Pitch Black (Romantic Thriller, Completed)

Chapter 30

The day after the attempted ransom drop, I got up at five, but not out of choice. A mistaken assumption that I'd sleep better in my own bed led to me running through the house in the early hours, only waking when I fell over a coffee table in the lounge.

I sat on the floor breathing hard, and the pain across my shins told me I'd have a lovely bruise later. Why did this have to happen? I hadn't suffered from such an awful sleepwalking episode for months. Since before I met Luke, in fact. I swore under my breath then froze as I heard a noise behind me. Strong hands reached under my armpits and pulled me to my feet. Nick. I recognised the aftershave and his own earthy smell under it.

He spun me around to face him. "Fucking hell. Are the nightmares getting worse?"

"They were bad after the funeral, but then they got better. I went two weeks without one before Tia disappeared."

"What did you dream of this time? I could hardly keep up. You've done a couple of laps of each floor and been up and down all four staircases."

"The kidnapper. I was chasing the kidnapper, but no matter how fast I ran, I couldn't catch him. Then I fell and woke up."

"It'll be a nightmare for everyone if those demons are back."

"I know that, Nick. Believe me, I know it."

Even in my sleep, I couldn't do right.

His face softened. "Come on, let's go back to bed."

"What's the point? I won't sleep. I might as well head into the office and do something useful."

"Are you sure you're ready for that?" His voice held more than a hint of concern. That was Nick all over. He rarely bore a grudge for long.

"I've got to go sometime, haven't I? Why not today? Everyone'll be whispering behind my back, anyway, so they might as well do it to my face."

<$img:Spacer>

The weather forecast predicted a crisp, clear day, so I whipped the cover off the Aston Martin. I'd barely driven the thing since I bought it, and I needed to lift my spirits. Metallic black with a black leather interior, it had a paddle shift gearbox and a top speed of 205 mph. Not that I'd ever drive so fast. At least, not in London. Too many traffic lights.

The journey left me smiling—I had to take pleasure in the small things nowadays—and when I walked into the large, modern building hidden away on a backstreet in Kings Cross, I found one of the conference rooms had already been commandeered as a base for the investigation. Nye and a few others had spent the night there, and what little information we'd gathered was projected onto the wall in an electronic index card system. That didn't stop Nye from having a pile of paper on his desk, though. He loved to print everything.

Despite the team's efforts, the only concrete lead was the van, and that didn't look hopeful. Mack might have snuck into the police database overnight and found the plates were stolen. They'd been taken almost four months ago from a silver Mercedes Sprinter van parked in South London.

Despite the multitude of automatic number plate recognition cameras dotted around the city, the registration number hadn't been spotted since. Either the kidnapper only put the plates on his van recently, or he'd been driving it outside London. Or maybe the bastard had just been plain lucky.

If it was the latter, I intended to make that luck run out.

"I've sent a pair of guys to the owner's address in case the theft report wasn't genuine," Nye said.

"I saw a Ford in the woods, not a Mercedes."

Nye leaned back in his seat. "I wanted to cover all bases, and we haven't found any other leads."