The day after the attempted ransom drop, I got up at five, but not out of choice. A mistaken assumption that I'd sleep better in my own bed led to me running through the house in the early hours, only waking when I fell over a coffee table in the lounge.
I sat on the floor breathing hard, and the pain across my shins told me I'd have a lovely bruise later. Why did this have to happen? I hadn't suffered from such an awful sleepwalking episode for months. Since before I met Luke, in fact. I swore under my breath then froze as I heard a noise behind me. Strong hands reached under my armpits and pulled me to my feet. Nick. I recognised the aftershave and his own earthy smell under it.
He spun me around to face him. "Fucking hell. Are the nightmares getting worse?"
"They were bad after the funeral, but then they got better. I went two weeks without one before Tia disappeared."
"What did you dream of this time? I could hardly keep up. You've done a couple of laps of each floor and been up and down all four staircases."
"The kidnapper. I was chasing the kidnapper, but no matter how fast I ran, I couldn't catch him. Then I fell and woke up."
"It'll be a nightmare for everyone if those demons are back."
"I know that, Nick. Believe me, I know it."
Even in my sleep, I couldn't do right.
His face softened. "Come on, let's go back to bed."
"What's the point? I won't sleep. I might as well head into the office and do something useful."
"Are you sure you're ready for that?" His voice held more than a hint of concern. That was Nick all over. He rarely bore a grudge for long.
"I've got to go sometime, haven't I? Why not today? Everyone'll be whispering behind my back, anyway, so they might as well do it to my face."
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The weather forecast predicted a crisp, clear day, so I whipped the cover off the Aston Martin. I'd barely driven the thing since I bought it, and I needed to lift my spirits. Metallic black with a black leather interior, it had a paddle shift gearbox and a top speed of 205 mph. Not that I'd ever drive so fast. At least, not in London. Too many traffic lights.
The journey left me smiling—I had to take pleasure in the small things nowadays—and when I walked into the large, modern building hidden away on a backstreet in Kings Cross, I found one of the conference rooms had already been commandeered as a base for the investigation. Nye and a few others had spent the night there, and what little information we'd gathered was projected onto the wall in an electronic index card system. That didn't stop Nye from having a pile of paper on his desk, though. He loved to print everything.
Despite the team's efforts, the only concrete lead was the van, and that didn't look hopeful. Mack might have snuck into the police database overnight and found the plates were stolen. They'd been taken almost four months ago from a silver Mercedes Sprinter van parked in South London.
Despite the multitude of automatic number plate recognition cameras dotted around the city, the registration number hadn't been spotted since. Either the kidnapper only put the plates on his van recently, or he'd been driving it outside London. Or maybe the bastard had just been plain lucky.
If it was the latter, I intended to make that luck run out.
"I've sent a pair of guys to the owner's address in case the theft report wasn't genuine," Nye said.
"I saw a Ford in the woods, not a Mercedes."
Nye leaned back in his seat. "I wanted to cover all bases, and we haven't found any other leads."
"You were right to send them. I'll get the cops to keep an eye out as well, off the record."
For that, I called an acquaintance in the Metropolitan Police. Jason Bridges was a good guy, one of the few cops I trusted. He saw the bigger picture rather than striving to keep his paperwork shipshape and his statistics up.
His methods meant he wasn't always popular with his superiors, and more than once he'd shared his frustrations over a drink. I'd offered him a job several times, but for the moment his loyalty lay with the Met. He genuinely believed he could help to make the city a better place, and I had to respect his tenacity.
Months had passed since I'd spoken to him. Did he know about my break?
"It's Emmy. Long time, no speak."
"You're not kidding, mate. I heard you'd gone AWOL."
"I needed some time off. You know, with everything that happened."
"Fair enough. Look, I'm sorry about your husband. Nobody deserves that."
"Thanks. It was a shock to lose him." I didn't want Jason's sympathy, and I didn't want to discuss the past either, so I moved the conversation back to the problem at hand. "I need a favour."
"I had a feeling this wasn't a social call. What do you want?"
He was right. I didn't do social calls. Although perhaps I should start? Spending so much time away from my old life had made me realise just how much my friends meant to me. But now wasn't the time to think about that.
"Can you keep an eye out for a white Ford Transit?" I read out the registration number.
"Sure thing. If anything gets picked up, what do you want done?"
"Nothing, just call me with the details. Quickly, yeah?"
"Right-oh. Don't suppose you want to tell me what this is about?"
I laughed. "You know me better than that, Jase."
"Always did play your cards close to your chest. Talk to you soon."
"You can count on it. And thanks."
I hung up, shoving the amber phone I'd recently been reunited with into my pocket alongside the red phone and Ash's phone. At this rate, I was going to need more pockets.
Living with Luke, I hadn't needed to cart so much crap around with me. Today, I'd stuffed my jacket with the bare essentials—the phones, my wallet, a couple of knives, lip balm, flex-cuffs, tissues, a tactical pen, pepper spray, a torch bright enough to blind a man, my favourite Zippo lighter, and a tube of mascara—I felt like a pack pony.
Bradley's voice played in my head. "Emmy, you're ruining the line of your jacket. It's by Ishmael, and it wasn't designed to be used as luggage."
Sigh.
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At a quarter to ten, my pocket started playing "Put Your Arms Around Me" by Texas, the ringtone I'd set for Nick back in happier days. I fumbled to get the red phone out, dropped it, then cursed as the screen cracked. Ah well, another one bites the dust. The amber phone rang ten seconds later, and this time I managed to answer successfully.
"Yeah?"
"Did you know Luke had a conversation with the kidnapper before you got there?"
"No, I didn't. Luke wasn't exactly coherent last night when I tried to speak to him. What did the bastard say?"
"Something about Luke ruining his life. I'll send over the recording of the interview. You'll want to hear it for yourself."
That would have been my next request. He knew me too well. "Thanks, Nicky."
Upstairs in my office, I wiped the dust off my laptop and turned it on. Thirty seconds later, my breath hitched as my husband smouldered back at me from the screen, one arm around me and the other held up to ward off Bradley, who'd been intent on replacing his white silk pocket square with a linen one that matched my purple dress. Bradley liked to be absolutely correct when it came to black tie.
Funny how the little things became so unimportant, wasn't it? Right now, the idea of tarting myself up and going out to a party made me want to crawl under the duvet and hide.
So, I stuck with my favourite distraction: work. Sloane had been busy—my inbox only contained eleven emails, all dated today.
Did she know I was back yet? Things had happened so quickly last night, I wasn't sure anyone had mentioned my return to her. I bashed out a quick message to let her know.
When I took a closer look at the screen, I spotted a new folder she'd set up titled IMPORTANT—For Emmy to read when she comes back. Uh-oh. Ninety-seven messages. At least she hadn't assumed I was dead. On the downside, it looked as if I had some bedtime reading to do.
But it could wait. I ignored the emails for the moment and put my headphones on. The file from Nick had arrived already, and I listened to it twice all the way through before pausing and rewinding the end, replaying the kidnapper's comments several times over.
The man's actions bugged me. When I saw him standing over Luke, I could have sworn he was about to pull the trigger. He'd had his finger on it for sure. But Luke was unconscious by that point. What would the bastard have achieved by killing him? Any "professional" kidnapper, and by that I mean one after an easy payoff, would have been long gone. Committing murder would complicate affairs to no end.
My gut said the kidnapper had a personal vendetta against Luke, and that was borne out by Luke's memories. He wanted Luke's life? What were the main things in it? His work, his sister, a stack of money, and at one time, me. My chest tightened when I thought of what we'd once had.
Emmy, stop it. Concentrate.
The kidnapper almost took three of those pillars, and indeed Luke himself, out of the picture. Oh, how I wished he'd tried for the fourth. I'd relish the day that arsehole came for me.
But he'd escaped, and now we needed to comb through Luke's life for anyone with a grudge. Nick's idea of starting with employees was a good one. For the time I'd been with Luke, he'd done nothing but work and hang out with me. Hardly contentious, and he'd always seemed too damn nice to make enemies. But did he have any dark secrets lurking in his past?
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I sat at the back of the room as Nye briefed the team, preferring to delegate the lead role for the time being. Nye certainly had the experience, and although I might have had seniority on paper, my head still wasn't in the game. But I did add my thoughts at the end.
"We need to look for someone with a personal grudge against Luke. Try work, ex-girlfriends, their boyfriends, previous domestic staff. Everyone." Everyone but Henry. He'd panned out as a lead—on the night of the ransom drop, he'd passed out in The Coach and Horses after being slapped by the barmaid.
"Family?" Nye asked.
"There's only his mother and Tia. His mother's a bitch, but she'd be shooting herself in the foot if she killed the golden goose."
"What about neighbours?"
"In the time I spent in Lower Foxford, we barely saw them, but check anyway."
The team drifted off to their stations, ready to start work, and Nye slumped down behind his laptop. Had he slept at all in the last twenty-four hours? Judging by his yawn, I suspected not.
"Nye, you look shit," I told him. "Get some sleep."
"Someone needs to supervise the team."
Yes, but not him. "I'll do it."
"You?"
"I think I'm qualified."
The rest of the guys looked as surprised as Nye when I settled into the top seat in the control room. Hardly surprising—at least three years had passed since I'd spent a whole day in there. So why now? I told myself it would help in the hunt for Tia, but the truth was, I didn't want to speak to Luke.
Was I being a coward? Hell, yeah. I'd rather face the business end of a machine gun than my inner self, any day, and the curious glances of the staff as I called my contacts in the city were easier to deal with than a single moment with Luke. I didn't enjoy the scrutiny, but after a while, I tuned out the discomfort. They'd get bored with me after a day or two.
Don't think, don't feel, just do. Be a robot, Emmy. I missed the simplicity of my life with Luke. Why hadn't I told him the truth in the first place? What if he'd known my true identity all along? Maybe, just maybe, there was a chance he'd have liked Emmy as well as Ash. Instead, I'd fucked up my first serious relationship in years, probably since Nick, in fact, with no chance of salvaging it. I mean, who would choose to continue a relationship based almost entirely on lies?
All I could do now was concentrate my efforts on finding Tia then getting her safely back.
Tia. I missed her too.
She'd been the sunshine in my life lately, making me smile in the evenings while I waited for Luke to get home. Was she keeping herself together? Had the kidnapper hurt her? The thought of her being held prisoner saw me planning ways to make him pay. And believe me, when it came to making lives a misery, my résumé was second to none. Which reminded me... I needed to fit in some target practice.
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Mid-morning, the team who'd gone to check on the stolen number plates returned. The registered owner was one Gabir Hassani, an Iraqi refugee now settled in South London, according to Mack.
"He wasn't there. His sister said he went home to visit their parents," the operative told me.
"In Iraq?"
"He left over a week ago."
"Any chance she was lying?"
My guy shrugged. "If she was, she did a good job of it. Showed us a family photo. Gabir Hassani's missing his right arm and his left leg."
Fuck. It may have been dark, but there was no way the man I chased through the woods was missing two limbs.
Which meant that avenue was a bust.
I spent the afternoon calling up old acquaintances and even went out to visit a couple, but nobody had heard a whisper about a kidnapping. All the other leads evaporated too. We were chasing shadows in an Arctic winter.
No hospital in the south of England had treated a stab wound to an upper arm last night. Disappointing, but at the same time, I hoped the kidnapper was in a lot of pain. The tyre prints belonged to a common set of Goodyears, the perfect size for a transit van. You could buy them from almost any tyre fitter, and it would be an impossible task trying to trace them all.
Six people had canvassed Lower Foxford, and while four villagers thought they might have seen transit vans in the vicinity, none could give a description of the driver. A further two operatives were in Luke's house and reported all was quiet there. They'd opened the mail, but only found a credit card bill and a circular from the local Porsche dealership inviting Luke to a canapé party.
"The credit card bill's interesting, though," our man told me.
"How so?"
"The man goes to a tanning salon every week."
Yes, thanks, I had noticed.
"And he spent a fortune on that holiday to the Bahamas. Even rented a private plane for the transfers. Are you still going?"
Luke had been planning to surprise me with a holiday? Fuck. Just when I'd thought I couldn't feel any shittier, I did.
"Is there anything relevant to the case?" I growled, then felt guilty because this was my problem, not anybody else's.
"What? Oh, no. Nothing at all."
My fists balled automatically, a subconscious reminder that I needed to speak to Jimmy.
Deep breaths, Emmy. Act professionally.
"Send the canvassers on to Middleton Foxford, would you? Keep one person with you at Luke's, just in case. Make yourselves at home, but do me a favour and don't drink the expensive wine."
"Right-o, boss."
Next up, I bit the bullet and called Mack. I couldn't put it off any longer.
"Hey, it's me." I forced a smile, knowing it would transfer to my voice.
"What can I do?"
Not her usual, "Hey, honey," or even a "How are ya?"
I'd never been great at handling these situations. With strangers, I could slip into a role, but when one of my best friends in the world treated me with such indifference, it hurt worse than a bullet.
"Uh, could you take a look through Luke's bank accounts?"
"Yes. Anything else?"
"You know the drill. See what else you can get into. Home computers, work network, anything interesting on the web."
"Sure."
"Thanks."
Click.
Talk about strained. Usually, Mack was the bubbliest out of all of us, but she'd barely given me the time of day. Boy, did I have a lot of bridges to mend.
With that in mind, I fired off an email to Bradley to let him know I was back. If he found out last, he'd never forgive me, but if I phoned him, that would be the entire day gone. Okay, one final call left to make. Would it be as painful as talking to Mack? Time to find out. I'd lived with Jimmy and his wife, Jackie, for almost two years, until just before my sixteenth birthday. He was the closest thing I had to a father.
"Jimmy?" my voice cracked, and I took a sip from the glass of water on my desk.
"Amanda, that you?"
Few people knew me as Amanda. My birth certificate agreed with them, but I hated the name. Why? Because my mother chose it. And by chose it, I mean she opened a book of baby names and got bored before she'd got to the end of the A's. But Jimmy had always called me Amanda, and so I let it be.
"Yeah, it's me."
"Blimey, girl, you had us worried the way you dropped off the face of the earth."
"I needed to be on my own for a while. I'm sorry."
"I get you, sweet thing, but next time you gotta promise to call Jimmy, you got it?"
"Hoping there won't be a next time."
"You won't be replacing that husband of yours in a hurry, then?"
"Doubt I'll ever replace him. He was one of a kind."
"That he was, girl. That he was. Now, you know I wasn't keen on him at first, but he grew on me over the years. He did you proud."
I choked back a laugh. Wasn't keen on him? A bit of an understatement from Jimmy. When my husband announced he wanted me to move to the States with him, Jimmy had threatened to fold him in half, hang him from the ceiling, and use him as a punchbag. They were about the same size. It would have been an interesting match.
"I know he did me proud," I sniffed.
"No tears, girl. Gotta keep your chin up. You in town at the moment?"
"Yeah, working."
"Well, try and fit in a few minutes to come and see us."
"I'll try, Jimmy. I'll visit as soon as I can. I promise."
Something else for my to-do list. At least Jimmy didn't sound as unhappy with me as everyone else. Meanwhile, I had to sort out this mess with Tia so she and Luke could get on with their lives while I got on with mine.
Whatever was left of it.