Page 5 of I Would Die for You

“You never know,” I said curtly.

“I think we’ve got a pretty good idea,” he’d said, smiling at my fearful expression.

But he shouldn’t be so complacent, because I know people can be taken from you when you least expect it. Like now.

Hank’s blue lights puncture the rapidly darkening skies, illuminating a room I hadn’t even realized needed lighting.

“You need to find her,” I sob, as I fall into his fatherly embrace. He may be the police chief of Coronado, but he’s a friend first and foremost, and Hannah’s disappearance will be hurting him almost as much as it’s hurting me. “Something’s happened—I know it has.”

“Let’s not be jumping to any conclusions,” he says, his soothing tone belying his grave expression, which suggests he already has. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation.”

“She’s eight years old, Hank, and someone has deliberately set out to take her.”

“I spoke to Hannah’s teacher on the way over here,” he says, guiding me into the kitchen with a firm hand in the small of my back. “She’s confirmed that a woman did indeed collect her and that she introduced herself as her aunt.”

“Oh my god!” I wail, as I imagine somebody else playing mother to my little girl. “What does she want? Why Hannah?”

As soon as the words are out, I wonder why it’s taken me twenty minutes to ask myself that question when the answer is so glaringly obvious. How had I not made the connection? How, in the maelstrom of emotions that have descended upon my brain since Hannah’s been missing, could I have forgotten the woman at mydoor? The woman who had even got as far as the hallway under the guise of being someone she wasn’t. The deafening roar in my head renders me speechless.

“Nicole!” calls out Brad as he runs through the open front door and rushes toward me.

I fall into him, my legs giving way as he bears my weight. “Where is she?” I sob.

His bottom lip wavers, but he pulls himself up short before it has a chance to manifest into anything more. Though I know if it wasn’t for me, he’d have been on his knees before he’d even made it through the front door of the house that bears so many hallmarks of his little girl. Her red rain mac hangs redundantly on its hook, her wellies, still caked in mud, stand to attention on the mat. I’d hazard a guess that he can even smell her, and I can’t help but feel strangely envious; her natural sweet scent having already lost itself on me.

“We’ll find her,” he says, looking to Hank for backup, both literally and metaphorically.

An unnerving silence resounds and a guttural sob catches in my chest as children on the other side of the street play on their tricycles in their front yard. It’s a scene that’s played out every day. Except today everything feels different. Instead of seeing the gleaming pink and blue metal frames reflecting the sunset, a dark cloud seems to be casting the longest of shadows, and instead of their little chuckles of delight, all I can hear is my past howling at me.

4

LONDON, 1986

The heat is oppressive, as it always is on those five days a year that London registers over seventy degrees Fahrenheit. Sweat drips down Cassie’s back as bodies press tightly together like sardines in a can, waiting for someone to set them free. If she’d known it was going to be this hot, she wouldn’t have worn her denim jacket, but she’d not trusted the weather girl on the TV this morning, even though she’d warned the elderly to stay inside and reminded animal lovers to keep their pets hydrated. In fact, Cassie had laughed in the face of it even further by wearing lace gloves and weighing herself down with layer after layer of plastic jewelry that sits heavily on her chest and around her wrists, making her skin itch, but impossible to scratch.

If she stands on tiptoes, held up by the pressing crowd around her, Cassie’s just tall enough to see that she’s on the wrong side of Oxford Street. If she were closer to the HMV record store, she’d be able to shelter in its shadow, but the sun is high, beating down on top of her head, making her feel like she’s cooking from the inside.

“Get back!” yells a power-hungry policeman. He raises his truncheon and needlessly jostles the edge of the ever-growing, excitable crowd.

Although the threat of authority looms menacingly, Cassie can’t help but feel empowered at the thought of revolting against it. She imagines being embroiled in the riots of a few years earlier or standing on the picket line of the long-standing miners’ strike, demanding to be heard, and although this isn’t quite the same, she doesn’t doubt that the police wouldn’t hesitate to use the same brute force if they felt their superiority slipping from their grasp.

As if the swaying teenage throng needed any further encouragement to unleash their hormonal frustrations, a girl wedged in three people across from Cassie starts to shout up out of the mêlée.

“Who do we want?” she yells, her turned-up mouth and mischievous glint displaying complete and utter defiance.

Cassie smiles, already a fan of her chutzpah. “Secret Oktober!”

The girl turns and winks at her, buoyed by her comradeship. “When do we want ’em?”

“Now!” roars Cassie.

The chant initially falls on deaf ears, but after a few more goes, the crowd begin to warm to the theme.

“Who do we want?”

“Secret Oktober!” comes the rousing response.

“When do we want ’em?”

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