Trusting a Stranger (7 page)

The girl was some sleeper.

Or was she? Unbidden, an image came to Hayley's mind of a young girl in the dark room just on the other side of the door; a young, frightened girl sitting up in bed with her feet pulled up, her arms wrapped around her legs as she stared at the closed door and shivered.

This was a warm house but it was a big one and Hayley imagined it would be very easy for a young child to feel lost and alone here. Especially a motherless child, who must be aware of some of the danger her father said she faced. And especially with that alarm sounding and with her father's attention obviously centred elsewhere.

Hayley pressed the nearby switch so that the hallway filled with light. She did not want to startle the girl if, by some chance, she should happen to be asleep. Then she took a deep breath and pushed open the door next to her.

It swung open to reveal a room that, as she had suspected, was pretty much a copy of her own room, directly above. It took her eyes a moment to become used to the dark. Then she realised there was no little girl sitting up, huddled in bed. There was no child still asleep. There was no child, raised from bed and shivering, frightened in the corner.

There was nobody in there at all.

***

Hayley turned and ran.

What could this mean? Was everything Ethan had told her about a daughter a lie? She realised now that despite her strong instincts to trust Ethan and to distrust Tomasi, all she had to go on were the two men's opposing statements.

But no… She knew there was something wrong with Alvaro Tomasi. She had known that before she caught him lying the first time, before he changed his story. Invented the second lie.

She remembered how Ethan had looked when he was talking about Katy. His emotions had been too raw, too real, too similar to what she remembered from her own father's emotions when the two of them had been alone together. He could not be lying.

So, where was Katy? Could she have been sleeping elsewhere? Had Ethan somehow managed to raise her and taken her with him as he ran downstairs?

With or without her, where had he gone? Fortunately, the house was built around long halls, as Hayley sprinted and threw doors open, looking through them to see if Ethan was in the room beyond. Each room she passed that was empty could only mean that he had gone further in the direction she was already moving.

She passed the sitting room where they had spoken earlier, and the dining room, and the kitchen. As she ran, she tried to remember more about the state of Katy's room.

Had there been some sort of struggle in there? Had Tomasi or one of his men managed to get in after all? Hayley didn't think so. There was nothing she could remember that had looked out of place or in disarray. In fact, as she far as she could tell, the bed hadn't looked as if it had been slept in at all.

Ethan had lied to her about Katy being in there for an early night. Did that make a lie out of everything he had told her about his daughter? Did Katy even exist?

That alarm certainly existed. As Hayley made her way closer to the heart of the household, it seemed to grow even louder.

‘Ethan!' she cried out, her sense of mystification and distress growing as she reached the last door in the hall and threw it open.

Beyond was a brightly lit office with a bank of television screens along one wall and a large timber desk at which Ethan sat before two giant computer screens. His fingers were raised to a keyboard before him and he continued typing as he turned and raised his eyes to her face.

In her panic, the movement looked painfully slow. Despite the ear-piercing shrillness of the alarm, it was as though he didn't realise anything was wrong.

Hayley felt a fierce clenching in her stomach. If she called him out on lying about having a daughter, then what danger would she be placing herself in? She couldn't even begin to guess what a man might be capable of if he was also guilty of inventing an entire tragic family life.

There was a photo behind the desk. A large one. It showed Ethan with a beautiful dark haired woman — Erica, it must be — and a beautiful, dark haired young girl. If Ethan had invented Katy, she was not a new invention.

Of course he hadn't invented Katy. She had felt his love and anxiety in everything he had told her about the little girl. She was not a bad judge of character. She could not have been fooled by that.

Katy was real. She was real and in danger and that made the news Hayley had to share all the more devastating.

‘Ethan,' she said again. ‘I have to tell you —'

‘I'll have this solved in a minute,' Ethan said. Then he frowned and, finally, his fingers paused. ‘What is it?' he asked, standing.

‘It's Katy,' Hayley gasped.

She ran towards him and threw herself into his arms, ready to be the emotional support that he was surely going to need.

‘She's gone!'

Ethan looked up at her. His expression was not the shock or the panic Hayley had expected. He was still typing away, glancing down at the computer screen again.

‘Did you hear me?' Hayley demanded, certain that he must not have. He always spoke as much with his hands as with words. It was his Italian heritage, she guessed. And now it felt like he wasn't paying her attention, even if the reason for that was that he was typing.

‘I said Katy's not here!' she repeated. ‘She's gone!'

‘I heard you.' Ethan cocked his head to one side, watching her closely as he tapped more emphatically on the enter key and then stood.

‘There's something you need to know,' he said, too slowly.

‘There's something you need to know! You're not listening to me. It must be shock or —'

‘I know Katy's not here.'

‘What?'

‘I said I know Katy's not here.' He walked towards her and took her elbow in his hand. ‘Come and sit down over here.'

Hayley stood still. She didn't want to sit. She was tired and she was in a foreign country and she was staying with a man she barely knew and she had been shot at.

‘That alarm?' she asked. ‘Was that the sound of Katy leaving?'

‘That alarm, thankfully, was false,' Ethan said. ‘We get those from time to time. I have the sensitivity of the alarm system set to very high. For obvious reasons. Sometimes it's an owl that sets it off at nighttime. Sometimes just the wind.'

Hayley considered this. Finally, she allowed him to lead her towards a couch that rested against a side wall.

He gave her a glass of water as well. ‘You look exhausted,' he said.

She sipped it. ‘I've had quite a day.'

He sat beside her. He looked exhausted, too, as he gave a dry laugh. ‘Welcome to my life.'

‘You often have your alarm going off in the middle of the night, and guests who are shot at?'

‘I'm always waiting for Tomasi's next trick. At the moment, I'm worried because he seems to have become so unpredictable. I've heard rumours that the family might be in even more trouble than I thought. Alvaro Tomasi is new to power.'

‘I don't understand. Why would that matter?'

‘There are rivals in his family. He might feel he has to prove himself.'

Hayley took a moment to consider the fact that she had been caught up in someone else's power game. This did not sit well with her idea of herself at all.

‘So where's Katy?' she asked at last.

Ethan regarded her for a long minute.

‘Is she okay?' asked Hayley, feeling a tightening in that knot of anxiety in her chest.

Ethan stood. ‘We need to go up to your room before we discuss this.'

‘What?'

Truly, he was the most astonishing man she had ever met. There seemed to be so little connection between the information she was requesting and the demand he was making.

‘Your bedroom,' he repeated. ‘Do you mind?'

‘Of course not. I…'

This time, Hayley let the sentence trail off because she had no idea of what she wanted to say next. Instead of talking, she led the way back upstairs to the bedroom that Ethan had shown her to so recently.

At the door, she turned towards him. This time his hand was on the doorknob. There was no doubt he planned on entering too. Hayley felt a little frisson at the realisation.

‘Why are we doing this?' she asked.

‘Because you asked me a question.' He held the door open for her and she walked in.

‘I still don't understand.'

‘I have to be sure who's going to be hearing the answer,' Ethan explained.

Hayley scratched her head, trying to work that out as Ethan followed her into the room.

‘That's one of my bathrobes?' he asked, waving his finger up and down in her direction.

Hayley nodded. ‘It was on the bed. I thought that meant for me to —'

‘It was.'

‘I can't work out what you mean.'

‘You talk too much.'

‘Everyone says that,' Hayley admitted, feeling a little nervous. ‘I think it's because I —'

‘Take it off.'

‘What?'

Ethan sighed, pushing his hands into his pockets. ‘In particular, you ask too many questions.'

‘Well, that's because you ask me to do the strangest —'

‘I'm not asking. I'm telling you. If you want to talk to me about Katy, you have to take the bathrobe off.'

Hayley thought quickly. Beneath the robe, she was clad in a pink and orange striped bra and a pair of pink knickers with an orange frill around the outside. Those were what she had put on this morning…

This morning.

Hayley froze. That bra and those knickers were what she had been wearing until her shower, a short while ago. She had been getting into bed when the alarm sounded. It was the knickers only.

She folded her arms across her chest and glared at Ethan. ‘You'll only talk to me if I'm nude?' she said. ‘That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of. What possible reason —'

‘You're curious about Katy,' Ethan reminded her.

He perched on the end of the bed and crossed his arms too, mirroring her. She nodded at him.

‘Well, I'm not going to tell you anything unless I'm certain you're not bugged.'

Hayley shook her head. ‘Bugged? Of course I'm not bugged. Why would I be —?'

‘You're here because Alvaro Tomasi sent you.'

‘Alvaro Tomasi shot me!'

‘Alvaro Tomasi missed.' Ethan spoke slowly. ‘I could be suspicious about that too, you know. After all, the information I have is that Tomasi — all the Tomasis — are very good shots.'

‘It doesn't feel like he missed me,' Hayley said, rubbing her arm. ‘Anyway, why would he do that?'

‘Oh, I don't know. Maybe so I would trust you and let you into my house and once inside, you could ask me all these questions!'

Hayley thought about that for a long moment. No one had ever judged her badly for being so inquisitive about people before. She had always attributed her interest in people to the fact that she cared about them. Because she did care about people.

But maybe Ethan was right. Maybe she did ask too many questions.

Then she turned and fought with the bathrobe's tie for a moment. She had knotted it in a hurry as she ran, and knotted it, it now seemed, rather too well.

‘You sure you can't just feel me through the robe?' she asked, looking over her shoulder.

It was a thick and fluffy robe and as Hayley spoke the expression in his eyes suggested he'd like, very much, to touch it. He leaned forward towards her and uncrossed his legs. Hayley closed her eyes and for one brief moment imagined him standing and stepping towards her, lowering his head towards hers as his hands explored her body through the thickness of the robe, as his fingers joined hers in trying to untie it.

When she opened them, Ethan was still sitting on the bed, watching her. Hayley made one last go at loosening the knot. The cotton now felt coarse beneath her fingertips but finally the knot gave and the two ends came loose. She shrugged her shoulders to shake the bathrobe free and used her hands to cover her breasts as it slithered down her back towards the floor.

As she watched him, his eyes darkened.

Hayley moved her arms slightly so he could see her chest was free of wires.

‘You will tell me now?' she asked. ‘I have no link to Tomasi, I promise you.'

Ethan coughed. ‘Something tells me I would answer any question you might care to ask while you're standing, looking like that,' he said.

She raised an eyebrow questioningly. ‘I have no idea what you mean.'

‘Yes you do. Every beautiful woman recognises a compliment.'

She stepped a little closer, her head leaning to one side. Beautiful? Was he playing games with her? Hayley wasn't beautiful and knew it. His first wife, Erica — the woman whose photo she had seen — had been beautiful, with long, wavy near-black hair and lips with the juicy colour of bitten cherries. But she knew better than to argue with him about it. If he wanted to pretend for a while that she was beautiful, no harm would come from it.

‘Is Katy safe?' Hayley asked.

She was surprised by how much she cared to hear the answer. Something in the sad story of this man living out here in a country that was not his own, trying to keep his young daughter safe from the people who had killed her mother, was almost unbearably touching. Without even meeting Katy, she had developed a real interest in the little girl's wellbeing.

Ethan nodded. Then he closed his eyes.

‘You can do up your robe again now,' he said. ‘In fact, it might be a good idea if you do.'

Suddenly embarrassed, Hayley wrapped the robe around her and reached for the two ends of the waist tie. This time, she did it up far more loosely.

‘You can look again now,' she said, sitting beside him on the bed.

‘Katy's safely at school,' Ethan told her.

‘At school? But it's the middle of the night.'