Chapter 1 #3
Speak of the devil.
The detective. She has backed off for now. A lead with a business associate.
Well, that’s good at least. We can’t search for Daisy properly when we do get some information if Anders is dogging our steps.
As usual, the gangster’s communication is controlled and calm, but even I saw his facade crack in the moments following Daisy’s disappearance.
When she vanished in his club, he was barking orders over all the channels his people were on, but despite the power he has, even he hasn't learned anything useful since that night.
Mav sits on Daisy's bed, listless and subdued. He hasn't even worked out in days, just sits around looking at pictures of Daisy on his phone. We’re just waiting for news of her. It’s like we’re in limbo, or purgatory.
I stare out the window. It's starting to snow, and I find myself wondering if Daisy would like it. I turn away with a huff, my chest hurting.
'There's information somewhere,' I mutter. 'We just need to find it.'
'Fuck this,' Blake growls, jumping up and heading for the door.
'Where are you going?' I ask, trying to project calm because this version of Blake isn’t good for anyone.
But I’m sick of being the one who has to hold it together for the others.
'Anywhere but here,’ he grinds out over his shoulder.
I see Mav glance at me a little worriedly, and I shake my head in defeat.
'I can't play babysitter right now,' I mutter. 'I don't have it in me. If he wants to go fuck everything up, let him.'
Mav says nothing, and I keep pacing. Sauvage is supposed to be letting me know if his private detectives have found anything soon, but the message he just sent me seems to be all he has.
'How can there be nothing?' Mav barks from the bed.
He's hugging Daisy's pillow like a child with a stuffy. He grips it hard, and, every once in a while, I see him take a small inhale, as if the lingering scent of her is going to calm him down.
I put my head in my hands for a second.
‘I don't understand,’ I say to myself for the millionth time over the past few days.
Days. It feels like several weeks have passed, not barely one.
Anything could have happened to her… I try not to think about the worst outcome, but it's hard when there's no word at all. What if she’s lying in a shallow—No, I won't think like that.
I can't. Nothing is worth anything if she's gone and I know Blake and Mav feel the same.
We haven't even needed to talk about it. We just know that, sometime over the past few months, she became our reason for everything. Without her, what’s the point?
'What are you doing?' I hear a woman shriek from downstairs, and Mav and I lock eyes.
'Fuck!'
I bolt out of Daisy’s room, knowing that this has something to do with him because, of course, it fucking does.
I bound down the stairs, and when I get to the kitchen, Blake has Laurie by her throat up against the wall. Her eyes are bulging. Her face is red.
‘Shit!'
I lurch forward and grab Blake while Mav pries his fingers from around her neck.
'You fucking psycho!' Laurie gasps out, her voice hoarse.
'Fuck! God damn it!' I push Blake back. 'What the fuck are you doing?'
'You tell him,' he snarls, pointing at Laurie. 'You tell them what you just said to me. She fucking knows. She fucking knows something.'
Laurie's shocked eyes glance from me to Blake to Mav.
'I don't understand,' she whispers, choking a little, her hands going to her neck and rubbing.
'Tell them!'
'What the fuck did you say?' I yell.
'I-I swear,' she stutters, 'I just asked if... if... if Daisy was okay.'
Does she know that Daisy is gone?
'What the fuck do you care? You hate Daisy!'
She shrugs.
'So why would you ask that?'
'I just... I saw her, okay? That’s all. I was at Marcus's, and it didn't look.
.. They were all in Joe's office, and now Joe's dead, and they were all in Joe's office a couple weeks ago, too, and that slutty nurse was there, and it was just..
. It didn't look right, and Marcus told me to stay out. I heard him on the phone...'
She breaks off and just shakes her head, but this is more information than we've had for weeks.
'Go on,' I say, but she doesn't say anything.
'Laurie.'
My voice turns pleading, and I'm pretty sure a tiny piece of me dies, but I'll do anything. I will beg this girl on my hands and knees if I have to, if she'll give me one shred of information about where Daisy is. She may know something, even if she doesn't know she does.
‘C’mon, Laurie...' I put my hands together, pleading. 'If you know anything... What else happened? That day?' I ask. 'The day you saw Daisy in Joe's office?'
'Nothing,' she says. 'It was... well, a few days later, he said—'
'What did Marcus say?' Mav snaps.
Her eyes narrow and she glares at him.
‘Please, Laurie,’ I say, giving Mav a warning look. ‘Daisy’s life could depend on what you tell us.’
Her eyes widen a little, but then she rolls them. 'I heard him. Not Marcus. It was... It was his father. Joseph. He didn't know I was there. He was talking on the phone.'
'What did he say?' I ask, exasperated, wishing she would just fucking spill her guts.
Fucking drama queen.
'He was just... He was talking about taking ‘her’ to a guy. I don’t know who he meant, but maybe it was….' She shrugs and looks almost apologetic. ‘Maybe it doesn’t mean anything, but he said ‘her’. I thought maybe he was talking about Daisy, but I don't know... and I don't know who Heath is...'
The color drains out of Blake's face and his brow furrows.
'What was that name?' I ask.
‘Heath? He said he was taking someone to a guy named Heath.’
'The Heath,' Mav whispers.
‘Holy shit! Was it The Heath?' I ask, striding forward and taking Laurie by the shoulders.
I try not to shake her.
'Think. Could he have said The Heath?'
'Maybe. It might have been,' she says, looking between the three of us with a bewildered expression on her face.
'I don't... I can't be sure. But... When he hung up, he came out into the hallway, and saw me and the look he gave me was like... like I shouldn't have been there, like he didn’t want anyone listening. And it seemed weird because, well, it was just about some guy named Heath.’
She takes a couple of steps away from us.
‘Anyway, I just came to see if Marcus was here, but he's not.
He's ghosting me, and I don't know what's going on.
I was trying to be there for him because of his brother, but.
..' She shrugs. 'To be honest, he didn't seem all that cut up about it.
He said something about not being the spare anymore.
So I guess he's excited that he's going to be head of the family once his dad is gone. '
I turn away from Laurie and ignore the rest of what she says now as I regard the others.
'We need a plane,' Mav says, echoing my thoughts.
I hear Laurie huff behind me. 'Jesus, you're welcome. Fucking assholes!'
I vaguely hear her muttering to herself about us being dicks and then there’s silence, so I guess she’s gone.
But I don't give a shit about Laurie despite the fact that she’s given us a lead.
Daisy could be at The Heath, a whole ocean away. We need to get to her.
'We can't use my father’s,’ I say. ‘He'll find out and we’ll be grounded. Literally.’
‘Who else do we know who owns one?’ Mav mutters. ‘I don’t even have a passport. I can’t go commercial. Plus, that detective told us not to leave town.’
‘Sauvage has to have one,’ Blake says. ‘He had his son brought back and forth from Geneva last year, so he must have one close by, and if anyone knows how to avoid Customs and Immigration, he will.'
I take out my phone and quickly message Sauvage. The Frenchman calls me a moment later.
'You have news?' he asks.
'Maybe,' I reply. 'Marcus's girlfriend says she heard Joseph Banderville talking about a guy named Heath.'
'And what does this mean?' the Frenchman asks impatiently.
'It could be The Heath. It's the clinic where Daisy was in England. It could be that the Bandervilles had her taken back there.'
'D’accord. My plane can be ready in an hour, but I cannot go with you.' He snarls something else in French that I don't catch. 'Find her and bring her back.'
I scowl at the phone. 'Of course we're gonna find her and bring her back,' I snarl. 'But not for you, Sauvage.'
The Frenchman snorts and the line goes dead.
‘French prick,' I mutter. 'Let's go.'
We go upstairs immediately and pack some essentials, not knowing how long we're going to be across the pond for. Blake’s movements are frenzied as he stuffs his duffel bag.
‘We’re gonna find her,’ he’s muttering to himself like a madman. ‘Gonna find her.’
I put my hand on his shoulder and he tenses.
‘We are going to find her,’ I say, hoping that I sound more positive than I feel.
What if this is just a wild goose chase that costs us time when we should be looking somewhere else?
But he closes his eyes and nods, muscles relaxing under my hand.
‘Yeah,’ he breathes.
'No guns,' I remind him, eyeing the spare magazine on his bed.
'Yeah, I know,' he sneers. 'I’m not bringing it. I probably know more about England than you do.'
I roll my eyes at him as I look at my phone and see a message from Sauvage telling us which airport his jet will be waiting for us at.
We’re ready within ten minutes, and we leave the KIP house quickly and quietly.
I give some orders to a couple of the juniors, letting them know that we'll be back soon and to hold the fort while we're gone. I don't tell them where we’re going or why, and I hope my father is too busy to keep tabs on me right now, too. With any luck, I’ll be back before he has any idea that I was ever gone.
I haven't seen him in days anyway. He's been on another business trip, this time somewhere in South America.
I realize that he hasn’t even mentioned Daisy’s disappearance to me once in the past week, and I get a sinking feeling that he might know exactly where she is. Maybe he even had her kidnapped.
I drive the truck, mostly because Blake looks jittery as hell— I'm wondering if he's been self-medicating a little— and Mav seems so lost in his own head that I wouldn’t trust him to drive a golf cart right now.
'Why would they have taken her back to England?' he mutters as we drive through the darkness, patches of fog glowing in the headlights.
'I don't understand. Joe was going to marry her, but they sent her back there. They couldn't have known that we...’ He trails off and shakes his head. ‘No, whoever it was couldn’t have known that he was dead yet. They must have been going to take her anyway. Why?’
‘Keep her under wraps?’ I say out loud. ‘Put where they could find her? She was at The Heath for ten years without escaping. Maybe the Bandervilles or my father figured that was a better place to keep her until the wedding. It was the first time she’d been out in the open for weeks.
Maybe they saw their chance and took it before she could go underground again. '
Mav shakes his head a little. Blake just stares out of the window and doesn't say anything in response.
I drive as fast as I can while still keeping to the speed limit. The last thing we need is to get stopped by the cops and delayed even more.
'If she’s there, what are they doing to her?' I hear Blake mutter. 'What are they doing to our girl?'
I side-eye him, my face grim.
Like him, I can't stop thinking about what we know about that place. There's not much, but what we are aware of isn’t great. I sort of wish I had let Blake bring his gun because there's no way the people who have her are the good guys.