AllFreeNovel
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‘And when I think you’re ready for it, it’ll be all yours.’
Quinn takes another slug from her bottle. The vodka isn’t sitting well with her.
Maybe skipping lunch was a bad idea.
‘You’re not being sidelined, Quinn. This missing kid is a lead story. I want it done properly, no shortcuts. Once it wraps up,thenwe’ll talk about Raqqa.’
Quinn seethes as she slips her phone back into her jeans. Lead story or not, Daryl or Anya could easily handle it. It’s a waste of firepower to keep her here when she could be in Syria.
The press conference has finished by the time she returns to the business centre and everyone bar the TV crews has left. The room dims abruptly as the powerful lights are turned off and Quinn picks her way around producers coiling cables and packing equipment away.
‘Can you go out and get me some shots of the beach?’ Quinnasks her cameraman. ‘They’re not going to let us get too close, but you should be able to get some long shots from the shore. And the gate from the beach to the hotel. Give me something moody. Maybe a tracking shot along the alley round the side of the hotel, too, if you can get it.’
She ducks out onto the terrace behind the conference room and lights a cigarette. The area in front of the pool where the reception took place is sealed off with police tape, but she can still get a sense of the key locations in this story, and how they relate geographically to one another.
She inhales a deep hit of nicotine as she walks from the hotel to the beach. Lottie Martini disappeared in more or less broad daylight, under the noses of a hundred wedding guests. Surely the kid would have screamed and yelled if some weirdo she didn’t know had grabbed her off the beach? Even in the chaos of a crowd, you’d think someone would’ve noticed.
Of course, it’s conceivable he – or she – lured the kid away with some plausible story, but odds are she went with someone she knew.
Quinn unscrews the cap of her Evian bottle again. This whole thing is such a fucking waste of time. It’ll turn out to be the mother, or a boyfriend. It always is. She could be on her way to the Middle East right now, and instead she’s stuck babysitting a seedy domestic drama.
As she tilts back her head to drain the bottle, Alexa Martini comes out onto the balcony a floor above her. The woman stands for a long moment with her hands on the railing, staring out to sea like a ship’s figurehead. Quinn can’t see her face, but her posture is ramrod straight. It’s like she’s carved out of ice.
Someone comes out onto the balcony to join her. A man; too young to be her dad. Quinn edges forward to get a better view. It’s the bridegroom. Marc something-or-other. Good-looking guy.
He puts his arm around the small of Alexa’s waist, and she leans back against him. She’s not made of icenow. They look like newlyweds – except this isn’t the woman he just married.
Interesting.
Quinn screws the top back on the empty plastic bottle and dumps it in the nearest recycling bin. Her spidey senses are tingling again.
Every good story begins with a loose thread.
