detail with anyone other than the police, or us. Don’t know if she’ll contain herself, but I didn’t think it would be good if everyone in town knew about this just yet.”
“Want a sandwich?” I asked, retrieving our lunch from the spot I’d hastily dumped it nearly two hours earlier.
Drake picked up his portion and looked around. “How’s that couch for sitting?”
“A lot of coffee soaked into the cushions. I don’t think I’d park my butt there yet.”
He chose a side chair and pulled it up to the desk. The ham sandwiches were about a day and a half away from fresh but at this point I didn’t care. I’d thought I was starving two hours ago. By the time I took my first bite, ravenous was a better word for it.
“I’d better call Brian,” Drake said ten minutes later as he brushed the last of the crumbs off his shirt.
“Yeah, we thought we had bad news for him when we left the rig. This is gonna be a double whammy.”
I located the Rolodex for him and he riffled through it until he came up with a number where he thought Brian could be reached. I puttered, tidying a few last things while he made the call.
“Brian says he’ll try to get away from London tonight. Meanwhile we should just make everything as secure as possible and not worry about it. He suggested that neither of us make any flights out to the rig alone, though. He knows that union guy, Brankin, and says he could be trouble.”
I’d come across keys to the file cabinet in Meggie’s desk, so I stacked as many of the papers as I could into the file drawers and locked them. At least they’d have to perform some serious breakage to get in there, or cart the whole cabinet off with them. I suspected they’d already taken anything they really wanted.
We checked the office’s two windows and made sure the deadbolt locks were secure on the only door. Drake disconnected the batteries on the two helicopters, secured all the compartment doors and locked the passenger doors. It was about as secure as we could make them without putting them into a locked building, and Brian hadn’t seemed to feel that was necessary.
In the U.S. it’s a federal crime to tamper with an aircraft, and I assumed the U.K. would have the same kind of rules. The only problem was that I didn’t think these thugs were exactly worried about the legal aspects of their actions. It’s also a crime to assault someone but that hadn’t stopped one of them from knocking Meggie unconscious and leaving her.
It was nearly three o’clock when we climbed into the company car and headed back toward our cottage.
The grounds of Dunworthy appeared on our left more than a mile before the turnoff to the castle, and the turn to our cottage was around a bend another quarter mile down the road. I debated about stopping in to introduce Drake, remembering Sarah’s casual invitation to drop in any time, but decided a nap before dinner sounded more appealing.
I awoke in darkness, pulled from leaden sleep by the ringing of the telephone downstairs. My foggy brain registered only that Drake must have answered it because it quit ringing about the time I rolled over. My body said stay; my brain nagged that I really shouldn’t or I would be asleep until about midnight, when I’d become fully awake. Logic finally won the argument and I dragged myself from bed and splashed cold water on my face in the bathroom.
“That was Brian on the phone,” Drake said, nearly scaring the socks off me as I blindly groped for a towel. “He said his mother’s taken a turn for the worse in the last hour and he doesn’t think he should leave just now. He asked me to go back out to the airport and get the aircraft stowed in one of the hangars out there. He’s already called ahead and arranged it.
“Now?”
“Yeah, I better go. If something happens to them outside and he hasn’t taken ‘reasonable precautions,’ his insurance company’s likely to give him a lot of grief. Apparently these union
“Want a sandwich?” I asked, retrieving our lunch from the spot I’d hastily dumped it nearly two hours earlier.
Drake picked up his portion and looked around. “How’s that couch for sitting?”
“A lot of coffee soaked into the cushions. I don’t think I’d park my butt there yet.”
He chose a side chair and pulled it up to the desk. The ham sandwiches were about a day and a half away from fresh but at this point I didn’t care. I’d thought I was starving two hours ago. By the time I took my first bite, ravenous was a better word for it.
“I’d better call Brian,” Drake said ten minutes later as he brushed the last of the crumbs off his shirt.
“Yeah, we thought we had bad news for him when we left the rig. This is gonna be a double whammy.”
I located the Rolodex for him and he riffled through it until he came up with a number where he thought Brian could be reached. I puttered, tidying a few last things while he made the call.
“Brian says he’ll try to get away from London tonight. Meanwhile we should just make everything as secure as possible and not worry about it. He suggested that neither of us make any flights out to the rig alone, though. He knows that union guy, Brankin, and says he could be trouble.”
I’d come across keys to the file cabinet in Meggie’s desk, so I stacked as many of the papers as I could into the file drawers and locked them. At least they’d have to perform some serious breakage to get in there, or cart the whole cabinet off with them. I suspected they’d already taken anything they really wanted.
We checked the office’s two windows and made sure the deadbolt locks were secure on the only door. Drake disconnected the batteries on the two helicopters, secured all the compartment doors and locked the passenger doors. It was about as secure as we could make them without putting them into a locked building, and Brian hadn’t seemed to feel that was necessary.
In the U.S. it’s a federal crime to tamper with an aircraft, and I assumed the U.K. would have the same kind of rules. The only problem was that I didn’t think these thugs were exactly worried about the legal aspects of their actions. It’s also a crime to assault someone but that hadn’t stopped one of them from knocking Meggie unconscious and leaving her.
It was nearly three o’clock when we climbed into the company car and headed back toward our cottage.
The grounds of Dunworthy appeared on our left more than a mile before the turnoff to the castle, and the turn to our cottage was around a bend another quarter mile down the road. I debated about stopping in to introduce Drake, remembering Sarah’s casual invitation to drop in any time, but decided a nap before dinner sounded more appealing.
I awoke in darkness, pulled from leaden sleep by the ringing of the telephone downstairs. My foggy brain registered only that Drake must have answered it because it quit ringing about the time I rolled over. My body said stay; my brain nagged that I really shouldn’t or I would be asleep until about midnight, when I’d become fully awake. Logic finally won the argument and I dragged myself from bed and splashed cold water on my face in the bathroom.
“That was Brian on the phone,” Drake said, nearly scaring the socks off me as I blindly groped for a towel. “He said his mother’s taken a turn for the worse in the last hour and he doesn’t think he should leave just now. He asked me to go back out to the airport and get the aircraft stowed in one of the hangars out there. He’s already called ahead and arranged it.
“Now?”
“Yeah, I better go. If something happens to them outside and he hasn’t taken ‘reasonable precautions,’ his insurance company’s likely to give him a lot of grief. Apparently these union
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