Wait. Max hadn’t seen Jett either?
No one had seen Jett since he’d been at the gym with Grey that morning. Pacing behind the bushes outside Grey’s cottage, Nella had even interrupted Daisy’s conference in Perth to ask her if she’d heard from him. She said he’d called around dawn asking if she was home(what the fuck, what the fuck),but obviously she wasn’t and had been asleep in her Perth hotel.
‘He hung up and then when I tried to call him back there was no answer,’ she said.
‘Did he mention what he was doing or why he ... needed you?’
‘He sounded out of breath,’ Daisy said. ‘As soon as he realised I wasn’t home he just dropped out. I gotta go, Nella – sorry, the 5 p.m. speaker’s about to start.’
So Daisy had been the last person to talk to Jett, almost twelve hours ago.
When Max told Nella to leave, she didn’t need telling twice; she was already halfway out the door with a new fear settling firmly in her stomach.
‘I need you,’ she whispered uselessly into the phone as it went to voicemail again. ‘I need you, please pick up.’
No. Stop.She always did this, when it got too much, when she was broken – she needed him to rescue her. And where had that got them? He thought she was so far out of his reach because she’d treated him like a servant who’d respond to her every beck and call, while she thought he was above her in a different way. Both of them were lying to each other, to themselves, trying to obscure the truth. She didn’t know half the things she wanted to know about him. Fifteen years and she’d barely scratched the surface. But he was the only one who’d ever really known her, really seen her. She’d realised that far too late.
She couldn’t even answer the simple question now: where could he have gone?
‘Nel?’ Grey’s voice made her jump, which was stupid because she was sitting cross-legged in the bushes outsidehiscottage – she should have been the one makinghimjump.
‘Sorry.’ He shifted his weight. ‘I couldn’t say everything I wanted to. I—’
‘Don’t.’ She held up a hand. ‘Max is right.’
‘She’s upset.’
‘But she’s right.’
He regarded her with an expression she couldn’t decipher.
‘You really haven’t seen him since this morning?’ Nella asked, unable to hide the waver in her voice.
‘I wouldn’t worry ...’ Grey’s voice trailed off.
‘What?What,Greyson?’
‘Shit.’ He rubbed a hand through his short hair. ‘With Tom and the fires, I got so distracted, I forgot ...’
‘Forgot what?’
‘Jett called me, from the car park, right after I left. He wanted me to check something ...’
‘Yes?’ Why did it seem like Grey was being deliberately, infuriatingly coy?
‘He didn’t want me to tell you, which is probably why it didn’t spring straight to my mind ...’
‘Greyson, I know you’re angry at me, I know I fucked up, but if this is the torture you’ve chosen to inflict, I—’
He touched her arm. ‘He asked me to look up when Sally Sue got parole.’
Her chest tightened. ‘Sally Sue? My old stalker?’ Her voice was higher than it should have been. ‘But she’s still in prison.’
Now it was Grey’s turn to hang his head in shame.
‘Greyson. Isn’t she still in prison?’
‘We agreed it was best not to tell you. Tom ... Tom gave the order.’
