“Nothing. You’ve done enough!” He slammed the phone down, caught somewhere between anger and utter panic. The two feelings were fighting each other for control, and he felt totally off kilter.How the hell had she even paid for a taxi?And then, like an icy wind moving through him, he remembered his wallet this morning. He reached for it quickly and opened it. It was almost empty.
“Fuck!” She’d stolen money out of his wallet. His mind raced . . . drugs, alcohol, taxi rides to where? What the hell did a teenage girl need R1,000 for? His sister would be frantic right now if she was alive to see this. She had tasked him with looking after her most precious possession, and he couldn’t even keep track of her. He had no idea what to do. Did he call the police? Did he mount a search party, but where would a teenage girl even go? Was she running away from him? Was she punishing him for not allowing her to go to that party? He felt an urgent need to do something, but what?
He walked over to the window and looked out over the city. Cape Town was a big place and with R1,000, she could be anywhere. But he needed to find her. He grabbed his car keys and walked out of his office. But he had no idea where to go. This time, he didn’t have a plan.
Doris looked up from her desk.
“Miss Granger?” he asked quickly.
She shot out of her seat and stood up. “Yes?”
“You were a teenage girl once?” he asked.
“Uh . . . yes . . .” Her brow wrinkled up as she answered.
He really didn’t want to ask her this. He liked to keep his personal and professional lives totally separate, but he had no choice. “Did you ever bunk off school?” he asked her.
“Why?”
“Please! Just answer the question.” His voice sounded a little too desperate for his liking, and he could see that his tone had caught her off guard.
“Yes,” she quickly said. “I hated school. Sometimes I would sneak out and go watch a film at the mall. The guy there used to let me sit in the projector room with him and we used to eat stale popcorn together and talk about movies all day. I was in so much trouble when my mom found out—”
“The mall?” he cut her off.
“Yes. Well, it wasn’t like the fancy big ones nowadays that have every shop you can imagine inside. It was a small, crappy strip mall and the theatre was next to a funeral parlor, which I always thought was a bit weird, and the guy used to say that it was for those movies that made people die of boredom—”
“The mall?” he asked again, thinking about the location of all the local malls.
“Yeah,” she repeated.
“The mall!” He clicked his fingers when the thought hit him. Only a few blocks away from the school there was a mall. They’d gone there recently together, to buy Emmy some clothes. She’d disappeared for ages in the shop and when he’d asked her where she’d gone, he could tell she’d been keeping something from him.
He ran. Straight down the corridor and didn’t even bother with the elevator.
CHAPTERTWENTY-EIGHT
Ryan
He didn’t stick to the speed limit, and he hoped there weren’t any traffic cops out today. He weaved through the traffic as quickly as he could and put his foot down flat when the lights turned amber. He made it there in just over twelve minutes, although the GPS had said eighteen. The parking lot was full and he would waste precious time looking for a space, so he did the only thing he could think of doing. He pulled into the closest wheelchair bay, and before jumping out of the car turned the disabled sign around that was still hanging from his rear-view mirror. The sign had been for his sister. It had been almost two years and he hadn’t taken the sign down. He’d tried once, but just couldn’t. Something had stopped him. That sign was his last link to her in this car, and he wasn’t able to let it go just yet.
He jumped out of the car and was ready to race into the mall and comb through it, shop by shop if he had to, when he stopped. There she was. Right there. Sitting on the edge of the fountain outside the main entrance, her arms folded tightly and her head hanging down. He watched her for a moment while catching his breath. A warm feeling of relief washed over him but was quickly replaced by another feeling altogether.
“Emmy?” He shouted her name so loudly that people stopped and looked at him. Her head snapped up and he watched as horror washed over her face. She looked so guilty and he wanted to know why.
“What the hell are you doing here?” He raced over to her. A few more people stopped what they were doing to look.
Emmy sprang to her feet and started walking away from him. He raced up to her and took her by the elbow, stopping her in her tracks.
“What the hell?” His voice was loud and he didn’t care who overheard them.
“Just leave me alone,” she said loudly.
“I will not. What the hell did you think you were doing, bunking off school and coming to the mall like this? Not to mention stealing money from my wallet. What are you up to?” More people had stopped and a few were shaking their heads in disapproval as his story unfolded in this rather public manner. Something he hated to do, but he couldn’t help it right now.
Emmy looked around at the growing crowd and then threw her hands over her eyes and went a bright shade of red. “This is so embarrassing.”
“No, what’s embarrassing is having your headmistress call me in the middle of a work day to tell me that my niece was seen climbing into a taxi and leaving the school property.”
