‘I really won’t lie to you about anything,’ Christopher said with apparent earnestness. ‘I am here exactly for the reasons I gave.’ He paused. ‘You shouldn’t leave the gate like that. If Nathaniel finds out I’m here, he’ll use it.’
‘The door’s been barricaded.’ Raj’s reply was gruff. ‘It’ll be bricked over tomorrow.’ He didn’t take his seat, standing with his fingertips light on the battered table top. ‘We’ll get you that map. I want you to show me where that house is.’
He motioned for Isabelle and Allie to rise. ‘Could you come with me, please? I’d like a word.’
They headed out together. At the door, Allie looked back. Christopher was watching them go.
She’d never seen him look more lonely.
‘What do you think?’ Isabelle asked Raj.
His ran a hand across his jaw. ‘I don’t know. If it’s an act, he’s very good.’
‘Well,’ Isabelle reminded him, ‘he’s had a good teacher.’
They’d gathered in the shadowy cellar corridor. A short distance behind them, four of Raj’s men guarded the cell holding Christopher.
Isabelle turned to Allie, who was standing quietly beside them. ‘What do you think? You know him better than us.’
Allie hesitated. ‘I wish I could be certain,’ she said. ‘That seemed like the real Christopher but…’
‘But he could be a good liar.’ Raj finished the sentence for her. ‘So we are in agreement.’
Allie didn’t argue with him but inside, she was torn. She was betraying Christopher by not believing him. But he’d done so little recently to merit her trust.
Even if he really had changed his mind, her loyalties had to lie with Cimmeria. With the people upstairs. Not with the brother who, not all that long ago, tried to burn this building down.
‘We’ll know more when we have a chance to check on that house.’ Isabelle called over her shoulder impatiently, ‘Where is that map?’
A guard spoke into his radio, then looked up at her. ‘On the way now.’
Isabelle turned to Raj, her gaze sharpening. ‘We will have to talk about that gatehouse, by the way. How was that allowed to happen?’
His lips tightened. ‘I wish I knew. Apparently the work was extremely professional, but I will take personal responsibility for that security lapse. It was unacceptable.’
It was very unusual for the headmistress to allow a student to observe her criticising her staff. Allie felt uncomfortably like an eavesdropper. She tried to find other things to look at.
‘Hmph.’ Isabelle seemed about to launch into a more heated complaint when Dom appeared out of the gloom, a laptop tucked under one arm, papers clutched in her hand.
She’d clearly run all the way down from her top floor office, and she was breathless by the time she reached them.
‘It’s real,’ she said before Isabelle could ask the question. ‘The house is real.’
Setting the laptop down roughly on a dusty ledge, she flipped it open. The screen lit up and a map appeared.
A location had been marked with a red dot. Dom tapped it with a fingertip.
‘There’s a farm here called St John’s Fields. It’s been in the St John family for generations.’
The computer screen was the brightest light in the dim hallway. Its glow gave everyone’s faces a ghostly hue.
‘And it’s the right St John?’ Isabelle’s voice sounded tight. ‘My father?’
Dom nodded. ‘It was in your father’s property portfolio until shortly before he died. At some point it was signed over to Nathaniel St John.’ She handed Isabelle a piece of paper. ‘The reason it didn’t come up in our property searches is because Nathaniel transferred ownership to a property portfolio trust, Ptolemy Properties Limited, more than a decade ago.’ Her glasses glinted in the light. ‘Basically, he sold it to himself.’
‘Which took it out of his name.’ Raj sounded impressed.
‘Exactly. The only property he didn’t transfer was the London townhouse.’ Dom glanced from Isabelle to Raj. ‘We’ve checked all the properties in the portfolio for other possibles but there are none in the region where we believe Nathaniel is hiding. We’re still going through them all thoroughly, though. Just in case we’ve missed something.’
‘Thank you, Dom.’ Isabelle looked grimly pleased. ‘This could be the place.’
Raj was already pulling his phone from his pocket. ‘We’ll need to readjust the satellite to give us a look at the house as soon as the sun comes up. I’ll get some of my guys out there. And anything you can find on the security he’s got in place out there…’
Dom nodded. ‘We’re working on that now.’
Raj glanced at his watch. ‘I think there’s not much we can do tonight until we can get a look at that house. It would be a good idea to let everyone get some rest. It might be a long time before we get another chance.’
Allie thought of the clock on the screen upstairs. Counting down, down, down.
‘Come on, Raj,’ she objected, ‘we don’t have time.’