Chapter 12
Alex
“Where are you?” I called. I wasn’t really worried. It was my garden, and I knew every inch of it. I knew that it was not dangerous. Somewhere a night bird shrieked once but otherwise was silent. The crickets sang. The grass was soaked with dew and I breathed deeply and walked along the path. When I reached the end of it I stopped.
“Emma?”
Something felt wrong. I couldn’t have said what it was exactly. It was just that the place at the end of the path where it touched the edge of the copse of trees felt wrong. I looked at the grass, and while I did I started noticing what it was. The grass was flattened.
I could see footprints on the surface of the dew. They glinted there. They led toward the wall.
“Emma!”
I shouted it, running to the wall. I felt a sudden madness enter me. I reached up to the top of the wall, being careful not to zap myself on the electric wiring around the top part of it. Hoisting myself up, I found a surprising thing. It wasn’t on…not anymore, anyway.
“Oh, my…” I dropped off the wall. I felt dazed. This was terrifying. This was…this was exactly what happened the last time. Exactly what happened to Ada.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to run. I had absolutely no idea what to do, other than hate myself for doing this again. For loving someone and killing them because of it.
I heard a car in the road beyond. That broke the stunned state that I currently was. Cars hardly ever came down our road. Especially at this time. Or that fast. I knew what to do.
Reaching into my pocket to call the private security firm I employ now to look after my private security needs, I found my hand was shaking as I tried to dial. I called, and spoke to Klaas, the head of the unit, as I ran to the garage.
“Klaas? Yeah. There’s been a breach in the wall and…” and I could barely say this, but I had to say it anyway, “and my girlfriend’s gone.”
I paused while Klaas said all the things one might expect—most of them beginning with the letter F—and then took a shaky breath.
“Quite,” I said. “Well, calling them fuckers isn’t going to help us. Please send two cars round here now. We need to trace these people. I heard a vehicle in the road behind and we can identify the tracks and follow them from there.”
Klaas apologized, and said he’d sort it out. I was already inside the garage. I was about to jump into the fastest car I owned and streak off to find her myself, when I realized how very stupid that actually was. I had no idea at all where she might be.
I ran back to the house.
“Kids,” I said, when I met them standing in the dining-room, looking scared. “There’s a problem. Um…Emma’s gone. We don’t know where. Daddy has to go find her. Okay?”
“Emma ran away from here?”
“No, sweetie,” I explained. “We just need to find out where she’s gone.” I didn’t want to say she’d been taken. Jack was old enough to remember what happened the first time. And I didn’t want him to think it would happen again. I didn’t want to think that either.
I heard the front doorbell. Happy for the fast response of the team, I ran to answer it. I found myself confronted with Klaas himself, the thickest South African with a blunt, open face.
“Hell,” he said. “What the fuck happened, man?” He ran a hand over his shaved head, face a picture of concern.
“No idea, Klaas. I appreciate you coming here.”
“Not at all,” he nodded. “Take us to the tracks.”
I nodded, leading him out to the place beside the hole in the fence. Sure enough, there were tracks there in the road. It must have accelerated at a hell of a rate because there was dark rubber left on the tarred surface.
“Yeah, that’s it,” Klaas agreed, studying them for a moment. “SUV. Smallish one. Colt treads. We’ll look up possibilities. In the meantime, I’m sending one of the cars that way.”
“Thanks,” I said, feeling suddenly weak with relief. Klaas looked at me astutely.
“No worries, man.”
I swallowed hard. It was probably sound advice, but impossible to follow. I had to get Emma back. I had to.
“Where will you go?” I asked, indicating the other team and Klaas himself.
Klaas started giving instructions. “You,” he said to the first man. “Go and question the security guard. You can do the house staff. You, look at the security camera data for…when, Mr. Carring?”
“Around six thirty,” I said, thinking quickly.
“Okay. Any time between six and seven,” Klaas nodded to his man, who disappeared. That left him with one other, and himself.
“Okay, Juan,” he said to the last man. “You keep in radio contact with the guys. Let me know if they find anything. And I,” he said to me, “will go and find what we’re looking for.”
“Thanks,” I said again.
“No worries, man.”
I followed Klaas inside and showed him to my office. He could use whatever he needed to in there to try and find whoever these would-be killers were. Because I have not one doubt in my mind that they were.
My mind went back to that time I had tried so hard, so fruitlessly, to forget. Then the call came through that they had Ada. Unless I closed my company, they would kill her.
I had hesitated maybe a moment too long. Not because I valued the company more than Ada, but because I had no idea how to start dismantling it. And perhaps, at least a little, because the company was our livelihood. What would Ada say if we suddenly lost everything?
It was a ridiculous thought, but it was a thought I had. And those two things had cost Ada her life.
They shot her. I was grateful at least for that. Cleanly through the head. It was shocking that I was grateful for that. It should never have happened at all. Images of her—of what she had suffered—played out through my mind for months, robbing me of sleep so that I thought I might lose my mind.
And now it was happening again, this time with Emma.
“I hate these people,” I hissed. The hate was a living thing, like an animal inside me. I clenched my fists, wanting to hold it in. I glanced at my desk, where Klaas calmly sat at the Mac, looking for things about cars. Seeing him was reassuring and I saw that much of my hate was to cover up my fear.
“Well, the fuckers are driving a Colt Ralliart.”
“Oh,” I said. They weren’t exactly cheap cars. Whoever this was seemed to have money at their disposal. But then that should have been obvious: breaching the security around Park House was a serious achievement in itself. I closed my eyes, wondering if I could make any guess at all about who these people might be. Who could possibly hate me enough to hurt the deepest part of my heart? Who was simultaneously well heeled enough and angry enough to do this?
I had no idea. But I knew that the need to get to where they were as quickly as possible. I would not let them take Emma. I had failed Ada and I lived haunted by her spirit all my life. I would not fail Emma. She was my light.
A sound made Klaas look up in surprise.
“Radio,” he said quickly. “Team two. They have something for me.”
“Answer,” I snapped, before I had thought about the fact that Klaas didn’t appreciate that. He raised a brow at me but did it immediately.
“Ace. What you found?” A pause. “Yes.”
I looked at him.
“They found the car.”
That was all I needed.
“I’m coming with you.”