Page 1 of Consume Me

Chapter 1

ALEXANDER

No one had slept.There wasn’t a chance in hell any of us would. Not tonight. Not until we found her. My inner circle had widened considerably in the last few months, but that wasn’t what felt off now. There was a time when only Norris and Brex would have been with me during a crisis. Tonight, neither of them were here. In their place were questions I couldn’t answer. I trusted my new allies, but that didn’t make the others’ absence easier to bear—especially since one of them was the last person seen with Clara.

“Again,” I repeated, growing tired of my own question. There had to be something we were missing, some clue as to what happened in the time between the heart attack and my discovery of Clara’s absence.

Sarah swallowed, looking around the room for a saviour, but no one spoke up. She’d changed into a loose pair of pants and a sweater that didn’t match. Her dark hair was still curled elegantly from the evening’s party and her make-up was tear-stained. “Norris and Clara took me outside. Norris called a car. It drove around and Norris helped me inside. The driver left a minute or two later without them and brought me here.” She hesitated, her teeth sinking into her lower lip as her eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry, Alex. I thought they were staying behind or…I didn’t really think. I was…was…”

“It’s okay,” Edward said wearily as he tried to scrounge up sympathy. I heard the frustration running like a current in his voice. He hadn’t bothered to change. There’d been no time between leaving the hospital and getting my call to come here immediately. He’d lost his tuxedo jacket and tie somewhere along the way. His husband was still fully dressed next to him, looking shell-shocked. “You were upset. No one blames you.”

But I did blame her, which was why I didn’t speak now. How could she not have noticed what happened to them? Why had Norris put her in the car first? None of it made any sense. The pieces didn’t fit together to form a clear picture—the pieces didn’t match at all. “Why didn’t you ask the driver where they were?”

“I didn’t think!” She hung her head, the tears spilling down her cheeks as she cried silently. “I just assumed they were coming in a different car, or they went back in, or…”

Across from her, Belle forced a sympathetic smile. My wife’s best friend hadn’t spoken a word since she’d arrived with her husband an hour ago. But where Belle appeared numb and half present, Smith listened to every word. I could almost see him filing them away for later analysis.

But what would he discover that I didn’t already know? Sarah had told us what she remembered, and it took effort to bite back more accusatory questions. Her story hadn’t changed once since I’d woken her up a few hours ago. She’d been fast asleep on a couch in the Belgium Suite, still in her dress from the night’s ruined party. The relief I’d felt when I’d found her was short-lived. She was alone, and her explanation of how she’d gotten home didn’t make sense. Not because she wasn’t being clear. I believed that she was self-absorbed enough to not care that she’d left the others behind. What didn’t make sense was the breach in protocol.

What didn’t make sense, quite simply, was Norris.

He wouldn’t have sent Sarah home with a driver when I asked him to take her home. He wouldn’t have put my wife in a different car. But the things that he wouldn’t do—the things that had already been done—paled in comparison when I considered the things he would do.

He would protect my wife as if she were his own.

He would see her safely home if I asked him.

He would answer his phone.

I couldn’t bring myself to consider why he hadn’t done any of these things or why, even now, hours later, I couldn’t reach him. Perhaps, because I couldn’t face the only explanation that fit with what I knew of my best friend and most trusted advisor.

There was only one thing that would have prevented him from doing so, and it was a possibility I couldn’t bring myself to consider, especially while Clara was missing.

A figure appeared in the doorway and I glanced up to find Georgia surveying the scene with careful eyes. With Norris unaccounted for and Brex gone, she’d stepped into the role one of them normally occupied without batting an eyelash. I would be grateful if I wasn’t angry at her, too.

“The sweep is complete,” she said with the air of someone tiptoeing through landmines. There was a split second of hesitation before she told me what I already knew. “Neither Norris or Clara are on the grounds. We reviewed the security footage and they never came through the gates. We’re trying to locate the driver that brought Sarah home.”

I heard the unspoken but that should have accompanied that sentence.

“But we won’t,” I said when she didn’t. “Was he on the footage?”

“I’ve called in some favors with MI-5. He was careful with how he drove.” The statement was simple enough, but it was laced with meaning. She seemed to understand—as I did—the delicate situation we’d found ourselves in. Without more information, we might make the others panic if we dissected this revelation in front of them. Then there was the other consideration.

We trusted all the people in this room. That didn’t mean we should.

“I don’t understand,” Edward burst out. “Where would she be? Where’s Norris? Do you think she left? I know that you two talked about that.”

My heart flatlined at his words, surprised that she’d shared that with him. Mostly because after the fight in which I’d asked her to move out—to protect herself and the children from me—she’d refused to even consider it. “She told you that?”

“She tells me a lot of things,” he said softly. “She told me she wouldn’t go.” His voice broke on the words, the truth catching in his throat.

At this moment, we all wished it was as simple as her leaving me. We all wished she had because we knew one thing with certainty: Clara wouldn’t go.

As each minute passed without word from her or Norris, it became increasingly clear that there would be no innocent explanation for what was happening. We weren’t going to discover that she’d asked to go for a drive or had retreated to the country or gotten in an accident. Each moment not knowing erased one more possibility and took us closer to the nightmare I couldn’t bring myself to face.

“Is there tracking at all?” Smith said stiffly, glancing between Georgia and me.

“It wasn’t our car that brought Sarah here,” I said. “We have to assume…” I couldn’t bring myself to say it. I couldn’t bring myself to admit what my brain knew but my heart couldn’t accept.