‘Why?’
‘Because, like I said, I think he’s in trouble. Either Pierce Randall are keeping him prisoner, or someone else is.’
‘In which case, we won’t be able to see Guy.’
‘And then we’ll know for sure he’s being held against his will.’
‘Or maybe they just want him kept away from us.’
Jake shrugged. ‘Maybe. But at least we’ll get some idea of what’s really going on.’
‘Only if she agrees to see us,’ said Lauren.
‘She’ll see us,’ said Jake grimly. ‘I’m going to make her an offer she can’t refuse.’
The young man hung up his phone. So, Jake Wells and Lauren Graham were on the move. Pierce Randall was their next stop. Good. Things were moving, but not as fast as he would have liked. It was time to step the game up a gear. To move on from just tracking them, hunting them, watching as they made the moves he wanted them to make. It was time to give them a push towards the edge. Then, when they’d delivered, he could kick them over that edge. Dead.
He wondered about Gareth Findlay-Weston. It had been a bold move on his part, the right move to make, but had it got him any further towards his goal?
And then there were ‘the others’. His crew. Sharp, eager, vicious. Should he set them on Jake and his girlfriend?
No, not just yet. He’d see what Jake did, first. See if he went in a direction that was different, not predictable. He’d see what came out of their visit to Pierce Randall.
Chapter 9
Jake and Lauren sat in the reception area of Pierce Randall’s offices, doing their best to look outwardly calm and confident. It wasn’t easy. Both of them knew the deadly power that Pierce Randall could wield, had wielded. The firm pushed the law to its very limits, and — if that didn’t work — then they used blackmail and even murder to get what they wanted. And Pierce Randall got away with it because they were The Law, with fingers in the legislation of almost every country across the world. They were a firm with power, and it showed in this building, Pierce Randall’s London HQ: a wonder of twenty-first-century architecture, glass and steel, the reception area a vast open space decorated with sculptures and plants.
We really have walked right into the dragon’s den, reflected Jake nervously. He realised from the way Lauren tapped her fingers rhythmically on the arm of the chair that she felt the same apprehension.
Jake remembered when he’d last been here, over a year ago. Then, he’d been brought to meet Alex Munro for the first time and had been offered the chance to work in partnership with the law firm to recover the hidden books. Munro had appeared sincere, genuine, even caring. As Jake was to discover later, that had all been a front. The only things that Pierce Randall cared about were money and power. That was how they’d built up their financial empire. For them, the hidden books of Malichea represented both money and power. That was why Jake was dangling the offer of one in front of them now.
A tall man in a neat dark suit approached them.
‘Mr Wells? Ms Graham?’ he asked politely.
‘Yes.’ Jake and Lauren stood up.
‘My name’s James. I am Ms Clark’s personal assistant. I’m to take you up to see her, if you’ll follow me.’
Jake and Lauren exchanged nervous looks as they followed the tall man towards the security gates. This was it!
James swiped his pass through a security scanner, and kept the gate open while Jake and Lauren came through. He then headed towards the lifts.
The journey up in the lift was fast and smooth. They stopped at the fifteenth floor, and followed James along a plushly carpeted corridor to a glass-walled office. He tapped at the door and announced, ‘Mr Wells and Ms Graham, Ms Clark.’
‘Thank you, James,’ said Clark.
Sue Clark hadn’t changed much since Jake had last seen her, when she’d sprung him from a police interrogation room and a charge of murder. She was a woman in her mid-twenties, wearing a smart and expensive-looking charcoal-grey suit, and with a look of intense anger in her eyes, barely hidden beneath her stern expression.
Clark indicated the two chairs on the other side of the desk, and Jake and Lauren sat down as James left.
‘On the phone you said you had one of the books to offer,’ said Clark.
‘Straight down to business?’ queried Jake. ‘No social niceties?’
‘You are accused of killing someone who was very important to this firm, and to me personally,’ said Clark curtly. ‘I have no wish for us to be friends.’ She turned to Lauren and added, ‘You and I have never met, Ms Graham, but I have heard a lot about you. Anyone who can do what you did and get away with it is someone who deserves some kind of respect.’