‘Good, the police are on their way,’ I said.
‘What’s the use?’ Chris muttered angrily. ‘Grady’s probably already on the other side of Europe, and we’ve still got no proof that Angus is even alive.’
‘Actually, we do.’ I pulled Nick’s phone out of my back pocket and held it up.
‘Is that mine?’ Nick said.
‘You left it in my room, so I brought it with me. I started recording just before I went into the warehouse.’
He gaped at me. ‘You—Sarah Burrowes, the queen of old-fashioned technology—used my smartphone to record evidence?’ His eyes met mine. ‘You’re amazing.’ His words, and the sight of his naked torso, shining with sweat, reminded me of the night before. A pleasant buzz suffused me.
‘You’ve all been great.’ Chris’s voice jolted me back to reality. ‘I don’t know what would’ve happened to me if you hadn’t started following me back in Barcelona.’
Nick found a ladder down the side of the building and we all climbed down to the ground just as a police car and two fire engines screeched to a halt outside the warehouse. Hoogeveen stepped out of the police car.
‘Trouble seems to follow you, young lady,’ he said to me. ‘You’ll all need to come down to the station for questioning.’
A tall, thin man in a dark suit got out of an unmarked black car and approached us. ‘That won’t be necessary, Chief Superintendent,’ he said smoothly. ‘I’m John Harrington from the National Crime Agency in the UK.’
‘You came!’ I cried.
Harrington gave me a cool smile. ‘If you’ll come with me, Miss Smith, I believe you and I have much to discuss.’ He gestured towards his car.
‘Smith?’ Hoogeveen looked confused.
‘Um, I may have lied to Mr Harrington just a little,’ I admitted, doing my best to look innocent. ‘I didn’t think he’d talk to me if he knew I was a journalist. My name is actually Sarah Burrowes.’
‘Miss Burrowes has caused us quite some trouble over the last few days,’ Hoogeveen said. ‘Nevertheless, I would like to hear her side of the story, too. I would appreciate it if we could all go straight to the station.’
Harrington opened the passenger door to his car. ‘Fine. If you would like to come in my car, Miss Burrowes, we can talk on the way to the station. We’ll meet Mr Ford and your other friends there.’
‘Fine,’ Hoogeveen said, turning to help Adelita into his car. Chris and Nick were already climbing into the back.
As I lowered myself into the passenger seat of the black car, Harrington spoke to Hoogeveen for a minute before climbing in beside me. He started the engine and the car eased forward.
‘Thanks for coming so quickly,’ I said. ‘I was worried the chief superintendent wasn’t going to believe me.’
‘It would have been much easier if you’d told me who you were in the first place. I could have got here sooner.’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I thought you’d be more likely to give out information to a lawyer than a journalist.’
‘You’re right about that,’ Harrington said. ‘But I’m not a fool. I knew you weren’t really a lawyer.’
I laughed. ‘Was my inexperience that obvious?’
‘Come on, a female drug dealer?’ He waggled a finger at me. ‘That was your mistake.’
I glanced out the car window so he wouldn’t see me roll my eyes. This guy took condescension to a new level. ‘I’ll have to remember that next time.’
‘I don’t think there’ll be a next time.’ His voice was cold.
An inexplicable shiver fingered my spine. Something was off, but I couldn’t work out what it was. ‘Well, I’m not planning to infiltrate any more drug rings, so you’re probably right.’
‘How did you find the warehouse?’ he said. ‘You’re hardly a pro at this, are you?’
And then something clicked in my head, and the cold fingers of suspicion wrapped around my throat and crystallised into fear.
A woman on a bike rode across the street in front of us and Harrington braked to a sudden halt, pounding the car horn. ‘Fucking cyclists!’ He wound down the window. ‘Get off the bloody road, will you!’
As he leant out the window to yell at the woman, I fumbled in my pocket until I found my phone and quickly dialled Adelita. I had no idea whether she would answer, or if she even had her phone with her, but she was my last hope at alerting Hoogeveen. I slipped the phone under my leg just as Harrington straightened and resumed driving.
‘You made a mistake, too,’ I said quietly.
‘Yeah, and what’s that?’
I forced myself to breathe evenly. ‘How did you know where it was?’
Harrington flicked his eyes towards me, then back to the road. ‘Excuse me?’
‘When I told you the cartel operated from a warehouse in Amsterdam, you laughed at me. But when I told you this morning I’d actually found it, you believed me. You agreed to come.’
He gave a rough laugh. ‘Well, I’d be a fool to ignore such a thing in my profession.’
‘Yeah, but the thing is, I never gave you the address.’
He glanced at me again. ‘You must be shaken after your experience, but you’re mistaken. You told me the address when we spoke on the phone.’
My voice shook as I spoke, but I couldn’t stop now. ‘No. I didn’t. Other than Adelita and Nick, you were the only one I told about the warehouse before yesterday. You’re behind all this, aren’t you?’
His perfectly composed face cracked slightly. ‘Do you realise how ridiculous that sounds? I work for Europe’s biggest drug enforcement agency.’
‘What better cover than working for the very organisation trying to bring down this cartel? You’re the one responsible for putting Grady behind bars. And you’ve kept him on the watchlist for years to make it look like he was in charge of the whole operation.’
Harrington’s jaw worked as he searched for a response. ‘Your claims are ludicrous. No one is going to believe a tabloid journalist over
