Chapter 3
Lovelyn
All action, Kane tossed me his keys then jogged to the van, collecting something from the front seat. My bag.
I gasped and snatched the oversized purple suede holdall with the floral handle I’d embroidered myself.
Inside, all my possessions, including my tablet and notebook, were there.
I clutched it to my chest. Thank the gods of small mercies.
At least one man in my life respected my organisational systems. Shame it was the criminal.
The man himself opened the door so I could climb into the matte-black car.
“Get us on the road,” Kane instructed.
“I don’t need commentary.”
With an infuriating smirk, he settled into the passenger seat.
I started the engine, mentally calculating where I might go to hunt for Dixie.
I’d intended to drop by her home after her radio silence but hadn’t yet found the time.
What if something had happened to her that I could have avoided if I’d been a better friend?
I knew she’d been upset. I’d seen her rush out of the skeleton crew’s warehouse with tears in her eyes.
Guilt sank its teeth in. The sole reason I was in a car with Mr Kidnapper.
Pulling out of the cover of the building, I drove through a retail estate, recognising it as on the eastern outskirts of Edinburgh, and took the turning for Deadwater. The drive to my home city on the England-Scotland border would be a little over an hour. Less, if I put my foot down.
Fine, as I had a whole bundle of emotions to process, none of them good.
Moving through the gears, I slammed into fourth then fifth, merging onto the main route from Edinburgh to Deadwater.
If Kane was alarmed by my driving, he didn’t say a word.
Nor did I look at him, my gaze locked firmly on the road.
Rain hit the windshield, and spray landed on my arm from the open windows.
I tapped the buttons to close them, but Kane corrected me.
“Not mine.”
Whatever. If he wanted to catch pneumonia, that was on him.
The afternoon rush-hour traffic was in play when we reached the city, a queue to cross the bridge to the English side.
Neon bled through rain, glass offices sulked beside pollution-darkened churches.
The pavements were filled with people leaving work, a sea of umbrellas bobbing where their owners dodged puddles.
I pushed through until we edged the suburb where Dixie lived. Outside her apartment block, I slid into a lucky parking space. Instantly, Kane leapt out.
I followed more slowly, gazing up at the U-shaped building.
Four floors, cheap, close to cash jobs, and anonymous.
Dixie liked to disappear in a crowd. The front doors were on open walkways with railings that faced the interior courtyard, and in the dark afternoon, lights shone in a few of the windows.
“Which one?” he asked.
“Number fifteen. I’m not sure which that is from the outside.”
He was already examining a directions sign and taking on a set of interior steps. When I reached the second floor, Kane had already identified the correct front door.
“Shite security. Knock, will ye?”
“Do you ever try saying please or would that void your warranty?” I rapped with my knuckle. “Dixie? It’s Lovelyn. Can you open up?”
No reply came.
To my left, the front window was unlit. I knocked again then leaned in to listen for any sounds. “I don’t think she’s here.”
“But this is where she lives?”
“Correct.”
His curled lip told me what he thought of Dixie’s accommodation choice.
He had a point. Dixie had made bank at the warehouse. She’d been one of their most in-demand sex workers. She could afford a fancy apartment on the harbour.
In the flat beyond Dixie’s, lights from a TV flickered in the window. I knocked on that door, raising a finger to Kane so he stayed back. We didn’t need the great lump scaring the neighbours.
Movement came inside, though the occupier didn’t speak.
“Hi,” I called. “I’m friends with Dixie. She isn’t answering. Have you seen her?”
The door opened a crack, a security chain clinking. A woman peered out, probably in her sixties and with a tabby cat in her arms. “Who are you?”
“Lovelyn, a friend from work.”
The lady looked me up and down. “At the whorehouse on the river?”
“The warehouse, yes.” Big difference in payroll and consent. “Have you seen her? I’m worried.”
She closed the door, opening it again with the chain off. She peered past me, and I glanced back, but Kane was thankfully nowhere in sight.
“You’re really her friend?”
“I am. I care about her.”
“Funny that she didn’t tell you she was leaving.”
“What do you mean?”
“The landlord was hammering on the door this morning. Told her if she was listening, he’s emptying the place so he can put in new tenants. Figured she hasn’t paid rent.”
My heart sank. “But you didn’t see her go?”
“Do I look like the Neighbourhood Watch committee? I only paid attention because the banging disturbed my pussy.” She stroked the cat, gave me one final look, and slammed the door in my face.
I stared at the frame for a moment then trotted back to where Kane lurked around the corner.
His expression told me he’d heard. “Where could she have gone?”
For the whole drive back, I’d been replaying every conversation I’d had with Dixie, searching for clues.
Any favourite haunts or references to where she’d grown up.
There wasn’t much. For all that she was a sweet and beautiful twentysomething woman with endless kindness to others and a love of gossip, her favourite saying being ‘bestie, you’ve gotta hear this’, Dixie had been a closed book when it came to her own life.
Her history was a blank space she hadn’t filled.
“I have no idea.”
Kane’s dark eyes showed no sign of disappointment. His gaze jumped to the direction of her flat. “But you can find out given the right information.”
“What do you—?”
He was already moving. I rounded the corner to see him barge Dixie’s door open with one heavy hit of his huge shoulder. Kane caught the door on the rebound and put his other hand out in a gesture for me to enter.
Shocked, I waited a beat for another resident to pop out and holler that they were calling the cops. No one did. Kane’s breaking and entering had barely made a ripple.
I didn’t like this. Yet the neighbour said the landlord was going to empty the place. That wasn’t right.
What if she’d been hurt and was lying inside? What if any clues got thrown away?
Those two thoughts got my legs moving until I was over the threshold and entering Dixie’s private domain.
“Subtlety is consistently your love language, I see,” I grouched.
The door tapped the broken lock behind me, Kane a hulking menace at my back. He didn’t answer.
I shivered in awareness at the closeness then crept into the hallway’s darkened space. “Dixie?”
Silence returned.
Dust motes hung in the air, and I trod around junk mail strewn on the floor. A row of hooks held pretty purses and cute jackets. Kane collected the nearest bag and searched inside. He moved on to the next, dropping the first on the floor.
I stooped to collect it. “Don’t be disrespectful. These are her things.”
He didn’t reply, but he hung the second up to search a third.
I entered the living room, something sweet and floral in the air like she’d just been here. On the left side, a knitted throw blanket decorated a sofa, and a stack of magazines perched on a cushion.
A tiny kitchenette in the corner held a kettle and a single mug, no hum from the half-sized fridge. No TV, nothing of value besides a little painted elephant on the fireplace.
I picked it up. Held it. She might have treasured this, yet it hadn’t been taken.
Kane passed me and slid open the doors to my right, revealing Dixie’s bedroom, a small bathroom beyond.
She wasn’t here. Relief mixed with deeper concerns. I was glad we hadn’t found her hurt or worse, but where was she, and why did she run?
Half-open drawers in her dresser and wire coat hangers on the bed suggested she’d packed fast. Kane picked up her hairbrush from the countertop and tossed it into the bag of hers he still carried.
What the…? Why would he need that?
He searched through her cupboards, and I turned away, a warning playing out in my mind. Then my gaze landed on Dixie’s coffee table. More specifically, the sleek grey edge of a tablet peeking out from a lower shelf.
I’d seen it before. It was the one she used when working for Cassie at the warehouse. A device she’d struggled with, unable to find where documents went when downloaded. It didn’t surprise me that she hadn’t taken it, but it was odd that it hadn’t been given back to Cassie.
More importantly, it might contain a clue to her whereabouts. Maybe a message or something in her email if she’d accessed it on there.
My heart pounded. Borrowing without permission was fine if I solved a missing person case.
This was her secret window, and now it was mine.
With a quick glance to check Kane was occupied in his snooping, I snatched it up and slid it into my bag, alongside the little elephant.
I straightened and tried to control my racing pulse.
“She left in a hurry,” Kane rumbled behind me.
I jumped. For a big man, he could sneak quietly when he wanted to. “I was concluding the same thing. She’s taken some of her clothes but not all, and she’d moved things around in her living room, maybe needing to get something off a shelf.”
“Such as a passport, or maybe cash she’d kept hidden?”
I shrugged. He loomed over me, all threat and temptation. I couldn’t tell which was worse.
“Did ye find anything that could help us?”
My secret burned inside me. I shone the metaphorical headlights back on Kane. “Tell me who you think is chasing her.”
He kept his mouth closed.
I prodded him in the chest with an extended finger that didn’t budge him an inch.
“Mystery is sexy until it gets someone killed. It looks to me like my friend came back here, threw her most important possessions into a bag, and ran like her tail was on fire. From the comment about her landlord, she’s quit this place entirely, otherwise he wouldn’t be threatening to empty it.
She was scared of something or someone. You know who, don’t you? ”
“I have my suspicions.”
“Then share them with me or we’re going nowhere.”
For a long moment, he remained quiet. Then he opened his mouth. “No.”
“You’re not helping her. In fact, you’re only infuriating me. There’s exactly zero reasons for me to help you any further. For all I know, you’re the nightmare she packed her bags to escape.”
“I’m not.”
Annoyance danced over me. The afternoon was getting darker, and neither of us had dared switch on a light. All of a sudden, I became highly aware of how alone I was with a man I didn’t trust.
Tension tightened my muscles. Foolish woman.
“I want to leave now. She isn’t here, and I don’t know where else she might be.
I have no clue on where to try next. You promised to take me back to my car, but I’d rather get a bus.
” My keys were in my bag, along with the stolen goods.
I’d more likely go home than retrieve my car this evening. It could wait.
Kane did his staring thing, blocking my path. “You didn’t ring your father.”
“If he got a report about my safety, he’d ignore it for two days then leave me a voicemail to tell me the barest details.”
Why did I just give up exactly how unprotected I was?
Kane didn’t speak again. But he stepped aside.
I darted out of Dixie’s flat and flew down the steps.
Kane followed, his much heavier bootsteps drumming after mine. “I’ll take ye. It’s pouring down.”
“Not if you were the last man alive.”
Despite myself, I peered back.
His confident, almost cocky gaze turned curious. “Where did you learn to drive like that?”
He meant my fast driving that got us here. But fuck him if he thought he was getting any information for free.
“Goodbye, Kane. Try not to terrorise any other women on your way home.”
“Night, flower girl.”
I fled the courtyard with a stolen tablet, a painted elephant, and one more thing I hadn’t meant to take. Kane’s attention.