“He listens to your mum.” Pulling my phone from the pocket at the front of my hoodie, I check it. There’s nothing though. “Penny can always get through to him. It’s been so long, do you really believe she’s still alive?”
“For his sake, I hope not. For her sake, I hope it was over quickly, that her body gave out before they had a chance to—”
He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t need to. We all know what happens to pretty young girls that get taken the way Freddie’s girl did. Snatched outside her own house. Her parents left with nothing but a lost necklace on their doorstep.
Red hair, green-kelp eyes, and milky porcelain skin…it’s a delicacy to some.
“Christopher?”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Lucy’s gone. Finding her…if she’s alive, he’ll tear this world to shreds. You think he’s bad now? If he finds her hurt and damaged, broken beyond repair, there will be nothing we can do contain him.” Shaking his head, his hand finds my knee, caressing softly. “What good would that be?”
It would be chaos.
We continue in silence, the radio hushed in the background, so low that the lyrics are lost to the music itself. It’s all a murmur of beats and rhythm. A whisper of life outside our world.
Chapter 31
Christopher
The snow-fogged grounds are still. Robbins and Bramblings break the eerie quiet with their song as the rising sun pierces through the clouds. They’re so thick they look like ghostly smog weaving through the rusty treeline that slowly ebbs into tall verdant pines on the other side of the lake.
A chill bursts from the inside out, my body remembering the feeling of death beneath those waters. So calm and sparkling on the surface.
How deceiving.
Getting out of the Defender, I look up at the square turrets and chimney-lined pitched roofs. Coming here as child was an adventure waiting to happen. Grandad would chase us around endless halls and corridors. Playing Marco Polo in all the nooks and crannies as it rained torrentially outside. The glass panes barely managing to withstand the beating from the downpour.
I can still hear his laughter as he walked into the room Cassie and I were hiding in. He’d spot her almost instantly, but still, he would ignore her stray foot or errant hand as he called out, “Marco!”
Cassie would quickly giggle, “Polo, Grandad!”
She was diabolical at the game. She hid in the same place every time. Thinking about it now, I bet she did it on purpose. I recall her screeches as he tickled her blue. And as much as the memory tears at me, it makes me chuckle.
“Fuck, I miss you,” I murmur, looking up to the sky above the turret that housed his office. The one room we weren’t allowed
in as children, but yet we always found ourselves in.
The icy dew coats my skin, permeating my clothes until every part of me feels as clammy as when I woke up to Casper’s hands pressing life back into me, kelp-tinged water wheezing from my mouth and nose.
A shudder runs through me, tearing me away from my thoughts and memories and pulling me out of my own head to the woman slipping her hand into mine. My woman.
“Let’s get inside.” Pressing a kiss to my arm, Arabella pulls me forward with her. “Ryan?”
“Yes, Mrs. Sinclair?”
She scowls up at me, her jaw ticking in the cutest of ways.
“Lest you forget, wife,” I tease her, urging some levity from inside me.
Cursing under her breath, her nails curl deeper as they pinch into my arm. “Fucking arsehole. As if I could fucking forget whose wife I am.”
“Mrs. Sinclair?”
She moves fast, turning to Murphy, her posture tight and coiled with annoyance. “Where are they?”
“There was an altercation, however it’s sorted, and they aren’t too far.”
“Altercation?” Fleur livens up beside him; she looks about ready to collapse on herself. “Are they okay?”