“You weren't able to follow her?”
“No, and I figured it was her young man come to make up and that sort of thing.”
"Do you remember his name?"
"Willem something. Granted, I think that was a fake name because when I gave the police that name, they brought every teacher at Eton named Willem through a line-up, and none of them matched the description she’d given me."
Shit, was I just chasing my tail? "Oh, okay."
“After I left the pub, I hunted and looked for her everywhere. She didn't answer her phone or respond to my texts. But when I left the pub, her car was still there. Our plan was to let her have one drink and she would drive us home, but if she'd had too much, we would leave her car and walk home. We were always supposed to go back together.”
“Is that when you went looking for her?”
“Yeah, me and our friend Crista, we went looking. The more we walked and asked questions, the more we heard about another meet-up near the boathouse. I assumed maybe Melissa had heard about it too and went to break it up. And then we found her up past the hill on the open land near the boathouse. She was on the ground, facedown, covered in blood. That was how we found her.”
"And did you see that Willem?"
“No. She was alone.”
"Can you tell me if you see him in this photo?" I’d snuck a photo from the mansion. Middleton, Drew, Bridge, and Bram Van Linsted were in the photo.
Antonia frowned. "I, um, no. It was too dark in the pub. I only saw him in profile. I can’t tell."
The disappointment ate at me. Another dead end. "You've been so helpful. I appreciate you speaking to me."
"Well, I'm glad someone's looking into her case again because the way it was handled initially has always bothered me. You know, the police came and asked so many questions, but I thought it would be like you see on TV. That they’d ask more than once, and then they’d circle right back. But none of that happened.”
"Can you describe him at all from the glimpse you got in the pub?"
Her brow furrowed and her nose scrunched. "Um, he’s not blond, but the hair was sandy or light brown. Good-looking is my guess from the look of his jawline, but… I wish I could explain it. Oh, I did see his eyes when he looked back at us through the crowd.”
A spark of hope flared in my chest. "What color were his eyes?"
"Like the gray of a murky storm. Not that beautiful silvery gray, but like storm clouds."
I swallowed hard. "Thank you. I appreciate it."
And as I left her in the café, I picked up my security escort outside. I frowned and tried not to think about the similarities of her description to someone I knew.
Francis Middleton had light blue eyes. In the right light, they looked gray. I had no proof, but I knew for a fact Bridge hadn't been the one to kill that girl. So why was his father trying to make me think he had?
And was Middleton the mysterious Willem?
Would the young teacher have risked everything to be with him? Her career and livelihood?
At least the trip wasn’t a total fail. But now I had even more questions than I did before.
Seventeen
Bridge
I checked my watch, anxious about Emma. I'd gotten a call from security that they were already in Windsor. And I was proud of myself. I had refrained from running a search on the client she was meeting. Just because a client needed a corporate fixer didn't mean that we should check them out. So it was fine. I trusted her.
Mate, you're not fine.
Okay, I wasn't fine. I could still fucking feel her all around me. My skin itched when I wasn't near her. This was a real fucking problem. I was almost better off with Mina.
Bullshit. I hadn’t felt like this with her. I wasn't constantly tortured, worrying about what she was doing, where she was, who she was with.
Because you didn’t love her.
A clicking sound alerted me that I wasn’t alone. I glanced around and realized East was staring at me, snapping his fingers in front of my face. “Mate, are you with us?”
I blinked and shook my head. Fucking hell. The status review meeting. "Yup, I'm here."
East shook his head. "No, you are decidedly not here. Did you see the update on Dubai? It's a mess, mate. Who put the report together?"
"I looked over it myself last night."
Ben and East glanced at each other. "Maybe we need to have our team review it again."
I frowned. "What, you think I can't do my own fucking status report?"
East cringed. "Mate, you haven't been right for a week, not since you found out about Emma. So maybe you should lean on the team that you hired, you know, as a thought."
He may have had a solid point, but I wasn't going to listen because that was bullshit. I was fine. I knew I was a hundred percent.
I glanced at my watch again. Where the fuck was she? And what was she doing? She hadn’t texted like she promised.
“I’m good.”
Ben shook his head. "Mate, come on. You're useless right now. Okay, give Dubai a rest. We’ll have the team redo the status reports. On to Middleton, how should we handle him?”
“The plan is to make him work for it, give him the account, then access his systems. What Emma got before wasn't good enough, obviously, which is why she’s still in play. And there is also the Barcelona issue.”
East shook his head. "I've been over the data from his phone. There’s nothing there we can use."
"Look again."
He laughed. “There's nothing to be found. Even Telly tried to hack the device. No go.”
I ran my hands through my hair. "There has to be something. The longer it takes, the longer Emma is in the crosshairs.”
Ben watched me warily. "Is Emma getting under your skin?"
“Aren’t Nyla and Liv under yours?"
Ben and East nodded sympathetically. "Yeah, mate. They do that,” East said.
“The angrier you make them the more they want to make you suffer," Ben muttered.
I frowned. “She makes protecting her so difficult.”
East nodded. “Remember Nyla? Remember how I said and did some things to protect her that maybe, you know, didn't make her so happy?"
I frowned. "Do you have a point?"
“Next time learn from my mistakes.”
I frowned. "So you're saying that this helpless feeling is a regular thing?”
Ben shrugged. "Yeah, mate.”
“That’s bullshit. She makes me feel like a caveman.”
They both threw their heads back and guffawed. These were my mates? I needed better friends. East laughed so hard he clutched his thighs.
“Yup, yup, they will get you. But angry sex is the best sex."
Sex with Emma was the best sex I'd ever had, but I was not telling them that. "Look, I've had lots of angry sex. Mina, random women I didn’t care about. It didn't feel like that."
Ben shook his head. "Mate, that's because you love her. That's kind of how this whole thing works."
My brow furrowed. “This is a bullshit setup.”