Her Silence

Chapter Twenty Eight

"Never apologise for trusting your intuition – your brain can play tricks, your heart can blind, but your gut is always right." Rachel Wolkin

James's POV

I can't eat any of my food. Rosie is looking at me blankly from the other side of the table whilst Amy is talking ten to the dozen in her ear, her partner sitting next to me, who is quite frankly a bore, and I can't envisage them being together for long. I don't know Amy too well, but this man has the personality of a wooden spoon and Amy's mind surely works at one hundred miles an hour. He wouldn't be able to keep up. But that isn't my concern: I'm thinking. How can I have missed so much? How did this all begin with money going missing, Rosie having a panic attack, and her psychotic Mother showing up? I've missed something, I know I have. Her Mother has disappeared off the face of the earth, and now her boss-turned-father-figure is acting sketchy. I can't piece any of it together. Though I'm sure that Jacob hasn't physically carried out any of the things that link him to this mess, there's a high possibility that he has been coordinating parts of it. But what for? The fact I have nothing on this guy except suspicion, partially confirmed by Amy, has annoyed me like never before. Not once in my whole career have I ever been behind the criminal. Or, rather, criminals. I saw Rosie looking around at everyone before we sat for the meal, and I know that she too believes there are more people involved in whatever the hell is going on than she first thought. More than we'd both like to admit.

            "... don't you think James?" What?

            "What?" I snap, and then clear my throat. "Sorry Amy, you caught me lost in thought. What were you saying?" I come back to earth and notice that Rosie is looking pinker than a piglet opposite me.

            "I said," Amy huffs, "that Rosie looks gorgeous tonight. Doesn't she?" I smile loosely. What a stupid question.

            "You bet she does," I say, looking at Rosie. I reach over and grab her hand. "There isn't a day that she doesn't." I go on, winking at her, feeling a strong sense of pride as her face turns crimson.

            "Why can't you love me like that Matt?" Ah, so he has a name. 'Matt' seemingly chokes on air, and I see Rosie cover her mouth in attempt to hide her laugh.

            "Well... well, Amy, we have only been seeing each other for two months. You're not even my girlfriend." Ouch. "Yet." He is holding the spade that just keeps on digging. Amy stands up abruptly and leaves the table, and Rosie goes to follow, but I tug on her hand. She looks at me with a furrowed brow, and I know she just wants to comfort Amy. Perhaps to tell her that Matt isn't 'the one'. "She's insufferable man." He murmurs, once they are both out of ear shot. I look at him sharply.

            "She has a good heart." I snap back. "I think you should leave; she isn't going to talk to you for a good while now, trust me." He nods, and gets up, quietly retreating from the table and towards the door. I turn back to my food and pick at it with my fork, although I have no intention of eating it. Trying to put together what Amy could have been hinting at earlier is doing me no good, she spoke in total riddles, so I take a napkin and decide that writing it down would be a better idea rather than trying to deal with a whirlpool of ideas in my head. I know that Rosie will have a pen in her bag, so I move round to where she was sitting. As I go through her bag, I hear a chime, and see Amy's phone light up on the table. I look around to see if the girls are in sight, or on their way back from the toilet perhaps. I know that's where most girls go when a crisis hits, but they don't seem to be anywhere close. It's odd, one may think, that someone would just leave their phone out in the open. Unless... No. It couldn't be. I stand up slowly and subtly glance over to sneak a look at the phone screen. An unsaved number.

            I think he bought it. I'll be outside. 

Shit. I look up and see that Matt, which probably isn't even his real name, hasn't left at all and is still very much in Tidy. Next to Jacob. Staring at the double doors headed to the kitchen. Oh, surely not. I run my hand through my hair and pull at it. I sit down. Jesus Christ, you can't trust anyone. How could I have been so stupid? I immediately ring Rosie. I can't just insert myself into a potential situation that might not even be happening and draw unwanted attention to myself. Rosie's phone goes straight to voicemail. Fuck it, my gut is telling me to abort all codes of conduct. I stand up and barge through the tables of seated people, sending an alert to the station. The closer I get to the doors, the more clearly I can see smoke carefully tumbling through the gaps, so innocently that the people in the bar probably won't notice it for another two minutes, at least. I have two minutes to save Rosie.

*****

It's about to go down, the build-up has been brewing, now it's time to figure out why.

I won't say much more, except that you should definitely keep reading to see what happens to Rosie, James, Tidy, and all the rest of it...

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