You can do this, Lucy. Just be calm and think.
I try to remember everything I’ve learned in therapy since what Bryce did. How to do a mental check over my body and acknowledge all the pain, and accept it so I can think around it. My head hurts, my mouth hurts, my wrists hurt, my lower belly hurts, my legs hurt, my ankles hurt…
Okay.
I’m lying on a mattress or a bed, I think. A couch, maybe. It’s something soft. I can feel air blowing near one of my hands. Maybe an air vent? Am I on a mattress on the floor? A futon?
I realize with a start that I should be listening for more conversation. But…there isn’t any. Everything is quiet now, as if they’ve left.
God, my brain is scrambled. I wonder what they gave—
Oh no you don’t!
I can’t think about that, because it will lead me to think about the baby. Thinking about not thinking about the baby sends a bolt of horror through me. I acknowledge it and then set it aside.
I need to mentally list what I’ve learned.
Someone named Drucilla has me, and her father’s with her. She’s a lawyer—I think that’s what they mean when they said “solicitor”—and her father is…in parliament, I think they said?
He has a good reputation. Would not be a suspect in a double murder.
Drucilla has known Liam for a while. At least I thought so. I can’t remember why now…
Liam’s father, the king, suspects but doesn’t know for sure if Liam is actually a bastard child. (Which explains why Liam told me he’s not a prince).
Liam is not really a bastard child.
Maybe these two people have been blackmailing him? Threatening him with the results of a paternity test, threatening to reveal he’s not really a royal?
God. Poor Liam.
I feel something soft against my ankle, and my heart stumbles. Then I feel the roughness of a cat’s tongue.
Grey!
As Grey licks me, I think of all those internet stories about people and their pets. Freddy the pit bull who woke Mom from sleep when little newborn Laura stopped breathing. That lion who runs and jumps into the arms of his former keeper. The cat who died in a house fire beside his owner, snuggled up against her.
My stomach churns with nausea.
I notice the smell of…cinnamon? It’s a house smell, kind of a Glade Plug-Ins type of smell.
I’m in someone’s house.
Grey licks me, and I wish futile wishes like that he could talk or untie things or wield a knife in my defense. I wonder how long until my captors notice Grey is in this room with me. I wonder if they’ll notice I’m awake.
I put some effort into regulating my breathing. I think of lions hugging people and that Internet video of a sloth scratching a cat’s head.
Then I hear a door open, and their voices are loud enough to let me know they’re in my room.
“Oh, there he is. Come here, kitty. Come to mummy.”
Hard arms pick me up. I hear a chuckle as I’m thrown over a painfully hard shoulder.
“Playing possum, are we?”
I don’t speak or move.
“We’ve got a new idea for you.” I’m feeling hopeful, praying that they’re taking me somewhere more public than a room inside a house.
That is—until I hear the ocean. Feel the rough floor of what smells just like a boat.
THIRTY-THREE Liam
Gone—without a word.
I can’t say I blame her.
She must have been upset, because although she took her cat and most of her belongings, she left several things, as if she rushed off without thinking.
The first thing I do when I realize is text Heath. I have to find her.
‘I’m on it, bro.’ That’s what he texts me back.
Heath tells Ain, and Ain comes back from vacation a few hours after I notice that she’s left. He checks on me, tells me he’s proud of me—apparently his sense of smell was better than I knew—and goes into his office to track down her rental car and flight plans.
Meanwhile, I miss two calls from Drucilla.
I know I should answer, but I feel like shit, and I don’t want to go meet her right now. If they tell the press, so be it. I already told the one person whose opinion matters. What’s the rest of the world?
At some point, the story will get out: I’m not a prince. My mother cheated on my father with a longtime family friend, my father’s friend, one Ronald Gibson, who at this point is a leader in our country’s parliament. He and his daughter, Drucilla, my secret half sister and childhood playmate, have been blackmailing me for more than half a year now, threatening to have my bio father, Ronald, take a DNA test proving he’s my sire and go to the press with it.
Why, I asked Dru long ago.
She smiled and said, “Why not?”
Dru and I hooked up one time when we were younger, and instead of being disgusted like I am now that I know who she really is, she seems to love our perverse history.
I hate her more than I have ever hated anyone except my biological father, Ronald. Which is saying something, given how King Gregory began to treat me after my mother and sister died.
I’ve spent a lot of time considering my options, one of which has always been to simply have Dru and Ronald killed. I know it’s what a lot of people in my position would do, if not in modern times, certainly in centuries past. And at least a time or two I’ve wished I could. That I could just remove my conscience, set it on a shelf and let it collect dust.
I never could. And so I’ve made my peace now. Soon, people will know. I’ll lose Haugr Castle, Pirate Island, all the other places where I made my childhood memories.
I tell myself, as I sit behind my desk and guzzle lemon water, that it will be okay. Everything will be okay once I find Lucy and apologize.
The call comes at a little after midnight. I’m asleep at my desk, weighted by the smallish dose of Librium I’m still taking for the next two days and drooling on my elbow.
My phone’s screen says HEATH.
“Hey, man. Bad news. We tracked Lucy’s rental to that strip of public beach a couple miles away.”
My mind buzzes. “And?”
“The cat is in there going nuts.”
“And?”
“She’s not there. Ain’s had people looking for an hour—you missed calls from him; he’s down there now—but no one has found her. Liam…it looks like she may have had a boat strapped to the top of her vehicle.”
“A boat? What do you mean?”
“Some kind of canoe, based on the way the rope is tied.”
“What rope?”
“There’s rope around the rack on top of her Range Rover.”
I close my eyes, rubbing them hard. “What are you talking about, Heath? That doesn’t make a fucking bit of sense.”
“I’m not saying that it does, man. I just wanted to see if I could wake you with a phone call. I was going to call Mora if not, have her go get you up.”
“Do you have the cat?” I ask him.
“What?”
I sit up. “Did you get her cat out of the car? You can’t leave cats in cars.”
“I don’t know. I’m not there.”
“Where are you?”
“Ain and I are going to the guard. To report her missing.”
“Is her car unlocked?”