Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Lowell’s phone mocked Noah from where it sat on the patio table, Hayes’s name bright on the screen. The call went to voicemail for the third time.
Noah’s patience, already stretched tissue-thin, was about to snap.
“I can’t force him to answer.” Lowell’s usual arrogance had melted away. His shoulders were hunched, his body practically doubled over as if the weight of Charlotte’s kidnapping—and his part in it—were pressing him down.
Noah grabbed the phone before the screen locked and opened the text app. His thumbs flew across the screen as he typed.
GET SOMEPLACE WHERE YOU’RE ALONE AND CALL ME NOW -NOAH
He sent the message, then stood and paced Lowell’s immaculate patio with the brand-new furniture and artfully placed decor. He couldn’t help the urge to kick over a potted plant.
The grass was too green. The flowers too bright. Nothing was right.
They’d discovered Charlotte missing at around eight o’clock that morning. It was now almost two thirty. Six and a half hours.
But she’d been gone much longer than that. While Noah had lain in bed sleeping, fighting nightmares about stalkers and guns and too-pleasant dreams about the nanny he couldn’t have, someone had broken into his house. Crept up the creaky staircase. Snatched his niece.
He’d done nothing to protect her. Nothing.
By now, Charlotte could be hundreds of miles away. Thousands, if Violet had bought a plane ticket.
She could be anywhere.
“What if he doesn’t call back?” Lowell asked, his voice small.
“He’ll call,” Noah snapped. Hayes had to call because if he didn’t… Noah couldn’t even consider it.
If Hayes didn’t call, then Noah had no idea what he’d do next.
Each step was a struggle against the urge to put his fist through something, especially his old so-called friend who’d set this horror show into motion. “He wants the merger. He’ll do anything for it. He’ll call.”
But the minutes crawled by like hours. Noah’s mind raced with images of Charlotte—scared, calling for him, wondering why he hadn’t protected her. He pressed his fingertips against his temples, trying to force the thoughts away.
When Lowell’s phone finally rang in his hand, Noah nearly jumped out of his skin. He swiped to answer. “Are you alone?” He sounded tight and controlled despite the hurricane raging inside him.
In the background, he heard voices—multiple people talking.
Lowell stood and crossed to Noah, gaze flicking from the phone to Noah’s face.
“I can’t.” Hayes’s usual confidence was gone, replaced by a genuine note of fear.
“I told you to get somewhere you could talk.” Noah’s stomach, already in knots, somersaulted.
If the police were with Hayes, the man would be careful about what he said.
He wouldn’t reveal anything useful. “Whatever you want,” Noah blurted.
“I don’t care. I’ll drop the merger, sign over my company.
You can have the house. I just want Charlotte back. ”
There was a pause, and the background noise abated. Finally, Hayes said, “This was never my plan.”
“I don’t care what your plan was! Where is she?”
“The police are here. I’ve told them everything I know.”
Noah’s fingers tightened around the phone. Was this some kind of trick? “Fine.” Not that he believed it. If the police had learned Charlotte’s whereabouts, surely they’d have told him. “Now tell me. Where is she? Where’s my niece?”
“I don’t know. I swear.” Hayes took an audible breath.
“I hired an investigator a few months back, as soon as Lowell told me about the merger. Before I ever made a bid, I figured out who Charlotte’s mother was, and I convinced her that if you were surrounded by enough scandal—if you and your nanny were caught in a compromising situation, or if she could prove that you were neglecting your niece—she’d be able to sue for custody.
The courts would let her have Charlotte back. ”
Noah struggled to process what he was hearing. “Did you really think that would work?”
“No, not…really,” Hayes admitted. “But she believed it.”
“You were using her.”
“I needed Tidewater to lose faith in you. I thought for sure Violet would learn something that I could use. And I figured, even if she did sue for custody, she’d lose. No harm done.”
“To you,” Noah spat. “But lots of harm to her. And now Charlotte has been—”
“You think I don’t know?” Hayes sounded angry and defensive, but beneath that, Noah heard a hint of panic. Maybe even genuine concern, though he suspected the man was more worried about being an accessory to kidnapping than about Violet’s feelings or Charlotte’s safety. “She’s sober now, but—“
“Is she in her right mind?”
He sighed. “I thought…I thought so. She seemed fine. You met her. You know how she was. Articulate, well-spoken. She seemed perfectly reasonable to me.”
“Except that she believed she could get custody.”
“Yeah.” The word was drawn out, hesitant. “I think she was deceived by her own certainty that she deserves custody of Charlotte. When we first started working together—”
“Sleeping together, you mean.”
A pause, then a sigh. “I’ve done a lot of things I regret.”
“Amazing what getting caught will do to your conscience.”
“I’m doing my best here, Aylett.”
“You got my niece kidnapped, Hayes. Surely you don’t expect sympathy.”
Another sigh. “The point is, she seemed fine at first. Full of hope and totally rational. But in the last few weeks, she was getting frustrated. She hardly ever saw your nanny, and when she did, the woman didn’t share any dirt.
We argued last night. I knew she was losing it, but I never dreamed she would do something like this.
I thought she’d just relapse or something. ”
“You’re a real piece of work.”
“I didn’t mean…” The man’s pitch rose. “I never meant for any of this to happen.”
Noah had no time for Hayes’s regrets. “What about the apartment Violet told Delaney about? Where is it?”
“I’ve never been there. I just gave her money to rent a place. I know it’s in Norfolk, but that’s all. I used to meet her at a hotel outside of town.”
“Which one? Maybe she’s there.”
“I told the police. They checked it already.”
Noah closed his eyes, his free hand clenching into a fist. The lead he’d hoped for crumbled to nothing. “That’s it?” The words scraped his throat. “That’s all you know?”
“I’m sorry.” Hayes sounded like he meant it. “I really am. But the police are working on it. They’ll find her. If there was anything I could do—”
Noah ended the call and hurled the phone onto the patio table. It skittered across the surface and clattered to the ground.
Lowell flinched but said nothing.
The rage that had been building all day erupted. Noah spun, searching for something to destroy, something to absorb the violence clawing at his chest. His gaze landed on one of Missy’s carefully arranged potted mums.
Before he could think, he kicked. The ceramic pot exploded against the patio stones, dirt and yellow flowers scattering everywhere.
“Noah.” Lowell’s hand landed on his shoulder.
He shrugged it off. “Don’t.” He was breathing hard. The small act of destruction had done nothing to ease the pressure threatening to crack his skull open.
“I’m so sorry.” Lowell’s voice was tentative. “I had no idea—”
“Sorry doesn’t bring her back.” Noah rounded on his former friend, this man who’d once known him better than anyone, who’d helped him move into his first apartment, who’d been his best man.
“You’ve been feeding him information about me.
About my business, my life, my family. And you never once stopped to think about what he might do with it. ”
Lowell’s face crumpled. “I thought… I was just helping him compete. Business stuff. I didn’t expect something like this to happen.”
Noah had never wanted to punch a man more in his life. But he had better things to do.
He pulled out his phone and called Detective Norton. The detective answered immediately.
“I just talked to Hayes,” Noah said without preamble. “He admitted to everything. He’s been working with Violet, but he claims he doesn’t know where she is. He said he’s cooperating—“
“He is. We heard everything he said to you, and he’d already told us all of that.”
“How do we know he’s telling the truth? Maybe he knows exactly where she is, and he just doesn’t want to admit it.”
“You’re going to have to trust—”
“Trust him? Are you crazy?”
“Not him.” Norton’s words came slowly, his tone low and even. “Trust us. We know what we’re doing.”
Easy for him to say. It wasn’t his niece who was missing. But Noah’s attitude wasn’t helping anything.
“You have to find that apartment. How hard can it be to track down one woman with a four-year-old?”
“Mr. Aylett, I understand your frustration—”
“No, you don’t.” Noah turned away from Lowell, who was picking up pieces of the shattered pot. “You have no idea what this feels like. Every second she’s gone is another second she’s terrified, wondering why no one’s coming for her.”
“We have everyone working on this, locals, state police. The FBI is involved. We’re doing everything we can to find her.”
The detective’s calm professionalism grated against Noah’s raw nerves. He wanted urgency, panic, the same desperate energy that was tearing him apart from the inside.
“I’m coming back,” Noah said, not because he wanted to be cooped up at the house, but because he had no idea what else to do.
“Be safe,” the detective said. “I’ll call if there are any developments.”
But there wouldn’t be any developments. Hayes was their only link to Charlotte, and he knew nothing.
Noah couldn’t help the despair seeping into every cell of his body. Charlotte was gone, and nobody knew where to find her.