Ryder
Itext Anders again.
Have you heard from Emily?
I might have overstepped in kissing her. But then, why would she have continued to text me and Anders if that was a problem? But there’s nothing in the group chat from her for the last couple of days.
My phone dings. Anders never responds that fast. Never. The good boy has some bad communication habits.
Anders
No, I was going to ask you that too. She stopped texting me two days ago.
He shoots off a similar response to the group chat as well.
“Fuck.”
Shayla
I’m sure she’s having a good time. Or she lost her phone. You two are like little old men.
I stare at my phone and reply to Shayla
Right.
But privately to Anders, I’ve got a different idea.
I’m calling Maya.
Anders
Damn, that’s ballsy.
The Rockwells’ housekeeper is part dynamo, but the rest is Tasmanian devil.
I’m not calling Rocky.
Anders
No, let’s not give him a heart attack before his surgery.
Exactly.
Maya’s line rings twice. “Emily?” she asks as she picks up.
“No, Maya, it’s Ryder. This is my phone.”
“I’m Gen X, not stupid. I know this is your phone. I thought maybe you were with her. You’re always here. Leaving cups everywhere.”
I make a mental note to pick up better after our hangout sessions. “Have you heard from her?”
“No,” she says, but I hear the implied jackass in her voice.
“Right okay. Well, if you hear anything, can you call me? You haven’t called Mr. Rockwell?”
“Call Rocky? No, I haven’t. He’s got enough to worry about. She’s an adult. I’ll wait a few days before I’ll call her brother.”
“Okay, good.”
I text Anders what I’ve found out, and my phone rings a moment later.
“I’ve got a bad feeling.”
“Me, too.”
There’s silence on the other end of the line. Because in the last week I think we’ve both realized, without saying it, we’re in love with the same girl and that’s not going to do anything good for our friendship.
“I haven’t been to England,” Anders says first.
“I’ve been there, but only to transfer to someplace in the Med,” I lie, but that was another life.
Still, most super yachts aren’t hanging out in the UK.
Even Brits who own yachts don’t keep them there.
I’ve been there at least twenty times in my new life.
Heathrow to Madrid, Mallorca, or one of twenty other airports in the Mediterranean.
So I’m not surprised Anders hasn’t been there. “We should go,” I say.
There’s another pause from Anders. He’s the predictable one.
He’s going to give me a canned response like that’s fucking dumb.
Flying halfway across the Atlantic because a girl who isn’t your girlfriend isn’t answering her phone.
“There’s a flight from Miami International that leaves in four hours. ”
“Send me the flight number and I’ll buy us some tickets.”
“I’ll get my own. See you there.” And the line goes dead.
I throw enough into my backpack to get me through a couple days.
But I have to leave my uncle’s knife. I’m not checking a bag just to bring it, even though I normally don’t go anywhere without it.
The old bastard never gave me bad advice.
Knowing how to use a knife and keeping one with you can keep you alive.
I take it out of my pocket and leave it on my kitchen counter and close the door.
Anders pushes his small backpack under the seat in front of him. I talked to the gate agent and got our seats moved to be together.
“Should I text Oliver?” Anders asks.
“You have his number? I thought he changed phones after that royal gossip site posted it.”
“He did, and I do. Don’t you?” Anders’s eyebrows shoot up.
“No, maybe.” I glance over at him and scroll back through the group chat—and there it is. “I’ll do it. Emily said she was meeting him.”
“It’s worth a try. He might know someone who can help us,” Anders says. He cocks his head to the side. It’s an unspoken maybe we should have called him already. Before we bought tickets.
Anders and I are coming to London. Emily is there. Have you heard from her?
Dots appear instantly.
Oliver
Who’s this?
Right. Fuck.
Ryder Dempsey
Oliver
Yes. I’m in London. I saw her two days ago.
I show the text to Anders. “That’s great,” he says.
I’m feeling a bit like a fool now, rushing to London. But two days is still inside the time frame for when we last heard from her.
We haven’t heard from her since then either.
The dots come and go while the announcement to turn off your phone plays on the loudspeaker. I tilt my body away from the flight attendant who’s stepping down the aisle. She glares at Anders and then me. I turn my phone over and smile at her, and she passes by.
Oliver
Does she text you every day?
Yes
Oliver
I think we’ve got a problem. I’ll get back to you when I know more.
I’m on a plane with Anders. Miami to Heathrow. We’ll be there in the morning. Should be through customs by seven.
Oliver
I’ll send a car. I need to go.
I turn back to Anders and switch my phone into airplane mode when the flight attendant slows in the aisle next to me. “What in the hell do you think he knows?” I ask Anders.
“Might be nothing.” He crosses his arms over his chest and closes his eyes. He’s asleep before the plane takes off, while I’m running scenarios of what might be going on in my head. We’ll figure it out.
I drift off and get a few hours of sleep before we land.
There’s a uniformed driver at the exit from customs with a sign that reads Dempsey and Thompson.
Flashbacks of the last time I was here zip through my thoughts.
I shoot off a message to Oliver and let him know we’re in the car, but he doesn’t reply.
Double-decker buses and a massive snarl of traffic have us inching toward the city center.
I’m fighting the urge to text Emily another hundred times.
Anders has his phone out too. I raise my chin at him, and he shows me his screen.
There are twenty messages from him to Em, all of them unread and unanswered.
She wouldn’t ghost all of us at the same time, even if she were a ghosting kind of person.
You’d have to do a lot to have her not call you back.
She doesn’t give up on people. Even if she doesn’t want me, I’ll still be her friend because souls like her don’t turn up in your life often. They have to be guarded and protected.
Anders shakes his head at me. “I’m glad we came. We’ll find her.”
“Yes.” It takes a good fifty minutes for our car to pull up to the Saint Redford hotel.
“Thanks.” I try to hand the driver a tip, but he waves me off.
“Whitehall’s taken care of me. But thank you.”
“Have a good one.” I pocket the money. Of course a prince’s driver doesn’t need a tip.
The doorman holds open the door for us. “His Highness is waiting for you in the alcove to the right.” He motions to the far side of the lobby.
My eyebrows shoot up at Anders, and he’s mimicking the expression.
To us, Oliver is that Ollie who did a damn good job as a deckhand but who you didn’t speak to until he had his first coffee break in the morning.
But to the rest of the world, he’s the spare-spare heir.
Prince of Genovia. Which isn’t what his country is called but what we like to rib him with instead.
It’s Castoria, a little bigger than Monaco but not as rich.
He’s sitting on a velvet sofa, bent over, his fingers flying over his phone.
“Hey.” I stop next to him.
Anders gets right to it. “Where were you when you saw her last?”
“Hey,” Oliver says to me. “I was at her hotel. She was supposed to meet me here that night, but she never showed up. Instead, she sent me a text message.”
“What did it say?” I ask.
“‘Changed my mind.’”
“About what?” Anders asks before I can.
Oliver stands. “Not here. Let’s go upstairs, and I can fill you in on everything I’ve learned.”
“Why not here?”
“Because I think she could still be in the building. Which means whoever has her will have people in the building too.”
“Shouldn’t we be watching the doors?”
Oliver nods to a man next to the front door sitting in a leather chair. He has that I-could-kill-you-in-a-hundred-ways look about him. He reminds me a hell of a lot of my uncle. “I’ve got security agents at every door. We’re going upstairs.”
Upstairs, Oliver tosses his phone on the oak table in the middle of the suite. It’s at least five times bigger than my apartment in Miami. Hell, it might be bigger than my parents’ old house in New Hampshire. But money doesn’t mean shit to me. “What did she change her mind about?”
“Why did the two of you come here?” Oliver shoots off.
“I care a lot about Emily,” Anders is quick to say.
I cross my arms over my chest. “Same.”
“I do as well. We had afternoon tea here. I walked her back to her hotel. We got caught in a rainstorm. She was supposed to come back and have dinner with me later that night. I’d arranged for us to eat in my suite.
” His eyebrows shoot up. Fucking hell. “She sent me a text that she changed her mind. I figured she might have had second thoughts because she’s not . . .”
Anders’s arm twitches. His fingers are clenched into fists. “Don’t tell me specifics about that. Not now. Why do you think she’s still in the hotel?”
“The cameras on this floor were disabled about the time she was to arrive here.”
“You’ve seen the footage. Have you gotten the police involved?” Anders asks. He’s the son of a retired police officer, so that would be his natural go-to. I’m the nephew of a criminal, so it’s the last thing I would want to do.
“No, not yet. I don’t want Rocky involved.”
“She told you,” I say. Rocky’s not doing well. Something like this could kill him.
“And the security department of the hotel has been going along with me. They have a long relationship with my family. When we were having tea, I saw someone glaring at Emily.”
“That’s not hard to believe. She’s a beautiful woman,” I say.
He laughs. “Yes, she is, and she thought it was a thug looking at me instead. We dismissed it.”
“But you shouldn’t have.” I sit on the leather sofa.
“No, I shouldn’t have. And I’m absolutely tortured by the fact that I took her last text message at its word.”
I cross my leg over my knee, my back against the short cushion. “Why do you think she’s in the hotel at all?”
“Because there’s film of her crossing the lobby, the room keycard I gave her was swiped in the elevator, and there’s footage of her getting off on this floor—”
“But then the cameras are off.” Anders glares at Oliver.
“You think I did this? That I have her squirreled away in a closet? Fuck you, Thompson. I’m lots of things, but I’m not a fucking perverted kidnapper.”
“What’s to say the cameras on the other floors weren’t tampered with and she’s not long gone?”
“Nothing, but they have done a forensic investigation and it’s not likely.” Oliver sits on the arm of the sofa next to me.
“Then what is likely?” I ask.
“We need to call the police,” Anders fires back at rapid speed.
“I think he’s right, and that’s a lot coming from me,” I say.
“Agreed. But we’re tracking the guy I saw in the teahouse. He’s a pro and knows most of the camera’s blind spots.”
“Guys like him have a reason—right? He could have easily just grabbed any woman off the street. But he took Emily. What’s his motivation?” I raise my eyebrows at Oliver.