Tuesday’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘What are you doing? You can’t call her, remember? The bad guys could be listening in to every word.’

Jeff grinned. He replied, ‘I’m not calling her.’

Chapter 35

Wolf tossed Ben the remains of the miniature body cam the dead guy had been wearing. Ben examined it. There was no doubt about what it was. Saunders and his associates hadn’t been content for the clean-up team simply to report back to them. They’d wanted a live-streamed window on the entire process. Whatever they’d come here to find, they were extremely serious about it.

A terrible chill filled the whole of Ben’s body as the realisation of what that meant hit him like a striking bullet. There was no longer any chance of concealing what had happened here, or of trying to play for more time. His energy drained away and he wanted to curl up on the floor beside Frank’s body. Because he understood that Grace was dead, or soon would be. Hidden in their towers, the enemy had observed every detail of what just happened, and who had killed their men. They knew that Jaden Wolf was still alive. Knew that they’d been tricked.

The same all-seeing eye that had caught out Wolf in the grounds of Karswell Hall that night had now done the same to Ben. He’d walked right into their trap. And now he would have to face the consequences.

Ben slowly trudged down the stairs, stepped over the other two dead bodies and brushed past Wolf without even looking at him. He felt as if he was walking through a trance.

Wolf asked, ‘Where are you going?’

Ben didn’t reply.

Wolf said, ‘Well, you might not be interested, but I’m going back up for that computer. Otherwise we’ll have come here for sweet bugger all.’

Ben no longer cared about the laptop. He crossed the hallway without bothering to walk around the blood pool, and left a trail of sticky red prints all the way into the kitchen where he made a bee-line for the collection of whisky bottles on the side. Quality single malts, all of them, though it wouldn’t have mattered if they’d been the worst kind of rot-gut. He grabbed two. Stuck one in his pocket and carried the other back out into the hallway. Wolf had come back downstairs with the Dell. He looked at Ben with concern and asked, ‘You okay?’

Ben replied, ‘No.’

Wolf checked his watch. 12.32 p.m. They’d been inside the house longer than felt comfortable. Neighbours could have heard the sounds of gunfire. ‘We’d better get out of here.’