“Wait!” I stop Lottie before she can dart past him.
Dropping to my knees, I search through his pockets, feeling sick to my stomach to be riffling through a dead man’s clothes. He’s dead, but Lottie can still live. I find a small brown container of pills in his left pocket and give it to her. “There. Now you have some for a while.”
“Thanks.” She smiles gratefully at me.
As we dart through the entryway and to the large front door, I’m two steps behind her. She wrenches it open and slips out. I’m following when a small sound pulls my attention to the left. “Veronica?”
She grabs my shoulder in a painful grip, dragging me backward. My hand slips from Lottie’s. The door slams shut and Veronica’s fist flies toward my face.
My world goes black.
The last sound I hear is the locks engaging.
When I blink my eyes open, I can’t move my hands. I’m sitting in a hard wooden dining chair at the bottom of a long mahogany table, and Callum’s dad is sitting opposite me. I haven’t seen him since that awful first breakfast in the garden.
He lifts his wine glass containing a dark red liquid. “Welcome, Juniper. I’d offer you a glass, but… well. You can see why yourself.”
I look down.
Thick brown ropes loop around both my arms, tying me to my chair.
No escape.
“Now, before my son makes an appearance, we have a lot to talk about, you and me.”
I’m afraid of what he’ll do to me, but at least Lottie got away. IhopeLottie got away. If nothing else, she’s free now. I lift my chin. “If I don’t want to talk?”
“I’d think you’d want to save your scent matches, or was I wrong? Would you prefer if I killed them?”
Chapter 39
Callum
Archer and Torin burst into the house five minutes before, demanding to know where Veronica was. From the concern stamped across their faces, it’s clear something was wrong.
I’d told them she’d gone out to get groceries, and they dragged me into the library and shut the door. Then they told me Juniper was missing. Archer and Torin’s news about Juniper is worrying, but I’m trying not to panic.
“Maybe she was having doubts about the movie and Chinese night, and left work early to go for a walk,” I say.
“You’re right. Leaving work early isn’t alarming.” Archer’s expression is stubborn. He sticks his hand into his pocket and pulls out something that jingles. He opens his palms flat to show me what it is. A gold bracelet. Afamiliargold bracelet. Juniper’s. “But findingthisis.”
“Her bracelet.” Frowning, I cross over to take it. It’s warm from Archer’s pocket. “It could have fallen off while she was working.”
“Yes, it could have,” Torin says. “But then why didn’t she go to look for it? Why did a maid say it looked like she rushed off, leaving her work half-finished?”
I give Archer the bracelet back. “She could have gone to run an errand.”
Torin shakes his head. “She wasn’t in her apartment, and we hung around there until five. There was no sign of her. When has she ever gotten home that late?”
“Never. That’s when.” Archer answers for him.
A cold sweat starts up on the back of my neck.
I’m trying not to panic yet. Just because she left for work in a hurry and her bracelet fell off her wrist doesn’t mean my dad has gotten their hands on her.
But it could.
I’m reaching for my cell phone when pounding starts up at the front door.
