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She put her head down and said nothing more. Because it wasn’t bloody fate. It was him.
When the tiramisu was ready to go into the fridge to set, he rose to his feet, looking down at the recipe. “Three hours.” He glanced at the kitchen clock hanging near the door. “That gives us some time, Gabriella Farnsworth. Let’s go into the lounge.”
“Let me just get the cocoa to sift on top, and pop it in the fridge.” She didn’t care that her voice sounded strained. She was terrified.
He looked at the picture, gave a nod.
She walked to the pantry. She had put the cocoa right at the back. She expected him to come and watch her, and she was not disappointed.
“I can’t get it.” She pointed to the tin of cocoa that was clearly out of her reach. “Can I get a step?”
He reached up to get it, and when he had his arm extended, and was up on his toes, she pulled out the jar of cinnamon she’d unscrewed earlier, and threw it in his face.
He breathed it in and began to cough and choke, and he swiped at his eyes with one hand, waved the knife at her with the other.
She shoved him, hard, out of the pantry, and felt a hot slice of pain when the knife he was slashing with caught her forearm.
She grabbed the key out of the lock, jumped back in the pantry, and slammed the door, locking it and pulling out the key. She backed away from the door as she heard the sink tap running as he washed cinnamon out of his eyes.
He was still coughing and wheezing, and the water carried on running for a while.
Then there was a clunk of pipes and the taps were switched off.
“I am very angry about this.” The words were soft as they came through the door. “You won’t like the consequences.”
She didn’t say anything. She wouldn’t have liked it, whatever had happened to her. If she’d simply obeyed him and gone into the lounge, she very much doubted she’d have liked that, either.
“You can’t stay in there forever,” he said. “And I can find a way in.”
She could stay here forever, she decided. She’d rather die in here than outside by his hand. And hopefully, somehow, James Archer would work out where she was.
It wasn’t impossible.
And right now, not impossible was enough.
chapterforty
“It was a Bentley,”PC Peters said. “A black Bentley. I got some of the registration.” He wrote it down on his notepad and ripped the page out, handing it to Hartridge.
James glanced at him, and the bobby shrunk a little.
“There was a lot going on, sir. I was trying to get to Miss Farnsworth.”
James gave a terse nod. Blaming Peters for not getting the full registration wasn’t going to help anyone.
“When did she leave the house?” Hartridge asked.
“I don’t know. It seems she wasn’t there when I arrived. She was walking home with her shopping bags when he took her.”
“And he took her right in front of you.” James was still working through that piece of information. “And you think it was deliberate?”
“I was quite obviously standing there,” Peters said. “If he wanted to keep her disappearance quiet, he could have taken her just around the corner and I would have carried on thinking she was safely tucked up at home.”
James had thought back to what he’d said to Gabriella that evening when he’d dropped her off more than once.
He’d thought she was staying in today, but he realized now there had been no discussion about it. He had wanted to stay the night with her, and not in a professional way, and maybe that had clouded his judgement.
He felt sick about it.