Ben could hardly stand feeling so powerless. All he could think of was Grace, and the absolute need to protect her the only way he could. Doubts began to creep into his mind. Had he played it right? Should he have done it differently?

That was when Frank came into the bedroom. Ben heard the door swing open hard and judder against the wall. The tread of footsteps clumping about the room. The crash of a bedside cabinet being violently tipped over and its contents spilling out. A lamp falling over. The angry muttering of a man frustrated by not being able to find what he was looking for.

Any moment now, Frank would head for the walk-in wardrobe. Ben realised it was virtually impossible that he wouldn’t think of searching among Abbott’s things in there. Ben’s plan to remain undetected was unravelling by the second. He and Wolf shrank back behind the row of hanging suits. Trying not to let the plastic covers rustle. He felt his palm becoming moist against the butt of the Browning.

And as he stood there listening to the man searching the bedroom, new thoughts were coming into Ben’s head. Because even though the confrontation he’d so badly wanted to avoid was now virtually inevitable, maybe the disaster could be turned to his advantage. The information Ben had hoped to gain from Abbott had died with him, but now a new option existed to find out who the killers were – more importantly, who they worked for. And if it could be done without their employers finding out too soon, then the time window for saving Grace could be kept open just a little longer.

To make that happen, Ben and Wolf needed to keep just one of the crew alive. A man with a gun pointed at his head could be made to report back to base as though everything was okay. He could also be persuaded to lead them straight back to his bosses.

Maybe this situation could offer Ben and Wolf a faster track to taking down the enemy than they’d anticipated. That thought filled Ben with a fierce, burning energy, like a supernova of pure white light.

He slipped Abbott’s laptop onto a shelf covered in neatly folded clothes. Started to move towards the wardrobe door. In the darkness, Wolf flashed him a look of alarm. What the fuck are you doing? But Ben could see in Wolf’s grim expression that he was getting ready for the inevitable fight, too.