‘Jesus,’ he said, wishing they could do more. ‘Can’t we move any faster?’
‘We’re gaining on them with every minute that passes.’
‘You’re saying she knew about this tracker?’
‘Yep. I put it in there Sunday evening. She fought me on it but nothing new there.’
‘She never told me,’ he said, which made him think she’d had something like this in her mind all along. Failure from the search team to find the girls would have grown the notion, Symes’s recording would have cemented the idea in her head, and Leanne’s timely injury had played right into her hands.
He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was perfectly prepared to exchange her life for theirs.
‘We’ve got company,’ said the driver, nodding to his rear-view mirror.
Bryant looked out of the rear window to see a second squad car behind them.
‘And another,’ the driver said as a third pulled out of a side street.
Bryant still couldn’t get his thinking beyond a twenty-minute delay.
He was sure the boss was expecting them to track her, which was all well and good while her phone was working, but what if it went dead or through a no-signal zone? She might know they were coming but she didn’t know how long it would take. Twenty minutes. What damage could Symes do to her in twenty minutes?
He swallowed down a wave of sickness as Leanne raised her gaze.
‘Good timing,’ she said. ‘Her phone has stopped moving. Start heading towards Shipley,’ she said to the driver. ‘And you and your buddies now need to make as much noise as you can.’
SEVENTY-SEVEN
Kim felt the car come to a halt. It wasn’t a pause at a set of lights or a junction. The engine had stopped.
She felt the car shift as Symes got out of the driver’s side of the vehicle.
A rush of cool air circled her as the back of the car was opened.
She felt something being cut close to her wrists before her arms became separated from her feet. Her joint muscles cried out at the sudden freedom.
A meaty hand grabbed at the back of her neck.
‘Out you get, bitch,’ he said, pulling her out of the car. She landed in a heap on what felt like gravel. ‘It’s just you and me now. That tracker they probably put in your phone is about thirty feet away from where I grabbed you, so you’re pretty fucked.’
Thank God he’d taken the bait and believed the borrowed phone to be hers. Everything about saving the girls hinged on her being able to use her head. Physically, he was right. She was fucked. Her wrists were still bound behind her and her ankles tied together.
‘Get up, bitch,’ he said, using her arms to pull her to her feet.
He ripped the blindfold from behind her head and there he was, as ugly and foul as she remembered him.
Despite the beating of her heart, she tried to employ all of her senses, as she had no idea where she was and daylight was fading fast, so it had to be around 6p.m.
She couldn’t hear any traffic, and she was standing before what looked like a row of six or seven derelict cottages.
‘Welcome to the place you’re going to die,’ he said, grabbing her right arm.
‘You’ll never get away with it,’ she said, returning the hatred in his eyes.
‘See anyone around, do you?’
‘They’ll find you.’
‘I don’t give a fuck,’ he said, dragging her forward. She had no choice but to hop to keep up with him. The time to fight him hadn’t come yet. First, she had to make sure the girls were safe.