‘Might be inside, guv, swapping details or something,’ Bryant offered.
‘Come on,’ Kim said, sprinting into the building.
Automatically, they separated.
Bryant headed to the toilet block while she searched the eateries and coffee shops. The place was almost deserted, so they wouldn’t be too hard to find.
She tried to keep her breathing even as she moved on to the small grocery store. One elderly man stepped out of her way as she sprinted down the soft drinks’ aisle.
She approached the woman on the till. ‘Have you seen a brown-haired man with a little blonde girl about seven years of age?’
The woman touched her left arm with her right hand. ‘Did she have a false…?’
‘Yes. Where are they?’
‘Dunno. They came in about half an hour ago, bought some sweets and headed out.’
‘And they’ve not been back?’ Kim asked as Bryant joined her.
The woman shook her head.
Kim said nothing as they headed back out through the automatic doors.
What they’d hoped was a badly timed shunt was clearly not the case.
‘We gotta split up, Bryant,’ Kim said, looking around.
‘I’ll go check around the hotel,’ he said, heading over to the Days Inn.
Kim stood and looked at the car for a second. Daniel was a grown man and Ava was no pushover. They couldn’t have gone too far.
She took out her phone as she headed behind the electric car chargers. She shone her torch all around, looking for anything that hinted which way they’d gone.
Following the path around the building, on her right was a fence that held back brittle trees on a slope that dropped down thirty feet towards the road. The light from the main car park faded away as she entered the service area. She walked carefully along a column of darkness, using the torch to light the way, stopping occasionally to listen for any sound.
Only the noise of an occasional car passing on the road to her right met her ears.
She paused as she reached the end of the path before turning into a delivery area. A light was triggered by her presence, but it only lit up the roller shutter door.
She was about to continue along the building when she heard something.
She wasn’t even sure it sounded human, but she cast the light around furiously. The phone torch caught something glistening on the ground.
Her heart almost stopped as her eyes followed the trail.
Slumped against the brick pillar, holding his hand over a bloody stomach, was Daniel Reynolds.
Eighty-Two
‘Jeez, Penn, what the hell is happening?’ Stacey asked, tapping her fingers on the desk.
She’d just sent a text message to Aunt Janine to see if she’d heard anything. She hadn’t. Their last contact with the boss had been when they entered the services in Abington.
‘Maybe they’ve just gone on to the next.’
‘The boss has been letting us know,’ Stacey said. They’d been able to track every movement from her calls and text messages, but she knew better than to call back at a time like this.
‘I just wanna know that Ava is—’ She stopped speaking as her phone rang. ‘Hello, DC Wood,’ she said, not recognising the number.
