Chapter Two
“He was kidnapped,” I said for what felt like the hundredth time. “I saw it with my own eyes. They loaded him into the back of a Wonderland van and drove off. How many times do I need to keep repeating myself?”
Police Constable Thornton scratched his chin.
He had a bald patch in his beard that I’d spent far too much time staring at.
Maybe from too much scratching. It was definitely a bad habit of his.
That and saying “hmm” a lot. I assumed it was supposed to represent thoughtfulness, but the more tired I got of repeating myself, the more it came across as disbelief.
“The problem we have, Mr. Carroll, is that we’ve run everything you’ve told us about Mr. White through our system, and there is no Warren White. Not now. Not ever.”
I laughed. “What? That’s ridiculous.” I massaged my temples.
It didn’t help the headache that had kicked in a couple of hours ago or make thinking easier by improving the blood flow to my brain.
“What are you trying to say? That I imagined him? I didn’t.
We had dinner at Linden House last night.
Ask the waiter. Ask the people who were there.
” I unclasped the watch around my wrist and shoved it in his direction. “He gave me this. Look, it’s engraved.”
Thornton gave it a cursory glance before leaning across the table. He smelled faintly of some old-fashioned aftershave. “No one is saying you made him up. Perhaps he went by another name?”
“Maybe.” I couldn’t see it, though. He’d have told me.
Thornton checked his notes. “And you said that you’ve only known him a couple of weeks. How much do you really know about him?”
“Enough.” Doubt had started to creep in.
I shook off the tendrils within seconds.
“It doesn’t matter what his name is. Warren being kidnapped is all that matters.
I gave you the van's registration. Have you run a check yet? And I gave you his address. Someone ransacked it before they took him. Have you had someone look at that yet? Maybe there are some clues. I shouldn’t have to tell you how to do your job. ”
Thornton leaned back in his seat and regarded me coolly, his gray eyes narrowing slightly. “You don’t need to. We have people working on both things, but they take time.”
He left the room after that. I put my watch back on, drank the cold coffee that hadn’t been that warm when they’d given it to me, and stared at the wall.
I knew the statistics about kidnapping, that the trail grew colder with every passing hour. I assumed Thornton knew that as well; he just didn’t seem to give a damn about it. Or perhaps I was expecting too much.
Something was different about him when he came back in. He didn’t sit, bracing his arms on the table instead, so I had to look up at him. “Have you found something?” Please God, don’t let them have found a body.
“We sent two officers to the address you gave us.”
I let out a breath. “So you know what happened? Did they talk to the neighbors? What did they tell you? Someone must have heard something. Did anyone else see the van?”
“There were no signs of disturbance at the address you gave us.”
The words were so absurd that it took a long time to sink in. “That’s impossible. They must’ve gone to the wrong address.”
“Flat eight?”
“Yeah.”
“They went to flat eight.”
I shook my head. “The door was hanging off its hinges.”
“The door was fine, and they talked to several people in the building. No one heard anything. No one saw anything. And no one knows a Warren White.” Thornton’s stare turned glacial.
“Look, Mr. Carroll, I don’t know what you hoped to achieve, whether you get a kick out of wasting police time, but we can’t track down a man who never existed. ”
“He exists,” I said. It sounded weak even to my own ears. “I spent the night with him. We were planning a future together. I’m not making it up.”
“Hmmm.”
I’d never been a violent man, but the repetition of that sound made me want to leap across the table, wrap my hands around Thornton’s neck, and squeeze until sound was no longer capable of passing between his lips.
Thornton walked over to the door and held it open, the dismissal clear. I took the hint, but halted in front of him. “A man’s been kidnapped and you lot don’t give a fuck.”
“We work on evidence, and as I’ve already explained to you, Mr. Carroll—”
I didn’t wait around to listen to the rest of what the condescending bastard had to say.
It was too risky when my hands were curled into fists, and I was itching to use them.
Thankfully, I had enough common sense and self-restraint to know that getting arrested for assaulting a police officer wouldn’t help anyone.
I was halfway back to my hotel before I started thinking clearly.
I changed direction and headed for Warren’s building instead.
Maybe if I got photographic evidence. Or if I found a neighbor who’d seen or heard something suspicious.
The police clearly couldn’t be trusted to find their arse with both hands, but they couldn’t ignore two people singing from the same hymn sheet.
It felt like days had passed rather than hours by the time I stood outside the building again.
There was no sign of the milk I’d spilled that morning in my rush to chase the van.
I took the stairs two at a time, buoyed by the certainty that the police were about to realize what a colossal mistake they’d made.
They’d be embarrassed. Apologetic, too. At least I hoped so.
I frowned when I reached the right door. This morning it had been hanging off its hinges. Now, those hinges were intact again. Was there more than one flat eight? I retraced my steps, trying the floor above and the one below, before returning to where I’d started. It was the right flat. So how?
Faint music from inside had me breathing more easily.
Warren was here. I didn’t know how, and frankly, I didn’t care.
All that mattered was that the events of today had been an awful misunderstanding, and he was here.
I lifted my fist and hammered on the door.
Footsteps approached, and then someone wrenched it open.
A woman stood there with an expectant look on her face.
She looked to be in her early fifties. She wore blue jeans, a matching pink cardigan, and fluffy slippers.
His mother? We’d never gotten around to talking about our families.
She had dark hair, but that meant nothing.
Perhaps his father was blond. Or sometimes genetics just did what they felt like.
“I need to speak to Warren,” I blurted.
“Who?”
“Warren.” I gestured to the flat at the woman’s back. “He lives here.”
She frowned. “I live here.”
“That’s not possible. He was here this morning. We both were. I woke up here.”
“Perhaps you’ve got the wrong flat.”
“No!” I shook my head for extra emphasis. “I thought that too. But it’s flat eight, and this is the only flat eight. His name’s Warren White. Blond hair, blue eyes, extremely handsome. Nice. Kind. You must know him.”
She thought for a few seconds, just long enough that it gave me hope. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I don’t, and he sounds like someone I’d remember if I’d ever met him.”
My heart was pounding so hard it felt like I might pass out. It must have shown in my expression, the woman grabbing my arm. “Come inside. You look like you need to sit down. I’ll make us a cup of tea, and I’m sure I’ve got some biscuits hidden in the back of the cupboard somewhere.”
I let her tug me inside. Not because I wanted tea or biscuits, or a sit-down, but because I wanted the opportunity to tell her how ridiculous it was to deny Warren’s existence while surrounded by his stuff.
Except everything inside was wrong.
A cream sofa with flowery cushions had replaced Warren’s black leather one.
The coffee table was wood now, rather than glass, topped with women’s magazines and a bowl of pot-pourri instead of a sleek horse ornament that I’d jokingly once told Warren was only there because it was heavy enough to use against a burglar.
I’d touched it, hefted its weight, felt how smooth it was.
The television was smaller and flanked by candles. The pictures on the wall were in the right place, but everything else about them had changed: the shape, the color of the frames, and the subject. Even the air smelled different. Polish and flowers instead of a musky masculine scent.
Not one trace of him remained in the living room.
The woman was talking, but I wasn’t hearing a single word of it.
I pushed past her, ignoring her protests, and went into the bathroom.
Where Warren’s mismatched bottles used to crowd the basin, there were identical glass dispensers, all neatly labeled.
Purple butterflies had replaced the neutral geometric patterns on the shower curtain.
Bedroom next, the woman gaping at me as I stood in the doorway.
It told the same story. White cushions on the bed where there’d been none.
A completely different bed than the one I’d woken up in this morning.
Warren’s headboard had been black; this one was white.
No clothes on the floor. No phone charger snaking across the carpet.
I backed out of the room, forcing the woman to take evasive action so I wouldn’t step on her foot. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t…”
She didn’t stop me as I headed for the door. No doubt she regretted the impulse to invite me in and was relieved that I was already on my way.
It felt like I hadn’t taken another breath until I left the building. I made up for it then, doubling over and filling my lungs with cold air.
Was I mad? Was that what was going on here? Did Warren not exist, just as Thornton had tried to tell me?
I fumbled the watch off my wrist, bracing myself before turning it over. If it were blank, then…
It wasn’t. The engraving was still there. I hadn’t done that myself. Warren was real.
He had to be.
So why was everyone trying to convince me he wasn’t?