Did active duty in Iraq, among other places.” He took off his jacket and hung it carefully over the back of the chair opposite Oxley. “I’ve had a great deal of experience with reticent witnesses.” He unbuttoned his cuffs.

Ingrid thought she heard the boy whimper. She silently watched Angelis start to roll up his left sleeve, inch by inch, revealing an elaborate tattoo of a woman in a flowing thigh length dress, a quiver of arrows slung over her back, a hunting dog at her feet. Some kind of ancient Greek Goddess, Ingrid supposed. Given Angelis’ expensive taste in suits, precisely coiffured hair and upperclass accent, the tattoo was entirely unexpected. She really didn’t know what to make of him at all.

“In my experience,” Angelis said, “they soon discover the error of their ways and see the light.” He grabbed the boy under the arms and dragged him out of his chair. “Usually shortly before everything goes black.”

Ingrid stepped a little closer. She was rewarded with another warning glance from Angelis.

With one hand still under the boy’s arm, Angelis pushed his face very close to Oxley’s. “Where is your American friend?”

“I don’t know.” Oxley stared at the bucket full of water, a look of terror in his eyes.

“You’re prepared to put yourself through all of this to protect some girl you barely know? I’m not sure whether I should applaud your loyalty or despise your stupidity.”

Angelis grabbed the boy’s neck and pushed his head toward the bucket. Ingrid grabbed Angelis’ other arm. He forcefully shook her off.

“Please! I don’t know!” Oxley cried.

Angelis shoved Oxley’s face into the water. The boy’s arms started to flail uselessly at his sides.

“For God’s sake!” Ingrid put a hand on Angelis’ shoulder.

A few moments later Angelis loosened his grip and the boy reared backward, coughing and spluttering. “Please… don’t hurt me,” he finally managed to say. “How can I tell you something I don’t know?”

Angelis tightened his hold again and applied downward pressure. Oxley’s face was just an inch or two from the surface of the water. “Tell me everything you do know!” Angelis pushed him closer, a quarter inch at a time.

Ingrid hesitated. She wanted to stop Angelis, yet at the same time was eager for Oxley to give up any information he might have. She laid a hand on Angelis’ arm. “No more.”

“Don’t make me fight you as well as him,” Angelis warned and pushed down Oxley’s head another half inch until his nose and mouth were again submerged. Angelis maintained that position for five, ten, fifteen seconds, then finally loosened his hold.

Oxley burst away from the water and sucked down breaths, coughing violently between each one.

“I can do this all day,” Angelis told him. “Can you?”

“Please… I really don’t know much.”

Angelis pushed him back down onto the chair. “I’m listening.”

“Sophie told me she was coming to London. She asked me to do her a favor.” He wiped a sleeve across his damp face. “She said I should disappear for a few days. Not tell anyone where I was going. Not use my phone. Not talk to anyone about her.”

“Did you ask why?”

Oxley shook his head. “I wanted to help her. I like her. She’s my friend.”

“Didn’t what she was asking you to do seem a little odd? Weren’t you at least curious?”

“If a friend asks for a favor, you don’t start questioning them. You just do it.”

“She’s your friend, yet she comes all this way and doesn’t want to see you. Seems to me she’s abused your trust.”

“You don’t understand. What we’ve got between us is… special.”

“Did she come here to meet someone else?”

“She didn’t say. But I suppose it’s possible.”

“Do you know where she was planning on meeting them?” Ingrid finally felt able to join the conversation. She was still shaken after watching Angelis’ performance. How could she just stand back and do nothing to stop him? What had gotten into her? She glanced at her hand. It was trembling.

Oxley shook his head. “She never told me anything about what she was planning to do.” He glanced down at the bucket of water. “I swear that’s the truth.”

“Has she ever mentioned any place here in the UK that might be important to her? Some place she wanted to visit?”

The boy shrugged. “Apart from London, she only ever talked about Cambridge. I want to do my masters there. Sophie said maybe she could come and study there at the same time. She said she absolutely loved the place. Apparently her dad was a student there years back.”

“You think she could be there right now?” Ingrid asked.

Oxley coughed before he answered. Water was running out both his nostrils. “I truly don’t know. She never gave me any details.”

“Does she know anyone there?”

“Some old friends of the family. She said I’d love them. Said they were a bit eccentric… like me.”

Adam Oxley hadn’t struck Ingrid as the eccentric type. She wondered if Rachel Whitticker had bothered to get to know him online very much at all.

“Which college in Cambridge did her father attend?” Angelis asked. Oxley flinched slightly at the sound of his voice.

“I… I… er…” The boy blinked rapidly, as if he were desperately trying to remember. “King’s,” he finally blurted out.

“Thank you.” Angelis said and carried the bucket over to the sink and emptied it. “It would have been so much easier for both of us if you’d told me that at the start.”

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