by Lena North
“How did you know she lived in Prosper?”
Mimi looked away, and he waited silently.
“I looked at her things,” she mumbled.
“What?”
“I was curious, okay? I didn’t destroy anything,” she snapped defensively. “Carrie was there, and I walked past the bar, and I saw you. You were all laughing and dancing, having a great time. Charlie was dancing with Roark, but you shoved him away and…”
He didn’t know what to say. He remembered that night, and he knew she’d seen them laugh at something Roark had said, and how he’d kissed Charlie.
“You broke into Nico and Paulie’s house?” he asked quietly.
“It wasn’t locked,” she protested. I walked in from the garden, and the gate was open. Her door was unlocked too, and I only wanted to… I don’t know? Look at the clothes she had. I found her wallet and the address on her driver’s license said Prosper.”
She’d gone through Charlie’s wallet?
“That’s breaking and entering, Mimi,” he said. “It’s not only insane. It’s also illegal.”
“I just wanted to understand. Why her? Why her and not me?”
“I love her,” he said, watched her blink back tears, and added tersely, “You were talking about things you had no business talking about, and didn’t sort it out when you found out you’d made damned stupid assumptions.”
“I heard the woman say it was sweet that Lottie had found her family, so I didn’t think it was a big deal. What good would it have been to try to take it back?”
“You could at least have told me? Or if not me, someone else?”
Her face hardened.
“I wanted him to come,” she spat out. “If they met, Sebastian would have a chance to fix the misunderstanding between them. They were so much in love once, and if he could talk to her –”
Joao made an impatient, angry sound to stop her from spewing whatever shit she’d been fed. Trying to calm himself down and reminding himself that she hadn’t known what Sebastian had done to Charlie, he slowly opened the envelope he’d brought.
“Sebastian Lievens is evil,” he said. “He hurt her for years, Mimi. Stalked her. Broke into her place. Hurt her friends. She jumped off a goddamned balcony to get away from him, and she’d found sanctuary in Croxier.”
He put a photo on her coffee table, right in front of her.
“Uncle Nico took this the night she came to the Islands, Mimi. This is what the man you sent after Charlie did to her,” he said.
She gasped, stretched her hand out toward a picture showing Charlie’s swollen face, but snatched it away as if she’d burned herself.
“He told me they’d had a fight, and that he was sorry,” she whispered.
“He lied.”
Joao put two more photos on top of the one showing Charlie.
“I took these yesterday,” he said.
Her eyes widened, but he didn’t wait for her to comment on the pictures of Dupree’s house and the duplex, both burnt to the ground.
“They both almost died. Roark spent three days in the hospital, but Dupree is still there, even though a week has passed.”
“Oh, God. Did you get out from –”
“I don’t live there,” he snapped. “I have a house up the hill. We live there.”
“You have a house on the hill?”
“Yeah.”
“You never told me,” she whispered.
“I should have broken things off between us a lot earlier, Mimi. I liked you a lot, but I never loved you, and I never realized you thought I did. That’s on me, and I’m sorry. Everything that happened after I told you we were over is on you.”
He put one more photo down, and she started crying. It showed Charlie dancing with Dupree and Lippy behind the bar.
“Whatever ugly revenge you need to take out on someone, take it out on me.”
“Joao –”
“Look at her,” he roared, and her eyes flew to the picture. “She’s happy. She didn’t do anything wrong, and she deserves to be happy goddamn it.” He forced himself to calm down again and said quietly, “Please don’t hurt her. Hurt me, send him after me, do whatever you need to do, but please, Mimi. Do it to me and let her be happy.”
“I always knew you didn’t love me the way I love you, but I thought what we had would be enough,” she murmured, still looking at the pictures in front of her.
“It wouldn’t have been. Perhaps it took me too long to figure that out, but I did and broke it off with you immediately. And maybe I was falling for her already before I ended things with you. I honestly don’t know, but what we have started after. This is who I am, and you should know that.”
“I’m sorry. I made mistakes –”
“You need to tell me everything you’ve ever said to him.”
She nodded and started talking. They had met three times since she moved to Prosper, and Sebastian had gotten a lot of details from her. Most of it was mundane details about life on the Islands, the bar and where everyone lived, and none of it seemed harmful.
“Okay. I have what I need now,” Joao said when she went silent.
He gathered up the photos and moved toward the door.
“Joao,” she called out.
“Yeah?”
“His father has a boat,” Mimi whispered, and his blood froze. “A really fast one, Joao. I heard them gossiping about it at that wedding, and I asked him. I…” She made a face. “I missed the water and wanted him to take me out on a day trip. He said Charlie didn’t know about it because she was afraid of water and couldn’t even swim.”
“How fast?” Joao asked.
The pulse had started beating in his ears, and an urge to hurry suddenly came over him. It was evening already, and he had planned to stay with Nicky for the night, but he wouldn’t. He’d have to go home.
“Fast enough to take him to Croxier in less than four hours. I heard that group in the hotel gossip about him, and they said it’d take him closer to three hours if he pushed it and the weather was good.”
Sebastian could have gone to the party, taken the boat out to start the fires and go back in time to show up for work the next morning. It would be a stretch, but he could have done it.
“Thank you, Mimi,” he said.
“I asked him to come over for dinner tonight, but he said he had other plans. I thought he was seeing someone else because he was grinning in a way I didn’t like. It ticked me off a little, but we aren’t… I think you need to go back to Croxier, Joao.”
He stared at her for a split second. Then he turned and ran, pulling out his phone and hoping to God it wasn’t too late.
“Pick up, Charlie, please pick up your phone,” he murmured as he pulled out of the parking lot and headed for the airport.
She didn’t.
He hung up, tried to tell himself she’d be working and was about to call Roark when a call came in.
“Sunshine?” he answered without checking.
“You need to come back,” Thea said. Her voice was calm, but he could hear the thickness in it and slammed his free hand on the steering wheel. “Roark and Lippy were shot, Ban is unconscious… and Charlie is missing.”
Chapter Eighteen
Gone
Joao
Joao stood on the pier outside the yacht club south of Prosper, watching the dark water in front of him.
“Do you see them?”
“Not yet.”
The voices from the dolphins off the coast of the mainland calmed him down, but not much and it was an effort to breathe slowly. He hadn’t gone back to the Islands. The police there were watching both the Croxier airport and the helipad, but it was just a safety measure. Joao knew Sebastian wouldn’t leave that way, and he had a pretty good idea where he’d be heading.
Thea had told him that a man matching Sebastian’s body type with a balaclava covering his face had walked into the bar via the kitche
n. He’d hit Ban in the back of the head hard enough to knock him out immediately. Then he’d moved on, shot Lippy in the shoulder, and when Roark had rushed toward him, he’d fired his gun again, grazing Roark’s side. None of the injuries were lethal, but all three men were in the hospital, where Dupree had caused such a commotion they’d had to call security and then sedate him.
The man had yanked Charlie out through the kitchen with the gun to her temple and disappeared. People had heard a boat start, but it must have been pulled up to the smaller dock behind the bar because only the backwash could be seen when they got out there. Dolphins had tried to follow, but the boat had been too fast for them, and they’d lost it almost instantly. It had been moving toward the mainland, they said.
Joao called Nicky immediately, and then everyone he knew in Prosper PD. Nicky had called Snows family and their friends, who were either officially or unofficially in law enforcement. Boats were sent out from the Islands and the mainland, and a few helicopters were in the air too. There was a lot of people looking for Charlie, but the night was dark and the ocean between the Islands and the mainland vast, so they hadn’t found the boat.
Yet.
The dolphins would tell him where it was. Joao was secure in this knowledge, and it was the only thing that kept him going as reports telling him absolutely nothing came in.
“Any word yet?” a tall black-haired man next to him rumbled.
Hawker Johns was a man Joao trusted completely and respected just as much. The older man never wavered in his relentless pursuit of those trying to cause harm to their small country, and since Joao accepted the position as chief of police, he’d been in regular contact with Hawker to learn from him. They were both protectors in a way, Joao in the water and Hawker in the mountains.
Hawker’s daughter stood next to him, and he held his hand on her shoulder. Her white hair shone like a beacon in the dark night as they waited in silence. On Joao’s other side stood a huge man with black tattoos inked into his neck and up the back of his bald head. He was Snow’s cousin, and out of the people waiting on the dock, this was the man Sebastian wanted to meet the least.
“No word yet but they’ll find them.”
“You holding it together?” Hawker asked quietly.
“He won’t kill her. He’ll know he’s being followed so he won’t stop. He’ll want to get back here fast, and he can’t harm her while he’s driving.”
He hoped to God he was right and had to believe what he told Hawker. Sebastian was crazy, though, and he might –
“I will file charges for harassment,” a calm voice said. “You have no proof and my son is a decorated police officer.”
“Senator Lievens,” Joao said and nodded, but turned toward Hawker, and mumbled, “And here’s the reason the asshole wants to bring Charlie to the mainland as fast as he can.”
“Harassment,” the senator repeated haughtily. “The girl is high strung and always exaggerated the disputes they had in the past. She has never pressed charges on any of her ridiculous accusations.”
Joao pulled the folded envelope out of his back pocket and pulled out the image of Charlie. The blue lights flashing over the picture gave it an eerie feeling, and the way she was positioned on a white sheet with her eyes closed made her look… dead.
“I wouldn’t call this exaggerating,” he said and held the photo up in front of Sebastian’s father.
“You have no proof,” the senator said, but his voice had lost some of its confidence.
“Talked to her neighbors,” Hawker Johns cut in. “Your son was there, and they heard her move inside. Heard her shout of pain when she landed after jumping off her own fucking balcony, breaking her goddamned foot. We have records of her desperate call to Carrie d’Izia. A statement from the pilot who flew her to the Islands, and another one from the doctor who treated the bruises your son’s fist put on her face and body.”
“We also have the recent events on the Islands. A couple of arson cases and the kidnapping of Charlie which both comes with charges for attempted murders,” Joao growled. “Your boy is going away for a long time, Senator Lievens.”
The senator straightened and looked at the picture again, but wisely remained silent.
“They’re approaching. Not far, coming in from the side.”
Joao turned immediately and looked out toward the ocean, and the people around him moved, knowing he would have heard from his friends. Ten minutes later, a white boat rounded the breakers, slowed down abruptly and came gliding slowly toward them. Sebastian was at the pulpit, and he docked the boat along the pier.
“Let’s go,” Joao said, and they moved.
She wasn’t on the boat.
Sebastian was pale and jittery, but he smiled a cocky smile and shrugged when they surrounded him.
“I told you to stop harassing my son,” Senator Lievens sneered. “We’ll leave now and you can discuss any other charges with our lawyers.”
“Joao,” Olly called out, jumped off the boat and walked over to them.
He held something out, and Joao lost it. It was a thin, black leather strap with a small shell hanging from it. He recognized it immediately because he’d picked that shell for Charlie the morning after they slept together the first time.
“Where is she?” he roared and grabbed Sebastian’s shirt.
Everyone was suddenly moving around them, and someone pulled at his arm, but he kept his grip and shook the smaller man.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sebastian choked out.
“That’s her necklace. Where is she?”
He raised an arm, forming a fist, and prepared to beat the truth out of the disgusting piece of shit in front of him. Several strong hands pulled him away, and he heard the senator talk to the police about pressing charges for assault.
“We’ll get the truth out of him,” Hawker murmured in his ear. “Mac’s on his way from Norton, driving as fast as he can.”
Mac was another man in the group around Hawker. He had the same ability as Joao to demand obedience, except where Joao’s voice only worked on watermen, Mac could make anyone do his bidding.
“She’s not in Croxier, and not here,” Joao snarled. “And in-between there’s nothing but a whole lot of water. We don’t have time.”
Hawker’s face hardened, but he turned toward the police officers, and grunted, “Arrest him.”
“What? For what?” Sebastian protested.
The officers started reading him his rights, but he kept yelling, “Father, what? Tell them to stop. I barely touched her and –”
“Sebastian,” the older man barked out. “Keep your mouth shut. We’ll get you a good lawyer. You might not even have to spend much time in prison.”
“Prison? Father stop th –”
“Shut up,” the inked man said quietly, but the way his voice carried over the crowd made everyone stop moving.
Sebastian stared up into eyes which had been a chocolate brown moments earlier, and whatever he saw in the pitch black depths made him take a small step back.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
“The Reaper.”
His voice was still just a quiet vibration in the air, but he didn’t have to say another word. They all knew that if Charlie wasn’t found alive, Sebastian Lievens was a dead man, and he would not die painlessly.
Sebastian tore his hands away from the officer who was about to cuff him and ran toward the boat, jumped up on it and threw the rope securing it to the dock into the water. Several men tried to grab the yacht, but the waves pushed it away too quickly. Joao was about to jump into the water when Sebastian called out to them.
“She jumped,” he yelled shakily as he moved toward the steering wheel. “Halfway here. She can’t even swim, and she jumped straight into the ocean. It wasn’t my fault. I tried to stop her, and I searched everywhere, but I’ll go out again.”
Then the engine roared, he made an impossibly tight
turn and disappeared around the pier.
“Follow him as far as you can and keep going. Send everyone you can reach. I’m coming,” Joao ordered the dolphins, and looked toward Hawker who nodded.
Birds would follow the boat too.
“She can’t swim?” Senator Lievens asked hoarsely.
“She can,” Joao countered. “But not that distance.”
Sunshine, he thought and pulled out his phone. Please, please, just stay floating. We’ll find you.
Then he walked off without a word to call the cousins in Croxier, pulling off his clothes as soon as he was out of sight from the others. Dupree, Lippy, and Roark were at the hospital, but all the others were getting into the water within minutes after his call. They’d come from the Islands as fast as they could swim, and he’d come from the mainland. Dolphins from everywhere would start looking. She’d been in the water for a long time already but if she kept her cool and stayed on her back, floating like he’d taught her… She could still be alive.
***
Charlie
“Sebastian, slow down,” I yelled. “I’m going to get sick.”
The angry voices from the dolphins had faded away almost immediately because the small boat moved at a dangerous speed. It bounced on the waves, and a few times we’d been airborne.
“What?” he yelled and turned to look at me.
“Watch out!” I shouted.
He turned back, the boat veered to the side, and I braced as we went up with the wave and landed with a loud thump on the other side. He started laughing but slowed the boat down.
“Sebastian turn around and take me back,” I pleaded. “You can’t get away with this. If you take me back, we won’t press charges.”
We totally would, but I wasn’t going to tell him while we were bouncing around in the middle of the dark ocean.
“Too late,” he shouted. “They’re snooping around, talking to my colleagues and making threats. That damned photographer has talked to his journalist friends, and someone sent a lot of classified information to my captain. My godfather even received some calls.”