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two years and forty-four days missing
chapter 75
alex
I scan my boarding pass through the reader and hand over my passport. My heart pounds as the woman on security swipes it through her scanner. I used the same false ID to make the hotel and car hire reservations when I snatched Flora Birch and I cross my fingers some bright detective hasn’t thought to put out an all-ports alert on my alias as well as my real name.
But the security guard barely givesAlicia Emma Douglasa second glance as she waves me towards the body scanner.
It’s Quinn who triggers the alarm, with her metal spinal rods and plates and screws. It takes twenty minutes for a female officer to be found to pat her down, my agitation growing with every second.
‘You need to chill,’ Quinn says, as she’s finally cleared and we head towards our gate. ‘Take a bloody Valium if you’re nervous. You’re going to attract attention.’
‘What if someone recognises me?’
‘In that get-up?’
I’ve tucked my hair beneath a grey beanie, and I’m wearing combat trousers and an oversized plaid shirt, a far cry from my usual crisp, tailored suit and brogues. But I won’t fool facial recognition software or a sharp-eyed reader of theMail.
I haven’t slept in more than thirty hours but I’m so wiredI find it hard to keep still. My body vibrates with adrenaline as we take our seats on the plane.Lottie is alive. I know it in my soul, in the very marrow of my bones. She’s alive and she’s just one plane ride away from me.
‘Remember what you promised,’ I tell Quinn. ‘Lottie’s all that matters. If something goes wrong, you don’t wait for me. You take Lottie and you leave.’
Quinn nods brusquely.
I lean back in my seat and close my eyes, trying to steady my jangling nerves. I made the right decision when I asked Quinn along. Jack would try to rescue me if I was in danger. I need someone who can walk away.
The woman must think she’s safe now; that she’s got away with it. After all, in more than two years, I’ve never even come close to guessing the truth, even though it was right under my nose. In her own warped, distorted way, I know she loves Lottie. She thinks she’s keeping her safe. But I’ve got no idea what she’ll do when she’s cornered.
Which is what makes her so dangerous.
Quinn and I don’t talk much on the drive from the airport. The air-conditioning in our rental car isn’t working, so I power down the windows, since it’s surprisingly warm given the time of year.
I’m not used to driving a manual vehicle and repeatedly crash the gears as I negotiate the mountain’s sharp hairpin bends.
‘Jesus,’ Quinn says, after the third or fourth time. ‘Want me to drive?’
‘Very funny,’ I mutter, struggling to get into third.
The landscape is barren and arid, one long undulating mass of sun-scorched fields littered with abandoned houses and farmsteads. Pockets of eucalyptus suddenly give way to stretches of scrubby grassland. Isolated mountaintop townsglower down on modern roads that have passed them by. It’s a beautiful, uncompromising land; a timeless vista of silent, sunburnt peaks, grey stone villages and forgotten valleys.
‘There,’ I say suddenly.
I point. It takes Quinn a moment to locate the villa, squatting on top of a small crag. Its ancient stone walls blend perfectly into the parched landscape.
‘Fuck. You weren’t kidding,’ she says.
There’s no way to approach the property unseen. The villa is effectively a small fortress, perched on its lonely mount with a clear view in every direction. It was built to defend itself against medieval marauders and I have no time to lay siege. I want my child back.
So I’m going to march up to the front door and ask for her.
The road forks a few metres ahead of us. I turn right, onto a narrow, unpaved track that corkscrews up the peak towards the villa, jolting in first gear over rocks and deep, sun-baked ruts.
The track stops in front of a low stone wall encircling the building two-thirds of the way up the mountain. We’ll have to make the rest of the way on foot.
Quinn struggles to keep her balance on the uneven ground, but I’m too keyed up to wait for her. I’m almost running up the steep slope now, sending stones skittering down the hillside behind me.
I stop when I reach the entrance, a latticed iron door which opens onto a large, tranquil courtyard. Colonnaded archways lead off to cool, open-sided rooms on three sides of the courtyard, while a small fountain surrounded by stone benches burbles quietly in the centre.
The villa seems deserted, but I know our approach must have been heard. As Quinn finally reaches the top of the hill, panting with exertion, I open a small wooden panel in the wall to the right of the door and reach for the bell pull within.
We wait, the sun beating down on us, as the bell echoes distantly within the villa. The final reverberations die away, leaving behind a silence broken only by the sound of water splashing in the fountain and the rasp of cicadas.
I’m about to reach for the bell pull again when a door slams deep inside the villa. We hear footsteps coming towards us.
My stomach fizzes with nerves. My chest tightens and it’s suddenly hard to breathe.
A woman approaches the latticed door.
The woman from the photograph: the woman who stole my child.
