Scorch (Virtues & Lies Book 2)

by Alexandra Silva

  Strange.

  My heart speeds up, my pulse hammering in my throat. I’m not taking any risks. Moving swiftly, I head back towards the ladies’ toilet.

  The hairs on the back of my neck tingle. Nervous energy sweeps through me without remorse.

  I’m so taken with the need to get back to the loos that I ram into some poor unsuspecting guy, sending myself flying, spinning face-first onto the wall.

  “Sorry,” the man says, his voice vibrating through the loud drumming of my pulse in my ears.

  I can’t form the words to reply with the pain shooting to the back of my skull, leaving me in a haze, stomach churning with my momentary disorientation.

  It never clears, fuzzing my extremities. The prickles from before become nails, deflating my consciousness. All I can think is that I’m in trouble as I collapse on myself, dragged under a sickly sea of darkness.

  Chapter 41

  Christopher

  The gallery room has pretty much cleared, and people have moved back into the dinner room with the dance floor. Charles excused himself soon after Edgar. Coleman is proving hard to shake. He keeps interrogating me like he’s interviewing me for a job. I suppose he is.

  He seems genuinely interested on my thoughts on how the justice system and outdated jurisdiction are letting our modern society down. They haven’t adapted enough.

  “A word of advice,” he says. Arms crossed over his chest and looking straight at me, he levels me with his narrowed stare. “You want to make a difference?”

  “Yes.”

  “Keep your affairs private.”

  “Excuse me?” I’m ready to jump down his throat and give him a thorough shakedown.

  “Don’t diminish your cause by flaunting your private life.” He pockets his age-withered hands.

  Seems rich coming from him.

  “I won’t endorse attention-seekers.”

  “But you will support a reward system based on popularity rather than potential and track record?”

  “I beg your par—” I silence him, raising my hand between us, as Wayne saunters to me.

  Confusion pinches his face. “I thought you didn’t want me to take my eyes off Arabella?” he spits at me.

  “Where is she?” Dread takes over every cell of my being. A sick feeling blisters my insides.

  “In the toilets, where I told you.” He steps closer, confusion becoming worry. “What the fuck is going on?”

  Pulling his phone out, he speaks into his lapel while handing it to me.

  I read the messages he points to.

  WAYNE: What’s happening?

  ME: I need you out here. Now.

  WAYNE: Arabella?

  ME: Ryan has her.

  WAYNE: You sure?

  ME: NOW.

  What the fuck?

  “What the fuck is this?” I blow at him, pulling my phone out.

  It’s off. I try to switch it on, but nothing happens. It takes me a moment to realise it isn’t mine. There’s no hairline crack on the screen.

  “He switched my fucking phone!” Clenching the useless piece of shit in my fist, I start for the toilets, leaving a mumbling Coleman behind.

  “What?” Wayne chases after me, grunting orders into his microphone.

  “I need eyes on Charles.”

  “Why?”

  “He set us up!” How could I be so fucking reckless?

  Why didn’t you check your phone?

  “What do you mean? He told me you needed me out here.” His voice rises as he keeps up with me.

  He should be fucking scared. If anything has happened to Arabella, I’ll kill him.

  “Nobody leaves the fucking place!” Slamming the corridor door leading to the toilets, I rush to the female loos.

  The air in here is cooler, stinging my lungs and burning my nose and throat.

  “Ah, Dios!” Edgar’s wife screams as I lunge into the women’s room at the same time as she’s opening the door to come out. “Jesus, you scared me.”

  “Where’s my wife?” Manic, my question comes out as a bark.

  “She went to get help.”

  “Help? What fo…” I find Dorothy before I’ve finished.

  Loud voices echo into the room, and before I make a move, Freddie and Casper are spinning me to face them.

  “Where is she?” Freddie growls.

  Loud thundering cracks punch the walls, echoing around us with every cubicle door Casper kicks open.

  There’s a moment when the gravity of the situation escalates, and I feel completely lost. More alone than I’ve ever been in my whole life. Ice chills my veins with a fear I can’t push through.

  I can’t fucking breathe. My lungs fill with concrete. My cold limbs leaden.

  Ryan barrels through the crowd, pulling me out of my stupor.

  “Find her.” Bellowing at him, I push through the crowd of security gathering.

  They need to be out there looking for Arabella. I’m so certain she’s gone, I feel her absence in every recess of my being. It’s unbearable.

  Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck!

  “Freddie!” The shout fills the hallway as I look in both directions, trying to sense where she went. But it’s pointless. Maybe I’m just a motherfucking sorry excuse of a husband. Maybe the whole sixth sense thing is complete and utter bollocks.

  Fuck. Fuck. FUCK!

  Hurling the phone in my hand at the wall, I follow it up with punch that grinds my knuckles.

  I shake Freddie’s hand from my shoulder as he tries to pull me from the wall I’m hammering with my bludgeoning fists.

  “The cameras,” I blurt, slapping my hands on the wall, pressing my forehead between them. “Check them all.”

  “On it.”

  That’s all he says before he walks towards one of the staff-only doors.

  “Wait.” I pick up the phone at my feet. “Check it too.”

  He catches it. “We’ll find her.”

  I nod. “Track my phone. I know he has her.”

  There’s not a single spark of doubt.

  “Arabella’s tough. She’ll give him hell, and when we find him…”

  “I’ll send him there.”

  One hour and twenty-three minutes, seven floors, two hundred and three rooms later… there’s nothing. No trace. Nothing.

  “Stop fucking pacing,” Freddie bites from where he’s sitting at the security desk of the hotel. He’s going through every possible camera.

  “Try her phone again.”

  “If it’s off, I can’t trace it!”

  “Mine.”

  “Same thing.”

  “There has to be something we’ve missed. A camera we haven’t looked at.” Casper stops in front of me, the worry on his face a mirror of mine.

  “The garage cameras?” Turning to Freddie, I ignore the noise coming from the hallway as Dad steps in the room with Mum and Benedict following behind him.

  “Tell Mercy,” Mum snaps at Benedict.

  “Not until I have more to tell her. Last thing I need is her going into a blind panic. You know what she’s like.”

  “Her daughter is missing!”

  “My daughter, Penelope. My child is missing, and I’m doing everything I can to get her back.”

  “Anything new?” Dad asks. His weariness betrays his controlled tone.

  Shaking my head, I feel like the little boy who’d just buried his hamster in the back garden, stumbling in with mud covering my hands and feet, my clothes soaked through and my broken heart clogging my throat.

  “I have every man available on this.” The assurance in his voice does nothing to quell the terror inside me. “We’re going to find her, I promise you.”

  He promised everything would be okay as he cleaned me up that day. I believed him. Eventually it was. After some time I stopped thinking about Herbert. I stopped missing the creak of his wheel at night or the tapping of the ball stopper when he went for a drink.

  But Arabella isn’t a pet. She’s every beat of my he
art, and the longer she’s missing, the more sluggish each thrum gets.

  Is that a sign? Does that mean she’s hurt…or worse?

  Shouldn’t I know all this? Feel it in my bones or have some kind of sixth sense?

  “I can’t hack into the traffic cameras with this piece of shit.” Freddie stands, overturning the keyboard and all the shit on the desk in one fell swoop.

  For that loud, chaotic moment my heart gongs, inflating me with something I need. It doesn’t matter that it pounds violence through my bloodstream. The need for blood. The need to hurt. To crush bones and tear muscle.

  If it brings her back, that’s what I’ll do. Even if it destroys me.

  “I’ve already called in a few favours on that. Nothing came back on the NPR system.” Dad sighs, defeat seeping into his tone.

  “Don’t fucking do that!” My hoarse voice breaks.

  How dare he break his promise this quickly.

  Freddie walks circles around the crowded room, muttering to himself, hands pulling at his hair.

  “NPR doesn’t recognise the car,” I tell him when he pauses beside me. “We need to check the cameras in the surrounding area.”

  “I’ve had an alert sent to border control. Even if they try to get her out with a fake passport, the facial recognition camera will set off a notification pinpointing her location,” Benedict informs us. It now makes sense why he keeps checking his phone.

  “If they try to take her out of the country.” Mum’s clearly got it in for him. She might have a point, but I wish she’d pack it in.

  “We can’t do anything from here.” I don’t want to leave the hotel. It’s the last place I set eyes on my wife. But I’m sure she’s not here; her absence scorches my insides. “We need to be out there. We need to be doing something!”

  “If I can just check the footage for the last two hours…we could follow them through most of London on street cams. You know I could,” he tells Dad. “Uncle Francis, that’s our best shot.”

  “You really think you could find her like that?” Benedict stands in front of the wall of screens showing empty hallways and a quiet lobby.

  My eyes draw to Leo and Cassie, marching down the corridor we’re off of. He’s practically dragging her on the teetering heels she’s wearing. Wayne and Rosalind follow them with Ryan at their side.

  “Yes.” Freddie’s answer draws my attention back.

  “Fine. Let’s go, Fred.”

  The door opens just as we all start moving.

  “What’s the plan?” They’re Leo’s first and only words.

  “We’ve sent everyone on their way,” Cassie says when no one replies.

  “We manned the doors. Every guy we had here was on watch,” Ryan tells me. “No sign of Charles or Mrs. Sinclair.”

  “So? What are we doing to find Arabella?” Leo asks again, irritation grating his words.

  “CCTV footage is useless. The cameras had to be tampered with. Wayne walks away, and she walks out of the toilet. There’s nothing else. No footage of her entering the room or going back into the toilet,” Freddie replies.

  “Get Fleur on the phone.” He tips his chin at Casper.

  “Why?”

  “Because Fred needs to get into Charles’ office. He can search his drives for anything that might help us. She needs to find his passport, that way we can get a better idea of their plan.”

  “Lucian’s on that,” Dad tells him at the same time as Mum says, “Leave her out of this.”

  “Her father has my wife and you want her to be left out of this?”

  “It’s not her fault. She’s wasn’t even here.” Mum’s cool tone is an echo of mine.

  I want to hate her for putting Fleur above me and Arabella. My stomach twists with the anger knifing through me.

  My vision hazes as uncontrollable shakes wrack my body, my hands fisting at my sides.

  “Why? Why isn’t she ever around when this happens?” My sharp words become a resounding shout. “Why isn’t it ever her? Why isn’t she here?”

  “Because she’s pregnant, and after what happened…” Cassie looks up at me with sorrow in her eyes. “You’re focusing on the wrong thing. Blame isn’t the important thing right now. Revenge…those things won’t get her back, Christopher.”

  I know she’s right. So fucking right, but I’m angry and terrified that I won’t get to Arabella in time.

  She looks at Freddie, chewing her lip like she’s scared he’s going to think she’s crazy as she goes on. “Maybe I’m being silly, but if you can hack into the traffic cameras, can’t you hack into the house cameras? You can check if Charles is there. Can’t you?”

  He humours her with a soft smile. “I can hack into them, but let’s be honest, would you go back home if you knew we were after you?” Pausing, he takes a couple of steps back, doing another lap of the room before he starts fucking around with his phone. “Motherfucker.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not Charles we need to be chasing for Arabella. Is it? The Law Society dinner…it wasn’t Charles she was going to.”

  Grinding my teeth, I inhale a deep breath, hoping it soothes the burn inside me. It adds to the flames inside. The inferno blazes so fucking wild that I might as well be physically in hell.

  “She wasn’t going to Heath House.” Spinning to face us, he exhales the breath he’s been holding. “The card gave her the details for the vodka and caviar lounge.”

  “And?” Benedict presses.

  “What’s the bet that that’s where they’ve taken her?” He shrugs. “It’s easy to check. I don’t need to do it. You’re the fucking Deputy PM. Ask one of your guys to get the Transport Office to look at the footage from that road.”

  “That’s not possible. At least not right now—it’ll take them hours if not days to get back to us.”

  “Fuck this!” All this talk is doing nothing but giving the fuckers more time to hurt Arabella.

  “Where are you going?” Leo steps in front of me.

  “Get the fuck out of my way.” Shouldering past him, I swing the door open and leave.

  Striding down the corridor, I pull my loosened tie off, wrapping it over my pulsing fist like I would wrap my hands before going at the sandbag at the gym.

  “We need a plan, Christopher,” Freddie blows out as he catches up to me.

  Leo keeps the pace on my other side. “We’re naked, man. We can’t walk around with nothing to protect ourselves with.”

  “We’re not walking around.” Taking two steps down at a time, I breathe in the cool air rushing up from the lobby. “If they were taking her to the Russian’s club before, that’s where we’re going now.”

  “Not without me,” Ryan calls a couple of steps behind.

  “Or me,” Wayne adds.

  “I told you to stay with Mum and Cassie,” Leo grinds as we hit the revolving doors.

  “I have the car.”

  “Seriously, Wayne, just—”

  “Don’t argue with me.” Wayne takes his keys off the valet, as does Ryan. They exchange words, and as we get into the cars, they’re each on their phones giving each of their teams orders to meet us at our destination.

  “When we get there, you’ll let me go ahead. The team will have surrounded the place; some of the guys are going to go into the premises and act as civilians. They’ll keep shit locked down when we’re in. At no point do you go rogue. Understand?”

  “I understand.” It doesn’t mean I’m going to follow his instructions. I’m getting my wife back, and where her life is concerned…all bets are off.

  Chapter 42

  Arabella

  The air smells singed. That kind of musty smoke scent you get after a bonfire hangs in the air. All I can think about are warm hazel eyes…verdant woodlands and serene lakes. Beachy bonfires and autumn evenings. Christmas days in front of crackling fires.

  It’s all dreamy until pain sears from the back of my head to my nose. My eyes water with the distinct scent of dried blood a
nd rich down.

  Rich down. Feathers and plumes…

  My hair tickles my face as I exhale, and as I shake my head to move my it from my eyes, a sharp stab slices from the top of my skull to my shoulders.

  “Ow…” Why is my head so sore? “Ah…”

  “Shhh,” a soft feminine voice whispers from beside me, followed by cold hands brushing my hair back. “Don’t wake up.”

  Fluttering open, my eyes sting even in the dim light. My head pulses and before I can fully take in my surroundings, I scrunch my eyes shut. Tears trickle down to my temples.

  I’ve never had a migraine in my life, but fuck…this feels like my head is about to pop right off my neck.

  “Don’t move. Don’t speak. Sleep.”

  I don’t want to sleep. I want to see where I am. Who this person is. I don’t remember leaving the auction.

  Where’s Christopher?

  “Christopher?”

  “Shhh…perestan’te razgovarivat,” the soft voice cajoles in a low, fearful whisper.

  The words filter through my head; their tone and rough twang is familiar. So brutish for such a warm voice.

  Forcing my eyes open with my breath held tight in my aching lungs, I fight through the curdling pain in my head.

  Long, messy blonde hair shields my face like a veil. It looks so silky even in its dishevelled state.

  The girl’s high features catch the light, and familiarity glows across her milky skin. I know this girl.

  “Where am I?” I breathe out, swallowing the bile that rises with the pounding in my head.

  “Shush!”

  No! The desperate way she hisses unfurls a deep panic inside me. My chest tightens. Acid singes my lungs as it collects on my chest. Hands push me back down as I try to get up. My stomach twists and as I’m about to hurl the contents of my stomach, her cool hand lands on my mouth.

  Fuck, full-blown panic rampages through me at the thought of drowning in my own sick. It’s the creak of a heavy door that kills my fight to get free.

  “Ona ne spit?” a deep, aggressive voice rumbles from a short distance.

  More tears form as sick begins to push through my closed lips.