‘Good morning, child.’ Tawanda pulled out a chair for Autumn. ‘There’s fruit salad and some hot croissants, or I could make you some eggs,’ she offered.
‘Eggs would be good,’ she answered as she took a croissant from the plate. She tore it in half, then half again and shaped out a fifth section to put on her plate.
She kept her eyes focused on her plate as she sensed Nathan and Alison approach the table. She didn’t want to talk about anything yet. She just wanted to eat and rehydrate, then later, when she was ready, she would tell them the decision she had made.
‘Did you sleep at all, Autumn?’ Alison asked, pouring herself her second cup of ginger tea.
Autumn sipped from a glass of juice Tawanda had put in front of her. ‘Yes, thank you, I did,’ she responded.
‘Good, I’m glad,’ Alison replied.
‘Are you? Are you really?’
‘Yes, of course I am. Yesterday, it was a lot to take in and…’
‘And what, Mother?’ Autumn’s eyes flashed as she raised her head to look at her.
‘Autumn, please, don’t be like this. Do you think it was easy keeping this from you? Have you any idea how hard it was on me? I love him, Autumn. He’s my husband, and I can’t be with him, ever again. It’s like he is dead. No, it’s worse than that, because he’s alive, living a life completely separate from mine, completely separate from ours. And this situation we are in, anything could go wrong. As it stands, As-Wana think I am giving up Rick. And they think he will give up all the people he has been involved with on the promise that they will let you live and leave you alone forever. If things go wrong, if he gets captured by them, there’s a chance I could lose all of you and cost many people their secrets, even their lives. But what is the alternative? We let them carry on taking and killing and never stopping.’ She took a breath. ‘If I hadn’t complied they would have taken you anyway. Killed you as soon as they had Rick. I wasn’t going to gamble on that. And I had to tell Section 7 because at least this way we have some control.’
‘Listen,’ Nathan interjected, ‘we need to decide what we’re going to do.’
‘No, that’s where you’re wrong,’ Autumn said firmly. ‘You’re not going to decide what we do, and neither is she. This is my call. I’m the one they want to kidnap. It should be my decision what happens next.’
‘Autumn, I am very experienced in handling situations like these, and Mr Regan is—’
Autumn looked directly at Nathan. ‘I’m going home, today, back to London,’ she said. ‘I am going to resume my old life, get back into all my old routines, and you, Mother, can tell the terrorist group that my security detail isn’t quite as tight as it was. That way, I’ll be fair game.’
‘No,’ Nathan said.
‘Autumn, as I’m trying to tell you, any kidnap was always going to be controlled and—’ Alison started.
‘Controlled! You call getting my record producer killed controlled?’
‘I don’t know what happened there. I had no idea that was going to happen,’ Alison insisted. ‘That was not part of the plan.’
Autumn stood up from her chair. ‘I’m sick of this! I want them to kidnap me, and I want my dad to come. I want to see him!’
‘Autumn, that isn’t how it will work,’ Nathan said.
‘If your father comes for you, Autumn, he will be intercepted by British agents, ‘Alison explained, ‘and he’ll be taken back into protective custody. That’s what we need to happen. British forces will come for you and capture members of As-Wana. You won’t see your father.’
‘My plan is we stage a kidnapping to get Rick to us,’ Nathan told them all.
‘That would never work,’ Alison told him. ‘And what would I say to my contacts? I’ve worked long and hard for this. It isn’t just about getting Rick back. It’s about bringing down some high-ranking members of the organization. Plus, it needs to be real. You and I, in Arabic headdress, aren’t going to be enough. Rick’s a professional, just like you. He would smell a rat a mile away.’
‘I have a team we can use. We can make it look authentic,’ Nathan insisted.
‘If I back out now with As-Wana, what do you think is going to happen? There would be a price on my head,’ Alison insisted. ‘This operation has to be completed.’
‘So you’re still going to put your daughter in danger for Section 7, are you? They’re playing you, Alison. Section 7 aren’t going to “control” the kidnap. All they want is Rick. A few members of As-Wana would be a bonus. I can’t see them busting a gut to save Autumn.’
‘I’m done with this,’ Autumn stated and made for the door.
‘Autumn, wait…’ He paused, turned to Alison. ‘I’ll go after her. We’ll think of something else.’
‘No. You stay here. I will go,’ Tawanda said, moving forward.
‘Tawanda…’
‘Make eggs,’ Tawanda ordered.
Twenty-Seven
‘She was always like this, you know, stubborn. It isn’t something new,’ Alison said.
They had sat in silence for the last ten minutes, listening to the ticking of the clock on the sideboard. It was Art Deco style, just like the one down in the basement. The night Autumn composed ‘Broken Pieces’ seemed like a lifetime ago.
He wondered what Tawanda was saying to her. To go home, to offer herself up for kidnap was ridiculous, and she wasn’t thinking straight. Finding out her father was still alive, giving her hope that she might be with him again, was clouding her judgment. She was disregarding everything under the false impression that she would be with him again, even for a moment. He understood, but he had to think like the professional he was, and that voice said the idea was insane.
‘She tried to dye her hair when she was ten. I caught her at the bathroom sink with a bottle of bleach and
