Page 60 of Ticket Out

“Do you think Fred meant it? That he was out of this?” she asked.

“Fred?” He tried to work out if he knew who Fred was, or if the blow to his head had made him forget.

“The driver. I didn’t catch the other man’s name, but the driver was Fred.”

“I don’t know if he meant it, but we aren’t tied up, and they’ve definitely gone.” The best he could hope for was that they wouldn’t be coming back, and he and Gabriella could somehow free themselves, or be able to attract enough attention that someone would let them out while the two men took their chance to disappear.

The worst case was that they had passed on his and Gabriella’s whereabouts to their boss, and Mr. Big was coming to deal with them himself.

“I wish they’d dropped us at a hospital,” Gabriella said. “You’ve got a serious concussion.”

“It’s not too bad.” He played rugby, had had concussion before, and he knew this was bad, but he didn’t like the worry in her voice.

She gave him a sidelong look, then moved around a bit, trying to get comfortable. “I guess we’ll have to wait for morning to see better, and hopefully someone will be about.”

“Where were you going tonight?” James asked. “Before all this nonsense? Will you be missed?”

“I was going to visit Mr. Rodney in hospital. I told Jerome, my neighbor, I was going, but he’s working late. No one will be expecting me.”

“But you work Saturdays, don’t you?”

She gave a sigh. “Yes. I work until midday on Saturdays. Mr. Greenberg will miss me. And I was supposed to go shopping with a friend in the afternoon.” She turned her head to look at him. “What about you?”

“Hartridge is expecting to meet me at the Yard tomorrow at ten.” They were going to try to track Devenish down again. He had still not got in touch, and James was losing patience with him. He wondered what Hartridge would do when he failed to turn up.

“Nothing we can do about it,” Gabriella said, shifting a little. Her skirt rode up higher on her thigh, and despite his pounding head, he noticed.

He closed his eyes and slid down on the canvases. “We’ll find a way out. Maybe even before we’re missed.”

“Maybe.” She sounded tired. “You don’t have family in London?”

“No. I’m from Cardiff.” And he was very bad at calling his parents. His colleagues would miss him long before his family realized something was wrong.

“Why did you move to London?” she asked, as the warmth of her shoulder against his, the scent of her, wound around him.

He cleared his throat. “Always wanted to join the Met.” He didn’t say that hadn’t gone as he thought it would. He would need to know her a lot better before he admitted to that. “So what brought you all the way to London?”

She hesitated, and that was so surprising, he opened his eyes and half lifted up to look at her.

She was staring up at the stars, hands behind her head. “I came to see if I could find what happened to my father,” she said.

It was such an unexpected comment, he was silent for a moment. “You don’t know?” he asked carefully.

“He left my mother and me after the war, when I was six, to come back to England to deal with his deceased father’s estate. Or that’s what he told my mother. And she never saw or heard from him again after he got on the ship that brought him here.”

“She obviously tried to find out what happened?” Of course she would have.

“Yes.” She sounded tired. “She contacted the British embassy in Canberra, asking for help. She contacted the shipping company. She contacted your lot—New Scotland Yard.” Gabriella lifted her shoulders. “Everyone said the same thing. There was no record of him, and he was an adult and was allowed to disappear if he wanted to.”

“So when you were old enough, you decided to take matters into your own hands?” James asked.

“I’ve always wondered, sure.” She lowered her hands, tucking them under her armpits. “But I also thought if he didn’t want to get back in touch with us, I wouldn’t waste my time looking for him.”

“So what changed?”

“My mother met someone maybe three years ago. Gino. He’s great. He loves her. She loves him. She deserves some happiness. But the priest won’t declare my father dead, even though we haven’t heard a word from him in sixteen years, so they can’t marry. And it’s killing them.”

He considered the hell of that limbo. “They won’t just move in together?”

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