I drove slowly right to the end and swung the car in a circle, as though I was simply turning round. The house looked quiet, but then, all the houses along this road looked quiet. It was too upmarket an area to stand for untidy rowdiness on the front lawn.
The opener for the electric gate was attached to the Mercury’s sun visor, but I didn’t want to take it right into the driveway. Instead I pulled up by the kerb next door, leaving the car facing the main road. No other vehicles had followed me into the street and none were already parked there. Nevertheless, I’d already started to sweat before I even got out of the car and it had little to do with the heat.
I took the opener with me, walking quickly across the road and through the gap as soon as it was wide enough, then closing the gates behind me. I did a rapid circuit of the exterior of the house, checking for obvious signs of forced entry. There weren’t any.
I even peered in through a couple of the ground-floor windows. The furniture was all in its usual carefully co-ordinated positions. Juanita and the other maids kept the place immaculate, as though in readiness for a magazine photo shoot. If Keith Pelzner had been taken from here, he – and his bodyguards – had gone without a fight.
I went in via the door to the kitchen, which was the only one I had a key for. There was a keypad for the alarm next to it. A glance at the panel on my way in told me the system hadn’t been set.
I did a fast sweep of the ground floor rather than a thorough search but even so there was nothing to find. No disturbance. No breakages. No sign of hurry. It was like they’d all simply got up and walked out of the front door. And then someone had sent the cleaners in.
I carefully used the bottom of my shirt to touch the door handles. If the place had been wiped down I didn’t want mine to be the only prints they found.
Upstairs I ran through the bedrooms in the main part of the house but they were all empty. Nothing in the drawers or the wardrobes, no personal effects at all. Even Keith’s study had been stripped of its usual mess of paper printouts and notes. His computer was gone, too.
With my heart in my mouth, I walked along the corridor to the rooms they’d given to me and to Sean. I looked in my own first. My bag and all my clothes had been taken.
I’d put my passport in the top drawer of the dressing table. I almost didn’t have to check to know it wouldn’t be there but I couldn’t suppress the squirt of panic when I proved myself right, even so. The feeling of being trapped with no back door out of there was suffocating me.
I took a couple of deep breaths, acutely aware of the amount of time I’d been in the house already. The longer I was there, the greater the risk. Still I couldn’t put it off any longer. I moved from my room to Sean’s. They were next door to each other, back to back. His was a mirror image of mine.
I knew the layout pretty well, because I’d spent the previous night there.
***
I’d gone simply to talk to him. At least, that’s what I’d told myself to begin with. Not so much talk as argue, really. I was pissed off with the way the job was unfolding and he was the only one I could shout at about it.
Ten minutes after I’d heard him go in I was outside, banging on the door. At first I thought he was avoiding me. He’d seen at dinner how annoyed I was at Whitmarsh’s automatic assumption that my sole purpose in life was to look after the kid. It was only Sean’s warning glance and his murmured, “later,” that had stopped me shooting my mouth off there and then.
I knocked again, louder this time. I was about to give it a third go when the door opened and there was Sean, wearing nothing but a towel round his hips, water glistening across his naked upper body.
“Sorry,” he said, rubbing at the back of his dark hair with another towel. “I was in the shower.” He stepped back, opening the door wider. “Come on in.”
I swallowed, the action ungluing my tongue from the roof of my mouth. “Look,” I said, my anger fleeing, “you’re busy. I can come back la—”
“Charlie,” he said, cutting me off in mid-waffle, pinning me with that deadly gaze. “Shut up and come in.”
I did as I was told almost meekly. He shut the door and turned to face me, a smile playing round his lips. I was trying not to look at the expanse of skin on view, but I couldn’t help it.
Even though he’d been out of the army for the best part of four years by that time, Sean was still fighting fit in the true sense of the word. Every lean inch of him was packed with the muscle of an athlete rather than a weight-lifter. He’d always been wide across the shoulders but he’d never used that as an excuse to bulk up.
My eyes strayed to the small scar just below the point of his left shoulder. The memory of how close I’d come to losing him hit me like a blow.
I realised Sean hadn’t moved but was just standing there without conceit watching me, watching him. I tore my eyes away, face heating, and sat down on the bed rather abruptly.
“So,” he said, “what’s on your mind?”
The flush, which had been starting to subside, flared painfully.
He laughed softly, then reached over to a chair and picked up a bundle of clothing. “Tell you what,” he said, “I’ll take myself out of your sight into the bathroom. You can yell at me from here.”
It was only when he was safely in the other room that my brain seemed inclined to resume normal service. “What the hell is going on, Sean?” I demanded, trying to pick up the thread of my earlier indignation. “Did you know I was going to be here as some kind of glorified nanny?”
“No.” His voice floated back to me. He’d left the door open just a slit and I could see him moving about behind it in a series of tantalising snatches. “I can’t start kicking up too much of a fuss about the way Whitmarsh is handling you, because as soon as he asks for a list of your previous jobs, we’re a bit snookered. It’s one of those difficult situations where nobody wants you without experience, but to get the experience . . .” I heard rather than saw him shrug. “You’ve no idea how much bullshitting you have to do to get started in this business.”
“So I just have to bite my tongue, is that it?” I said, aware of a weary kind of resentment.
“No,” he said again, emerging from the bathroom. This time when he appeared the towel had been replaced by a pair of dark tan chinos. But he had yet to put on a shirt, or buckle the belt. It seemed a wanton invitation.
My eyes suddenly became fixed on the chevron of dark hair that disappeared beneath the waistband of his trousers. I could feel my body reacting, however much my mind told it not to.
“Keep looking at me like that, Charlie,” Sean said, his voice husky, “and talking is the last thing we’re going to be doing.”
He moved in closer, pulling me to my feet, running his fingers lightly down my arms. My skin came up in goose bumps instantly.
“I though you’d lost interest,” I managed, suddenly breathless.
He shook his head. “Oh no,” he said, rueful. “I’ve been going cross-eyed trying to let you move at your own pace, but I really think you ought to leave now, because otherwise I’m going to be so tempted to push you faster than you want to go.”
I had every opportunity to move away from him then, but I didn’t. It was time. I was ready. I stepped in closer and lifted my face to his, my voice little more than a whisper. “Who says I don’t want that, too?”
***
It was only later – much later – that we had resumed our conversation.
“To go back to an earlier subject, something’s clearly wrong out here, and I think both of us are being kept in the dark about it,” Sean said, settling so I could lie with my head resting on his shoulder and listen to his heartbeat recover its steady rhythm. Above us, I could hear the quiet rustle of the ceiling fan as it gently cooled the sweat on our bodies.