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But the driver didn’t respond either.
The uneasiness became a swarm of buzzing, stinging bees. I was overcome by an eerie sense of déjà-vu. It was happening again, just like last August.
My next text was to Brien and Cain, informing them that Eden was missing and asking if they or anyone else had heard from Jones.
Cain called me right back. “Adrian doesn’t know anything. Did you ask Rio?”
“No. Can you do it? I’ll contact her mom and dad.”
“Will do,” he said. “And I’ll see if Kerry or William know anything.”
“Thanks.”
I ended the call and started to open my contacts. Then I cursed. Why hadn’t I added the Montgomery’s numbers to my own phone when I’d programmed Eden’s?
Then I remembered we were monitoring her cell. I opened the security app and pulled up her recent calls and texts. Unfortunately, Eden’s parents didn’t know anything more than I did.
“She left here over an hour ago,” Gigi Montgomery told me. “She never came back?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out. She’s not in her suite and no one seems to know where she is. She was coming straight back, right?”
“Well, yeah.” Gigi paused. “I mean, we thought she was. We watched her get into the SUV and drive off. Have you sent someone out to look for the SUV?”
She could be lying. My lie-detector sense only worked when I was physically in a human’s presence. But my gut said the woman was telling the truth—for one thing, she sounded as worried as I did.
“Not yet,” I said grimly. “But I will.”
“Let me talk to him,” Wes Montgomery said, and a moment later, he came on the phone. “Are you saying Eden’s missing?”
“I don’t know. She could be somewhere on the castle grounds.”
She didn’t have permission to roam the castle, but this was Eden. She was resourceful, and she knew the castle as well as I did.
“Maybe she left,” Montgomery said. “Maybe she doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life as your goddamned thrall.”
My molars clamped together. “That’s between me and her,” I said tightly. “If you know something, I suggest you tell me. Now.”
Otherwise I’d compel it out of the man. I didn’t care if he was Eden’s father or that the syndicate had an unwritten policy of not pissing off the locals. Finding Eden trumped both of those things.
A long, insulting pause, but when Montgomery replied, he confirmed what his wife had told me. “We thought she was on her way back to the castle. The last thing we saw, she was getting into one of your SUVs.”
“Okay.” I forced my jaw to loosen. “Contact me at this number if she turns up.”
“I’m taking my truck out to look for her,” he said and ended the call.
Acid ate at my stomach. I paced up and down the path near the French door.
Eden hadn’t wanted to come back to Lilith Island. I’d forced her to return. Maneuvered her into accepting my blood bond.
Could she have been biding her time? Waiting for a chance to escape?
But it didn’t add up. She was truly sorry for what she’d done—that part hadn’t been a lie. I’d felt her guilt and shame. She hadn’t even touched Eugene Smith’s blood money. She was doing everything she could to make it up to me and the syndicate.
Plus, there was the baby. Why leave now after we’d come to an agreement about his place in the syndicate? Hell, she’d made me swear on my sire’s grave that our son would have choices, that he wouldn’t be forced to join the syndicate if he didn’t want to.
My phone buzzed with a text from Cain: Rio doesn’t know anything & William was about to let you know she hasn’t come back.
A text from Brien popped up next. The cams show she left & never returned. Jones isn’t back either.
