I thank her and end the call before tapping the new number onto the keypad.
“Hello?” Amelia’s mom sounds like her daughter on the phone, and it takes all my willpower not to blurt out her name.
“Ms. York? This is Declan Byrne, your daughter’s hu-employer.” I stop myself in time. Amelia didn’t want to invite her mom toour wedding, rejecting my offer to send the private jet to New York. “Have you spoken to Amelia today?”
Pause. “She called me this morning to tell me that she was coming home.”
Suspicion snakes through the handset and raises my hackles. I’ve a lot of accountability to settle but now is not the time.
“What exactly is going on, Mr. Byrne? Where is my daughter?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out. She checked onto the 17:30 flight from Dublin but she didn’t board. She didn’t tell you where else she might’ve gone?”
“No. You’re scaring me now. Let me call her.”
The line goes dead, and I’m left staring at a dark screen.
“Declan, you don’t think that Amelia contacted her father?” The color has drained from Orla’s face.
It’s been there, hovering just beneath the surface and waiting for me to acknowledge it. Now that Orla has said it out loud, I realize that this is why too much adrenaline is pumping through my body.
Amelia called her mom and said that she was going home. Why else would she not get on that flight when she knew that her mom was waiting for her?
My phone vibrates with an incoming call. I raise it to my ear. “Ms. York?”
A different voice answers. Female. Younger than Amelia’s mom but with the same accent. “No, this is Carol, Amelia’s friend.”
“Carol, have you heard from Amelia?”Please say yes, I repeat in my head.Please say yes…
“Not for a while. She stopped calling me right after she told me that she was having your baby.” She waits for me to catch up. “Look, I don’t know what the fuck is going on here, but that can wait. All I care about right now is making sure that my friend is safe and well, and it sounds to me like you can’t vouch for either of these counts.”
Ouch. “I deserve that, and you’re right. But while I’m talking to you, I’m not out there looking for Amelia.”
“Lucky for you, I know where she is then.”
My heart performs a somersault. “Where is she?”
“Somewhere outside of Dublin. She hasn’t moved in a while, so either her phone lost signal or she’s still at the same location.”
“You track your friend’s phone?”
“Snap Maps, Mr. Byrne. Someone has to keep an eye on her. You should try it sometime. I’ll send you the location now.”
When my phone buzzes, I open the message, expecting it to be from Carol.
The world comes to a grinding standstill when I open the image on my screen.
It’s Amelia. She’s lying on the floor, wrists tied behind her back, eyes closed. But it’s the blood and bruising on her swollen jaw that rips the feral howl from my chest.
My men surround the warehouse from the location that Carol gave me.
Michael Morran sent a message with the brutal image of my wife.
What is a grandson worth?
Amelia must’ve told him that she’s pregnant, and he saw an easy way to make some money. I don’t care that she told him she’s carrying mygrandchild. I only care about getting her out of this building alive.
Then I’ll make the fucker who touched her wish he’d never been born.
