Page 43 of The Professor
“Is Cheesy Crust still a good pizza place?” I asked Bridget.
“Yeah, not bad.” She winked at me. “You gonna treat your red-haired beauty to something more than toast for her dinner?”
“Something like that,” I muttered.
“He’s replied,” Jamie said, opening an email from Hank Taylor.
My attention switched. “What’s it say?”
“He’s making demands of his own. Want’s proof of life.”
“We can do that. I’ll send a picture of Chelsea holding up her iPhone with the date and time on it.”
“Good idea,” Cillian said.
“So he isn’t saying he won’t hand over the money?” I asked.
“No, not at all. Seems he’s happy to pay, we should have asked for more.” Jamie huffed. “And he wants to do the handover somewhere public.”
“Mitch said to use the Memorial Field, it’s about a mile from here, nice and public,” Cillian said. “Never really any cops around unless there’s a report of trouble.”
“That’ll work.” I knew the spot. “Reply and say we’ll do it at first light. Give him the deets of our overseas account, theencrypted one that can’t be traced. He can do the transfer there and then before we give her back, but he can see she’s alive.”
Jamie started typing.
I let out a sigh. Was Hank Taylor really going to cough up four million so easily? There had to be a catch. Things never went smoothly.
Reaching for coffee, I knew I had to think straight. Chelsea had the ability to addle my brain, she’d thrown me off my train of thought more than once in lectures, had me daydreaming instead of marking papers, and taking risks like visiting the Sure Thing just to try and get some relief from the need she created in me.
And I couldn’t let that distraction fuck this up. Not only did we need the money, we couldn’t afford any more members of Galahad getting arrested. I had to keep Chelsea at a distance until this was sorted.
Like that was going to happen!
“Done.” Jamie sat back and folded his arms. “Just need that photo.”
“Ah, yeah, I’ll do that.” I stood, and my phone rang. “It’s Mitch.” I answered and put it on speaker. “Hey, what’s up?”
“The guys are still in custody, they’ve been charged, they need a decent lawyer sooner rather than later.”
“I’ll be on the case first thing, and we’ll have the funds to pay them.”
“Excellent.” Mitch paused. “And remember that asshole who tried to strangle Bridget last week?”
“Yeah.” I looked at Bridget. “The bruises on her neck have only just gone.”
She hitched a breath in and downturned her lipstick-coated mouth. “He’s a fucking bastard.”
“He’s also a murderer.”
“What?” Jamie said with a frown. “What’s happened, Mitch? What have you heard?”
“A woman’s been killed, strangled over in New Marston. The press haven’t got it yet, but she was a prostitute.”
“You reckon it’s him? How so?”
“I know it’s him. We had a good shot of him on Ring coming into Rose Cottage, and MIT have just circulated a CCTV image of him a hundred yards from where her body was found.”
“Fuck.” I tensed. Rage going through me. “The twins should have finished him off when they had the chance.”
