Page 52 of Gone in the Night (Detective Morgan Brookes #16)

FIFTY-TWO

Ben ended the call, the all-too-familiar feeling of panic rising in his chest that made it hard to breathe properly. He flew out of his office not quite sure where he was going, but he startled Stan who jumped off the seat of his chair.

‘Have you heard from Morgan?’

Stan shook his head. Ben was dialling her number, but it went to voicemail. He ran to Marc’s office. ‘Morgan is missing.’

‘What, how?’

‘I don’t know. She sent a message saying she had to go see Amy because she wasn’t doing very well, but I’ve just spoken to Cain.

Amy is fine, had a baby girl, and Morgan has never been to the hospital, nobody messaged her to go there.

I need to speak to Marie now because the last I knew she was in that garage searching. ’

He ran out of the office, and Marc picked up the phone.

‘Ma’am, we have a situation. Detective Brookes is missing.

Yes, you heard right, Morgan hasn’t been seen or heard from for two hours.

Last sighting of her was at Stefan Montgomery’s house.

No, I don’t know if she left there. I’m assuming she did because the search team came back without her or without mentioning that she was still there. Thank you.’

Marc hung up and ran after Ben who was already in the custody suite. A detention officer was opening the door of cell nine, where Marie was sitting on a blue plastic mattress in a grey sweatshirt and grey joggers.

She stared up at Ben, her eyes glassy.

‘Where is Morgan?’

‘Who?’

‘You know who.’

Marie shook her head, then a small smile crept across her lips. ‘You’re missing a detective? That’s pretty careless. Where did you lose her?’

Ben rushed in and crouched down in front of her. ‘In the garage, she was in the garage last. What did you do?’

‘I didn’t do anything. I was in the house the entire time, you saw me. I brought you ice for your eye. Did it help?’

Ben stood up and turned to Marc. ‘I want all patrols back to the Montgomery house now, she must still be there.’

Marie was watching them. ‘Tick tock, her clock might be running out.’

He whipped around. ‘What does that mean? Tell me where she is.’

‘I don’t know, but good luck finding her, things have a way of going missing in that godforsaken house that don’t always get found.’

Ben didn’t agree with violence against women, had dealt with more than his fair share of wife beaters, but he had an urge to slap Marie across the cheek and wipe the stupid grin off her face.

He rushed back up to the office to where Stan was sitting looking confused.

‘When you searched Marie’s flat, did you see Morgan?’

‘No, there was nobody there. It was empty.’

‘It can’t have been, she had to have been there.’

Stan shook his head. ‘She wasn’t there, I swear she wasn’t. I had to go through the garage to get up to the flat and it was empty.’

‘They must have CCTV, get hold of Beth Montgomery now, please, go find her and drive her back to her house if you must, but meet me there. I’m going to search the garage again.’

Ben didn’t wait for other officers to help him. The control room should have already sent a patrol to the house. He didn’t wait for Marc either. He didn’t know where he was as per usual and didn’t care one little bit. All he cared about was finding Morgan before anything happened to her.

Morgan tried to remember what the guy on the video had said.

This was life or death. She could die down here if she ran out of air.

Was it bite the tie wraps and pull as tight as she could?

She wriggled until she had her hands near to her mouth, and it took her a couple of attempts to bite hold of the end of the tie wrap and grip it in her teeth, but it kept slipping because of the saliva.

It was so hard with the gag in her mouth, then she realised if she bent her head a little bit more, she could push her fingers in her mouth.

At first, she pushed the material further back, making herself retch before managing to hook a finger into a piece of the cotton and drag it out.

The relief when she could breathe was better than anything she ever knew existed. She sucked in greedy gulps of air with tears rolling down her cheeks.

Not wasting any time, she pulled the end of the tie wrap as tight as it would go with her teeth, then shuffled and moved around until her hands were above her head.

She didn’t know if this was going to work, the YouTuber was in a living room that was the size of this entire garage with lots of room to manoeuvre and she could barely move.

What did he do? He whipped his hands down in front of his body and the tie wrap just burst open.

Counting to three she pushed her hands as far back as she could get them above her head then she brought them down over her head. As her hands moved lower, the pressure or whatever it was burst the tight plastic wide open, and she cried with the relief.

It bloody worked, well I never.

This needed to be shown in schools when they had public safety lessons or life lessons, whatever they called them, because in Rydal Falls there was more chance of being killed by a psychopath than there was of dying of a drug overdose or a car crash. Which was crazy, but true.

Taking a moment to slow her breathing down to normal and think, she lay back and wondered what she was going to do.

She wasn’t a hundred per cent sure what was happening, but Morgan knew one thing: she was getting out of here alive.

After pushing and hammering against the trapdoor, she realised it must be bolted from above, but she wasn’t giving in.

She felt around in her pocket and realised she had no phone, no keys, nothing to protect herself with except the bits of broken tie wrap that were pretty sharp.

She felt all of the pieces to find the one with the most jagged edge.

When she came face to face with whoever had thrown her into this pit like a sack of shit, she would be ready to poke their bloody eyes out with their own plastic ties.

And she wouldn’t feel one ounce of regret about it.