Sidney Sheldon’s Mistress of the Game. Tilly Bagshawe

the authorities at all. With their money and connections, they could easily have made the payment quietly and been done with it. Or hired their own, private hit men to try and get these guys.

      But they hadn’t. They’d come to Agent Edwards with a case that would either make or break his career. Screwing up was not an option.

      Finding the kidnappers’ car had been a coup. Agent Edwards had matched the DNA on hairs found in the trunk to hairs from Lexi’s pillow. Two voice-distorted phone calls to Peter Templeton’s office were probably made from inside a large, industrial structure. The FBI’s tech team had analyzed the echo, if you could believe that shit.

      But it wasn’t enough. Agent Edwards didn’t want eighteen targets. He wanted one.

      ‘Send a chopper up. Not too low. It needs to sound like routine air traffic.’

      ‘Yes, sir. What are they looking for, exactly?’

      Agent Edwards looked at his junior witheringly.

      ‘The Emerald City of Oz. Jesus! Tire tracks, shit-for-brains. They’re looking for fucking tire tracks.’

      He’d never wanted to get involved.

      He was in a brothel in Phuket when the call came through, enjoying the attentions of a pair of eleven-year-old twins. Pussies so tight they could have cracked hazelnuts, tongues as eager and skillful as any of the high-end hookers he used back home. Bliss.

      He loved the Thais. Such an enlightened people.

      ‘Ten million bucks, split three ways. The house has third world security. Trust me, you’ll be taking candy from a baby. Get in, get the kid, get the money, get out.’

      ‘I don’t need that kind of money.’

      Laughter. ‘You don’t have to need it. You just have to want it.’

      ‘I’m straight now, all right? Find someone else.’

      He closed his eyes in pleasure as the girls plundered his body with their tongues and fingers. At home, he paid prostitutes to dress up as schoolgirls. But nothing could compare to the real deal: the smooth skin, the hard, budding breasts, the hairless paradise between the legs …

      ‘You know, the little girl is adorable.’

      The voice on the phone wasn’t giving up.

      ‘She’s the spitting image of her mother. Everybody says so.’

      He hesitated. An image of Alexandra Blackwell in her youthful heyday popped into his mind. He remembered her well. The long, lithe legs, tanned a perfect caramel. The cascade of blonde hair. The trembling, pale pink lips, parting, smiling:

      Hello Rory. It’s been a long time.

      ‘How old did you say she was?’

      One of the Thai twins circled her tongue around his anus. The other opened her mouth, cocooning his balls in a cave of warm, soft wetness. He moaned with pleasure.

      ‘She’s eight.’

      Eight years old.

      The spitting image of her mother.

      Everybody says so.

      ‘All right. I’ll do it. But this is the last …’

      He never got to finish. The line had already gone dead.

      

      ‘Have you found her?’

      Peter Templeton clutched Agent Edwards’ hand so tightly he cut off the circulation.

      Agent Edwards thought: Poor bastard. He’s aged ten years in the last two weeks.

      ‘We think so. Yes. A facility in Jersey, near …’

      ‘When are you going in?’

      ‘Tonight. As soon as it’s dark.’

      ‘Can’t you do it now?’

      ‘Tonight will be better. This is the best way, sir. Trust me. We have a lot of experience with hostage situations.’

      Peter thought: I hope to God he knows what he’s doing.

      Agent Edwards thought: I hope to God I know what I’m doing.

      They both thought: What if they kill her between now and nightfall?

      ‘Try and get some rest, sir. As soon as we hear anything, I’ll let you know.’

      

      The leader and the other man were angry with the pig. Lexi heard them fighting. She could only make out fragments.

       We agreed … Can’t control yourself … what if she identifies?

       She won’t … the mask, man

       Goddamned paedo …

      … how much longer? … I want my money.

       Soon

       Two weeks already … if they were gonna pay …

      Shut the hell up, man! You’ll get your money.

      Lexi pressed her face to the door of her cramped cell, straining for every word. Not because she was frightened. But because she was determined to glean as much information about her captors as possible. Especially the pig, the man who had hurt her, who had forced his body inside her.

      My family will come for me. One day, soon they’ll come. Then I’ll make that pig suffer for what he did to me.

      Her greatest nightmare was not that she might be killed, but that her kidnappers might somehow escape. She mustn’t let that happen. They had to be punished.

      

      ‘Jesus Christ. How much longer?’

      Agent Edwards squatted behind an unmarked car in the gathering darkness. Next to him squatted his junior partner, Agent Jones. Behind them crouched Chuck Barclay, the commander of the special marine corps unit that was about to lead the rescue operation.

      ‘Twelve minutes.’ Captain Barclay smiled, a flash of white teeth illuminating his tar-blackened face. He was a small, rather unprepossessing man in his mid forties, with a thin wiry body and pinched face; more of a fox terrier than the mastiff that Agent Edwards had been expecting. More worryingly, Barclay’s ‘crack squad’ appeared to consist of only five young marines with night-vision goggles and standard-issue handguns. There wasn’t an automatic weapon or a hand grenade in sight.

      ‘Barclay’s the best,’ Agent Edwards’s boss had assured him.

      He’d better be.

      The twelve minutes felt like twelve hours. It was a warm, late summer night, but Agent Edwards could feel the hairs on his arms and neck stand on end. Cold, clammy sweat seeped from his pores. His shirt was wet. He noticed Agent Jones was also shivering. The crumbling textile mill on the hill above them was barely discernible in the darkness. Even with the roar of the route 206 traffic in the distance, it felt like the most desolate place on earth.

      Then suddenly, a movement. Captain Barclay gave a terse nod to his men. Seconds later, as if by magic, they had dispersed across the flat landscape, dropping into the undergrowth like so many silent leaves. It was impressive.