Page 17 of The Ring Thief
“Everything’s fine. I was just wondering if you knew when mywife left.”
There’s a weighty silence, and I can almost sense his judgment through the phone line as he considers why I might be asking a night-shift attendant about my wife’s whereabouts at three in the fucking morning.
Just when I’m about to lose the tentative hold on my patience, he responds, his tone formal, “I’m sorry, Mr. Masters. She must have left before I started my shift at eight.”
“Of course,” I murmur, my heart thumping a staccato beat in my chest. Where is she?
“Should I call?—”
“No!” I say a little too sharply. I moderate my tone, saying more levelly, “She was having dinner with her father, so I guess she must’ve stayed the night and forgot to tell me. Thank you for your help.”
The excuse is as flimsy as paper on water, but I disconnect the call before he can say anything else.
I stare down at my screen, strategizing my next move. If I call her father and she’s not with him, it’ll send him into a panic and make him ask questions I don’t have answers to. Instead, I decide to call the one person who always seems to have a bead on Lily, and probably spends more time with her than I do.
It rings several times and just when I think she won’t answer, a groggy voice fills my ear, thick with sleep. “Hello?”
“Sasha,” I greet roughly. “It’s Declan.”
“Declan,” she repeats, still sounding half-asleep. “Why are you calling me at…?” There’s a rustle, and then an aggravated sigh. “For fuck’s sake, I have to be up in two hours. I’m never gonna get back to sleep now.” The last words are mumbled, as if they weren’t meant for me.
“Sorry,” I mutter guiltily, but then demand, “Where’s Lily?”
There’s an angry scoff, but I bluster on before she can jump down my throat. “Look, I’ve just got back to the condo and the place is empty. There’s no note, no message, no call to tell me where she is or when she’ll be back. I know she had dinner with Grant, but I don’t want to worry him unnecessarily if she’s with you.”
I’m trying to stay calm, because Sasha is overprotective as hell of her friend and she’s got the nose of a bloodhound, able to scent when shithas gone awry from a mile away. Not sure why I’m worried, because waking her up in the middle of the night has definitely already tipped her off.
“Did you call her?” There’s an edge to her voice, but she’s probably just still annoyed I woke her up.
“Of course I called her,” I snap. “She isn’t picking up.”
“Probably because she’s asleep like a normal person,” she grouches back.
I ignore that. “It doesn’t look like she was here at all, except for the fact someone had to let the movers in. There’s shit everywhere, and brok—” I cut myself off, scrubbing my free hand through my hair. “Fuck. I’m worried about her. It’s not like Lily to just disappear on me.”
Her face flashes behind my lids, pale and lined with exhaustion. Her large blue eyes had been like two enormous bruises on her face. I’d known something was wrong, and I’d ignored it. I’d been too worried about my fucking father and all the shit he was trying to pull behind my back.
A sinking feeling fills me, and I swallow thickly.
There’s another rustle through the line. “Are you telling me,” she starts, “that you haven’t spoken to your wife since you got back from your honeymoon? The same honeymoon that you cut short after just three days?” I don’t answer, but she’s not finished, anyway. Her voice lowers until she’s almost hissing at me. “So, you had no free time, not even a single minute during your work emergency—” I can hear the fucking quotation marks, “—to check in with Lily? And now you’ve… what?” she laughs harshly. “You’ve walked in to find your bed isn’t perfectly made and waiting like she promised, and you’ve finally figured out you should be worried about where she might be?”
My spine goes ramrod straight as I break down every word, every syllable and nuance of her little speech, and I come to one brain-rattling question. “How’d you know about the bed?”
“What?” She sounds genuinely confused, but I don’t know her well enough to say for sure.
“You said I’d walked in and found my bed unmade,” I repeat, blinking furiously as I look over at the bed in question. “How wouldyou know that?” She inhales deeply and then slowly lets it out, the sound joining the whoosh of my heartbeat in my ear.
“I know that,” she says slowly, like she thinks I’m deaf, dumb, and worse. I clench the phone, teeth grinding as I fight back my temper. “Because before your wife went to her bed, I was with her. Something you might have known if you actually gave a shit about her,sweetheart.”
That startles me, especially when she makes the endearment sound exactly like ‘asshole’.
“I do care—” My protests go unheard because she’s already hung up.
My hand drops and I stare down at my phone, feeling blindsided. I’m fucking exhausted, and I don’t have the processing power to understand what this all means. All I want to do is crawl into bed with Lily, but she’s not here and…
I think something’s seriously fucking wrong.
I look up, weary eyes taking in the mess, knowing I can’t sleep here tonight. A hollow laugh escapes me, loud in the condo’s silence, grim and humorless.
