Page 80

Now when she paused, Flynn couldn’t even find words.
“You’rewhere?” he muttered.
“It’s the stupidest thing, but I sneaked onto their boat looking for clues, and they came back. I hid in the wardrobe and now I’m stuck here and I’m certain Vic is a murderer so I’d really rather he didn’t catch me and I’m sorry for avoiding you but it doesn’t matter what happened between us, I need you to find me. I sent you my locat––” Her voice cut out and Flynn looked down at his phone to find the call had been lost.
Instinct had him calling her back, but it wouldn’t connect.
He swore again as he strode back into the sergeant’s office.
“I spoke to the harbourmaster,” Sergeant Proctor said, ending his own phone call. “The boat already left. Five minutes ago, apparently. And we don’t know which way they were heading.”
“Lily has them,” Flynn said in a panic.
“What?” PC Hill said incredulously.
“Or they have Lily,” he said as a jolt of fear shot up his spine. “She’s on their boat and she thinks Vic killed Joseph.”
“Bloody hell.” The sergeant rose quickly from his chair. “Where’s the boat?”
“I have her last known location, but she just lost her phone signal.” With his finger scrolling through his contact list, he moved towards the door. “We need a boat,” he said, glancing up at his colleagues.
“Who are you calling?” the sergeant asked.
“Kit Treneary. Can you call the coastguard? And anyone else you know with a boat.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
“No, no, no!”Frantically, Lily whacked the side of her phone, as though that might make the signal magically come back.
Since she hadn’t left room for Flynn to get much of a word in, she wasn’t even sure when she’d been disconnected. Had he understood her predicament? The police on Scilly didn’t even have a boat, which seemed more ridiculous now than it ever had. How could you police an archipelago without a boat, for goodness’ sake?
How was he going to reach her without a boat? Her breathing was uneven and panic elevated her heart rate.
Flynn would come, she told herself. Of course he would. She just needed to sit tight until he turned up.
Noises in the room had her peering through the crack again.
Keith deposited a bunch of clothes onto the bed.
“Not there!” Joyce hissed. “We can hang them straight in the wardrobe.”
Lily pulled her chin to her chest, swearing to herself wildly. In an awkward shuffle, she scrabbled to the far side of the wardrobe, curling herself as small as possible. “We’ll bring the chair from our room as well,” Joyce said as the wardrobe doorslid open and light flooded in. “It’s handy to have a chair even if it takes up space…”
Lily glanced up, holding her breath while she waited to be discovered.
“Bring the bedding over as well.” Joyce craned her neck to look behind her while she deposited the clothes onto the rack and slid them in Lily’s direction. “We should make up the bed first.”
As Joyce moved away from the wardrobe, Lily let out a quiet, controlled breath. When the coast was clear, she pulled the clothes closer to hide herself, and pushed the door so it wasn’t so wide open.
While Joyce and Keith came and went from the room, Lily focussed on her breathing while checking her phone often, hoping the signal might return.
Fifteen minutes passed with Lily constantly panicking that she was about to be discovered. After that, Joyce and Keith must have decided they’d done enough moving. With no sounds from them, she suspected they’d gone up on deck.
Even if Flynn had received her location, he’d have lost it as soon as her phone cut out.
And if he was coming after them, shouldn’t he have been there by now? They hadn’t long left the harbour when she’d called him.
Turning her head, she rested her cheek on her knees and sighed heavily. How long until they docked somewhere? Could she manage to stay hidden until they reached land? And what would she do then, with no money, no identification, nothing.