Free Ultimate Weapon by Chris Ryan Page A

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    ‘Is that Louise?’ he said into the phone as soon as it was answered.
    ‘Yes.’
    The woman sounded tired and stressed. Somewhere in the background, he could hear a baby screaming. ‘It’s Nick Scott, Sarah’s dad.’
    There was a pause while she tried to place them. ‘OK,’ she said.
    ‘I was just wondering if you had heard from Sarah at all?’
    ‘Is she OK?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ said Nick. ‘No one has heard from her for a week or so. I was just wondering if she might be with one of her old friends.’
    ‘I haven’t seen her for almost two years,’ said Louise.
    ‘Sorry to trouble you.’
    ‘Jesus, I hope she’s OK.’
    ‘So do I.’
    Nick put the phone down and glanced out of the window. It was a cold but clear night. The cottage was halfway up a hill, with a view on to the Black Mountains beyond. A three-quarter moon was hanging in the sky, sending pale shafts of silvery light into the grey-green hillside. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear a car, but it was half a mile to the next house, and tonight, like every night, the hills were cloaked in silence. Nicktried the next number on his list. Emma had been Sarah’s best friend at school, the pair of them inseparable from the ages of fifteen to seventeen, although her mother, keen for her daughter to climb the heights of Herefordshire society, hadn’t liked Sarah much, and approved of Nick even less. Last he’d heard, Emma was working in London on a women’s magazine. He tried her on the mobile number. No, she told him. She hadn’t heard anything of Sarah. In fact, she hadn’t spoken to her for six months. Emma had called her asking if she could be a case study for a magazine feature about how brains stopped a girl from getting a proper boyfriend, and, to use Emma’s phrase, ‘she seemed a bit miffed about it’. So, no, she hadn’t heard from Sarah recently. Nick put the phone down, and looked out of the window again. He felt desperate for a drink, and was thankful that there was nothing in the cottage: if he’d been in town, nothing would have stopped him nipping out to the off-licence. He tried another number: James, a guy Sarah had dated when she stopped seeing Jed for about a year in her early twenties. No luck there. He’d changed address, and the person answering the phone didn’t know where he’d moved to. Bugger it, thought Nick.
A brick wall would be more help than this.
    Again he looked out of the window. Something was moving. A shadow maybe. Nick looked closer. He could hear a rustling, but that might just have been the wind blowing through trees. No, he decided. Tonight was just like every other night on the edge of the Black Mountains. Empty. Still.
Abandoned.
    He tried another number. Gill was one of Sarah’s friends from university: she was now working in Manchester as a doctor. Nick knew that she sometimes went up to stay with her for the weekend. They’d spend twenty-four hours getting wasted on the clubbing scene. Maybe she was just crashing there for a few days. Perhaps she’d just forgotten to take her mobile charger with her. It was easy enough to do. Nick sometimes forgot to charge up his mobile before leaving for the rigs.
    No, said Gill. She’d been up for the weekend about a month ago. She seemed her usual self: strung out like a wire, babbling about work, drinking too much, always looking for the next party, the same old Sarah. There had been a text a couple of weeks ago, but since then Gill had heard nothing. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Let me know if there’s anything I can do.’
    With a sinking feeling, Nick put the phone down. He was running out of options. None of her friends knew where the hell she was. Her professor was acting evasively. She had a hundred grand in her bank account.
What the hell has happened to her?
    Suddenly, Nick could feel how cold the cottage was. It was a few weeks since he’d been here, and a cold snap meant its old stone walls had frozen solid: they