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

Silently, he paced through the empty house. It was so very quiet he wondered if he was the only person left in the village. Not a sound could be heard. Even the floor boards beneath his boots didn’t creak. It was unnerving, even for him. He wandered aimlessly from one room to another until he reached the back of the house. Once there, he paced restlessly around the empty room, purposely keeping his gaze averted from the house next door or trying to. Inevitably, as it had done throughout the long, long night, he was drawn to it anyway.

That one glance made him pause. He frowned. Stepping back a little so he was hidden by the half-open shutter, Justin studied Vanessa’s garden carefully. Had he just imagined that slight movement of shadows beside the outbuilding? His heart lurched when he saw the tell-tale shape of a hooded figure dart along the privet hedge, away from the house and toward the end of the garden.

“Now, who are you?” he murmured aloud.

Wasting no time, Justin swivelled around and raced to the door. He didn’t stop to notify the others he was going. He had his gun and could use a shot to alert them if he encountered a problem, but it would have to be a big problem for him not to be able to deal with the night-time intruder on his own.

“Damn it,” Justin growled, yanking the door open and slipping out into the night.

He hated the fact that the intruder had gotten so close to the house while he had been on watch, and he hadn’t seen a damned thing. He could only hope the intruder hadn’t managed to get into Vanessa’s home.

Determined to find out for himself, Justin lengthened his stride. Circumnavigating the garden posed no problem whatsoever, but he hunkered as low as possible anyway so that nobody would see him. Everything was eerily still and silent as he made his way toward the small, open field at the end of the garden. Once there, he paused and scoured the area. At first, he couldn’t see anything, but then the shadows shifted again.

When he watched the cloaked figure dart into the trees in the far corner of the field, Justin began to jog. With one last thoughtful look at the houses, he began to plot how he was going to take the man down, and what he was going to do with the man when he did.

Vanessa’s heart was pounding by the time she reached the hillock overlooking the farm. At first glance, all was still and quiet; a bit like the night really. But it was almost too quiet. Every scuffle of movement seemed a thousand times louder than it truly was; each crackle of a breaking twig like gunfire in the cold, night air. As a result, her nerves were frayed, and her worry had continued to grow so much that it was all sh

e could do to stay where she was and not turn around and run straight home.

“I have come this far,” she whispered, somewhat relieved to realise that dawn had continued to edge its way across the horizon, and now cast everything in a greyish haze.

Focus on what you are here to do, Vanessa. There is no reason for you to be afraid, she reminded herself, firmly ignoring the nagging voice of reason that warned her nobody knew where she was. If anything did happen to her nobody would have any idea where to start to look for her.

A bit like Geraldine, really, Vanessa thought. It forced chills down her spine.

She paused for a moment and made herself focus all her attention on the farmhouse nestled to the left of the small group of buildings before her. The tiny yard at the back of the property stood empty, surrounded in a low stone wall which widened as it extended beyond the yard and to the back of the stable-block which ran to the south-west of the property. The stable-block formed one wall of a courtyard, the buildings of which formed a square in the middle of which stood an old hay cart. From a distance, the place looked unkempt and unlived in. For a moment, and not for the first time, Vanessa had to wonder why her sister had loved the place so. It was remote, isolated, and had nothing going for it whatsoever other than its distance to the local villages. But Geraldine had loved the small house she had called home.

“She just hadn’t loved the man she had shared it with,” Vanessa murmured aloud.

Although Geraldine had never said as much, Vanessa suspected that her sister had never truly cared for the man she had called her husband. He was someone who could run the farm she wanted to live on. Geraldine had needed Curtis’s expertise, for what it was, to help her. She just hadn’t wanted him. As far as Vanessa was concerned, that had been Geraldine’s downfall, and had ultimately led to her disappearance.

It was enough to reinforce Vanessa’s own belief that she would truly be better off if she didn’t have a man in her life; a man like Justin. He was trouble with a capital T, she knew it. He could easily upset one’s train of thought, as he had when she had first met him in Weeks’ study. The last thing she wanted was for him to do such a thing on a regular basis. It would undoubtedly lead her to the same situation Geraldine had been in; stuck in an unhappy marriage with a man who didn’t care about her.

Vanessa shuddered and, not for the first time, forced herself to turn her thoughts away from Justin. Squaring her shoulders, she stared somewhat militarily at the house and forced herself to contemplate what she was going to do now that she was here. Having not been out of the house at such an ungodly hour of the morning before, she had no idea how to judge the hour, so had no idea what time it was.

All she could do now was sit and wait for Curtis to leave.

Justin paused a few feet away from the now motionless figure. He had yet to see a face beneath the voluminous hood and was intrigued to find out who it was, and what they had been doing at Vanessa’s.

I wonder if it is Curtis? He mused as he studied the narrow shoulders and small stature. He doubted it given Curtis was supposed to be a burly farmer.

Justin squinted at the figure, wondering if it might be Geraldine. Whoever it was, had a definite interest in the farm; Geraldine’s farm. The more he contemplated that it might be the missing farmer’s wife, the more his gut warned him he was wrong. He didn’t know why. It was just a gut feeling he had, and he had learned from early on in his life with the Star Elite, never to ignore his gut feeling about things. It had rarely led him astray and had saved his life on more than one occasion.

One minute passed. Then two. Then three.

Justin propped a shoulder against the tree beside him and folded his arms. His attention was drawn to a flicker of movement beside the farmhouse. Together with the cloaked figure, he watched someone leave the property. The dull thud of the door slamming closed behind the man made the cloaked figure jump in alarm, but it didn’t waver from its position hidden within the trees. Together, they watched the farmer leave the house, lock the door, and drag his jacket on as he marched across the yard toward the stables. It didn’t take long for the farmer to cinch his horse to the stays of the cart and clamber aboard, or disappear down the long, winding track toward the village and, Justin suspected, the town beyond that where the farmer’s market was held.

Unsurprisingly, no sooner had the farmer gone than the cloaked figure began to move toward the house. Justin, with one hand resting on his gun, followed. He had a sneaking suspicion in his gut that the person before him wasn’t Geraldine. It wasn’t Graham who, he suspected, wouldn’t be able to walk this far and certainly wouldn’t walk with such a sure-footed gait. It wasn’t any of his colleagues, or any of Weeks’ men. The only person who could leave Vanessa’s house at dawn and head toward the farm was none other than Vanessa.

“Damn it all to Hell,” Justin growled beneath his breath. He kept a careful distance but didn’t allow too many feet between them as he followed her through the trees, and down a narrow slope to the cart track.

Once there, she paused and studied the road, as if to make sure Curtis wasn’t returning. When she was sure he had gone, she hurried toward the farmhouse.

Justin’s hands twitched with the need to grab her and demand she return home, but curiosity warned him not to. He wanted to see why she was in the one place she had been warned to stay away from. Given the furtive way she was behaving he had to wonder if she had something to do with her sister’s disappearance.

Strangely, that thought made him want to rage at something – or someone. He wanted to grab her and shake her, and demand to know what in the Hell she thought she was doing. Instead, he narrowed the distance a little and prayed she wouldn’t glance over her shoulder and see him.

Thankfully, she didn’t, and he was able to follow her right up to the back door of the farmhouse where she carefully fumbled around under a loose cobble to the right of the back window and withdrew a heavy iron key. Impatience was jabbing him harshly as he waited for her to put the key into the lock. Before she could turn it, however, he grabbed hold of her hand.