The Grange Series

Steve Arkwright broke through walls, digital walls; secure resilient firewalls. That they were there was the challenge, he had to get to the other side. Then he smashed one too many and the men in suits who knocked on his door were not happy, but they had a plan and it involved a choice - with only one possible answer- sign here and you are ours. Scared, isolated and broken by the weight of their authority he signed on the line, in his future others would decide on the lines he would cross and where his searching fingers would dance like spiders across the keyboard. This was a gilded cage, and they might control where he goes, but not what he thinks, and there was his escape. He took the knowledge they gave him and used it. Timing was the key; he needed the right time and enough chaos to help him out of the gilded cage. The gold was wearing thin and the bars were showing clearly. His current contract, hiding behind another changed identity, gave the opportunity and threw him across the path of The Grange and unexpected allies. Arkwright never questioned the motives of those who threw their lot in with him, he just took advantage of their co-operation and the end run was close. He made his breakout and escaped his control.

Smuggling, skulduggery and scuba diving and he was in the right place at the wrong time. A late evening encounter outside the compressor shed and a moment of panic. A tourist joins the list of missing persons, literally whisked away one night and missing for weeks. Don Steel wasn't any tourist, his new enemies may have been unknown but their ignorance of who they had snatched would prove costly. Battered, bruised and bloody he turns up in a ditch high in the mountains above Glencoe; airlifted to hospital for treatment his recuperation is disrupted by an attempt to silence him. Steel would be neither silent nor compliantly lie down. Leaving his attacker in the care of and needing the attention of the ward sister he takes to the road and begins a cat and mouse chase across the highlands and islands of Scotland to a final showdown in Tobermory Bay backed up by allies colleagues and friends, and one friend discovers just how far he will go.

Josie Burke and Jessica Spear finish a sweaty afternoon in Ten Acre Wood with the lads, and get a hosing down to get rid of the mud when they get back to The Grange. The moment is captured on a smartphone and the video hits YouTube, and the hits are rising. Jessica is the new girl at the Grange, she's her Daddy's girl, and Daddy is rich, opinionated and with his share of enemies, but that was business. She was his weak spot and he knew it, so did others, and when she disappears from an isolated road after a scene by the swimming pool at society party relationships become strained. She had been lodged at The Grange for security, and it had made her vulnerable, but there was something not quite right about this, there was another thread to this web of intrigue that remained hidden. Jardine draws on his contacts and persuades Michael Spear to hand over Hoplite's newest hardware. Two unmanned UAV's begin to sweep the countryside around the last known location. The videos from her captors are analysed by the technical staff and the results put out to the field agents. Steel and Josie are on the road, checking the locations when a breakthrough confirms they are in the right area, a shackled figure in a cottage by the sea on the Northumberland coast. One of Jessica's captors who broke the rules, then the trail goes cold until a weak signal from a fading mobile gives a target area. The trail takes them across the wild country astride the England/Scotland Border; on to the Northumberland coast and into the forests of Keilder and the cold deathlike chill of a forest dawn. Where a hard cough on the still air could be a fox, or a silenced weapon finding its mark. Back up would be useful, but the clock ticks on, and the deadline may be closer than the reinforcements.

Alfred Burke was part of an Urban legend, engines retired from service and put into cold war storage, back up for when the worst case scenario became a reality. Others had their own agenda and the legacy of their work creates a threat as real today as when the Black Fives disappeared. A mystery that has lingered like the last wisps of the steam engines he worked with, and just as difficult to grasp, but he knows what happened and that makes him useful and valuable. He has hidden the secret where it may be found if you know what you are looking for, to see it you must believe, and if you believe you will see it. Less scrupulous parties want the information and don't care how they get it. Steel and Josie in the thick of it again in a race to uncover the secret.