His cheeks were burning. ‘She was being overly friendly, stroked my arm. I mean I pulled away from her because she’s the last person on this earth I’d be interested in.’
Morgan started to laugh, and he looked confused. ‘What’s funny?’
She snorted and shook her head. ‘Look, that’s her problem not yours. I don’t care, really. I mean I’m annoyed she tried it on with you when she knows we’re an item, but that’s it. She’s playing games to get what she wants, and because you ignored her, she went above your head anyway, straight to Marc. It’s okay, Ben, stop feeling guilty about something that wasn’t your fault.’
Ben sighed, took hold of her hand then leaned down and kissed her cheek.
‘You’re okay, not going to strangle her with your bare hands or anything?’
‘I couldn’t be bothered. Stop stressing, we’re fine, aren’t we?’
‘Finer than ever.’
‘Good.’
He sat down and stared at her. She shrugged, blew him a kiss and sat down, logging on to her computer. She wasn’t sorry that she had gone to the caves, but she was relieved she’d made it back alive and in one piece though.
‘Look, I’m sorry too, I get carried away and don’t always think straight.’
He rolled his eyes at her, and she pointed to the rubber glove with the bracelet inside. ‘Can you make yourself useful and check if either missing woman was wearing a silver-coloured charm bracelet at the time of their disappearance. Please.’
He logged on to his computer. ‘I sometimes wonder if you should be the boss, Morgan, because you don’t take orders from anyone you’re supposed to.’
‘But we might have a lead, and we wouldn’t have had that if I was in Buttermere, would we?’
He shook his head, a small smile forming on his lips. ‘You drive me insane.’
She shrugged. ‘Good, I aim to please.’
The pair of them worked in silence as Ben scrolled through both misper files and she searched through the different databases for Ernie’s name. Nothing came up, he was as clean as a whistle which made her feel a whole lot better about the fact that he was dating her aunt. Ben finished reading through the missing women’s files.
‘No mention of a bracelet, it could all be a huge coincidence.’
‘It could have got forgotten about. Let’s ask both Scarlett and Janey’s families.’
‘I don’t know if I’m willing to face Scarlett’s dad again. He’s an angry guy and rightly so, but my jaw is still painful after he punched me.’
‘Then we’ll get the FLO to ask him. Caroline could show them the photograph of the bracelet and see if they recognise it.’
‘Take it to Wendy, get her to photograph it and bag it up. Then send it off for forensic testing. I can’t do better than that.’
Grabbing the glove off her desk she left and went to find Wendy. Something was niggling away at her and she wasn’t sure what it was, except that they were running out of time. That she did know for sure.
FIFTY
Cain was bored and wished he’d driven here in his own vehicle; they were wasting time. Too much time, and he still didn’t know what Morgan was up to. As he climbed inside the van, his phone began to ring, and he saw her name flash across the screen. Not daring to move an inch in case he lost the signal again he answered.
‘About time, where the hell are you?’
‘I can’t believe you told Ben I wasn’t with you.’
‘I was worried, where did you go dashing off to on your own?’
‘I went to check out the abandoned caves, not far from the old summer camp.’
‘Who with, are you crazy?’
‘Don’t you start, I’ve already been told off by Ben. I went with a guy who used to volunteer for Mountain Rescue, it was a dud. The mispers aren’t there but I did find a silver charm bracelet inside of them which definitely didn’t belong there. Wendy is sending it off to the lab as we speak. Where are you?’
