She hasn’t replied but she could be busy, especially holed up with Mum, Bethy and the kids. I spoke to my dad before I left the hotel and explained that I’d wrapped business up early and would be back home on the earlier flight. Olivia doesn’t know that; I want to surprise her. Thoughts of my girl and me, just the two of us are filling my head and I wonder if she’d like a holiday together which only makes me think of her in very small bikinis and sand getting everywhere. Yeah, we need a holiday.
I shift uncomfortably and am glad I’m not travelling economy. At least in business I can stretch out and adjust myself, specifically my erection at the thought of bikinis, sun and sex, without looking like a pervert.
Shit! With that thought I am thinking about Raymond Daniels. My dad has told me today that it looks as though the doctor will at least have the decency to plead guilty, albeit to lesser charges, but Raymond is still on the run. The authorities have no reason to believe he has left the country, but they have no proof that he hasn’t, making him a huge uncertainty and the fact that the evidence against him is irrefutable he has nothing to lose making him a danger to anyone he comes across. I just can’t shift the feeling that the only one he’s gunning for is my girl.
Relief soars through my veins as the plane ascends to its optimum altitude. I really am on my way back. I have hated being away, pathetically so. Even I mocked myself never mind my inner voice. I don’t care if I am whipped. In fact, I couldn’t be happier about it and in future I might just arrange overseas trips for when Olivia can come too. I’m sure my meetings would pass quicker if I knew she was waiting for me each night and I know Arianna is more than capable of handling a lot of the stuff I do. Or I could make everyone come to me and when they see my beautiful girl, they’d know exactly why Mason Harding doesn’t like to leave home.
A grin spreads across my face at the fact that I am referring to myself in the third person. My grin coincides with a member of cabin crew coming to a stop before me. She’s pretty, very, and is nicely packaged. Her flush and batting of the eyelids suggests she’s interested. Before, pre-Olivia, the mile-high club would have been a real option, but now? Nah. The mile-high club will have to wait for my next check in when Livy is with me.
“Drink, sir?” the steward asks with a little pupil dilation.
“Just water please.” I smile, but it’s flat. I will not encourage this. In fact, I might just need to extinguish the little fire burning in her eyes and behind her smile. “Does everything indicate a speedy return to the U.K. My fiancée is waiting.” Olivia might not know she’s my fiancée. She is. That’s the compromise, a long engagement giving her time to think and get used to the idea, with or without a ring.
“Oh.” She sighs, disappointed. “Everything looks fine.” She hands me my water and leaves me with the book I won’t read and my thoughts and holiday plans to take me home.
It seems to take as long to get off the plane and make my way through arrivals to find my luggage then my dad, as it did to fly home and the flight was almost seven hours. It’s still daylight as we emerge from the airport and almost seven in the evening, technically just three hours after I left New York, meaning I am likely to be fucked over with jet lag at some point in the next couple of days. Especially as I have no intention of sleeping tonight, not when I’m back in my own bed with my girl.
My phone suddenly bursts into life and I’m surprised to see no response from Olivia to my earlier message and am even more surprised to see one from Sarah.
“Fuck.” I shout loud enough to make my dad turn with a start and everyone around us to spin around sharply. “I don’t believe it,” I snap. “She is missing, how the fuck has this happened? One job.”
My dad’s standing before me, pulling my phone from my hand to read the message, then he’s calling Olivia, to no avail. He doesn’t bother to try again; he’s getting into the car and cussing me for not moving quickly enough whilst giving me orders. I call my mum, Tommy, Bethy, everyone at home to see if they know anything and Arianna to check if Olivia has gone home. All the time my dad is making his own calls and messing around on his second phone before turning to me for answers.
“Nobody has seen her since Sarah,” I say with a shake of my head and a heavy sense of sickness in my stomach. “She and I are going to have serious fucking words about doing as she’s told.” Dad laughs, not that I can see any humour in this situation.
“She’s a woman, son. You tell her to stay, she’ll follow, tell her to follow, and she’ll go the opposite way. That’s why we love them, that’s why you love her.”
“Where the fuck is she?” I don’t expect an answer.
“Right there.” My Dad passes me his phone where I see a map with a beeping symbol in the middle of the screen.
“What?”
“I might have put a tracker on her.”
“You implanted a tracker? I said no to that.” I’m grateful and angry all at once.
“No. I didn’t do the implant, that might have been immoral and illegal without her consent,” he concedes. “But her phone, yes, you know that, however the phone one is inactive.” He sighs. “This is from her shoes. There are others in her purse, bag and sunglasses.” He speaks as if he’s telling me he has done the most normal thing in the world by implanting trackers in my girlfriend’s possessions, but I am beyond grateful that he did as I only agreed to the phone one that is inactive. That word is chilling since the only reason I can come up with for its inactivity is that it’s broken or has been taken from her.
“This address is her flat and Sarah said she was going back there.”
“Okay, let’s go and get the girl, son.”
“My girl, Dad, not the girl, mine.”
Chapter 60
Olivia
I receive a text from Mase as I am climbing the steps to my flat, probably one of the last if not the actual last time I’ll make this trip. I grin as I absorb the meaning behind his words.
I’m so distracted by the fact that he won’t be steamrolling me into marriage that I don’t respond. I’ll do that once I get inside. With my key in the door I turn the lock. With a back kick to close it I head straight for the virtually empty kitchen. I suddenly realise that I haven’t eaten all day so optimistically open the cupboard hoping to find a bar of chocolate or a biscuit, even if it’s likely to be a little stale.
