Private London - James Patterson [3]
‘Witness-protection programme?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Only not government-sanctioned?’
‘In fact it is.’
‘She’s how old?’
‘Hannah is nineteen.’
‘And I’m taking her back to England?’
‘You are.’
‘For how long?’
‘Three years, Dan.’
I looked at him quizzically and took a sip of beer. Then nodded. ‘Long enough to get a degree, I guess?’
Jack Morgan nodded, pleased. ‘You catch on fast.’
‘Where’s she going to be studying?’
‘Chancellors.’
I nodded right back at him. One of the oldest, one of the best. I looked down at the documents. Money was clearly not a problem. Private didn’t come cheap – even if it was for just a hand-holding job on a flight over the Pond.
‘This isn’t just a hand-holding exercise, Dan.’
I fought the urge to react. ‘It’s not?’
‘She’s extremely valuable cargo. I need an eye on her the whole time she’s over there in England. Looked after discreetly.’
‘Hard to be discreet if she goes round like Madonna with a crew of bodyguards the whole time.’
‘Indeed. Less of a bodyguard, more of a companion. Let us know if she starts falling in with the wrong kind of crowd. Discreetly. Eyes and ears.’
‘So discreet even Hannah herself doesn’t know about it?’
‘Right again.’
‘When’s her course start?’
‘September.’
I took a sip of my lager. ‘I might need some strings pulling.’
‘Way ahead of you.’ Jack nodded at the briefcase. ‘I’ve spoken to the dean of admissions.’
‘What’s she going to be reading?’
‘Psychiatry.’
I nodded thoughtfully again. ‘That could work.’
‘She’s had some issues in the past that I can’t talk about. Maybe this will help her deal with that.’
‘And we make sure she has the space to do so.’
‘Her father is a major client of ours, Dan. Seven figures major. So she’s important to us.’
‘What does he do?’
Jack looked at me with a small quirk of a smile. ‘He pays the bills.’
‘Like you said. Need-to-know basis.’
‘You got it, bubba.’ He clicked his glass against mine and drained it. ‘Okay. Let’s go meet the million-dollar baby.’
Chapter 5
I HAD EXPECTED the precious cargo I was going to be babysitting to be just that.
West Coast precious. Serious money, serious Valley attitude. I had her pictured pretty clearly in my mind’s eye – young, tanned and beautiful.
She was young, I got that much right at least. Looked even younger than she actually was.
Hannah’s hair was mousy brown, tied back. She wore tortoiseshell glasses, a simple skirt and blouse with a cardigan, flat shoes. I don’t know the name of the geeky girl from Scooby Doo, but she was like a thinner version of her without the confidence. Maybe a taller Ugly Betty. No make-up discernible to my eye, and my eye was pretty good in that respect. Nervous.
Hannah Shapiro looked like she wouldn’t say boo to a waddling duck, let alone a goose.
‘Hi, I’m Dan,’ I said. ‘Dan Carter.’ I held out my hand.
She shook it with her own small, delicate hand but didn’t say a word or make eye contact.
Maybe it was down to the confident air of masculine authority I exude. Maybe – but she looked as though a strong wind could knock her over. If she was going to be studying psychiatry I was surmising she had ambitions for the research side of the business. I couldn’t see her as a practitioner, with the couch and the reassuring voice and the leading questions. You had to be comfortable around people to do that kind of work.
Perhaps she was right to be nervous – she was standing next to Del Rio, after all.
Del Rio, one of Jack Morgan’s right-hand men from the West Coast office. He’d done four years’ hard time at the state’s pleasure, and looked perfectly capable of doing so again. But he was on our side of the law nowadays, if not exactly working within it.
But that was the whole point of Private, after all. We weren’t constrained by the same rules and regulations that restricted our uniformed counterparts. That was how we earned our money. And if half the rumours I had heard about Del Rio were true, he was more than willing to take the law into his own bare hands – take it with