Betrayal of Innocence (A New Adventure Begins - Star Elite 1)

“If there is let me know,” Justin murmured. “Meantime, stay away from the farm, just in case Curtis is the kidnapper.”

Vanessa sighed but didn’t argue with him. There was no point telling the man she had no intention of following orders from anybody, including him.

Justin looked at her sharply when she fell suspiciously quiet. He wanted to issue her a few last words of caution but was drawn to just how confined the hallway had become. Its walls seemed to have enveloped them in an intimate silence that removed the outside world and left the two of them alone, together, in a confined space. His gaze fell to her lips. His thoughts stumbled to a halt. Words failed him.

“Are you all right?” Vanessa asked when he kept staring at her blankly, as though he had never seen her before in his life.

Justin jerked. It took a few moments before he could remember what he had been doing before she had hijacked his thoughts.

Eager to be away from the emotions she made him feel,

Justin yanked the door open.

“Let me know if you find anything out,” he ordered with a stern air of command that made her staring at him in surprise.

“Mr Silverton?” Vanessa called after him, wondering what had brought about such a swift change in his demeanour.

Justin reluctantly stopped beside the front gate and turned to face her. He was immediately hit with the vision of her standing in the doorway as she waved him off to work. It brought forth a flood of thoughts and, yes, a yearning that shocked him.

“You forgot the key,” she informed him quietly.

“Thank you,” he grunted when he took it off her. He turned around and began to walk away only to stop and turn to face her one last time.

“Stay safe,” he murmured quietly.

Vanessa watched him stomp off as though the Hounds from Hell were nipping at his heels and wondered what he knew that she didn’t.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Vanessa watched the sunrise chase away the darkness of the night and braced herself for what lay ahead. She visibly shook with nerves but refused to allow it to dissuade her. She had to go to the farm and search it. All right, so Justin and the men from the Star Elite had said they would do it but she really didn’t believe they had meant what they had said or understood the urgency. Today was Thursday – market day – the day when Curtis went to market and on to the tavern where he would drink until closing time. There would be no other opportunity to search the farm for another week. Vanessa knew she would go quietly out of her mind if she had to wait another few days to find answers to her questions.

“If it is devoid of your belongings, Geraldine, Curtis has to have had something to do with your disappearance. He will have to face justice,” she whispered. “I have to find some way to prove his guilt but will cross that bridge when I come to it.”

Quietly, she let herself out of the house. She paused and looked about the empty garden. Her heart began to hammer in her chest. She wasn’t usually afraid of the dark, but after the kidnappings she wasn’t at all comfortable being outside, all alone, in the quiet of the early morning. Even the presence of several burly men next door did little to quell her rising fear as she began to make her way across the garden. She wished now she had thought to carry a weapon of some sort with her – just in case. But it was too late to turn back now.

If I do, I might not leave the house again, she thought with a shiver.

To keep her mind off what she was doing, Vanessa allowed her thoughts to wander. She swiftly wished she hadn’t when they instinctively turned to Justin.

“He doesn’t belong here,” she whispered into the cold, night air. “As long as I remember he will leave just as soon as they have caught the kidnapper there should be no problem. He can go his way and I can go mine. Simple.”

Deep inside where it mattered, though, she knew it wasn’t simple at all. It was very, very complicated.

Justin yawned widely and heaved a sigh. He had never been so bored in his life. Bored. Tired, and thoroughly confused. If there was one thing he loved in life it was a good mystery. If there was one thing he absolutely hated, it was being forced to consider making changes to his life that he didn’t want. In particular, changes like moving home and relocating to a new area or being forced to undertake jobs for the Star Elite he really didn’t want to do, like spending a sleepless night keeping watch over a deathly silent village where absolutely nothing happened.

He had to wonder, somewhat cynically, whether the people who had been kidnapped hadn’t actually been kidnapped at all but had left of their own accord because they couldn’t stand the silence anymore. Festering away in a quiet little nothing sort of place like this was something he was never going to do. The mental image of Graham Clarkson was more than enough to give him the chills. While the man was nice and friendly, he had reduced his life to existing, not living. It was not something Justin would ever allow himself to be reduced to.

“Not while I draw breath,” he promised himself devoutly.

He was a man of action. A man who had spent his life skirting close to death on more than one occasion and revelled in it. Justin rose to the challenge called life and had no qualms about what he needed to do to succeed. It hadn’t done him any harm either. He was financially well off, and could afford, well, whatever he wanted. He had a nice, fairly large house all to himself; a space to call his own he could do what he liked with. Not only that but he had a good job that allowed him to travel, often for days at a time, and an excellent group of friends he would, and often did, trust with his life. The only thing he was missing was a wife, and a family, but he had no interest in either of those, so it was hardly any great loss.

“One never misses what one never has,” he murmured.

As far as he was concerned, his life was just the way he liked it. He was happy to spend the rest of his days as he was. There was no need to change or relocate to a dratted little nowhere sort of place like this, and no reason for him to consider that anything might be missing from his life.

But he was.

He had spent the long and painfully empty hours of the night contemplating what it might be like to finish a job like the one, so he could go home, to his house occupied by a wife and maybe a child or two. While it was something he knew he didn’t want, he hadn’t been able to get the thought out of his mind. It had started to haunt him – to the point he was now crabby, out of sorts, and ready to tear out his own hair.