Chapter 51 Betrayed
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Betrayed
HENRY
“It’s getting late; I think we should call it a day!” I shouted to River. He stopped his trek up the overgrown hillside and squinted at the setting sun.
“Jeez, sorry mate, I didn’t realise I’d monopolised your entire day!” he remarked with a chuckle, making his way back down through the thick, green ferns. “Check out that view, though! What a sight!”
I turned, my breath catching at the spectrum of crimson, magenta, orange and pink colouring the water as the sun dipped closer to the horizon and the silhouettes of other Whitsundays Islands in the distance.
Ri would love this. She would look so beautiful with that sunset glowing against her perfect skin, bejewelling her golden hair.
“You’ve got it bad, Henry,” River joked, nudging me in the ribs as he passed me on the way down to the ruin that was the old resort site.
“I can tell by the look on your face that you’re thinking about your lovely wife …
but you can see my vision, right? A trail up to an intimate lookout bar, cocktails, and the setting sun, nestled amidst nature. ”
“Yes. It would be spectacular.”
River prattled on as he started down the hill, but my mind had already strayed back to Ri.
She’d seemed preoccupied when I’d left that morning, mumbling something about using the spa and ‘tidying her room’.
She had very few belongings left in the guest bedroom, as far as I could tell from the volume of clothes and toiletries that had appeared in our bedroom.
Our bedroom. I loved the sound of that.
I loved her.
The sudden urge to tell her, to give her the word I hadn’t quite worked up the courage to say to her before now. I needed her to know that she was it for me.
When we got back, I wasn’t going to hold it in a second longer.
As we reached the bottom of the hill and picked our way through the mess of the old resort, heading in the direction of the jetty and the Girl on Fire, my phone buzzed in my pocket.
And then again. And again.
I tugged it out. Missed calls and messages from Lucian.
“Shit,” I muttered as text messages began flooding in. “I boosted the Wi-Fi on the yacht, I shouldn’t have been out of range today.” I opened the texts.
Lucian: Atlas still hasn’t checked in with the hotel. I’m filing a missing person report
Lucian: You need to contact your silent partner, maybe he knows something the SynAPPsee guys don’t
Lucian: I know it’s shit you have to explain to him that Atlas is missing, but he might have information we need
Lucian: Hello?
Lucian: You missed a call, but the caller didn’t leave a message.
Lucian: You missed a call, but the caller didn’t leave a message.
Lucian: Why is your phone going straight to voicemail?
Lucian: You missed a call, but the caller didn’t leave a message.
Lucian: Should I be worrying right now? Or have you turned your phone on DND so you and Irina can have special cuddles?
Lucian: Ri’s phone is ringing out. I’m officially worried
Lucian: Josie isn’t answering her phone either
Lucian: I’m getting on a plane to Airlie now. And I’m charging it to your credit card for the stress you’re putting me through
Lucian: You and Ri better be okay when I get there …
I blew out a breath, following River on unsteady feet. Why was Ri not answering her phone? And Josie?
“Everything okay?” River asked, slowing for me to catch up with him. I shook my head, anxiety playing havoc with my lungs.
“We need to get back to the Girl on Fire.” Maybe Ri was in the spa and her phone wasn’t nearby? There had to be a rational explanation.
But the tight feeling in my gut persisted. I dialled Lucian, but it went straight to voicemail. He must be in the air. I tried Ri as we picked our way through a garden of upended, broken pots and the creepy brown tendrils of the once-alive plants they had housed.
It rang. And rang.
“This call is being forwarded to voicemail …”
“Shit,” I muttered. The jetty was up ahead, and I started jogging, my shoes pounding on the timbers. River’s footsteps thumped behind me, reverberating in my ears. I wasn’t sure I breathed as I raced up the gangplank, across the deck and down the stairs to the owner’s suite.
“Ri!” I called, tripping over a disgruntled Trinket as she tried to wind around my ankles. “Irina!”
“Help!” The voice, hoarse and reedy, came from somewhere beneath us.
“Who is that?” River asked. I surged towards the stairs that led to the lowest level of the yacht. Ri’s old bedroom, Lucian’s room and the crew quarters were all down there.
“It sounds like Parker,” I muttered. “That way.” I pointed to the door leading to the crew quarters before heading the other way down the hall to the four guest bedrooms. Maybe Ri had fallen asleep on her old bed? She had looked a little tired and pale this morning.
“Holy—Henry, you need to get back here!” River shouted.
My stomach dropped, and I turned away from Ri’s door, stumbling down the hall.
I lurched to a halt at the doorway to the crew quarters.
Parker’s ankles and wrists were bound behind him in a hogtie, and he was white as a ghost, his hair slicked to his scalp with sweat.
“What happened?” I demanded as River worked to untie him. My chest ached, like my lungs were in a vice. At the sound of my voice, a plaintive yowl erupted from under the bed. Abernathy emerged, shook himself until fur flew around the room, and darted off. “Where’s Ri?”
“Sh-she told me to bring Abernathy down here,” Parker rasped as River managed to free his wrists. “But some guy was waiting … with a gun … she tied me up. Can I get some water?”
River rushed to the sink in the small galley. I held tight to the door frame, my legs feeling like they might not hold me up. “Who? Who tied you up?” I demanded.
“Josie.” He coughed, and River handed him the water. He drank greedily. I turned and raced back to the closed door to Ri’s old room, shoving it open.
She wasn’t there. The room was empty, the only sign anyone had been there was a small wooden box in the centre of the bed.
No! No, no, no, no, no …
I doubled over, my hands braced on my knees as I sucked in hissing breaths. Squeezing rhythmically. Relief that I hadn’t opened the door to a murder scene warred with blinding panic. Someone had come for her.
What if they planned to hurt her?
Don’t fall apart. Don’t break down. She needs you.
Josie. She’d known of the plan to come to Staghorn before anyone else. She’d overseen supply runs to the island.
She could have filled the island with people who wished Ri harm, and we would have been none the wiser.
Fuck. I’d been a trusting fool.
Don’t panic, Henry. This is just another problem. You fix problems.
I tried to focus only on the facts. My wife was missing. An unknown man with a gun had been on board my yacht.
The captain of my yacht had betrayed me.
Parker was my only lead right now. I needed answers. I needed to move. To act! If he couldn’t give me a starting point on what to do, where to look …
A buzzing sound from the bed caught my attention. Something was vibrating under the wooden box.
Ri’s phone.
I lunged for it, noting the name Stefan on the screen. Her cousin. Damn it. She was worried about her family tracking her down, dragging her home. Was that what had happened?
I answered the call.
“Where is she?” I growled.
“Who is … oh, are you the husband?” a thickly accented male voice answered.
“Yes, I’m the husband! And you’re the cousin.”
“I am. Is she not with you?”
“No.” The urge to demand answers, to beg for them, clawed at my throat. I swallowed it down like razorblades. “What do you want?”
“I called to warn her … sounds like I’m too late.” Stefan let out an exhausted sigh.
“Warn her about what?”
I waited, but he didn’t answer. “Stefan, if you care about her at all, you’ll tell me everything you know. I can’t help her when I’m flying blind.”
I sat down on the edge of the bed, pinching the bridge of my nose to stave off the prickling tears.
Losing your shit won’t get her back, Henry.
“C?lin found out she’d gotten married. He left the night before last; I’m assuming he was headed there to drag her home. I would have called earlier if I’d known, but I just got back from a … job.”
“C?lin?” I asked, the name unfamiliar. “I thought your father’s name was Bogdan.”
“It is … she didn’t tell you about C?lin?” Stefan huffed out a dark laugh. “Figures. She’s been keeping a lot of secrets, it seems.”
My insides felt suddenly hollow, the next question leaving my mouth as if it were the last bubbles of air leaving a drowning man’s lungs.
“Who is C?lin?”
“Her fiancé.”
Ri was engaged. And she’d been prepared to live illegally in Australia to avoid returning to her fiancé, which was all the information I needed to make a judgement call about the man.
Stefan filled me in on the transaction she’d had to make—her life, her loyalty, her freedom, to her uncle’s business partner, in return for her university degree.
No wonder she’d not wanted to return. Bought and sold like she was a piece of meat and not a human being with feelings, and thoughts, and autonomy.
A woman I would break laws to keep safe. My wife, who had been abducted from under my nose.
“Find my cousin, Henry,” Stefan said. “And if there’s anything I can do to help you get her out of this, call me back. I don’t want her coming back here … and if he manages it, you’re not going to see her again.” He ended the call.
There was no way I was letting them take her from me.
Fix the problem. Get her back.
But how? If C?lin had her, where would he go? He must have been smuggled onto the island with the chopper of supplies that Josie had organised, but none had landed since the last time I’d seen Ri. She couldn’t have left the island. Not by air, anyway.
Josie’s betrayal burned, but it was nothing compared to the knife in the gut sensation of not knowing where my wife was. Not knowing if she was safe and unharmed.
I grabbed gum from my pocket, tossing two sticks into my mouth and chewing frantically. I needed an outlet for all this pent-up tension in my body. I needed to think straight. If I could just get some space in my brain that wasn’t taken up with terror, I could solve this problem.
I had to solve this problem.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. I fumbled for it as a text message flashed up on the screen.
Unknown Number: We have Irina. If you want to see her alive again, come and find us.
A shared location popped up on the screen, and I was scrambling off Ri’s bed, calling for River.
“D’you find her?” he asked, face taut with worry, I wondered what mine must look like.
“Yes and no.” I held out the phone so he could see the message and the dropped location pin.
“Jesus Christ,” River cursed softly. “Okay, let’s go.”
Parker, a step behind River, paled.
“You stay here,” I told him. “Keep Abs and Trink from worrying too much.”
Parker’s face visibly relaxed, and I pushed past him, taking the stairs two at a time. My phone buzzed again.
Unknown Number: Don’t try to bring the authorities onto the island. If we hear a chopper, she’s
I stumbled to a halt, brain whirring. Shit. Lucian was on his way. He’d charter a helicopter from the mainland.
“What now?” River asked, looking over my shoulder. I swiped away from the message, opening my text thread with Lucian.
Henry: I’m safe. Ri is not. Stay on the mainland or you could get her killed. DO NOT CHOPPER OUT HERE UNTIL YOU HEAR FROM ME AGAIN
“Uh, isn’t that going to freak him out?” River asked.
“Probably. But he’ll follow orders.” I swallowed back bile, climbing the steps once more. “I’m sorry you’re caught up in this.”
“I’d rather be caught up than let you deal with this alone.” River shrugged. “It’s a hazard of being billionaire adjacent, I guess—getting dragged into someone abducting your business partner’s wife. Do you think they want to blackmail you?”
A dark, twisted guffaw ripped from me. I was teetering on the brink of hysteria. If blackmail was the intention, I’d do it. I’d do whatever they asked of me if it would protect her.
The sun had set by the time we picked our way through the hazardous ruins of the main resort building, and in through the gaping maw that had once been a grand lobby.
The place stunk of rot and mildew, and vines had snaked their way over the reception desk and the skeletons of abandoned wicker furniture. I checked the location pin.
“We need to head down that way,” I murmured, pointing to one corridor that disappeared into the gloom a few steps in.
“What do they want with you anyway?” River mumbled. “It must be something huge if they’re willing to resort to kidnap and death threats to get it.”
And the realisation struck me—if their goal was simply to take Ri back to Romania, there was no need to involve me, to lure me here.
What was I about to walk into?
It doesn’t matter. You’ll do it to save her.