Liar Liar

Sinister. Sinister.

‘Please let me go, Ben.’ My voice is small, my fear, by contrast, immense.

‘I’ve already explained why I can’t. After the lengths I’ve gone to, things must be so.’

‘Remy will know I haven’t gone anywhere. He-he’ll get someone to check the movement on my passport.’

‘Boats come and go from the port all of the time. You could’ve crossed over the border into France and gotten lost. There are all kinds of places you might go. All kinds of things that might happen to you, Rose.’ The menace in his softly delivered words rings loud and clear.

‘He won’t stop looking for me—he loves me.’

‘Except you left him after you discovered how he’d lied to you.’

‘I don’t care about any of that—you can have the shares. Everything! I just want to go.’

‘I can’t let you go. It’s better for you that you stop asking.’

‘Please.’ Tears trip and spill down my cheeks, my fear an all-encompassing thing. It’s not a walk where you can’t see the end of a dark alley, or a swim in the ocean where you lose sight of land. This isn’t the fear of the unknown. There’s no need to hypothesise what lies at the end of this for me.

Because I know.

51

Remy

Was she forced?

Did she leave on her own?

She left the gala without a word, though not really. She only went to gather her thoughts and came back at me, all guns blazing.

‘Are you listening to me?’ Rhett’s voice brings me back to the car.

‘Oui. CCTV. Work and home.’ Twisting the wheel hard right, I cut across the early evening traffic.

‘Much fucking good you’ll be to her dead. What about her friends? Could she be with them?’

‘She wouldn’t have taken a suitcase for a coffee,’ I grate out.

‘They might know where she is, though. Where she’s likely to be.’ He begins to type something out on his phone.

Shouldn’t I know better than them? Because the closer I get, the less certain I feel. The deeper my dread grows. The harder I grip the steering wheel. The more likely I am to grind my molars to dust.

Please, Rose. Tell me where you are. Tell me you’re okay.

‘Try her phone again.’ My gaze cuts to Rhett, moving back to the road instantly. Not for safety’s sakes but because of what I see there.

Pity.

‘I just did. It’s still off. Watch the . . .’ His arm shoots out, finger pointed, as I swerve around the motorcyclist. ‘Fucking hell. I’ll be grey before we get there.’

‘What have you got in the trunk?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Guns. Weapons. Firearms.’

‘Remy, man.’ He blows out a breath, rubbing a hand across the top of his head.

‘I want to know where I stand, Everett.’

‘On fucking trial, by the sounds of things.’

‘I’m not losing my head. Just preparing.’

His phone chimes with a text. ‘Right, according to one Castain, Charles, she left work around three this afternoon to go to Monaco One. She didn’t go back to the office. Apparently, he’s still waiting for a bubble tea.’

‘Did she have a meeting?’

‘No, she was picking a jacket up from Max Mara. What time did you last speak to her?’

‘At lunch time, a little after noon.’

I need to be inside you. Her response had been something between a breath and a groan as I’d trailed my hand up her thigh, bringing with it the hem of her skirt.

‘Ah, but not in the office.’ Her laugh was pure tease as she’d pressed herself against me. My whole body had ached and trembled, the need to be deep inside her always so powerful.

‘And she was okay then?’

I nod once, rather stiffly. ‘She was fine.’ As fine as a charcoal illustration drawn by an old master’s hand.

‘Less said about that, the better,’ he mutters as we pull into the private complex near Larvotto Beach, slowing for the boom gate.

‘You’ll need the security code, or the plastic policeman will pop out of his box to quiz you with his clipboard.’ He means the security guard, of course.

The window buzzes as it lowers. I lean out and enter the code.

‘Have you got a place in here?’ he splutters as the gate begins to rise

‘I’ve got places everywhere.’

I park in one of the visitor spots and climb out, ignoring, for now, the options a gun might bring to my hand. I know this complex well having lived here a decade ago. I already know he lives here, and my guess is he’ll be at home right now. He doesn’t strike me as the kind to be interested in happy hour drinks straight from the office. More like sundowners on the deck, I decide, as I approach the back of his townhouse, Rhett’s footsteps sounding from behind.

I open the low gate to his garden and stride up the path.

‘You know this isn’t the front of the house, right?’

Without answering, I slide open the glass patio door.