Page 29 of One Week With My Dad's Best Friend

One cop stares at me, and I shake my head. “She broke into my home. That is when I called you. She is trying to blackmail me with a sex video she recorded of me and my girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend!” she hisses. “She’s a child and there is no proof I recorded the video or blackmailed him.”

“She’s an adult.”

“You will find the security footage at my workplace will prove she is the person behind the recording, and my home security will prove the blackmail and everything else.” I point to her face and her ripped top. “She did everything she could to get me to agree to her plan. To give her two million dollars.”

“We’ll take her in. But we need the footage within twenty-four hours to charge her,” One cop says. Taking hold of her arm.

“The video is on her phone and the cloud. I need to delete them.”

“It’s evidence, I’m afraid. No judge will lock her up without it.”

Cassandra screams as she’s led down the hallway. She lashes out at the cop holding her arm and he spins her to the wall, pressing her face against the panel, and slaps a pair of handcuffs on her wrists.

Only once she is in the car and leaving my property do I run up the stairs. There is no way Scarlett isn’t awake from the chaos.

When I open the door, the bed is unmade, but she isn’t in it. I rush to the bathroom, but she isn’t there either.

“Scarlett, where are you?” I call out, checking in the other bathroom, hoping she is listening to music through earphones.

But everything is empty.

I chew the inside of my cheek and try to think back. Did I remember any sounds? Her padding down the staircase? Her footsteps on the tiled floor?

I was too busy arguing with Cassandra.

Did she overhear the conversation?

My eyebrows pull together in concern as I look around the room. I dash to the upstairs hallway, running in and out of the many bedrooms our children will fill. My heart is crashing against my ribcage because she is nowhere around.

Panic thumps in my chest as I walk out of the room and down the hall. I check the other rooms in the house, just in case, but nothing. I walk up and down the stairs, trying to think of where else she would be. Even checking my locked office and the living room and kitchen again. I search every room in the house, twice, and by the time I’m back in our bedroom, blood is pounding in my ears and my body trembling with fear.

Her phone isn’t beside the bed—she leaves it there every evening. I open the wardrobe and most of her clothes are there, but her purse is gone.

She wouldn’t leave me. Would she?

“Scarlett,” I yell. But I know she isn’t here.

I rush down the staircase two steps at a time to retrieve my phone. Frantic, I call her number but there’s no answer and then the list of her friends I have in my contacts. It’s late but I don’t care. I need to find her. Now, I’m happy I insisted on getting the numbers from her mother before they left for Hollywood.

But none of her friends have seen her since Friday night.

I drive to Hetty’s house. She is her best friend.

She tells me she isn’t there, but if Scarlett didn’t want me to know where she was. Hetty is likely to go along with the plan.

I wait for half an hour for her to come to her senses and come out of the house, but as it’s past midnight and all the lights have gone out.

My phone chimes.

Hetty: She really isn’t here. I promise.

Then where the hell is she?

My blood is thrashing at the thought of her being alone. She walked from my home, in the pouring rain, so she couldn't have gotten too far.

I have the key to her family’s home.

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