Andrea exhaled loudly as she flicked the phone shut. Now there really was no going back. Part of her was afraid of what involving Jimmy was going to mean for Emma's safe release. Jimmy was a violent man. He was capable of inflicting serious injury, even killing someone, but perhaps, in the end, that was what she wanted. Revenge on the people who'd abducted her daughter and put her through such pain. And Jimmy was no fool. He wouldn't rush in guns blazing and put Emma and everyone else in danger. He possessed an animal cunning, an ability to sniff out danger, something that had served him well in the past and something, she knew, he wouldn't have lost, even during his years in Spain. You didn't lose cunning like that. It was instinctive. And she needed someone with it in her corner.
She went back inside and locked the door behind her, feeling a little better. At least she'd actually done something now, and the paralysis born of utter helplessness which had affected her all evening seemed to dissipate a little. She drank another glass of water, smoked a last cigarette, and thought about having another brandy, but decided against it. Andrea had a strong tolerance of alcohol, having consumed it regularly throughout her adult life, but she'd had more than enough tonight. She needed to keep her wits about her. It would have been all too easy simply to lose herself in the oblivion of the bottle, and behaviour like that wouldn't help Emma.
Emma. Her baby. A fourteen-year-old girl enduring her first night as the prisoner of those animals.
If she's still alive . . .
Andrea stopped the thought, took a deep breath and told herself not to weaken.
'Think positive. They won't hurt her. They want money.'
She repeated it to herself three times, praying to God that it was true. Then, with slow, listless movements, she got herself ready for bed knowing that, for better or for worse, Jimmy would be here tomorrow. Jimmy Galante. Armed robber, violent thug, and possibly her only hope.
As she lay under the silk sheets in the master bedroom, staring at the ceiling, with a gap beside her where Pat usually lay, it wasn't her husband she was thinking about. It was Emma.
And Jimmy.
Three
Jimmy Galante had always been a smooth bastard. Now forty, two years older than Andrea, he still looked damn good as he walked out of the arrivals gate at Heathrow's Terminal One, dressed in a tailored suit and open-neck shirt, and Andrea noticed more than one pair of female eyes glancing at him as he walked across the concourse with a casual confidence that bordered on arrogance. Tall, broad-shouldered and tanned, his thick wavy black hair was longer than she remembered, but still as lustrous as it had been all those years ago. Even under the current circumstances, even after all these years, Andrea still felt a twinge of excitement. She wondered what it was about her, why she always seemed to go for the smooth bastards. It was something her business partner, Isobel, had once asked her, with more than a hint of disapproval in her voice, and it was a question she hadn't attempted to answer. Some women just go for the wrong sort of men, Andrea told herself, and maybe she was one of them.
As Jimmy approached her, he smiled, and there was something so knowing and cocky about his expression that it made her realize immediately why their relationship had ended. Up close the lines on his face were more pronounced, and the scar that ran down in a jagged line from just below his earlobe to his chin seemed deeper than before. But the eyes, so dark they were almost black, still commanded attention.
'Hello, babe,' he said, looking her up and down. 'You look good.'
She knew he was just saying that. She felt awful, and she was pretty sure she looked awful as well. She'd hardly slept the previous night, tossing and turning in the silence, knowing that Emma was out there somewhere, desperate for her mother's help. Emma was a tough young thing – she took after her mother in that respect – but there was no way she could have been prepared for what she had to be going through now. Andrea had always protected her from the darker things the world had to offer. She wanted for nothing materially (although she wasn't spoiled); she was being well educated at a decent private school (girls only); and her mother had always been there for her, never failing to make time in her busy schedule for her daughter and providing her with the nurturing hand any child needs. They'd always been a team, the two of them, with Andrea the senior partner.
Today had been easier than the previous night because she'd been able to keep busy. Having called Isobel to tell her that she wasn't feeling too good and was going to take the day off, she'd then phoned the dentist's and found out that Emma had kept her 4.45 appointment. She didn't know how this helped her, but for some reason the knowledge that Emma had been alive and well the previous afternoon, only a few hours before the kidnapper had called her, made it feel more likely that she was alive now.
Andrea had then spent the remainder of the morning and much of the first half of the afternoon raising the half a million she needed. This had involved emptying the two private deposit boxes she rented in separate banks in Knightsbridge, which gave her the grand total of £439,000. It was money that had been built up over a number of years as a result of various cash deals, and she'd viewed it as her retirement fund, her nest egg should things ever go badly wrong. And now they had. She'd then called the three banks where she had personal accounts, and organized the transfer of cleared funds between accounts to secure the remaining £61,000, which had proved a lot less easy than she'd anticipated, since no one these days seemed to want to hand over large sums of cash. When this had been done, she was left with a total of £11,561 in liquid assets – a pretty poor return for fourteen years of hard graft.
There'd still been aspects of the business to attend to as well. She'd received a number of calls from the company accountants regarding the Bedfordshire Spa, and even a couple of semiapologetic ones from Isobel on the same subject. She'd dealt with them as best she could but it was hard to concentrate on anything other than Emma. Andrea had built up her company, Feminine Touch Health and Beauty Spas, from absolutely nothing into a thriving business which generated turnover in excess of five million cash.
Yet ultimately, when it came down to it, this huge achievement and all the hard work that had brought it about would count for absolutely nothing if her daughter didn't come home.
Which was why Jimmy was here. To make sure she did.
'Any news?' he asked as they stood there looking at each other.
'No, nothing yet.'
'You got the money?'
She thought she saw a glint in his dark eyes when he said this, and felt a twinge of unease. The expression on his face remained irritatingly casual, and his lips formed the vague, knowing half-smile of someone who always has the answers. It concerned her that he didn't seem to be too worried about his daughter.
'I'll have it by tomorrow night,' she told him. 'Come on, let's go. I want to beat the rush-hour traffic.'
They walked in silence through the arrivals hall and into short-term parking.
'My, my, you are doing well,' said Jimmy when he saw the Mercedes.
'I've worked hard for it,' she answered curtly.
'You didn't tell me what you did for a living.'