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Authors: Scott Mariani
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Zoë, there is a guy I would recommend …’
When he left the Bradburys’ place Ben walked straight back to his flat. He picked up the phone and punched a number into the keypad. Charlie answered.
‘That thing you were asking me about,’ Ben said. ‘Would you still be interested, if I told you an opportunity had come up?’
Charlie didn’t need time to decide. ‘I’d be interested.’
‘Good. Now listen.’ Ben told him in careful detail what Bradbury was offering.
‘That would take care of the mortgage for a year,’ Charlie said. ‘But I already know what Rhonda will say.’
‘All you have to do is find Zoë. You don’t have to try to bring her back. She shouldn’t be too hard to track down, by the sound of it. Just follow the party music and the trail of empty bottles. All her parents want to know is that she’s safe. The most you’d need to do is persuade her to make contact with them.’
‘It sounds easy.’
‘That’s because it is easy,’ Ben said. ‘It’s low seasonthere at the moment, so you won’t even make much of a hole in the ten grand. You can tell Rhonda that all you’re doing is delivering a message – surely that won’t be a problem for her? This is the Greek Islands, not Afghanistan. And you’ll be there and back inside five days, maximum.’
‘I’m interested,’ Charlie said again.
‘I need to call the Bradburys right now and tell them yes or no. It’s your decision.’
‘Count me in,’ Charlie said.
Chapter Thirteen
At that moment, one and a half thousand miles away on the tiny Greek island of Paxos, Zoë Bradbury was being roughly shoved and prodded down the beach, back towards the jetty where she’d tried to escape four days before.
It was the first daylight she’d seen since then. For four days she’d been tied down to the bed, only allowed free when she screamed to be allowed to use the toilet. For four days, they’d been questioning her around the clock.
The whole time, she was racking her brains to remember. Who was she? Sometimes there was just nothing there, nothing but a big empty blank. But then, every so often, it felt like something was stirring in her mind, as though the drifting fragments of memory wanted to gel together and fall into focus. Faces, voices, places. They hovered tantalisingly in her head. But just when they seemed so close and she tried to reach out to them, they would suddenly dissolve back into the mist.
She stared for hours at the tiny scar on her finger.A childhood injury, maybe. But how had she got it? She had no idea. A thousand other questions crowded and jostled in her mind. Where was she from? Who were her family and friends? What was her life like?
And then there was the most horrifying question of all. What did these people want with her?
As her initial acute terror faded into a new kind of steady, chilling horror, she watched and listened to her captors. Two of the men never spoke to her and she saw little of them. It was the woman and the fair-haired guy she had the most contact with. The woman had a hard look about her, but there were times when it seemed to melt a little, and she spoke more kindly.
The fair-haired guy was a psychopath. Zoë hated him profoundly, and the only thing that had kept her going throughout those endless hours had been her fantasy of somehow getting free, getting that gun or the knife from him, and using it on him.
But however they tried to get the information out of her, whether the threats were implicit or whether they were obscenely violent and screamed in her face, none of it was working. She could see they were getting increasingly desperate.
Then a new thought had come into her mind. What if her memory did come back to her? What would they do to her, once they had whatever it was they wanted?
She had a good idea what the fair-haired man wanted to do, if the woman let him. Maybe her amnesia was the only thing keeping her alive.
And now they were taking her somewhere.
When he left the Bradburys’ place Ben walked straight back to his flat. He picked up the phone and punched a number into the keypad. Charlie answered.
‘That thing you were asking me about,’ Ben said. ‘Would you still be interested, if I told you an opportunity had come up?’
Charlie didn’t need time to decide. ‘I’d be interested.’
‘Good. Now listen.’ Ben told him in careful detail what Bradbury was offering.
‘That would take care of the mortgage for a year,’ Charlie said. ‘But I already know what Rhonda will say.’
‘All you have to do is find Zoë. You don’t have to try to bring her back. She shouldn’t be too hard to track down, by the sound of it. Just follow the party music and the trail of empty bottles. All her parents want to know is that she’s safe. The most you’d need to do is persuade her to make contact with them.’
‘It sounds easy.’
‘That’s because it is easy,’ Ben said. ‘It’s low seasonthere at the moment, so you won’t even make much of a hole in the ten grand. You can tell Rhonda that all you’re doing is delivering a message – surely that won’t be a problem for her? This is the Greek Islands, not Afghanistan. And you’ll be there and back inside five days, maximum.’
‘I’m interested,’ Charlie said again.
‘I need to call the Bradburys right now and tell them yes or no. It’s your decision.’
‘Count me in,’ Charlie said.
Chapter Thirteen
At that moment, one and a half thousand miles away on the tiny Greek island of Paxos, Zoë Bradbury was being roughly shoved and prodded down the beach, back towards the jetty where she’d tried to escape four days before.
It was the first daylight she’d seen since then. For four days she’d been tied down to the bed, only allowed free when she screamed to be allowed to use the toilet. For four days, they’d been questioning her around the clock.
The whole time, she was racking her brains to remember. Who was she? Sometimes there was just nothing there, nothing but a big empty blank. But then, every so often, it felt like something was stirring in her mind, as though the drifting fragments of memory wanted to gel together and fall into focus. Faces, voices, places. They hovered tantalisingly in her head. But just when they seemed so close and she tried to reach out to them, they would suddenly dissolve back into the mist.
She stared for hours at the tiny scar on her finger.A childhood injury, maybe. But how had she got it? She had no idea. A thousand other questions crowded and jostled in her mind. Where was she from? Who were her family and friends? What was her life like?
And then there was the most horrifying question of all. What did these people want with her?
As her initial acute terror faded into a new kind of steady, chilling horror, she watched and listened to her captors. Two of the men never spoke to her and she saw little of them. It was the woman and the fair-haired guy she had the most contact with. The woman had a hard look about her, but there were times when it seemed to melt a little, and she spoke more kindly.
The fair-haired guy was a psychopath. Zoë hated him profoundly, and the only thing that had kept her going throughout those endless hours had been her fantasy of somehow getting free, getting that gun or the knife from him, and using it on him.
But however they tried to get the information out of her, whether the threats were implicit or whether they were obscenely violent and screamed in her face, none of it was working. She could see they were getting increasingly desperate.
Then a new thought had come into her mind. What if her memory did come back to her? What would they do to her, once they had whatever it was they wanted?
She had a good idea what the fair-haired man wanted to do, if the woman let him. Maybe her amnesia was the only thing keeping her alive.
And now they were taking her somewhere.
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