Contemplating whether three pairs of shoes was overkill, my phone rang and I strolled toward where I’d placed it on the bed. It was Mum. “Hi,” I answered. “Do you think three pairs?—”
“Eilidh.” Mum gasped out, tears in her voice.
My heart stopped. “What? What is it?”
“Someone took Millie,” Mum sobbed. “I’m so sorry.”
“Who took Millie?” I demanded, adrenaline rushing through me. An image of a woman I’d never met floated through my mind. Pamela. Millie’s mum. “How? When? Who? Have you called the police? Fyfe?”
“Yes. The police are out looking and Fyfe is on his way. I said I’d call you. I wasn’t there. My staff were. The kids started screaming at something in the playroom so all my staff went running, leaving the nursery empty for just a few seconds. Millie was napping in one of the cots. When they returned, Millie was gone.”
I felt abruptly lightheaded. “Was it Pamela? Did Pamela take her?”
Mum sounded breathless with emotion. “I don’t know who did it. I’m driving back from Inverness with your dad. The police are checking the camera feeds. Fyfe is on his way to check them too.”
Sickness rolled in my stomach as I hurried downstairs in search of my car keys. “I need to go to him,” I told Mum before hanging up. I couldn’t fall apart. I had to keep it together. Forcing myself not to think about Millie and how scared she must be, and that someone had stolen her … I shoved the horror from my mind. Fyfe and Millie needed me to keep my shit together.
Who could have taken Millie?
Was it Pamela? She seemed like the most likely culprit. Right?
Fear curdled my blood.
What if it was Cameron Phillips? What if it was him or another weirdo who had fixated on me and had been watching us?
What if my past had invited another sick bastard into our lives and this was all my fault?
Forty-Two
FYFE
Scrambling for my phone, I pulled up the email Adam had sent me on my mother and her new family. Scrolling through the ID pics, I stared at my mother’s wife’s photo. “That’s her. Right?” I held it out to the police officer who had introduced himself but for the life of me couldn’t remember his name.
I’d almost crashed my fucking car driving like a maniac to the daycare center in Caelmore. If I thought too hard on the fact that my daughter was in a stranger’s hands, that she’d been kidnapped after only a mere few months in my care, I’d lose my mind.
And I was no good to Millie as a panicked glob of emotion rather than a capable father who could find her.
The officer studied the CCTV footage from the nursery that clearly showed a blond woman skulking into the room and leaving with Millie in her arms. I reached over and paused the footage just as she was departing and looked up at the camera as if she hadn’t realized it was there.
The copper studied the image on my phone and nodded grimly. “It looks like a match. Who is it?”
“My mother’s wife,” I bit out angrily just as the phone buzzed in my hand, startling me. “Unknown caller.”
“Put it on speaker,” the police officer demanded.
Fingers shaking, I did just that. “Hello.”
There was some heavy breathing and a moment of hesitancy before she spoke. “I have your bairn. I’m going to text a bank account number to you. I want fifty grand in that account by the end of the day or you’ll never see your daughter again.”
“Jay McDonald,” I said her name.
There was a wee gasp on the other end of the line.
Rage suffused me.
The police officer mouthed, “Keep her talking.”
“We know who you are. You can’t get away with this,” I gritted out. “If anything happens?—”
