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“Aren’t police supposed to be more helpful?” I asked, and Adrian snorted.
“Not in my experience.”
“We have to go and find her,” I said. “What if she’s…”
I didn’t want to say the words that flashed through my mind:dead,raped,tortured. All I wanted was to find her.
“Okay,” Adrian said, and grabbed his keys from his workstation.
“You coming?” I asked Jackson, who looked at his client and sighed.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “We’ll have to finish this tomorrow. Our girlfriend’s gone missing.”
His client was a reedy twenty-something guy. I expected him to balk at the wordsour girlfriend, but instead he shrugged and said, “Okay, that sounds more important.”
“Thank you so much,” I said, and helped him collect his things to rush him out faster. “I’ll cover the cost of your tattoo and give you a full refund on everything you’ve already paid.”
The guy grinned. “Cool, thanks.”
I unlocked the door to let him out of the shop, and we all raced out to the back alley and piled into my car.
“Do you remember how to get to Cora’s house?” I asked Adrian as I turned into the main street.
“Yep,” he said. “Turn right at the next set of lights.”
He kept navigating until we arrived at a single-storey weatherboard house. Emma’s car was there, parked next to the curb, but otherwise the road was bare.
“His car’s not here,” I observed. “That’s a good sign.”
“Why would she come back here?” Jackson asked. “After how terrified she was the last time she escaped.”
“Maybe we scared her off with the threesome,” Adrian said, voicing the thought we were all trying not to acknowledge.
I walked faster. “Please don’t say that.”
Adrian pulled out his lock-picking kit, but the front door was unlocked. I pushed it open, half expecting the worst, but the living room looked normal, albeit dark. Jackson opened a curtain and the weak afternoon sunlight made the room a tiny bit brighter.
The house wasn’t large and didn’t take long to search. We moved down the hallway, checking each room, but there was no sign of Emma or Cora.
“What the fuck?” Jackson breathed. “How could she just disappear?”
The pit in my stomach felt like it was growing deeper.
“Because she didn’t. I’m guessing she was taken.”
We moved back through the house to the living room, where I examined the furniture, looking for clues. There were no obvious signs of a struggle, and nothing had been damaged. But I knew there were ways of taking someone against their will without leaving evidence.
“Taken where?” Adrian asked.
I pulled out my phone and checked my app. Two blue dots showed me where Adrian and Jackson were, and Emma’s dot was a few miles to our west. I recognized the address: it was Nathan’s mother’s house.
“With the one person who has a reason to kidnap her,” I said, setting my mouth in a grim line. “Nathan.”
46
EMMA
Iawoke somewhere dark with a pounding headache.
