He had been in touch with both Guy Thomas and Robert Richmond, and the remaining kidnapper was still floating around somewhere just out of reach. Robert’s sources told him that he was still in England, but no one seemed to know where. He had gone underground and was staying out of sight.

Both men were immensely relieved that Mike had survived his ordeal.

Daniel had changed places with Patrick halfway through the New York trip.

Theo was sad to leave Mike, but he knew she had to get back to work, and he was grateful she had stayed for so long.

“I’ll come over as soon as they let me travel,” he promised her before she left. And they had decided to take the trip to Venice and Rome when he felt up to it, maybe in the summer.

She was swamped when she got back, and they spoke several times a day. The four agents from the DGSE were assigned to her again, and they were in evidence. She couldn’t enjoy the same freedom she’d had in New York, and she missed it.

She’d been back for a week when Robert got word of a sighting of the Russian they’d been looking for since December. They followed the leads he had to the Cotswolds, where they saw the kidnapper coming out of a supermarket and closed in on him before he could flee. He tried to run and fired a shot at one of the MI6 agents pursuing him, missed, and the agents caught him and pinned him to the ground, and delivered him personally three days later to Guy Thomas, who arrested him and added him to the others to stand trial for the kidnap and murder of Matthieu and Axel Pasquier, and the attempted kidnapping of Theodora Morgan Pasquier. Guy went to Theo’s office to tell her in person. Mike already knew, but Guy wanted the pleasure of telling her himself. It had taken more than a year to find them, but justice would be done in the end.

Theo looked incredulous when he told her. “Does that mean I’m a free woman?” she asked him.

“Not totally, I’m afraid. You will need to be careful in the future. You will always be a target. Your success and your fortune are both a blessing and a curse. I’d like to keep our detail with you for another month, just to be comfortable, and after that your own private security should accompany you publicly. There will always be someone envious and ill-intentioned. There are unseen evils in this world, and you need to protect yourself against them.”