Page 109 of The Black Trilogy

“I don’t suppose you’ve got CCTV?”

He shook his head. “Do you want to post a letter?”

I refrained from suggesting he return his brain to sender and left before I kicked something. A quick walk along the residential road didn’t reveal a single camera. This was a game of snakes and ladders, and I’d just slid all the way down a boa constrictor.

We were back to square one again. I ground my teeth, something I hadn’t done since my teenage years because it gave me a headache. The kidnapper had promised further instructions, so all we could do was wait.

I ate dinner alone in the office, picking at the pizza I’d had delivered with the enthusiasm of a sloth. I’d told myself I needed to stay in case we got a break in the investigation, but I was lying. In a quiet corner of the canteen, there were no reminders of the husband I’d lost. At home, the reminders lay everywhere.

The rest of Sloane’s saved emails held nothing of interest, and my calendar stretched ahead, empty. My mind had nothing to distract it from memories of my husband and Tia, fighting it out for prime position. And as I’d told Sloane I wouldn’t return to the States until Tia was found, I’d have to live with that.

Back in the control room, I found Nye had gone to get some sleep, and Tom, who was running things in his absence, took one look at me and told me to do the same.

“I should stay. What if something comes up?”

He gave me a gentle push towards the door. “Then we’ll deal with it. If this becomes a rescue situation, we need you ready to do what you do best.”

At the moment, the only things I felt capable of were drinking coffee and staring into space.

“Fine. Promise you’ll call if you need me?”

“You know I will. Now, get out of here.”

I drove home, sticking to the speed limit for once as I didn’t want the journey to end. Luke was pacing around the kitchen when I arrived, and my heart seized when I saw him. Not because he was upset, but because his hands held my husband’s mug. To the casual eye, it was nothing special—oversized china with black is the new black written on it—but it had been his favourite, and I wasn’t ready to see another man drinking from it.

As Luke turned, tea sloshed out and hit the tiles. “Why aren’t you doing more? This’ll be the fourth night she’s been gone. What’s that maniac doing to her? He ripped her nail out for goodness' sake. She must be in agony.”

Dan and Nick looked on, silent, and it was me who spoke. “I know it’s not easy, but believe me, we’re doing everything we can. There’s so little to go on, we don’t have much choice but to wait.”

“Believe you? Yeah, right. How would you like it if your nail had been ripped out?”

Been there, done that. “It hurts, but it’ll grow back. He could have done a lot worse.”

I’d seen everything from fingers to ears being sent to parents. One poor family got sent their kid’s foot, still stuffed into the tiny Nike trainer he’d got for his birthday the previous weekend. A fingernail was nothing compared to that.

But I had a feeling Luke wouldn’t appreciate me pointing that out, so I stayed quiet.

And he didn’t like that either.

“How can you act so calm? I suppose it’s because it’s not your sister that’s been abducted. You’ve got me stuck here in this luxury prison with this pair…” he jerked his thumb at Nick and Dan, “who could be doing something far more useful than babysitting me. I should have called the police.”

“I’m calm because getting worked up won’t solve the problem,” I answered, although at that moment I felt anything but calm inside. “We’ve got over fifty people working on this, most of whom were cherry picked from the police or military for being the best in their field. We’ve chased down every lead as it’s come in, but there’s been precious little to go on.”

Luke paused in his steps to glare at me, but this time I didn’t back down.

“Nobody’s got a good look at the kidnapper, and if I hadn’t followed you to the woods that night, you’d be lying dead, and I’d be the only one who even knew Tia was missing.”

His eyes softened slightly, but still he didn’t speak. Well, he wasn’t the only one hurting right now. I walked from the room with a parting shot of, “If you don’t want to be here, Dan will call you a car and you can go home.”

Yes, Diamond was back.

I wandered the house aimlessly, ruing an awful day that only got worse with each passing minute. Even though people surrounded me, I felt horribly alone. Part of me wanted to grab a bag, climb into the Aston, and run again, but I couldn’t break my promise to Nate. While it might have helped my sanity, I’d done quite enough damage when I left the first time, and I needed to search for Tia.

On the first floor, my feet carried me to the study I’d shared with my husband. Small and cosy, we’d used it as an alternative to the control room downstairs when we needed peace.

I hadn’t been in there since he died, and it looked like nobody else had either. His favourite pen still sat in the middle of his desk. A book he’d been reading sat on the coffee table, the bookmark showing he’d never get to finish a quarter of the pages. One of his jumpers hung over the back of the couch under his favourite painting.

It was on the couch that Nick found me, squashed into one corner, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around my legs, and my head resting on the jumper. I could have sworn it still smelled of my husband, but it had been three months, so perhaps that was just my imagination.

---