When it’d decided not to have a heart attack, I called my uncle, half expecting him not to answer. Images ran through my head, her lying on the side of a road, her in the back of a van, her in darkness wondering where the fuck I was to look after her. I heard the promises I’d made to her mother, and I heard something crack inside me, something I thought I no longer had.
I’d sell my soul to make sure she was safe.
It took until the tenth ring, but my uncle’s clipped vowels came through clear.
“Tommy, son, how’s it going?”
“Where is she?”
“Who? Whichsheare we talking about? I’ve got a very nice she with me right now…”
“I’m not fucking talking about one of your whores. Where’s Jameson?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, son…”
He never called me son, unless he wanted to seriously piss me off. “Where is she?”
There was a laugh, a callous, cold laugh that made me want to punch a wall because I couldn’t punch his face. “She’ll be fine. They won’t hurt a hair on her pretty head.”
I knew what had happened to her in her dorm room when she was younger. I knew she still had trauma from it. I’d just made sure that the dickhead who’d done that to her would be seeing some serious time inside, and now my family was putting her through another worse trauma right now.
“I said to sort out Marcus. Leave the sisters alone.” It was a good thing I wasn’t near my uncle right now.
“You were taking too long. Your heart eyes for the rich bitch were interfering with what we needed to get done. Just like it was with Leila. You don’t let a woman become more important than family.” He laughed. “Anyway, I’m about to get busy. Ash knows where she is.” He hung up, and when I tried to call him back, he’d turned his phone off.
I resisted the urge to lob my phone away.
They had her. Ash and whoever else he’d commandeered into helping him. This wasn’t just about proving a point to Marcus: this was about proving a point to me, about who was the puppeteer in all this.
I stood still, closed my eyes.
I should be telling myself that Jameson was just another girl. What did she matter to me? It was a holiday fling. That was all.
That was what I’d been telling myself.
I was lying. She was anything but any other girl.
I could be crass, cruel. I was a contender for dickhead of the year at times. But no one was going to harm this woman, and if they did, they weren’t going to see another sunrise.
I held up my phone and found the last number I ever thought I’d dial in a situation like this.
A sleepy voice answered.
“Livi. It’s Tommy. We have a problem.”
I knewAsh almost as well as I knew myself, and I knew the island better. While he’d usually been sleeping off a hangover, I was travelling round the beaches and villages, finding out about the people and buildings. Years of living here meant I knew the place better than anywhere else in the world, and right now, I didn’t want to see another inch of the island ever again.
Ash wasn’t picking up his phone. Neither were a couple of his cronies who I knew he’d have involved in this, which meant I was going to have a wide search for where they’d taken Jameson.
Livi had contacted their security, passed on the descriptions of Ash and his mates, and said she wasn’t interested in calling the police – yet. She’d been surprisingly rational, given I’d told her that her daughter had been kidnapped, as if this was a common occurrence in her world, which perhaps it was.
“Fuck!” I kicked out at an empty beer can on the singed grass, then tried to dial a couple of other people connected to Colm.
I struck out when his security lead answered.
“Thought I’d hear from you tonight.” Winnie Long had worked for my family for years. His loyalty was to the firm rather than any one person. “You looking for something?”
“Where’s Ash taken Jameson?” It was blurted out; even I could hear the desperation in my voice. “I need to know where he’s taking her, Win.”
