Chapter 35
Harvey stepped into the house. “Lily? I’m home. Lily, where are you?”
Ten minutes later, he’d searched every inch of the house and realized that she wasn’t there.
Fear nearly made him freeze, but he forced himself to keep moving. Grabbing out his phone, he rang her. But it went straight to voicemail. Shit. Did she have it turned off?
He attempted to use the app to find it, but it just showed the location as here. Had she not taken it with her?
Trey must know where she was. He’d been here the entire day. Harvey rushed back out of the house and found his man sitting in his car across the street.
When he reached him, Trey put down his phone and stared up at him before winding down his window. “Hey, boss, what’s up?”
“Where is Lily?” he demanded. He didn’t have time for niceties.
“What do you mean, where is Lily? She’s inside the house,” Trey said. “Isn’t she?”
“No, Trey, she fucking well isn’t. Why haven’t you been keeping an eye on her? You’re supposed to be watching the house. How did she leave without you seeing?”
And had she left, or had something else happened?
Had someone taken her, hurt her? But that didn’t make sense. It was broad daylight. The alarm would’ve been on, and Trey had been sitting right here all day.
Hadn’t he?
“You’ve been here all day, right?”
Trey gave him a look that was filled with guilt.
Fuck.
“Where have you been? What have you been doing? And why haven’t you been taking care of Lily?”
“Look, man, you told me to watch the house. You didn’t say anything about taking care of her. And I had to go out for just half an hour, maybe an hour.”
“What did you have to do that was so important?” he asked.
Trey looked away. “Look, I’ve got a bit of a cash flow issue, man, I’m so sorry—”
“I don’t care. When did you leave and when did you get back?”
“It was kind of after lunch, maybe between one-thirty and two-thirty?”
“How did anyone get to her without the alarm going off? It was still set when I got home.”
Harvey rushed back into the house. He could hear Trey behind him. He started searching through the house to see if she’d taken anything, or if there was any sign of a struggle. Her handbag was gone. Maybe one of her sweaters, he wasn’t sure. And her phone was on the bedside table.
Fuck.
Pushing his fingers through his hair, he tried to think about what to do.
“What do you want me to do? Have you got any way of tracking her? What about the cameras?” Trey asked.
Right, the cameras. He ran down to his office to log into the camera feed. He searched back to when Trey had left, and that’s when he saw them approaching the door.
Fiadh and Amanda.
What were they doing here? Had they taken Lily out with them?
A sense of relief filled him. She must have gone out with Fiadh. He needed to have a chat with her about messaging him before she left the house. Was he being overprotective? Yes.
Did he care? No.
All he wanted was for her to be safe.
Grabbing his phone, he called Fiadh. Unfortunately, it went to voicemail, and that’s when he saw movement on the video feed for the back of the house, and saw Lily on the ground. She was crawling away from the house, then she got up and walked to the back gate.
What was she doing? Why had she gone out that way?
Why had she been on the ground? Why was she limping?
And why was she alone?
Twenty minutes later, he stormed into Ronan’s house.
And breathed out a sigh of relief. Thank God. Sitting in the living room, drinking wine, were Fiadh and Amanda.
“Fiadh, why don’t you ever answer your phone?” he snapped.
Fiadh frowned up at him. “What, no hello for your sister? Why are you so grumpy? What are you even doing here? Shouldn’t you be tucked away with your new girlfriend?”
“Where is she?”
Fiadh blinked at him. “What do you mean, where is she? Isn’t she with you?”
“No, she’s not with me. Do you know where she went?
“How would I know? I’ve never met her.”
He froze. Oh, fuck.
Oh, shit.
“Fiadh, when you went to my house today, did you talk to Lily?”
Fiadh’s face grew pale. “She was at your house?”
“Yes, she was there when you two visited. And now, Lily is missing. My security cameras caught sight of her in the backyard. She looked like she was limping. Maybe she twisted her ankle. I don’t know.”
He hated the idea that she was hurt and he couldn’t help her.
“We went to your house today, Harvey, but we never saw Lily. Did she leave before we got there?” Fiadh asked.
“No, not according to the timestamp on the security camera footage. The two of you appeared at the front door a good five minutes before she was seen in the backyard.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “Oh, no. Oh, no.”
“What did you do? Fiadh, what the fuck did you do?”
“Hey, boy, why are you swearing at your sister?”
Harvey glanced over as his grandfather walked into the living room.
“You don’t swear at your sister and you don’t yell at her.”
“What is going on in here?” Ronan strode in as well. Fuck, he hadn’t realized that his oldest brother was home, but at the moment, he didn’t care what he said or did. He just needed Fiadh to tell him what had happened.
“Tell me what happened, Fiadh. What do you know?”
“I don’t know anything.” Fiadh ran her fingers through her hair, looking distressed.
“What is going on? And before you say anything more,” Ronan said, “you’re going to stop talking to Fiadh like that.”
“Then she better start talking. Lily is missing. I got home to find the house empty. Trey said he left for about an hour between one-thirty and two-thirty. I checked the security camera footage. That’s when Fiadh and her friend here arrived at my house.
Uninvited. Soon after, I saw Lily leaving via the back gate.
She was limping, and for a start, she seemed to be crawling along the ground.
Why would she crawl along the ground, Fiadh? Why would she leave the house?”
Tears started to roll down Fiadh’s cheeks, and Ronan scowled at him. “Talk to her like that one more time . . .”
Harvey turned on him. “My girl is missing. She’s somewhere out there alone. She doesn’t even have any money, Ronan. She left most of her belongings including her phone. I don’t even know if she has a sweater. I don’t know what state of mind she’s in. You know she’s fragile right now.”
“Why is she so fragile? Why won’t you talk about her? Why couldn’t we meet her,” Fiadh asked, wiping away tears.
“Because the girl went through something terrible, Fiadh.” It was actually his grandfather who spoke up. “She needs some time to recover without being overwhelmed by all of us.”
“Amanda, I think it’s time you left,” Ronan said firmly.
Amanda was watching them all with wide eyes, but she nodded and got up. “I’m really sorry for this. I’ll call you, Fiadh.”
Fiadh just nodded.
“You’ve met Lily?” Harvey asked his grandfather once Amanda was gone.
“Yeah, that day she was here. Her mother drugged her, Fiadh, and let her be abused. So, nobody knows what state of mind the girl will be in, even though she’s a strong one. You tell us what you know.”
Fiadh nodded.
“We went to find Amanda’s notebook. She lost one on a job and thought she’d check your house. I didn’t know that you’d returned.”
He started pacing back and forth. “So you just entered my house.”
“I do that all the time,” Fiadh said.
She did and it was his fault for not telling his family that he’d returned. He’d just wanted to keep that to himself for a bit longer. You didn’t see her at all?”
“No, we didn’t see her at all,” Fiadh said, her gaze dropped guiltily.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Well, we were talking to each other. I was saying to Amanda that I had hoped the two of you would hit it off. That I thought she might have seen you while she was redecorating your place, and that you might have gotten along, because I would have liked her as a sister-in-law. I’m so sorry, Harvey.
Maybe she overheard us. This is all my fault. ” Fiadh burst into tears.
At any other time, he might have tried to comfort her, but he didn’t have the patience or time for that.
Ronan grasped hold of her shoulders. “Fiadh, this is important. Was there anything more?”
That didn’t sound like enough to send Lily running.
“I just, well, I guess I was venting. I didn’t understand that she’d been through something traumatic.
I kind of thought she was snubbing us or something, like she thought our family wasn’t good enough.
And then when Amanda said she had met her and that she’d seemed like a cold, snobby person.
Well, I just got a little upset and said things that I now regret, and that I realize she might have taken badly.
But surely it wasn’t bad enough for her to leave. ”
“She thinks that she’s not good enough for me, that I deserve better, because she’s recovering from what happened to her.
It’s scarred her. When Amanda met her, she probably came across like she was cold and uninterested because she was drugged.
She was stuck in an engagement to a man she hated. And she couldn’t see a way out.”
“Not everyone has a great family who will go to bat for them,” his grandfather told Fiadh gently.
“I’m so sorry. I really am. I didn’t mean to hurt her, or to cause her to leave. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“She can’t have gone that far,” his grandfather said. “Where would she go?”
“I don’t know.” He ran his hand over his face. “She doesn’t know anybody. She doesn’t have any friends or family in the city.”
“What about her sister?” Ronan asked.
“She lives in Texas, and they’re not close. I don’t know if Lily would go to Clem.”
“Call her,” his grandfather suggested. “Just in case she ends up there.”
“Has she got a credit card?” Ronan asked. “Any way of getting money?”
“No, she doesn’t have anything.” Which was stressing him out. “Well, there was a credit card from her mother but I doubt it has anything on it.”
“Let’s see if we can get Paddy to trace it anyway. Don’t worry, we’ll find her,” Ronan said.
They had to find her because he couldn’t imagine living without her.