Silent Truths (45 page)

When Laurie finally woke up again she didn’t know where she was. The room was dark, the
curtains were drawn, and a single sheet was covering her up to the chin. Only her eyes moved as she looked around. Somewhere, at an elusive distance, she could feel fear, but wasn’t sure why. Her head seemed thick and heavy, making her think of the attack at the foot of the stairs. Yet she knew it wasn’t that. Something else had happened since, something to do with … Suddenly it all came rushing back, and as horror engulfed her, her chest heaved in panic.

But no, it was OK. This was Andrew and Stephen’s house. This was their bed and the person moving around upstairs, opening and closing cupboard doors, banging pots, was only Rhona. There was nothing to be afraid of now. She was home and safe. The woman had driven her back during the dawn hours, she remembered that now. She’d let herself in the door, then waited to hear the car drive away before coming in here and collapsing on the bed. So there was nothing to be afraid of now.

Though stiff, she forced herself up off the bed and waited for the dizziness to pass. Her flip-flops, she noticed, were under the sheet, telling her she’d gone to bed with them on. The digital clock said eighteen fifteen.

Feeling her senses respond to the smell of sizzling garlic and onions that was drifting down the stairs, she took heart again, for no one but Rhona would be up there cooking, so the irrational dread that they might now be holding her prisoner in her own home was momentarily quelled. Going over to the bathroom she turned on the light and looked in the mirror. The fear she’d experienced,
and still couldn’t quite shake, had left its mark, for her face was horribly pale, and the purplish shadows round her eyes made them seem haunted and hollow. She took a step forward then gasped and jumped as something upstairs clattered to the floor. Her heart was suddenly thudding wildly, and for one panicked moment she almost rushed upstairs to be with Rhona so she no longer had to be alone. But her clothes felt as though they were stuck to her body; she had to take them off and get in the shower.

Once naked she turned to look at herself in the full-length mirror and felt vaguely surprised to see no evidence of the discomfort she was feeling. Her legs, though sore, were as unblemished as her narrow hips and waist; and her ample breasts, though tender, were as smooth to the touch as her shoulders and arms. No injuries, no below-the-surface bruising, just a stiffness that hopefully the Jacuzzi shower would massage from her limbs.

Ten minutes later she emerged from the shower, her eyes red from crying tears she could hardly explain, and her nerves still horribly on edge. But at least she was fresher now, and hungry beyond endurance, so tugging a short pink T-shirt over her breasts, she stepped into a pair of yellow hipster capris, and after combing out her wet hair, she left in pursuit of the mouth-watering aroma.

‘Rhona,’ she called out, as she reached the top of the stairs, not wanting to startle her, and still more than half afraid that it wasn’t going to be Rhona. ‘It’s only me,’ she said tentatively, ‘and whatever you’re making I want all of –’ She stopped dead. It wasn’t Rhona, it was Elliot. She wasn’t sure why
she was so thrown, but it took a few seconds to assimilate, during which she suddenly and stupidly wanted to cry, then run to him, then run away. Then all she could think of was the fact that she was hardly decently dressed – in fact, so indecently that her midriff was totally bare, and in this skimpy top her breasts might as well be. She never dressed like this in front of a man for fear he’d stop seeing her as a professional. And they did, because it had happened in the past. She’d heard them talking about her as the greatest pair of tits that ever owned a brain, or the knockers they thought of when they needed to come, or other things that were equally, if not
more
sexist and crude, the way men did. And this wasn’t just any man, either. This was Elliot.

As he registered her confusion his eyes showed only irony and never dropped from her own. ‘You’re awake,’ he said, lifting a glass of red wine and taking a sip.

‘I thought you were Rhona,’ she said, feeling the tightness in her nipples, and knowing he could see it, despite not looking.

He shook his head.

She knew she was blushing. ‘Uh, I’d better go back …’ She pointed downstairs.

He only looked at her, and she didn’t move. This was so unexpected she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. She felt brazen and shy and confounded by the conflict. In the end she went downstairs to find a shirt to put over the T-shirt, which she left unbuttoned but tied at the waist.

‘How are you feeling?’ he said when she reappeared a few minutes later. He was standing at
the stove now, sprinkling
herbes de Provence
over a thick tomato and olive sauce. The fact that he was here, behaving as though he was always here, combined with the smell that was almost making her drool, and then his question – which had started her heart pounding, for it reminded her of how traumatized she still was – were making it virtually impossible for her to think straight.

‘Aren’t you supposed to be in New York?’ she managed, trying not to wince at the protest in her muscles as she sat on one of the bar stools.

He glanced over at her. ‘Are you up to some wine?’ he said, nodding towards the bottle.

She looked at it. ‘Maybe, just a little,’ she answered, knowing she probably wasn’t.

Taking down a glass he half filled it and passed it over. ‘Rhona checked you over while you were sleeping,’ he said. ‘No untoward measures seem to have been taken, and nothing seems to be broken.’

They both sipped some wine, watching each other over the rims of the glasses. She was so glad he was here. She didn’t need to feel afraid while he was here, yet somehow she had to get herself out of this emotional state, for the way it was locking her into him was likely to push her into doing something she’d be horribly embarrassed about later.

‘Do you know who they were?’ he asked.

She shook her head and looked down at her glass. ‘Not really,’ she answered. ‘There was a woman, and two men. I think they might have drugged me.’ The words sent her spinning back into the nightmare, but she kept her head down so the fear wouldn’t show.

‘They might have given you some form of sodium amytal,’ he said. ‘It puts you into a kind of twilight zone. Combined with sleep deprivation it can be quite effective.’

She sat quietly for a few minutes, trying to reconstruct the events in a coherent and detailed fashion. It was hard to remain detached from all she was feeling, but the last thing she wanted was for him to know how afraid she still was. ‘Do you have any idea who they might have been?’ she said. ‘I know they weren’t the Gatlings …’

‘No. The Gatlings are in America. The people who questioned you obviously work for them, and are quite possibly affiliated to the secret service. Did you hear them call each other by name at all?’

She was still thinking hard as she shook her head, then her eyes went to his as she said, ‘They asked me about Liam. They knew he was in Paris, but I don’t know whether
I
told them why, or if they knew anyway.’

‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘None of us really knows anything yet to be in any serious danger, but it’s going to come.’

Her eyes widened, as her heart gave a new thump of unease. ‘Why do you say that? I mean, we always knew …’ She didn’t want him to think she couldn’t cope with the danger, and she was on the verge of sounding that way. ‘Did something happen in New York?’ she said. ‘Actually, why are you back already?’

His eyes narrowed as he regarded her.

She felt foolish then. He’d come back because of her, of course. Knowing that made her feel strangely weak, then unbalanced inside. She took a
sip of wine, which didn’t make her feel any better. Then attempting a joke she laughed and said, ‘So you came rushing back like a B-movie hero? Nice one.’ As the words left her mouth she wished she could just shove them right back in again, and the way he cocked an eyebrow didn’t help one bit.

‘So how did you find out where I was?’ she asked, as he went to drop spaghetti into a pan of boiling water.

‘You told Stan north-east out of London and, knowing the Gatlings have a home in Suffolk, it was just a matter of finding out where. Not that Stan could get in when he got there, but by letting them know he was there, they might have let you go sooner rather than later.’

She watched him lower the gas, and found, to her surprise, that she was feeling a little stronger now. However, she was only too aware that there was no emotional safe ground here, for whichever way her mind went, whether to her interrogation, or to him, she was likely to become overwhelmed at any moment.

‘Where do you keep the placemats and napkins?’ he asked, checking the pasta.

Sliding down from the stool she went to the dining-room sideboard and took them out. ‘Where’s Rhona, by the way?’ she asked.

‘With somebody called Angelo. He flew in from Athens at five this afternoon and is going to be here for a few days, so, to quote her, she’s “making the most of it”.’

‘In my hour of need,’ Laurie commented drily. ‘But her men’s is always greater. Where shall we eat? At the table or the counter?’

‘You choose.’

Wondering if the table might seem a little too intimate she started back to the counter. When she got there she performed a mental glance back at the table. With the rain streaming down outside, and the wind howling up a nice summer gale, it would be more cosy over there, and maybe she’d light a couple of candles. But no, candles were going too far; she didn’t want to give the wrong impression. However, it might create a warm, friendly sort of glow … Her promise to Rhona suddenly rose to the front of her mind and, returning to the counter, she set down the mats. There just wasn’t any way she could talk about Lysette tonight, not when she was already in such a confused and vulnerable state.

Suddenly feeling the need to sit down, she pulled a chair from the dining table and dropped her head between her knees.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

‘I think so,’ she answered, coming up slowly. ‘Probably just hunger. I haven’t eaten for what feels like a week, and that smells so good.’

He said no more, merely carried on preparing the meal, while she sat watching him, remembering how often she’d sat with him like this in the past, either waiting for Lysette to return from one of her rescue missions, or removing herself from the crowd to come and chat as he cooked. They’d spent a lot of time back then, just the two of them, in corners at parties, or apart from the throng in pubs. She wondered if he’d ever noticed it too; or what he’d thought about the frequency with which she’d visited Lysette. He’d never seemed to mind, but she couldn’t say he’d ever seemed to welcome it
either. He’d just been, as he was now, polite, interested in a professional sense, concerned in a chivalrous male sense, but never anything deeper than that. Which was why she wasn’t going to attach any other kind of meaning to his early return from New York. He’d merely done what he felt was right, and being here now, cooking, was no more than an extension of that.

‘You’ve gone quiet,’ he commented, while draining the pasta.

‘I was wondering about your trip to New York,’ she told him, averting her head so he wouldn’t see the tears that had suddenly risen in her eyes. ‘You said something just now that intimated it hadn’t been an entire waste of time.’

‘Far from it,’ he responded. ‘Tom Maykin’s joining the team, which is going to be invaluable considering the number of American players there are sure to be. Liam’s got a couple of French reporters on it too, and Jerome and Jed are flying to Hong Kong to see who they can pull in from that end. Would you like bread with this?’

She nodded. ‘Stacks of it.’ She’d be better once she’d eaten.

‘Maykin put me in touch with a foreign exchange expert,’ he was saying.

‘Oh God,’ she groaned, suddenly remembering. ‘They know we’re looking into it. They brought it up last night. They wanted to know why we’re interested.’

‘What did you tell them?’

‘That there were certain trends. I might even have said between the dollar and euro, I don’t recall. But it was definitely mentioned.’

He considered her answer while ladling two piles of spaghetti on to their plates.

‘Maybe I should back out of this now,’ she said. ‘I can see I’m becoming more of a hindrance than a help. First the break-in, now this …’

‘Do you want to back out?’ he asked, reaching for the sauce.

‘No, of course not, but –’

‘Then let’s end that conversation. Can you get the bread from the oven?’

Surprised that he hadn’t jumped at her offer, she lined a basket with a napkin and dropped in the warm bread, while he finished dishing up. This easy domesticity, his nearness, the response of her body were all becoming a bit too hard to manage again.

‘Actually,’ she said, putting the counter-bar between them, ‘there’s another reason I should back out.’

His eyes met hers.

She wished they weren’t so intense, for they affected her train of thought and there was a good chance now that her voice was going to sound quavery or strained when she spoke. ‘Well, uh, it’s just, well … actually there are two reasons,’ she said, mercifully finding her mettle at the end. ‘They talked about my parents last night.’

His face darkened. ‘Go on.’

‘They talked about my father’s heart and Lysette’s death …’ She took a breath. ‘If anything were to happen to them because of my involvement in this –’

‘It won’t,’ he assured her. ‘They were using it as a means of persuasion or, more accurately, intimidation.’

She nodded. ‘I thought as much, I just needed to hear you say it too.’ She looked down at her plate, hesitated for a moment, then twisted her fork into the spaghetti. Thank God for this monstrous hunger, for not even all the emotional turmoil could get the better of it. ‘Mmm,’ she murmured, as the rich tangy flavour of the sauce sank into her taste buds, momentarily obliterating all other sensory confusions.

He was still watching her, eating, taking a sip of wine and waiting for her to speak again. In the end he said, ‘You mentioned two reasons.’