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What urgent family matters?
The only family he knew about was her father, so did Flavia’s disappearance have anything to do with Alistair Lassiter’s sudden journey to the Far East? But why not tell him? Why simply cut him out of her life—cut him stone-dead? As if there were nothing at all between them!
Why is she doing this to me?
The question tore at him again. That was the heart of it! That was what was eating him alive. Flavia, who had been as close to him as a heartbeat, who clung to him in trembling ecstasy, hugged him in spontaneous affection, held his hand with absolute confidence and familiarity as they walked along, was now treating him as if he didn’t exist! Her silence was deafening—devastating.
Frustration gripped him in its vice. How the hell could he find out where she was, why she had disappeared, what was damn well going on and why? As if cold gel oozed through his veins, he was chillingly conscious of just how little he knew about Flavia. Oh, they’d talked and talked at Mereden and Santera, talked about anything and everything—easily, naturally, as if they’d been doing it all their lives—but what they hadn’t talked about had been their personal lives.
I thought there would be time for that—much more time!
Instead, all he’d ever told her had been the bare bones of where he’d grown up, how he’d come to Britain and found a way to make something of himself. And as for Flavia—what had she told him about herself?
Very little. They hadn’t talked about her father, and apart from saying she lived in the West Country, she’d said nothing else. He frowned. The West Country covered a fair amount of territory. He’d already run a search under her name for everywhere west of Salisbury, but nothing had come up.
She could be anywhere! Anywhere!
He strode back to his desk, his mood black and bleak. Those turbid emotions swirled inside him again—part frustration, part anxiety. And one more emotion as well. He knew what it was—knew it but did not want to identify it. Did not want t
o name it.
But it was there all the same. Like a knife piercing into him.
Hurting him …
He sat down in his chair, closing his eyes. The pain sliced again.
I thought we were happy together. I thought we’d found something in each other that was special—binding us together. Making everything good between us.
That was what made her disappearance, her obdurate silence, so impossible to understand. That she could have gone from the warm, ardent, wonderful woman she’d been to someone who could just walk away without any desire to communicate with him, to let him know what was happening.
If she has things to deal with, I can understand that! I don’t demand she comes back to me immediately. I don’t expect her to cut out everything else from her life! I only want to understand what those calls on her are—to know she’s all right …
It was the blankness that was destroying him. The impotence. He wanted to know where she was, discover what she was coping with and why.
Where is she?
The question rang again in his head, as unanswerable now as it had ever been.
Grimly, he got out his work. He’d been working like the devil, trying to drown out his emotions with hard labour. Give his teeming mind something to grip on to. At least he didn’t have the business of whether or not to proceed with bailing out Lassiter to contend with. Alistair Lassiter had gone as silent as his daughter …
No. Don’t think about either of them! Don’t speculate pointlessly, frustratingly, about whether Flavia’s disappearance has anything to do with her father. Just focus on something else—anything else.
But for all his harsh self-adjurations the only question he was interested in kept surfacing.
Where is she and how can I find her?
Then, like a gate opening in his mind, something struck him.
Her passport.
She’d got her passport couriered to the airport so she could fly to Santera.
Couriered from where?
His hand moving faster than his mind, he seized up his desk phone. His instructions to his PA were immediate. The courier company the concierge at Mereden had put in touch with Flavia would know exactly where they had fetched her passport from.
He sat back. Relief filled him. Finally he could make a start on finding her …
