She produced more handcuffs from somewhere—how many pairs did she have?—and secured me to a solid-looking metal bracket inside the old building. A second later, she slapped a strip of duct tape over my mouth.
“Shh.”
Like I had a choice.
Something glinted in her hand, and as she stepped towards the barn door again, I realised it was the aforementioned knife. Bloody hell. Who was this psycho? And what did she have planned for whoever was outside?
CHAPTER 9 - BETHANY
“MAM, I AM not sure this is a good idea. What if the thief is dangerous?”
Rafiq was a worrywart. He’d spent the whole trip making dire predictions about my fate, which I found kind of ironic considering the way he drove.
“It’ll be fine.” I tried to sound more confident than I felt. “I’m not going to confront her or anything. Hey! That’s a red light!”
Instead of slowing down, he hit the accelerator. “Is okay. It has no camera. Mam, you have the asthma?”
No, just possible cardiac arrest. I forced myself to stop hyperventilating and focus on Rafiq’s phone screen as my heart threatened to hammer its way through my ribcage. Was it better to be unemployed or dead? That seemed like a decision I might need to make in the near future. At least my will was in order—I’d carefully written Piers out of it and left all my worldly goods in trust for Chaucer, with anything left over going to an equine charity at the end of his life.
“I’m perfectly healthy. Have you considered sticking to the speed limits?”
“Time is money. Benjamin Franklin say this. You know Benjamin Franklin?” Not personally, no. “He was the president of the United States of America. My cousin lives there.”
“Lovely.” Americans came into the gallery on occasion, and they were always so loud, so pushy. Give me a quiet, reserved Brit any day. Apart from Piers, of course. As far as I was concerned, he could take a running jump off the white cliffs of Dover and good riddance. “I think in this instance, it might be preferable to get to our destination just a teeny bit slower.”
And also alive.
“Which way we go now?”
“Right at the roundabout.”
Five minutes later, Rafiq slammed on the brakes as we approached an overgrown driveway, and I crossed myself as I lurched forward. I wasn’t even Catholic, but it seemed like a good idea to hedge my bets.
“We are here?” he asked.
“According to the phone, we are.”
“You should call the police now.”
And risk losing Hugo’s painting again? Not a chance. “I’ve got a better idea. You go down the driveway, and if the car’s empty, I’ll jump behind the wheel and we can quickly drive away.”
Rafiq was the master at that.
“What if it is not empty?”
“Uh, perhaps you could say you’re lost, and then we’ll have a rethink?”
“You mean lie? I do not lie. It is rude.”
“Ordinarily, I’d agree with you, but do you think you could make an exception today? Say you took a wrong turn? Just a small fib?”
“A fib is not as bad as a lie?”
“No, no, definitely not. I fib all the time.”
For years, I’d complimented Piers on his appearance when in reality, he’d turned into a beluga whale who’d stumbled across Saville Row. Day after day, I’d assured my sister she wasn’t overreacting when she wasn’t just a drama queen, she was a supreme overlord. And as for my mother, every single room in her house looked like a death match between Trump Tower and the Palace of Versailles. Twenty-four-carat over-the-top opulence. I told her it looked fabulous.
“Okay, then I will fib. Should we go down the driveway right now?”
Good question. A brave person would probably have got out of the car and snuck through the trees commando-style for a recon first, but I wasn’t brave and I was also wearing stilettos. Running would be a problem. Why hadn’t I changed my stupid shoes when I stopped to pick up the spare key? And my pencil skirt. That wasn’t conducive to a swift escape either.
Dammit, I really wasn’t cut out for this.
“Yes, drive slowly. If you see a red Ford Fiesta, stop as close to it as you can.”
I’d sat in the back of the cab like a regular passenger, and the seat blocked my view as we trundled forward. Should I hide? What if the girl recognised me? She’d only seen me for a brief moment, and hopefully she’d been more focused on stealing my key than memorising my face. I arranged my hair so that it masked my features and scooched down in the seat a bit.
Trees met overhead, giving the tunnel-like driveway a foreboding appearance. Between terror and the humidity, I was sweating like a pig in a sauna, and I almost told Rafiq to turn around. This wasn’t my life. I was born to make small talk at cocktail parties, not hunt down teenage hoodlums.
An old brick-built house came into view, battered by time and the elements, shutters hanging crooked by the windows. The front door sagged open. Was the girl inside? Surely nobody actually lived there?
A flash of red at the side of the building caught my eye, and I sagged with relief. My car! And the boot was still closed, so hopefully that little brat hadn’t found Hugo’s painting. Not that she’d know what to do with it if she did. A girl of her ilk probably couldn’t tell the difference between paint-by-numbers and a Picasso.
“I see the car,” Rafiq said, a hint of excitement in his voice. “This is excellent news.”
“Yes, it is.” Honestly, the best part was that I wouldn’t have to ride back in the taxi with him. “Just pull up alongside it.”
I fumbled in my pocket for the key, eager to get away from this horrid, horrid place, but Rafiq’s sharp intake of breath stopped me. What now?
“There is a man.”
A man?
“Where?”
Rafiq pointed past the house, where the corner of an old barn was just visible. Sure enough, a tall, well-dressed man was walking towards us, and if it were at all possible, he looked even more out of place than I felt. Who was he? Why was he here? Was he involved in the theft of my car?
As he came closer, I realised there was something familiar about him. I’d seen him before, but where? I considered telling Rafiq to reverse, but then what would happen to my car? The man didn’t look dangerous, not in a serial-killer way, in any case. Dangerous to a girl’s heart, perhaps. Mine skipped as he got closer.
Then I remembered where I’d seen him. At the gallery. The freaking gallery. Last night, he’d been at the show with a stunning blonde, and I’d been trying to sell him a sculpture until Henrietta had practically elbowed me out of the way. An American. Slightly brash but not at all suspicious, and yet here he was, incongruous among the undergrowth in a blue button-down shirt, grey flannel slacks, and polished brown brogues. What the hell was going on?
A thousand possibilities flew through my mind. What if I’d got this wrong and my car hadn’t been stolen by an opportunist thief? Perhaps they’d lured me here as part of a kidnap plot? My family had money, although I wasn’t convinced my father would shell out for a ransom payment.
“Uh, I think we should leave.”
“But your car is here.”