Everything stopped and for a second, there was total silence. We all looked at each other, panting. What the fuck?

The rear doors swung open. A man in a leather jacket, jeans and a black balaclava ran over to me with a pair of bolt cutters and cut the chain of my handcuffs. I fell in a heap to the floor and he threw me the bolt cutters, then ran back outside.

Who the hell’s that? Then I decided I didn’t care: free was better than jail. I quickly cut everyone’s handcuff chains. Our guns were in a separate locker at the back of the truck. I cut the padlock on that, too, and we grabbed them.

Outside, we saw a cement truck with its front grill crumpled: now we knew what had rammed into the side of our truck. The guy in a balaclava was holding off the German police, firing over their heads to make them duck down behind their cars. When he saw us, he ran towards a parked van and nodded me towards the driver’s seat. I jumped in, he got into the passenger seat and everyone else piled into the back.

I crushed the gas pedal and we tore off down the street in a cloud of tire smoke. The guy next to me finally pulled off his balaclava and we all stared at him in shock.

“Well don’t all feckin’ thank me at once,” said Kian.

Bradan threw his arms around his brother and hugged him tight from behind. Everyone else pressed in close and started slapping his shoulders in thanks. I had to make do with blindly reaching across and ruffling his hair because I was blasting us through the center of Berlin at sixty miles an hour.

“What about the Secret Service?” asked JD. “Does Emily know you’re here?”

“She helped me give ‘em the slip,” Kian said fondly. “As soon as it all went south for you lot, she understood.”

I screeched around a corner, threw the van into reverse and slotted it into an alley. Five seconds later, the police tore past. We waited as their sirens faded into the distance, then relaxed.

“Tell me everything,” said Kian.

We caught him up, finishing with how Becker had taken Erin. “We’ve got to get her back,” I said, my voice tight. I felt JD look at me, but he didn’t say anything.

Kian glanced between JD and me, sensing the tension. Then he shook his head: later. “We will,” he told us.

It was good to have him there. But my stomach was a tight, cold knot of worry. How were we going to save her when we had no idea where she was?

70. Erin

70

ERIN