Scrolling through the missed calls, none of them say ‘Pacer’. Chancing rejection, I search through the messages.
PACER: I ran because I wasn’t man enough to stay and protect you. I’m sorry.
I’m torn. Half of me wants him to sweat on that guilt because he was a prick, but the other half of me understands how claustrophobic this would feel. The life that Pacer and I are accustomed to—cameras always watching—makes the world seem a hell of a lot smaller. His is smaller again. How can I judge that?
I flick through to Pacer’s number and call him. The line jumps in and out as it rings. I walk to the end of the cage, and lean against the metal bar doorway.
“Hi.” He sounds hesitant, but it’s still him.
I clear my throat as I let out my one syllable reply. “Hi.”
“Chelsea? Are you there?”
I walk down the caged aisle to get better reception. “Can you hear me now?”
“Yeah, I got you. Where are you? Are you alright?” He sounds worried now. It makes my heart soften.
“I’m fine. I’m just getting some work done.”
“Chelsea?” The connection fades.
“Hello?” I reply.
“Do you want me to come past your place when you’re done?” I can hear his whole sentence without fault.
“No. I think we should really keep things cool while there is so much interest in us.”
“Fucking connection. Chelsea? Can you … what … you … cool?” Only fragments of his sentence come through, but from what I hear, he sounds annoyed.
“I’ll call you later, Pacer.”
The call drops out completely as I finish the sentence. I don’t know how much of what I said he could actually hear.
I don’t call him back. I need to work. There’s so much to uncover, and this may be the last chance I have of piecing it all together.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It’s almost midnight. Where the hell can she be? She’s not in her office, she’s not at her parents’ and she’s definitely not home. Standing on the balcony of my newly purchased city apartment, I watch the last of the photographers leave the front of Chelsea’s house. I’ll hand it to them, they’re patient fuckers.
Now I’m really starting to worry. I’ve tried to call her again, but it’s the same reordered message I’ve heard for the past five hours. It’s time to call in the services of Scott.
The call rings once and the line picks up without a greeting, as usual.
“I need you to get the location of a phone that called me five hours ago,” I say.
“What’s the number?” His voice never sounds human.
“Just wait.” I press my way through to Chelsea’s contact details in my phone. “Zero, four, zero, one, eight, three, four, eight, zero, two.”
“Ten minutes.” The call ends.
Ten minutes goes quicker than I anticipated, and my phone buzzes with Scott’s number displayed.
“What did you get?” I answer.
“That number keeps bouncing between three towers in the city.”
“What does that mean?” I don’t know how bad this is.
“It means I can’t get a direct location, just a triangulation. It’s probably underground so when it drops out of one tower’s frequency, it will bounce to another.”
This doesn’t make sense. What is she doing?
“How come Apple can pinpoint iPhone’s exact locations, but you can’t with all your gadgets and skill?” I snap.
“The phone doesn’t have Wi-Fi turned on. Nothing I can do.”
My anger builds. “Just give me the triangulation then.”
Why the hell wouldn’t she have her Wi-Fi turned on? What the fuck is she doing? It’s driving me insane that I don’t know what she’s up to. What if something’s happened to her?
“It’s in the vicinity of Sussex Street. Between Liverpool and Druitt Street.”
I frown as I think about the location. “There’s a fair distance between those streets.”
“It’s all I’ve got.” He abruptly ends the call, in true Scott fashion.
If Reed has gotten to her, I will commit more than just murder. I will sell him off, piece by piece. There are plenty of people who will pay me good money to have their chance to get at the corrupt motherfucker.
Our deal has worn thin since he double-crossed me with Collins, so I’m in no mind to negotiate anymore with the asshole.
Grabbing my keys from the dining table, I race out the front door and down the hallway to the elevator. Stabbing my finger vigorously into the elevator’s call button isn’t enough to stem the fury bubbling inside me. My temper is getting the better of me today. No matter how much I try reminding myself that my feelings for Chelsea will only lead to a lifetime of running from watching eyes, I can’t help what’s happening. It’s beyond my control.
The wandering mind can be a cruel enemy when uncertainty lingers. The sinking feeling something that something bad has happened keeps edging its way in. By the time the elevator has reached the ground level, I’ve practically convinced myself that Jackson Reed has Chelsea in a room somewhere. I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to her. It’s my fault that my temper spiralled out of control and I left her like that. I should’ve ignored Michael Lawson’s bitch of a wife. She knew what she was doing, and I let it rule my anger. I wasn’t man enough to stop it. I was weak.
Making my way out of the front entrance to the apartment I rented across the road from Chelsea’s house, I catch sight of her getting out of a cab.
Thank fuck for that!
The looming images of her gagged and tied to a chair in a dark room dissolve from my mind. I step back into a darkened alcove next to her building entrance. She looks around the empty street and makes her way to her front door. Leaning back into the darkness, I watch her.
She’s still in the same clothes that she was in when I saw her last. Where have you been, honeybee?
When you invest so much time and effort into knowing everything about someone like I have with my honeybee, not knowing something now is like driving without lights at night.
Chelsea closes her door, and a light flicks on inside. She pulls down her blinds for once. Finally, she’s starting to take her privacy more seriously. She used to keep the blinds open. You never know who might be watching, honeybee.
Satisfied that Chelsea’s now home and safe for the night, I make my way back inside and head to Franco’s car parked in my basement car park. I need to find out why she was over that part of the city.
Was it for work or something else? I have the feeling she’s not going to give up on Reed, no matter what I threaten her with. Which means I’m going to have to deal with the parasite sooner than I had planned. This has been coming to him for a long time. When people like Jackson Reed try to run with the big boys, they always fuck up one way or another. I told the others that it was only matter of time before he made a deal that he couldn’t fulfil. Reed’s days on this earth were always going to be limited when he started playing both sides of the fiddle.
Driving through the city at this time on a Monday night is only asking for trouble. The only people out past midnight tonight are cops and crooks. With my curfew just being lifted this morning, the cops will be on the look out for me too. But at this point, I don’t care. I need to find out what Chelsea has been doing for the past five hours, so I take my chances and drive as casually as possible towards Sussex Street.
Sussex Street is a one-way street, so I start at Druitt Street and make my way along it, watching out for anything that might give me a clue as to what she was doing. The street is dark and empty. There’s nothing in particular that strikes me about this location. Crossing over two blocks, I slow when I make out the figure of a guy walking along the footpath. As I pass, I stare at him behind the concealment of my blackened windows. I recognise him from somewhere. Looking along the buildings for an idea as to where he came from, I note that nothing looks significant. Roller doors to loading docks, closed entrances to office buildings and vacant shopfronts—there’s nothing along here that provides an answer.