“Search the place?”
“I don’t know what other options we have.”
They’d clearly done this before. The pair of them checked Gemma’s whole flat, combing through everything from her bathroom cupboard to her underwear drawer with a clinical efficiency that left me cold. Alaric made me check in the pockets of every item in her closet while they lifted the mattress, checked beneath cabinets, and even dismantled part of the toilet tank.
“Are you done yet? This is horrible,” I whispered.
“Horrible that your friend’s missing?” Alaric asked. “Or horrible that we’re looking for her?”
When he put it like that… “It’s just so invasive.”
“The police would do the same thing. Hey, what’s this?” He’d been thumbing through a folder full of paperwork, and now he held up an official-looking document. “Hmm. A restraining order, expired last month. Ever heard of a Kevin Waite?”
A chill ran through me. A restraining order? “No, but her neighbour mentioned one of the men she dated was a loser called Kev or maybe Trev who wouldn’t leave her alone.”
“Sounds like our guy. He got banned from coming within a hundred metres of her.” Alaric quickly checked the rest of the papers. “Nothing else of note. I’ll take a picture of this.”
Despite the thorough search, the flat looked the same when they finished as it had when we’d arrived. Perhaps Gemma herself would notice something out of place, but I couldn’t.
“Anything else?” Alaric asked Ravi as he emerged from the bedroom for the final time.
“Just a gym membership card. Beth, didn’t you say she met the current boyfriend at the gym? Figure that’d be a good place to start if we need to find him.”
“Let’s pay Kevin Waite a visit first,” Alaric said. “Maybe he just couldn’t stay away?”
Couldn’t stay away? Well, wasn’t that a creepy thought?
CHAPTER 36 - ALARIC
A MISSING WOMAN was precisely what Alaric didn’t need at this moment, but he couldn’t just abandon Beth’s friend. Instinct told him there was a problem, and experience told him the police wouldn’t exactly bust a gut to look into it. It was the same the world over—good cops were overworked and underpaid, bogged down by paperwork plus the crushing weight of public expectations. They’d focus on the big cases—the ones that would garner them favourable headlines—and the easy wins that would improve their statistics. Bad cops? Well, they were a whole other issue. And a disappearance where the only suggestion of foul play was a vague voicemail would be lucky to get an officer assigned.
But the court paperwork gave an address for Waite. In East London, by the looks of it—Emmy’s old stomping ground. Alaric had visited with her a time or two. Despite her current lifestyle and the size of her bank account, she still fit right in on the Mile End Road. Jimmy, the ex-boxer who acted as a father figure to her, always said you could take the girl out of East London but you’d never take East London out of the girl. If Alaric and Ravi left now, they could drop Beth off and be in Aldgate in a couple of hours. In terms of distance, Acton and Aldgate weren’t far apart, maybe ten miles, but traffic in central London backed up worse than in DC. Could they get there faster on the Tube? Probably, but if you needed to escort a new “friend” to another location, using a vehicle was a damned good idea. Putting a gun to a man’s back on a train was something Alaric wanted to avoid. Yes, he’d done it before, but not in London, and the presence of the public brought a whole new level of risk.
“Are we going straight to see Kevin?” Beth asked.
“If when you say ‘we’ you mean me and Ravi, then we’re going right now.”
“You think you’re leaving me here? Not likely. Gemma’s my friend.”
“Of course we’re not leaving you here, my sweet. We’ll take you back to Kensington.”
Beth folded her arms. Uh-oh. “Okay, you try that. I have an Oyster card.”
Normally, loyalty and determination were qualities Alaric admired in a woman, but today, he had to concede that obedience and a propensity to shy away from confrontation were also desirable traits. Now what? Should they take her home anyway? Ravi could pocket the damn Oyster card without her noticing, but she’d be mad, and Alaric really didn’t want to lose yet another assistant. Plus he liked Beth. More than he should have—he admitted that—and he hated to see her upset. But nor did he want to see her get hurt physically, and if Waite was involved in Gemma’s disappearance, he might not appreciate a visit from a group of concerned strangers.
Ravi put an arm around Beth to steer her past a group of youths, a move that made Alaric bristle on instinct, but…there, he had her wallet. If Alaric hadn’t known him so well, hadn’t been on the receiving end as Ravi practised the move a hundred times, he’d never have noticed.
“Beth, at the very least, Waite’s a stalker who’s already been taken to court once. If he is wrapped up in this, the chances are he won’t go quietly. I’m used to being in these situations, and so is Ravi. You’re not.”
“I’ll be quiet and keep out of the way.”
“Yes, in Kensington. I want you to stay safe.”
“I will be if I’m with you.”
It was nice that she had confidence in him and Ravi, but unfortunately, the world wasn’t quite that simple.
“Today, you’d be a distraction. We need to focus one hundred percent of our attention on Waite and what he is and isn’t telling us.”
“What if I stayed in the car?”
Beth’s tone held an edge of desperation, and Alaric understood why—when Gemma had called yesterday, Beth hadn’t answered, and now the misplaced guilt was eating away at her. But he still wasn’t taking needless risks.
“Actually, that’s not a bad idea,” Ravi said. “We might need the car moved to the back of the building if…you know.”
If they needed to bundle Waite or Gemma into it. Yes, Alaric knew. And sooner or later, Beth would come to understand that not everything he or the other men of Sirius did was strictly law-abiding. Perhaps it was better the revelation happened sooner? Days like this, he regretted breaking up with Emmy. That way, she could’ve done the dirty work while he played getaway driver, and kidnapping a kidnapper wouldn’t even raise one of her perfectly plucked eyebrows.
Beth managed a tight smile. “If I’m in the car, at least you won’t come out of the building and find it clamped.”
“Okay, fine. You wait in the car, and you keep your phone in your hand. If one of us gives you an instruction, you need to follow it, no questions asked.”
Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. “I will, I promise.”
If Gemma lived in the armpit of the world, then Kevin was well within sniffing distance. Ravi tried the handle of the building’s outer door as Alaric gave one last glance towards Beth, sitting behind the wheel of the SUV in the side street opposite. Her face was in shadow, but he felt her eyes on him.
“Hey, this door really is unlocked. Great security.”
“Probably nothing worth stealing.”