Despite her hurrying me into my office, when she takes a seat across the desk from me, words fail to eventuate. Her lips twitch and settle, like she’s trying out a few different flavours of her speech before settling on the tastiest one.
“Take your time,” I grumble, shaking my head and cueing up the contact details for my most dependable crew members. My jaw clenches as I realise how small that circle has shrunk in the past few days.
“I don’t trust Isabelle.”
The words come as a surprise to me, and I sit back in my chair, full attention focused on my sister. Meri isn’t one for speculation; she enjoys facts, figures, actions, checklists. To hear such a firm opinion gives me pause.
I pick up a pen and balance it in my fingers while waiting to see if she’ll give me more. But she’s tight-lipped. So tight that her mouth has narrowed into a thin line.
“Has she given you any reason not to trust her?”
“Aside from mysteriously being in the right place at the right time?”
It’s hard to hide the wry smile that wants to emerge at those words. “I doubt Isabelle would phrase it that way. She sacrificed a lot to save Sophia.”
“What?” Meri scoffs. “A strained ankle? Hardly the worst thing in the world.”
I was thinking more along the lines of her job, her peace of mind, and her entire lifestyle. The easy dismissal reminds me that my sister doesn’t know the half of it. Unless Isabelle has confided in her, which doesn’t seem likely given the concerns she’s raising, Meri won’t know of the standoff, the killing, the car chase.
I could fill her in, but I recline farther in my chair, waiting to see if there’s more substance to my sister’s scepticism. The position is so far from my own that it makes me downright curious. “Would you rather she turned up full of bullet holes and on the brink of death?”
“It would make more sense.” Meri stands up and paces to the door, tilting her head as though listening out for someone on the other side. “Haven’t you wondered why she’s asking so many questions? From what Yuri tells me, it a constant stream from morning to night.”
“She’s being held captive in a house with people she’s never met before.” My slow smile does nothing to wipe the irritated expression from my sister’s face. “It stands to reason she has questions.”
But Meri is already shaking her head. “You’re not thinking clearly.” She exposes the length of her throat as she raises her eyes to the ceiling. “Perhaps you should cool it with the flirting. At least until we know more about the circumstances of Sophia’s abduction.”
I should have known she’d pick up on my attraction and it’s a reasonable request. A condition I might have set for myself if my own reactions hadn’t been so very different to Meri’s.
“Isabelle is under my control here,” I remind her instead. “She can’t contact anyone, and she can’t go anywhere, not without my say so. I’m paying her an allowance worth more than she’s ever earned in her life. There’s no danger.”
“She’s very like Alice, isn’t she?”
The words set my teeth on edge. To hear my ex-wife’s name dragged into comparison with Isabelle is a travesty. It’s also untrue. The warm woman talking my staff’s ears off and eating me out of house and home isn’t anything like my frosty ex.
I’m suddenly sick of the conversation and sit up straight. “Do you have anything solid to go on or is this justfeelings?”
“It’s myintuition,”she shoots back, lip curling. “Which you know doesn’t trigger for no reason. There’s something going on with her that doesn’t ring true.” She pauses. “I think you should move her to a more secure safehouse.”
“No!” The words bark out of me with such force that I’m taken by surprise as much as my sister. “No,” I repeat. “Unless you have something concrete, my decision will stay the same.”
Meri walks back to the desk, peering at me with open curiosity. “What is it? What is it about her?”
But I’m over this conversation. “She’s staying here. We’ve located Sergio and I’m confident he’ll soon lead us to the other players. This will be over soon.”
She still doesn’t appear convinced, and it niggles at me. Maybe my reaction is down to lack of sleep but I’m intensely irritated that she isn’t falling into line with my decisions where usually we’d be a united front, in step with any plan.
But we’ve been out of synch for a while now. She still craves the things I used to—money, power, influence—where I’ve converted into a complacent homebody by comparison.
I dismiss her with enough authority that she doesn’t resist me even though the angle of her chin tells me she wants to. I sit, pushing thoughts of everything out of my mind for a few seconds, then turn back to the more prominent concern.
Sergio.
My preference would be to drag the man out of his hiding place and strip the flesh from his bones while he pleads for mercy. I want to hang him from chains while I treat his enlarged body like a punching bag; seeing how many blows I can get in before he splits open.
My short stint at torture a few days ago tells me not to bother. Sergio’s been in the crime business long enough to know not to hand out names. By the time I break past that resistance, he won’t be in a fit state to finger anyone. Not that I can trust with any certainty.
With Antonio, I had a sense of urgency. Sophia had still been missing at that stage, in peril. I’d had to try even disproved methods in a last-ditch effort to track her.
