“What are they going to find, Nolan? What kind of shit went down tonight?”
He’s not asking me if I killed her or anything. He’s asking what kind of kink I was up to. “Her shoes are in the pool. Her clothes are outside, panties are ripped down the middle, out there as well. There’s lube on the stairs, which we can’t retrieve without the cops seeing, since it’s a straight-line view. There’s rope in one of the bedrooms. She’s… got some marks on her wrists. Maybe her face, but I think those are gone by now. I didn’t come inside her.”
“I tell you what, Romantic. You sure as fuck don’t make life easy.”
“It was planned, Pax.”
“I figured that out, asshole. I’m not accusing you. But we should wake her up and get her to come down and talk to them. Outside,” he stresses. “They cannot come in the house without a warrant. Otherwise we’re gonna be on the news tomorrow.”
“But who knew she was here?”
“Your sister?”
“No,” I say, as we walk to the other end of the house so we can take the back stairs instead of the main ones in the foyer. “I haven’t told her shit.”
“She has people following you, Nolan. I’ve been on your case for one day and I know this.”
I say nothing. Fucking Claudette has gone off the deep end.
The path back to the bedroom Ivy and I were sleeping in is complicated. This whole fucking house is complicated. More than twenty thousand square feet and filled with bedrooms, storerooms, garages, offices, and even two separate guest houses outside. By the time we reach the right hallway, I’m relieved. “Ivy?” I say, walking into the bedroom. “Ivy?” I call again, looking in the bathroom. “Where the fuck are you—”
And that’s when I see what’s on the bed.
Pax crossed the room and snatches it up just as I’m about to.
“What the fuck?” I ask him. “How the hell did that get in here?”
But Pax is stunned silent. And I can’t blame him. I know this little piece of history he’s holding. I know because the cops showed it to me once when I was being questioned.
I just didn’t know it was his. His little part in the whole Mister Browns rape case.
“What the fuck is going on?” Pax asks. “Is your little girlfriend part of this?”
“No, fuck that. She’s here—” But my words trail off as I step around the other side of the bed and see blood on the floor.
“Someone is here,” Pax says. “Someone who knows very intimate things about what we did that night.”
“They took Ivy,” I say.
“Nolan, they can’t get off this island. They can’t even get over to the main part of the island. There’s cops out front. No one is getting past them. I didn’t see a boat at the dock when I flew in. So she’s still here. In this house somewhere. Where would she be?”
“Fuck me. This place is huge, Pax. There’s so many places.”
“Choose two,” Pax says, pointing his gun at me and then himself. “And we’ll each take one.”
“The attic and… the basement, I guess. The fucking attic is six thousand square feet. The basement probably the same. But she could be anywhere. We have fifteen bedrooms. Hell, she could be in a bathroom. We have twenty of those.”
“Well, we’re not going to find her just standing here, so let’s go.” Pax takes off, disappears into the hallway, then peeks his head back in a few seconds later. “How the fuck do I get to the attic?”
Ivy.
That’s the only word on my mind as we run through the hallways. I point to another set of stairs, Pax going up, taking them three at a time, and I hop down until I’m in the main room of the basement.
Everything is lit up. Everything is on. The TVs in various rooms. The lights above the pool table. The surround sound is blasting something from the media room. The doors leading out to the pool are wide open and the sea wind is blowing the curtains like ribbons.
“Ivy,” I call. “Ivy, can you hear me?”
But she can’t. She can’t hear anything because of the music, and the movie, and the wind. I walk over to the master control for the surround sound and turn it off. There is still the sound of the TVs, so I enter each room, one by one, gun ready, and turn them off too.
And when I get through them all, I realize something.
She’s not here.
Chapter Forty-Four - Ivy
I wake up lying on a cold concrete floor. My eyes flutter as I try to open them, but all I see is a fuzzy glare. My head is splitting with a headache and everything is silent.
There is no one here.
“Help,” I say, my voice hoarse. “Help,” I try again, a little louder.
But then a black shadow moves in one corner and someone walks towards me wearing a ski mask and bulky clothing.
“Why are you doing this?”
A photograph floats down to the ground in front of me. I can’t even focus yet, so it takes time for me to get a good look at it. To realize what it is.
Nolan and me. Outside near the pool. He’s ripping my panties off and I’m just standing there, letting him. Someone has written Rape Me over the top of the photo.
I look up at the masked person and shake my head. “That’s not what happened.”
My captor says nothing. Just walks slowly towards me.
I panic and start thrashing. My hands are tied behind my back, and every time I twist, my raw skin screams for me to stop. I manage to get into a sitting position, but only because a hand reaches down and grabs me by my hair and pulls me up.
The person leans down and a familiar smell permeates the air.
A sickly smell that tells me exactly who this person is.
I wait for words to explain why this is happening, but none come. I am dragged across the floor until I’m at the entrance to a bedroom. The figure points to the bed inside, lit only by a small lamp of a bedside table.
I shake my head and say, “No.”
I am slapped and kicked and pushed until I am absolutely on that bed, lying down, in my pretty lingerie as my feet are tied to a bedpost.