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She hangs up the phone, then runs to fetch her bag from her office. With each footstep she’s thinking, Please be okay. Please be okay.
I can’t lose you, Adam.
Not now.
CHAPTER
58
JAMIE CURSES THE speed of his shitty Vauxhall Corsa. He should have gotten a patrol car, he mutters as he negotiates the streets toward the hospital.
To his relief, Romilly is waiting for him at the main entrance. She climbs into the passenger seat before he’s even had a chance to put the handbrake on.
“What if something’s happened to him, Jamie?” she says.
“He’s fine. I’m sure he’s fine.” But his words sound hollow, even to him.
* * *
They drive in silence, Romilly craning forward in her seat, swearing every time they face a red light or a slow driver. And as they pull into the car park outside the surgery, Romilly points.
“There. That’s his car.”
Jamie pulls up alongside, and they both get out. Adam’s BMW sits alone. He tries a handle: locked. They look toward the boarded-up surgery.
“And you think he’s in there?”
Before Jamie can stop her, Romilly walks fast toward the building and tries the main door. It opens. She glances back at him, then goes inside. Jamie follows.
He can tell someone’s been through here. Footprints scuffed in the dirt, a barely perceptible feeling in the air. Like a long-abandoned fug has been disturbed. He knows they need to be more careful—put on shoe covers and gloves at least—but his priority lies with Adam right now.
He follows Rom into a room with “Private” on the door. She seems to know where she’s going, and Jamie wonders how she must be feeling. The place her father had worked, where she’d played as a little girl. But she doesn’t pause, now standing in front of a pile of boxes. the dust has been scuffed on one of the lids, lying askew, but apart from that, there’s no sign of Adam.
Romilly looks at him, wordlessly, then leaves, continuing through the building. She starts calling his name, and he silently pleads for a replying voice to shout back. But there’s nothing. He pushes at doors as he goes, each room as empty as the last.
Romilly has reached the end of the corridor now; the fire door is open, banging in the wind. She’s stopped, staring at the ground. As he walks up next to her, she points.
It’s a patch of something dark. Jamie bends down to it, putting out a tentative hand. Still wet. He lifts it up, staring at the red stain at the end of his finger.
“But why?” Jamie says, almost to himself. “Why would he take Adam?”
Romilly’s face is pale. “Adam has an acute fear of needles, Jamie. Almost pathological. He’s terrified of them.”
Jamie takes a quick breath in. At the same time his hand reaches for his phone.
“Fuck,” he mutters. “Fuck.”
CHAPTER
59
THE FIRST THING Adam notices is cold concrete under his bare feet, gritty dust between his toes. It’s dark. So dark.
He’s cold—the room’s freezing. He moves his head; everything spins. The dizziness overwhelms him for a second, and he stops, screwing his eyes shut. Then he opens them again. Slowly his eyes adjust to the gloom. He sees the outline of furniture: a table, a wooden chair.
There’s a strange smell in the air: damp, salt, seaweed. He tries to remember where he was—the surgery, Cole’s surgery—and instinctively knows he’s no longer there. Where is he? How did he get here? He’s confused, so confused.
He tries to open his mouth, but it feels glued, something sticky over his lips. He tries to reach up but his hands don’t move. He feels the first wave of panic take hold.
