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Love? She knew him? What the hell was happening?
“There’s been a change of plan,” she announced and pointed her gun at him. “You’re staying here and I’m going on alone with Lennox. Do not follow me, do you understand?”
“Natasha, this wasn’t the plan! You agreed!” he pleaded with her.
Ignoring him, she put the window back up and tucked the gun into her lap as she moved off, leaving the man who had been in my dressing room behind. She pulled out of the car park and back onto the main roads.
Dread made my blood run cold in my veins. What kind of deal did he have with her, and why had she now changed her mind enough to double-cross him? This situation was getting worse with every moment that passed. The bad vibe I’d had at the concert continued to grow until it evolved into a full-on panic attack. I was going to die at the hands of this woman.
To distract myself from what might happen, I tried to focus on the directions that we were going, the roads we were taking, anything that might help Tom find me. If only I was able to get a message to him about where I was somehow. Why had I left my phone in the dressing room? He would have been able to track me with it by now.
Time seemed to stretch out forever as the city disappeared. We headed out into the dark countryside, unseen and probably undiscoverable. I couldn’t make out any of where we were going. I caught glimpses of the occasional road sign, but it almost felt as though we had looped around a few different ways in an attempt to stop me from knowing exactly where we were.
By the time we pulled into the driveway of a small, whitewashed cottage, the clock on the car dash told me it was about an hour and a half since I had got off stage. Natasha exited the car and came round to my side, pointing the gun at me through the door.
“Just do what you’re told and this will all be over soon enough,” she warned me. My mind was running away with all the gruesome possibilities and a chill went down my spine thinking about what ‘over’ could actually mean.
I needed to get out of there. I didn’t know how I could achieve that, but I needed to get the hell away from her. By now, Tom would know I was gone and would be looking for me. Had I not been right off the stage, I would have had my phone and Tom would be able to track me. But now I wasn’t sure what was meant to happen at all. Part of me wondered if she had planned for this. Had she, or the dressing room stranger, known I wouldn’t be traceable if they got me when they did? I feared that I was being paranoid. After all, Tom had run such a tight ship until now.
The thought of shoving her and running crossed my mind. But she was armed, it was dark, and I had no idea if she knew the area or not. Maybe this was somewhere that she was very familiar with. I, on the other hand, would be running blind, and she would definitely be pissed off when she got back on her feet. If she wasn’t going to kill me before that, she definitely would after.
So instead, I let her shove me into the cottage, where she ordered me into one of the kitchen chairs and tied me tightly to it. I couldn’t have moved even if I hadn’t been too terrified to do so.
“Now, my love, that’s better, isn’t it?” She smiled at me, and my stomach churned. “The plan had been for Trevor to come with us, and then leave us here while I talked to you. He thinks if I can just talk to you, then I’ll come to my senses and be his wife again.” She pulled a chair over and sat opposite me. “But you and I both know that I’m doing nothing of the sort, don’t we?” She ran her hand over my cheek, and I tried not to wince back from her touch.
“What?” My panic wasn’t remotely hidden from my voice, it was higher and a touch squeakier than normal.
“You sent me cards, you wrote songs for me. He’s never done that.”
My mind was racing almost as fast as my heart. What the hell was she talking about? I had never sent her a card, and I had certainly never written a song for her.
“Maybe he loves you in other ways,” I suggested with a smile.
A second later my ears were ringing and my eye socket felt like it had exploded. For a moment I thought that she might have shot me. As the initial fog of the impact started to clear I realised that she had struck me with the butt of the gun.
“Don’t ever talk to me about how he might love me. I don’t love him, I love you. You and I are meant to be together, and you know it.”
“I’m sorry,” I murmured in defeat.
“That’s better.” She smiled at me manically again. Her hand stroked over my face where she had hit me. “I’m sorry to have hurt you, but you have to know how much it hurts to hear you saying someone else could love me better than you. No one could ever love me better than you, Lennox.”
CHAPTER 21
TOM
It had been two hours since Lennox was last seen in the venue. The clock was ticking. We were no closer to finding him.
The call from the police station had been a hoax. No one at the station had even heard of the name the sergeant had given and there was no one who had been brought in on a speeding incident. In fact, the only person they had in custody at all was merely the first drunk of the night, a woman in her fifties who had gotten a bit lairy with a bouncer.
The second I realised that it was a ruse to lure me away, I understood exactly what was going to happen. I knew what Levi was going to tell me the instant his name appeared on my car’s display. Natasha had got him.
The CCTV around the venue confirmed that Natasha had been driving. What surprised me was that her ex-husband had been the one to hustle Lennox into the car with her. Aiding and abetting a kidnap was not something I had pegged for him, though he had been very clear that he was still in love with her. Maybe he thought this was his way back into her good graces. His reassurances that he didn’t think she was capable of being violent with Lennox suddenly paled into insignificance considering this new knowledge.
“Levi, find me everything you know on Trevor Gibson, and get Eric on the phone.”
He nodded and got to work in the mobile operations centre that we had temporarily set up in my hotel room. A few moments later, Levi handed me his phone.
“Eric? I hope we didn’t wake you.”
