At that moment, someone called Allie’s name. She spun around to see Dom in the doorway.
Even today, the tech wasn’t wearing a dress – she wore perfectly creased black trousers, with a white shirt and long, black blazer.
Her face was alight with excitement.
Allie hurried towards her, only vaguely aware that Sylvain had caught up and was walking alongside her.
‘What is it?’ Allie asked.
Dom motioned for her to follow. If she was surprised to see Sylvain it didn’t show on her face.
‘Come with me. We’ve found something.’
11
Dom moved fast down the hallway, her long jacket flowing behind her. Sylvain and Allie stayed right on her heels. She stopped only long enough to grab Isabelle and Raj along the way.
‘What have you found?’ Sylvain asked her as they hurried through the classroom wing to the stairwell.
Allie glanced at him. His face was set, his blue eyes clear and focused. He’d stepped back into Cimmeria’s crisis situation seamlessly. As if he’d never gone away at all.
‘We’ve been tracing their communications, trying to triangulate their location. Looking for any indication of where they’re keeping Carter,’ Dom explained.
‘Nathaniel has no idea we can hear every word his guards say,’ Isabelle added. ‘It’s a useful tool.’
‘Or it should be,’ Raj said. ‘If they’d say something useful.’
‘They just did,’ Dom said, shooting him a look. ‘At last.’
When they reached her office, Shak was at the table typing furiously, headphones perched on his head.
‘Has there been more?’ Dom asked as she hustled across the room.
He nodded without looking up. ‘They’re still talking.’
Sylvain turned around, taking in the room that had become a command hub. Allie tried to see it with his eyes – maps stretched across one wall, tagged with dozens of photos of expensive mansions owned by supporters of Nathaniel, a cluster of laptops dominating the round table, metres of wires snaking across the floor.
Dom hurried to her desk calling over shoulder, ‘Give me a second and I’ll show you what I’m talking about.’
Isabelle and Raj followed her, talking quietly. Allie and Sylvain stayed by the door, waiting.
The room fell quiet, the only sound the machine gun rattle of computer keys as Shak and Dom typed.
Then Dom glanced up. ‘Here we go.’
Crackling male voices filled the air from hidden speakers.
‘He says he wants you to pick up a package.’ Allie recognised the nasal voice as belonging to the guard they knew only as Six. ‘From that place in the village.’
There was a pause than another voice swore. It was Nine. ‘What are we now? His sodding delivery boys? This is ridiculous. Waste of our time. Tell him to pick up his own package.’
The guards engaged in creative criticism of their boss, whose name they never mentioned. But it was clear they were talking about Nathaniel.
‘I’ve had just about enough of this,’ Nine’s voice sounded cold with anger. ‘Someone has to tell One this is over.’
‘Go right ahead.’ Six’s voice was a snarl. ‘But someone’s still got to go down to the Half Moon and pick up the bloody package and it isn’t going to be me.’
Raj took a sharp breath.
Dom pushed a button, cutting off their voices.
‘That was their first mistake,’ she said. ‘There are forty-seven establishments in England called the Half Moon. Fifteen are in the south of England. Only four are within the Home Counties where we believe Nathaniel to be hiding.’
She typed something into her keyboard, and a map flashed up on the widescreen monitor mounted on one wall. A bright red circle had been drawn on it.
Allie’s heart skipped a beat. Suddenly she knew what Dom was going to say.
‘Nathaniel is somewhere in that circle.’ Dom thrust a finger at the screen. ‘I’d bet this building and everyone in it that’s where Carter is, too.’
‘Well, it’s a start.’ Isabelle glanced at Raj, whose expression was set and brooding. ‘But no more than that.’
Raj nodded his agreement.
Allie wanted more. ‘If we know where he is, we should go get him,’ she said. ‘What are we waiting for?’
Raj typed something into Dom’s computer, and brought up a satellite image of green countryside, dotted with houses. He thrust his finger at the monitor.
‘There will be no fewer than five hundred houses in that area, Allie,’ he said. ‘That’s five hundred places to hide.’ He pointed at a long building, a rectangular white blob on the screen. ‘Then there are industrial structures. Farm buildings. Barns. We can’t break into all of them.’
Allie’s heart fell. When he put it that way, it didn’t seem like they knew much at all. Carter was still lost.
Her unhappiness must have shown on her face.
‘A start isn’t nothing,’ Dom chided her gently. ‘It’s a beginning. You have to have a beginning before you can get to the end.’