Or was it simply a matter of him feeling confident enough in the magical protections within his own home to forgo the electronic ones? Possibly. We’d have to audit him to find out the truth, and again, I doubted he’d willingly undergo such an intrusion without the order coming from someone much higher up than me.
“What time did all this happen? Do you remember?”
He pursed his lips briefly. “Probably about nine forty-five. I remember being annoyed that you were so early.”
Nine forty-five would have put her arrival around the same as René’s. Did that mean he was working with her, or was it mere coincidence? If the latter, had she still been in the apartment when he’d arrived, our meeting on the entrance steps giving her time to leave the building via another exit?
“This woman, whoever she was, might well have searched your apartment while you were unconscious—do you keep anything of value here? Confidential files, perhaps?”
“Anything of value, files or not, is kept in the safe.”
“And where is that?”
“Thatis something you do not need to know. It’s well hidden and requires my prints to open and close it. She would not have found it.”
“You can’t be sure?—”
“I can, but I’ll nevertheless check once the ambulance has arrived and I’m cleared to move.”
I studied him for a second. “Has anyone else got access to your safe?”
“Only my immediate family, but my wife remains in Canberra, and you, dear woman, allowed my daughter to be kidnapped.”
“I hardly allowed?—”
He waved a hand, cutting me off. “Let’s not get into word games. Just update me on your efforts to find her.”
I shoved my frustration and dislike of the man down and quickly updated him on not only events so far, but everything we were doing to find both Monica and Lanie.
“Why did you ask the Society to tail your daughter?” I added. “Why not just ask the council to provide protection?”
“Because I believe the threat comes from within the council.”
“Against you?”
“Yes, but as my only child, it placed her in danger.”
Which was confirmation of what Ginny and I had always suspected. The question was, had Monica used the threat to make her own escape plans? “What was the threat against you?”
“That information is need-to-know. Your task was to protect her—a task you failed miserably.”
“Hard to protect someone who goes out of their way to avoid it,” I snapped back. “Who else, beside you and the Society, knew about the threat?”
“Monica, obviously, but no one else.”
“Would she have mentioned it to her bridesmaids or her fiancé?”
“I talked to Mark this morning. She didn’t mention it to him, and he hasn’t heard from her for a few days.”
“Is that unusual?”
“I wouldn’t think so.”
“But she did agree to the marriage, did she not?”
“That is a rather odd question, given she would not have said yes had she not wished to marry him.”
Thatwould depend on how badly Tane wished the union and how much pressure had been placed on her to agree. “Where was he when you spoke to him?”
