CHAPTER HUNDRED AND FIFTY-THREE

BRIAN POV

Three days and three long nights.

 I’ve been calling every agency I can think of through my lunch breaks and driving around the streets looking for her every night, despite knowing full well that she’s probably long gone. I wonder how she celebrated becoming an official adult. I wonder if she celebrated at all.

 I found myself at Amie and Nick’s front door last night, just to check in person that they hadn’t heard anything. Their eyes said it all. They told me she’s a lost cause and it’s sad I haven’t accepted that yet. But I haven’t.

      I can’t.

 We’ve never had  Moona Avii's mobile number on her case file, simply because she refused to give it to anyone, me included. It was Amie’s parting gift to me, followed up with the assurance that there’s no way the madam will answer, but it still felt like I’d been handed the Holy Grail as I left their doorstep and headed back to my car. 

I pulled over before I was even back in Lydney, my heart thumping as I keyed her number into my mobile.

  Amie was right, of course. The call rang straight to voicemail.

  They’ve gone straight to voicemail ever since.

      When the office is quiet and my meetings are done for the day, I sit back in my chair and stare at my handset. 

Nothing from Moona, and only a string of unanswered texts from Cain in Berlin. I haven’t replied because I daren’t. I can’t lie, and the moment I tell him Moona has taken off somewhere and I’m on a one-man mission to locate her and solve her housing crisis, he’ll either have me committed or fly back home to scream some sense into me.

 If Moona would just pick up her pissing messages and think to let me know she was safe, life would be a whole lot easier. I’ve left several voicemails – all of them perfectly professional requests that she please let me know she’s still breathing. All of them guarded and work-focused – mentioning my calls with the housing agencies and how I’d appreciate her contacting me to push things forward.

Maybe I should try a more personal approach, but that would be more than my job would be worth should it ever reach the ears of my superiors.

 So I don’t call again. I drive instead. My usual route, which up until now has proved utterly pointless. Another evening of fruitless searching. Picnic areas and back alleys and meandering lanes through the middle of nowhere, all for nothing.

 I’m on autopilot as I drive back from Gloucester, contemplating whether I really do need to put this search to bed and move on. I’m thinking I should fill Cain in on what’s been happening and hope that his common sense manages to hammer its way through my thick skull.

I’ve all but decided this needs to be my final night scouring the streets for an adult woman who clearly doesn’t want to be found, when I notice a figure walking along the hedgerows by Forest Oak Farm. I slow down, but only a little, well aware that it’s probably just some random out walking their dog after dark, but my heart is in my throat when I see the backpack swinging heavily from the woman’s shoulder. It’s a she, it’s definitely a she, and she’s limping. 

I close the distance and a pale face turns to me, illuminated by my headlights for long enough that I recognise the glowering stare. Her long black hair is whipping in the evening wind, her mouth

angry and tight as she glares at the stupid idiot with his lights on full beam.

I slam on the brakes in a heartbeat, and the car skids to a halt just past her.

 She must recognise the car, that’s the only explanation for why she waves her arms and tries to run for me. I’m already out and rushing in her direction when she limps onto the tarmac.

Her backpack crashes from her shoulder and she’s about to crash down with it as I grab hold of her and keep her steady. 

She weighs nothing in my arms. My poor lost Moona is nothing but a limp little bird with hollow bones. I’m holding her so tight I’m worried I’ll crush her, but she holds me right back and lets me support her without squirming. 

Her eyes are sunken and tired, even in the moonlight, and her lip is split and dried with crusty blood, but despite any of that she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

“I’ve got you,” I tell her as she digs her fingers into my arms. “Are you hurt?”

“Sprained my fucking ankle this afternoon.”

 She struggles in my grip, trying to hitch her backpack back up, but I hold her firm. “You’ve been bleeding,” I tell her, nodding to her lip as she stares right up at me.

      “I’ll live.”

      “I left you messages.”

     

“Got no battery, no minutes left, either.”

I pick up her backpack and sling it over my shoulder, being careful not to let her go for even a second. I take a step towards the car but she digs her heels in, even though it makes her grimace.

 “I’m not fucking going back there!” she hisses. “I’m eighteen now, I don’t fucking have to. They don’t fucking want me there anyway!”

      I stop. Think. And she’s right. Of course she is.

      There’s no room waiting for her now at Nick and Amie’s. There’s no room waiting for her anywhere, not this time of night.

      “So where were you going if not to Nick and Amie’s?” I ask. “Why were you heading this way?”

      She looks away from me, staring into the shadows of the hedgerow so intently I think she must have spotted something. I look to my right but there’s nothing there.

  “I was coming to you,” she whispers, and my pulse races.

      “To me?”

 She nods. “Had nowhere else to go, did I?” She still won’t look at me. “I mean, I know you wouldn’t want me around either and all that, it’s just… I needed somewhere to get warm…”

 “And you were coming to me? To my place?”

      She sighs. “You don’t have to make me feel like a total fucking dick.”

      But I’m not. I never would.

      “I’m glad you thought you could come to me,” I say, and her pretty mouth curls into a snide smile.

      “Like I said, I had no other asshole I could call on.”

  Even exhausted and limping with a cut lip and nowhere to go, the girl has to be a brash little shit. Maybe I’d be taken in by her bravado if I couldn’t feel the way her fingers are grasping my arms for dear life.

 I’d be a fool to believe this could mean anything. I’d be a fool to believe these feelings I have for her could be real, and even if they were, that they could ever amount to anything. But my mouth is dry and my breath is short and my heart is thumping so hard I can feel it in my temples.

  “So, what’s it gonna be, Brian?” she asks. “You gonna take me to yours, or do I have to keep on limping down this road all fucking night?”

      I hoist her back onto her own two feet and she winces at the pain.

     

“I can’t take you to mine,” I tell her. 

“My co worker lives on the ground floor. You’re not officially in my books anymore, Moona, I shouldn’t be…”

 “Aww, you don’t want co worker to think we’re fucking? Is she your girlfriend or something?”

 I sigh. “She’s my colleague.” I helped her along the road to the car. “A wrong impression could cost me my job, Moona. I have kids to take care of, kids who need my help, just like you.”

 She stiffens in my arms. “I’m not a fucking kid.”

      She steadies herself against the car as I drop her backpack onto the back seat and open the passenger door for her. She sucks in breath as I help her inside.

      She’s staring straight through the windscreen as I get behind the wheel.

      “If I can’t stay with you, I gotta keep running,” she says. “I have to get out of here.”

      “Running from who?” I ask, but she doesn’t answer.

 “Moona, where the hell have you been? People have been worried sick about you.” I set off on the empty road, shooting her sideways looks just to make sure I’m not dreaming all this.

“Nobody’s worried sick about me.”

      “You think I’m driving these roads in the middle of the night for my health?”

      She shrugs and it makes me sigh again.

 “I’m driving these roads for you, Moona. To look for you. I’ve been out here for days.”

      Her eyes burn in the darkness. “You have?”

      “Yes, I have.”

      “You’ve really been looking for me?”

      “Every spare fucking minute.”

She laughs… that vivacious cackle of hers. It zips up my spine, even though it’s more muted than usual. “Guess you weren’t looking fucking hard enough then, were you?”