Page 3 of Locked in Wonderland

“Enough.” Doubt had started to creep in. I shook off the tendrils within seconds. “It doesn’t matter what his name is. Warren being kidnapped is all that matters. I gave you the van's registration. Have you run a check yet? And I gave you his address. Someone ransacked it before they took him. Have you had someone look at that yet? Maybe there are some clues. I shouldn’t have to tell you how to do your job.”

Thornton leaned back in his seat and regarded me coolly, his gray eyes narrowing slightly. “You don’t need to. We have people working on both things, but they take time.”

He left the room after that. I put my watch back on, drank the cold coffee that hadn’t been that warm when they’d given it to me, and stared at the wall.

I knew the statistics about kidnapping, that the trail grew colder with every passing hour. I assumed Thornton knew that as well; he just didn’t seem to give a damn about it. Or perhaps I was expecting too much.

Something was different about him when he came back in. He didn’t sit, bracing his arms on the table instead, so I had to look up at him. “Have you found something?” Please God, don’t let them have found a body.

“We sent two officers to the address you gave us.”

I let out a breath. “So you know what happened? Did they talk to the neighbors? What did they tell you? Someone must have heard something. Did anyone else see the van?”

“There were no signs of disturbance at the address you gave us.”

The words were so absurd that it took a long time to sink in. “That’s impossible. They must’ve gone to the wrong address.”

“Flat eight?”

“Yeah.”

“They went to flat eight.”

I shook my head. “The door was hanging off its hinges.”

“The door was fine, and they talked to several people in the building. No one heard anything. No one saw anything. And no one knows a Warren White.” Thornton’s stare turned glacial. “Look, Mr. Carroll, I don’t know what you hoped to achieve, whether you get a kick out of wasting police time, but we can’t track down a man who never existed.”

“He exists,” I said. It sounded weak even to my own ears. “I spent the night with him. We were planning a future together. I’m not making it up.”

“Hmmm.”

I’d never been a violent man, but the repetition of that sound made me want to leap across the table, wrap my hands around Thornton’s neck, and squeeze until sound was no longer capable of passing between his lips.

Thornton walked over to the door and held it open, the dismissal clear. I took the hint, but halted in front of him. “A man’s been kidnapped and you lot don’t give a fuck.”

“We work on evidence, and as I’ve already explained to you, Mr. Carroll—”

I didn’t wait around to listen to the rest of what the condescending bastard had to say. It was too risky when my hands were curled into fists, and I was itching to use them. Thankfully, I had enough common sense and self-restraint to know that getting arrested for assaulting a police officer wouldn’t help anyone.

I was halfway back to my hotel before I started thinking clearly. I changed direction and headed for Warren’s building instead. Maybe if I got photographic evidence. Or if I found a neighbor who’d seen or heard something suspicious. The police clearly couldn’t be trusted to find their arse with both hands, but they couldn’t ignore two people singing from the same hymn sheet.

It felt like days had passed rather than hours by the time I stood outside the building again. There was no sign of the milk I’d spilled that morning in my rush to chase the van. I took the stairs two at a time, buoyed by the certainty that the police were about to realize what a colossal mistake they’d made. They’d be embarrassed. Apologetic, too. At least I hoped so.

I frowned when I reached the right door. This morning it had been hanging off its hinges. Now, those hinges were intact again. Was there more than one flat eight? I retraced my steps, trying the floor above and the one below, before returning to where I’d started. It was the right flat. So how?

Faint music from inside had me breathing more easily. Warren was here. I didn’t know how, and frankly, I didn’t care. All that mattered was that the events of today had been an awful misunderstanding, and he was here. I lifted my fist and hammered on the door. Footsteps approached, and then someone wrenched it open.

A woman stood there with an expectant look on her face. She looked to be in her early fifties. She wore blue jeans, a matching pink cardigan, and fluffy slippers. His mother? We’d never gotten around to talking about our families. She had dark hair, but that meant nothing. Perhaps his father was blond. Or sometimes genetics just did what they felt like.

“I need to speak to Warren,” I blurted.

“Who?”

“Warren.” I gestured to the flat at the woman’s back. “He lives here.”

She frowned. “I live here.”

“That’s not possible. He was here this morning. We both were. I woke up here.”