Decay (Phoebe Reede: The Untold #3.2 Declan Reede: The Untold Story #6)
Page 3
By the time I climbed onto the flight to Charlotte, North Carolina—my final destination—I was filled to the brim with nervous energy. After waiting impatiently to hear from Phoebe, I was ready for some action, to actively do something to find her, rather than sitting back and waiting.
After I’d landed and grabbed a hire car, I headed to check into the hotel. My plan was to get settled and then head into Richards Racing early the following morning.
WHEN I pulled into the car park in front of the headquarters of Richards Racing, the enormity of what I was doing struck me. It’d danced around my consciousness during the flight, and then as I spent the night alone in the hotel, but stopping in front of the short, flat brick building that housed the administration of the team I’d entrusted with my daughter’s safety, it hit me harder than ever that she was missing.
Gone.
Hadn’t been heard from in over a week.
In fact, it was pushing closer to two weeks since she’d woken me with her panicked call.
The realisation that she could be in serious danger—that she might even be injured—was almost enough to force me to the ground. It’d been years since I’d suffered a full-blown panic attack, but sitting there in the car trying to process my thoughts over Phoebe’s disappearance, I got the closest I had in years.
And that pissed me off.
If she’d been injured in an accident after running off because of that arsehole who had used her, I would kill the bastard.
After a few calming breaths, I threw open the door and charged toward the building. Getting through security, and getting a pass to access the building while I was in town, was easy with a quick flash of my passport and words that left no uncertainty over what would happen if they didn’t let me through. One of the guards directed me straight to Dale’s assistant’s desk.
Mary-Lou’s eyes widened when he gave her my name.
“Mr Reede, I’m afraid there’s been no more news, and Phoebe didn’t turn up over the weekend.”
No shit, Sherlock. “I understand, and now I want to know what you are doing about it.”
“Doing?”
I breathed out through my nose, the heavy exhalation revealing every ounce of my irritation. “One of your drivers is missing. Surely you’ve contacted the police? Hospitals? Done something to ensure that she is okay?”
“Well . . . no.”
“And why”—the fuck—“not?” It was hard to hold back my desire to let loose on her, but I was trying to remain professional despite the raging sea roiling inside me.
“Because we received communication from her that she would be going away.”
“That was before she missed a race. Surely when she didn’t show to that, you should have shown some fu—concern.”
“Well, of course, but it’s not the first time a driver hasn’t shown to a race. Last year—”
“It’s the first goddamned time my daughter has missed any race. Let alone the first one of the season.”
“I’m afraid I’m not aware of Miss Reede’s record, but—”
“But fucking nothing!” I lost it as she continued to make excuses. “I made it very clear to Dale Richards that Phoebe was to be looked after. That any issues with her were to be reported back to Mrs Reede or myself as soon as they arose. So, why the fuck weren’t we told there were issues between her and the other driver?”
“Other driver?”
“Beau Miller.” I ground his name out through my teeth. “The one who has made her life difficult since she arrived in the States.”
“Beau? Oh, well, no, I mean . . . He wouldn’t . . . He’s a sweetheart. You should see him with his fiancée.”
Her words, designed to calm me, only added fuel to my fire, and I held up my hand to silence her. “I can see that you don’t know all the information, but that doesn’t excuse you not looking out for Phoebe the way Dale promised me he would. Why wasn’t I called?”
“As you said, we were told to contact you with any issues.”
“And Phoebe being missing wasn’t an issue?”
“As I said, we have a precedent for this sort of thing.”
I rubbed my forehead. How had I managed to get tangled up with what was possibly the most incompetent team in the whole format? “My daughter is missing and I’m placing the blame for anything and everything that has happened to her squarely where it belongs. On your head, and on the heads of every single person in this building who have done jack and shit to find her.”
“We can’t be resp—”
“Yes. You can. One phone call. That’s all you needed to make. One goddamned phone call to the police to report her missing.”
She hung her head. “Yes, sir. Would you like me to call them for you now?”
“It’s a little fucking late. I’ll go see them in person this afternoon. For now, I want to know if there’s anything that can give me some idea of what the hell happened to her here.”
“What do you mean, ‘what happened’?”
“I mean exactly what I said. Phoebe isn’t the sort to run off without cause, and all I know is whatever caused her to disappear has something to do with Beau Miller.” And if I could get my hands on him, I would wring his fucking neck until he told me what he’d done to her to make her run off that way. “So when would I be able to meet with him?”
She tapped on her computer. “I’m afraid he’s . . . Oh, wait, that’s unusual . . .”
“What?”
“It says he’s booked on a flight to head back to Florida on Wednesday. Usually he would stay down there until the end of the 500.”
I had to wonder if it was a guilty conscience that had driven him back to North Carolina. My hands formed fists at my side as I clenched my jaw tight.
“It says here that he’s logged into the office this morning.”
“Which. Direction.” I could barely force the words out through the pain in my teeth from grinding them together so hard.
She cut a quick glance over her shoulder at a corridor that ended with a doorway. Her attention turned toward me again almost instantly. No doubt her initial reaction was a reflex rather than her actually being helpful, but I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
I didn’t say another word, just stalked off in the direction of the corridor. I wondered if that was his office. The fucker. He’d hurt for the way he had hurt my little girl. I’d string him up and force every dark detail from him and then I’d make him pay for every crime.
“MR REEDE!” THE woman from the desk raced along behind me, no doubt trying to catch up, but my anger lengthened my stride and carried me swiftly to the door.
I shoved it open. “Where the fuck is my daughter?” I shouted into the space beyond.
I saw my mistake a second later, when a few tools dropped in the workshop. The metallic clanking as they hit a concrete floor was unmistakable. An instant later, the man from the photo strip Phoebe had always kept on her bedside table stepped out from a small alcove with a desk. It was a face I knew from the promotional photos we’d been sent after Phoebe’s arrival as well. A man she’d come to the States for and who had taken her heart and crushed it.
Now, I was going to fucking crush him.
“Mr Reede, if you please,” Mary-Lou shouted after me.
My blood boiled as Beau stared at me with fear burning in his eyes and worry painted on his face.
His fucking worry was justified.
“Where is she?” My words came out in a growl, as my desire to fuck him up for hurting her spiked to a new intensity. A few more steps and I’d have him in my reach; I’d be able to wrap my arms around his neck and wring out both an explanation and an apology.
He indicated toward a door. “Mr Reede,” he said, trying to usher me inside. As if I’d go anywhere he asked without getting answers first. His voice held a confident edge that reached inside of me and stole the last of my sanity.
My hand shot out, closing hard around his throat. I shoved him as hard as I could into the c
losest surface. “Listen to me, you lying sack of shit. If you think I’m going to do anything you want until you tell me where Phoebe is and what you did to her, you’re sorely mistaken.”
He held his hand up, but still had the same smarmy tone when he continued. “I can’t say where she is, sir, but I assure you, I wanna know just as badly as you do.”
I stared at him through narrowed eyes. The world was still tinged with the red haze the first glimpse of him had caused within me.
“I don’t wanna see no harm come to Phoebe.”
“You’ve already harmed her,” I said as I yanked him away from the wall just far enough to get leverage to smash him against it again. He didn’t fight back, and that irritated the fuck out of me. My fists ached with the need to connect with his cheek, but without him fighting back, I couldn’t attack.
The years had made me fucking soft.
And that pissed me off more.
Beau swallowed heavily, showing his weakness. Maybe he wasn’t fighting because he couldn’t. Maybe he was a fucking coward who could only hurt young women and those more vulnerable than he was.
“You hurt my baby girl and now she’s missing. Tell me where she is or so help me God . . .”
His eyes darted around behind me. “Can we please take this in private, sir?”
Without releasing my hold on his throat, I followed his gaze to see a group of onlookers. I wondered whether maybe he was worried about getting his pretty face mangled in front of his friends, and for a moment, I didn’t care. But then sense snuck back in and I realised where I was, and that although I was there as a father—and the father in me wanted to knock this fucker’s block off—I also had to be professional.
Within a few minutes, we were in his office—a space filled with trinkets, trophies, and photos of him with a blonde woman. His pregnant fiancée, no doubt. The sight just stroked along the beast within me.
“I ain’t heard from Phoebe in almost nine days. She spoke to me just before she disappeared.”
While he spoke, my eyes were trained on one of the photos of him and the other woman. Memories of my father and his string of affairs filled my head. Was this blonde clueless to Beau’s screwing around? Or was she like Mum and tacitly accepting of his deeds, however bad they might be? My gaze found Beau’s, and I let my irritation show.
All of the words I’d never had a chance to tell my father before he died took a stranglehold around my throat and forced my fingers into fists. I let that anger flow through me, aimed at the one I could hurt. The one who’d broken my baby girl. “Yeah, I heard all about that. You’re a sick fuck, aren’t you? Do you enjoy playing with young girls’ hearts? Hurting them so much that they feel they’ve got no choice but to run away?”
When I’d started my statement his head was bowed, but as I continued it lifted and a small smile twisted the corner of his mouth. Did he enjoy knowing he’d hurt her? “So she’s spoken to ya?”
“She called home in the middle of the night nine days ago and . . .” My panic spiralled as I recalled the fear and suffering in her tone. The pain caused by the fucker in front of me.
I couldn’t look in the arsehole’s eyes as I lost control and a panic attack gripped me anew. I needed a release or I was going to pummel him into the ground. Alyssa’s request for me to not do anything stupid was the only thing saving him.
“Fuck!” I kicked the closest thing to me, a wheeled office chair, and sent it rushing across the room until it smashed into the wall. The instant the bang echoed through the room, I doubled over. The release wasn’t enough and my worries were burrowing their way into my lungs, filling up the space so I had no room left to breathe around them all.
I tried to level my voice and control my breathing when I spoke to him again. There could be no doubt that I meant business or that I was going to make him suffer. “I have to find her, so I’m going to ask one more time, and one more time only. What the fuck did you do to my daughter?”
“I swear to ya, I didn’t do nothin’ to hurt her. I couldn’t hurt her intentionally. I-I love her.” His face was ashen and he wouldn’t meet my eye. He was either lying or his concern for her was genuine and he was going through his own panic. It was impossible to tell which.
Before I could ask anything else to work out the truth, he started his own story. One where Phoebe had gone to comfort him after his sister had died, where they’d had their issues—including some that involved a woman named Cassidee I could only assume was the blonde in the photos—but where he’d thought they’d worked their way to a happy ending.
It didn’t gel with what Phoebe had said about things being hard for her in the States. Or about Beau making them that way.
“So what, exactly, was the last thing you said to each other?” I asked as I continued my path pacing around his office. The space was too small to contain all my thoughts, but it would have to do.
“When we were in Georgia, she promised she’d be comin’ back as soon as she could. Then I got a text tellin’ me she was at the shoot. The next was the phone call where she told me she was goin’ away, that she don’t love me, and that she’d been playin’ games.”
The words weren’t Phoebe’s. She could be brutally blunt at times, but she’d walk away from a relationship rather than play games. I was certain of it. “That’s just not Phoebe. She’s not a game player—she’s never had time for that nonsense.” As parts of his story sank in and started to make sense, a sliver of hope slipped into my heart. If he loved her like he said he did, he would have at least spoken to the cops about her absence. “What did the police say?”
“Police?”
My steps faltered and I turned to glare at him. “You went to the police, didn’t you? Phoebe isn’t the sort to just disappear. Not without there being something seriously wrong.”
“Well, I—”
It wasn’t good enough. I would have thought when people realised Phoebe had gone missing, someone would have called the police. It was the only thing that had stopped me going to them direct—not that it had been enough to stop me from talking to the Australian embassy. “Surely if you’re as in love with her as you claim to be, you would know that much about her.”
“When she said . . .” He hung his head. “I haven’t spoken to the police. I didn’t think—”
“Jesus fucking Christ! Is everyone over here incompetent?” Why the fuck did I think it was a good idea to let her go halfway around the world? Especially to chase this fucking arsehole who claimed to care about her on one hand, and then didn’t do the basics to look after her on the other. He tried to cut me off, but I wouldn’t let him. “Can you at least tell me whether she was wearing her MedicAlert?”
The thought of her being involved in an accident and no one realising she was a transplant recipient was too much. It would be so easy for the wrong medicine to be given, or for her regular medication to be accidentally stopped.
His brow pinched as he assessed me. “MedicAlert?”
“Goddamn it!” I couldn’t hold in my frustration over the lack of information. Did anyone here actually know my daughter at all? “It’s not a hard question. Was she wearing her fucking bracelet?”
“The silver one?”
I resisted the urge to throttle him for his stupidity. “Yes, that one.”
“I think so. Is it important?”
“Fuck. For someone who claims to love my daughter, you really don’t know shit, do you?”
He reeled at the words and I almost felt bad, except that they were true. If Phoebe cared for him even half as much as he claimed she did, she would’ve told him the basics about her condition at least. It wasn’t something she advertised to the world, but she didn’t shy away from it either.
The expression on his face was enough for me to soften my stance a little though. “She has a medical condition and it is extremely important that she has that bracelet on in case of an accident. I just hope she has her medications with her wherever she is, otherwise . . .”
“Otherwise she’s probably already—” Even as I started to say the sentence the words attacked my heart. The one word I’d refused to think, but that made the most sense for her lack of contact, sank into my heart. It strangled my vocal cords and sent a cold chill down my spine.
Dead.
It echoed through me, reigniting an agony that had been on a slow burn in my soul since the day I’d learned of my firstborn son’s passing and that had last spiked when we’d been fighting for Nikki’s health.
“Is that somethin’ to do with what happened when she was a baby?”
My gaze swivelled to him in a heartbeat. Maybe she had told him more than I knew, even if he didn’t know about the MedicAlert bracelet. “What did she tell you?”
“Everythin’, I guess. About her being sick, her brother passin’, and about her mama bein’ alone at first.”
I didn’t know how to respond to him. That he’d know those secrets surprised me more than anything else I’d learned. Usually when Phoebe spoke about what happened, it was just in no-nonsense medical terms. She didn’t often talk about the mistakes I’d made because she knew they were the biggest regrets in my life. It wasn’t that the story wasn’t there for everyone to see if they looked, just that Phoebe usually chose to focus on the positives.
His next words were ones of reassurance, telling me the things I knew to be true but wondered at in my darkest moments. That Phoebe loved me, and would never turn her back on her family. The earnestness in his voice met its counterpart in me and words came tumbling from me, admitting my weakness. I needed to find her. It was as simple as that.
After deciding his desire to find her was genuine, I pushed away from his desk. “I’m going to go talk to the police and lodge a missing persons report.”
“Mr Reede, there’s somethin’ else I think ya should know.” His voice quivered as he said the words, drawing renewed suspicion from me.
“And what’s that?”
“Xavier. He—he . . . She started seein’ him regular when things were . . . difficult between us. He believes they’re still together.”