Eventually, I wore myself out and flopped on my bed. After checking my orders for the following day, I wrote a to-do list and took a shower.
Gus was waiting in my room when I got back, his handsome face twisted in a concerned frown.
“What’s the matter?”
“Billy just called me. Luke didn’t show up to visit him.”
* * *
Gus wouldn’t let me drive. He forced me into the passenger seat of my own fucking car, and drove like a pensioner to Luke’s house.
The van was gone. My heart lurched. Luke and Billy’s relationship was a work in progress, but there was no way Luke would’ve let him down. Not now, after everything they’d been through.
“Gus—”
“I’ve got a key. Let’s check inside. If he’s not here, I’ll call Fran.”
“Billy didn’t call her already?”
“He couldn’t get through. Call Luke again while I check inside.”
“I’m coming with you.”
Gus pushed me back into my seat. “No. Stay here.”
He was gone before I could argue, but I got out of the car anyway and called Luke while Gus disappeared into the house.
It rang and rang before his automated voicemail kicked in. I called straight back, but hung up when Gus appeared in front of me, clutching Luke’s phone. “Shit.”
“Don’t panic,” Gus said. “Wherever he’s gone, he’s just forgotten it. He might be caught in traffic on the way to see Billy as we speak.”
“It’s nine o’clock. He was leaving at four.”
“Then maybe Fran knows where he is, but listen. You two are—”
“Don’t.” I snatched Luke’s phone and saw my apology messages unread on his screen, along with a couple from Billy. “Just don’t, okay?”
We got back in the car and drove to Luke’s childhood home. I had no idea what car his mother was driving these days, but Gus’s muttered curse told me it wasn’t where it should’ve been.
He fished his phone from his pocket and made a call, cursing again when whoever it was didn’t answer either. “Fuck. She’s not here and her phone is ringing out too. We can check the pub, but if he’s not there, I don’t know what else to do.”
I had nothing. Just panic and fear melding with the dread I’d been carrying for days. Something was wrong. I couldn’t say how I knew, but I did.
“Hang on a sec.” Gus’s gaze flickered to something outside of the car. “I think Barb next door is trying to get my attention. Wait here.”
He left me in the car again, and once again, I got out, but this time I followed him, and reached him just as Fran’s friendly neighbour confirmed my worst fears.
“The police came,” the old woman said. “Luke’s been in a terrible accident.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Luke
I’d never been so confused in my fucking life. I blinked hard, willing Fran’s worried face to morph into someone else, but when I tried to figure out who, white spots danced in front of my eyes. “I want—”
But for the thousandth time, I couldn’t finish the sentence.
Fran shushed me, and pushed me down on the padded shelf I seemed to be lying on. “The doctor said you have to stay still.”
Doctor? The fuck? I hadn’t seen a doctor since my last navy medical. Hadn’t visited my local GP since I was twelve. Why the hell was a doctor telling me to stay still?
Thinking about it made the bone-crushing headache throb even worse, but since it was the only thing keeping me awake, I went with it and forced my fragmented brain to come together and take stock of the weird situation I seemed to be in.
Headache aside, my whole body hurt, and the sensation of my mother holding my hand was almost as strange as the arctic cold air blasting up my nose. I reached for whatever was resting on my face and ripped it away.
Fran sighed. “Really? Again?”
“What?”
She said something, but I couldn’t hear her. Her lips moved like a cartoon, and then she was gone.
I couldn’t say how much time had passed when I next saw her again, but I knew the moment I opened my eyes that something had changed. Her features were sharper, more familiar, and though my surroundings still made no sense, I recognised them for what they were.
Fran gripped my hands as I struggled to sit up, but she couldn’t keep me down.
I shook her off. “What the fuck am I doing in hospital?”
“You don’t remember?”
I tried for a glare, but my head hurt too much to pull it off. My vision swam and my stomach lurched, but a vicious pain in my left side kept me upright. “What’s going on? Where’s Mia?”
“Mia?”
Brilliant. On top of everything else, I’d apparently neglected to keep my mother up to date with my love life too, but Fran spoke again before I could. “I don’t know where Mia is. I can ring Gus and ask, but you have to lie down, okay? Your ribs are broken and you have a head injury.”
Broken ribs. Head injury. I matched the words to the pain radiating through me and groaned. “How?”
“You were knocked down by a car outside the timber merchant. Hit and run. The police are looking for the car. Do you remember anything?”
I wanted to. Every instinct I had screamed at me that I did, but chasing it hurt too much. I shook my head helplessly and lay back down. Pain pulsed through me, and I closed my eyes to it, willing it away. But pain had never worked like that for me. Absorbing it was all I had, and I let it pull me under, dragging me so deep that even Fran stroking my face began to feel normal.
* * *
“We’re looking for her,” Rebecca said, holding my gaze. “We went to the house, but there was no one there, and her car was gone. Hopefully, she’ll turn up soon.”
Not good enough. I wrapped an arm around myself and peered over the edge of my bed for my missing boots. Waking up to the police looming over my bed had kicked my concussed memory back to life, and now they were telling me not only was the lunatic who’d run me down still on the run, but they had no idea where Mia was. If she was safe. Alive, even. Because no one was denying that Morgan Benson had intended to kill me with his fuck-stick black Ford Focus.
Morgan Benson. I turned the name over in my head. I knew him—vaguely, but I didn’t know him. Billy had, though. Maybe Mia did, too.