Relief flooded through me, and I let out a gleeful little breath. Of course he hadn’t given up on me. Maxim would never do that. He’d been fighting for me before he even knew me.
CHAPTER 24
Elizabeth
When Max hung up the phone, he looked moodier than ever.
“What’s going on?”
“Sandra’s taking the manuscript to the publisher.”
“When?”
“Right now.”
I frowned sharply. This wasn’t good. If the list of names got out after everything he’d done to try and stop it, someone was going to try and say Maxim hadn’t done his job, because I’d caused too much of a distraction. Worse, maybe they’d think I distracted him on purpose.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know. In her car.”
I took Maxim’s phone off him. “Then it’s not over yet. Get the bike, we need to go to Hammersmith. You’re still tracking her, right?”
“Of course I am. What are you planning?”
“We’re going to take it back, Maxim, that’s what.”
Holding my breath, I waited for the phone to stop ringing and someone to pick up. “Mitch? It’s Elizabeth. Can you do me a favor? I need some of the guys to help me out. The ones with mopeds. You know who I mean.”
Mitch sounded grudging and there was a solid pause, but the old man let a breath out anyway, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “What have you gone and got yourself messed up in, girlie?”
“I’d tell you, but I’d have to kill you,” I joked, and that was enough to get a bark of a laugh out of him. “It’s got to be now, Mitch. I don’t have any time to explain.”
“Alright. Leave it with me. Don’t you worry. They’ll be ready when you want them. Just don’t go telling Cassie.”
“Thanks Mitch. I owe you big time.”
Maxim
“Right lads, you understand what the job is?”
I folded my arms across my chest, squinting across at half a dozen teenagers, dressed in an assortment of tracksuits that had nothing at all to do with a willingness to work out, although half of them had come from Elizabeth’s boxing gym. Friends of friends of friends. Down the line enough that they didn’t really know her. But Mitch knew the kind of people she was after.
I was rewarded with a few unimpressed stares, and some wry, curling smiles. Someone revved the engine of their moped and helmets snapped down, and the other engines buzzed to life too.
I’d seen enough of this town not to be surprised by how quickly Mitch had them here, under the underpass, right on the road that Sandra’s car was due to come along.
It was a stroke of genius on Elizabeth’s part. She’d heard enough things not quite on the right side of the law to think that a Russian partnership wouldn’t go amiss, and she wasn’t wrong.
Some had their hoods pulled up over their heads, others had helmets on, some with reflective vizors over their faces, others brightly colored and open at the front like motocross helmets and they all started buzzing around us, pulling into formation around my Ducati.
Used to be the police couldn’t risk a chase with a kid without a helmet on. They’d tightened that up, but I’d seen gangs like this make brazen smash and grabs at high speed, taunting the Old Bill as they gave chase. Fake plates and a bit of organisation, enough to get them weaponised and effective. It was one particular strand of crime us Russian’s weren’t immediately involved in. At least, we hadn’t been until right then.
My Ducati was by far the most powerful bike in the set, and the others only had little buzzing motors, but it didn’t matter, they had speed and maneuverability. They could get in quick and get out faster. Elizabeth straddled the bike behind me, and pulled her helmet down, adjusting the vizor.
The pair of us were all in black. Fake plates were an easy switch when I already had a garage full. I’d waited until we were away from the building, out of sight of any traffic cameras to switch them out.
The mopeds flanked me as we roared up the dual highway, forming into a V like tight formation fighter jets. Each moped had a driver and a pillion rider, ready with fast hands and whatever weapons came to hand.
Like something out of Mad Max, one of the kids at the back pulled a wheelie and another one clinging to the back of his mate’s bike cranked up the volume on a portable speaker plugged into his phone. I might have been a gangster, but I’d never done anything as foolishly flashy as this.
The lot of them were animals. Undisciplined, crazy, stupid. They were exactly who we needed to use.
I saw the Jaguar pull out of the slip lane at the next junction we came to. We swarmed up the fast lane, overtaking until we were three cars ahead, two cars, distance narrowing. None of the drivers wanted to look at us. Passengers averted their eyes. None of them wanted to signal to us that they were likely targets.