‘What are you doing here—’ he began, but the rest of his sentence escaped in a whoomph as I planted a hand on his chest and shoved him back against the door.
‘Why did you get that blond bastard to drug me last night and put me on a train to Venice?’ My face was hot. My fists clenched of their own accord.
His face paled slightly. ‘What do you mean? I went to Le Tigre de Papier at nine o’clock, just like we agreed. I waited for an hour, but you didn’t show.’
‘I came here first. I guess one of your boys decided to do the job for you. As soon as I mentioned your name he was right on the case of getting me out of there.’
He turned paler. ‘You mentioned my name?’
He looked kind of scared, and I started to wonder whether I’d been wrong about him. But I wasn’t taking any chances this time. I wasn’t going to trust him until I’d got some information out of him. ‘Don’t act dumb. I saw you discussing strategy with your mate a minute ago.’
‘I didn’t have a choice! You didn’t show up last night, so when Grady put the hard word on me, I pretended to be interested in the business, just like you suggested.’
‘I didn’t think you’d take it quite so literally.’
He raked his fingers through his hair. ‘I couldn’t see another way out of this. I’ve had to do some things I would never have contemplated only a few days ago.’
I gave him a sceptical look. ‘What, like sending me off to Venice? Like bashing up my photographer?’
He recoiled from me. ‘I had nothing to do with that! Why did you come here? I told you it wasn’t safe.’
I watched his face for a few seconds. He certainly looked earnest. I fished around in my bag and pulled out my voice recorder.
‘Because of this.’ I rewound it and pressed play.
The last of the colour left Ford’s face as he listened to Grady’s words. ‘How did you get that?’ His voice was almost a whisper.
‘It was on the answering machine in that office yesterday. That’s why I came back here before we were supposed to meet. I wanted to warn you before it was too late.’
He stumbled backwards and half fell onto the couch against the wall. His hands over his face muffled his words as he spoke. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
Either he was really good at acting scared shitless, or he was innocent.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ I said. ‘You can tell me everything you know and we’ll make a plan.’
He threw his hands out in a wild gesture. ‘I can’t go out there. The police think I murdered Angus. This is the safest place—’
‘Angus is still alive,’ I broke in.
His hands dropped to his lap. He stared up at me in consternation. ‘What? Grady said there was a photo of his body.’
‘It must’ve been faked. My friendly kidnapper let it slip last night. He seemed confused, like he didn’t know Angus was supposed to be dead.’
‘Grady told me he’d help me hide from the police.’ His gaze was fixed on some invisible point beyond the room. ‘I wasn’t sure if I could trust him, and now I know why.’
‘Do you think he and Angus set you up?’
He continued as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘I knew they were into something big, but I never thought they’d go this far to stop me exposing them.’
I stepped closer to him. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
Finally, he looked at me. ‘It’s too late for that. I’m the only suspect in Angus’s disappearance, and I don’t have any evidence otherwise.’
‘We’ve got this.’ I brandished the voice recorder. ‘It’s a start, but we’ll need more than that. We need to find Angus and prove that he’s alive, and then we can go to the police. But we have to make a plan first, and I’m not too keen to stick around here after last night.’
‘I can’t risk going anywhere in public.’
‘We’ll go to my hotel room. It’s close.’
His face revealed the war of emotions in his head. ‘OK,’ he said at last. ‘We’ll go. But there’s only one way for us to get out of here without suspicion.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Don’t think you made it in here without being noticed. There are cameras in the alley. We can’t leave here together.’
‘You’ve lost me.’
‘I’ve only just been accepted here, so I need to act the part. I’m going to have to throw you out. I’ll meet you outside your hotel afterwards.’
I held my arm out for him to grasp. ‘Let’s do it.’
He wrapped a tentative hand around my forearm.
‘Come on, you can do better than that.’
He smiled grimly. ‘Apologies in advance.’
He opened the door and tightened his grip on my arm hard enough that I cried out in surprise. He pulled me out into the bar where the bartender was talking to a skinny man with a beard. Both of them looked over as we burst into the room. I froze for a second, then leant back on my heels and tried to yank my arm away.
‘Let go of me!’ I shouted. So effective was my action that he very nearly did let go, but reacted just in time and continued to drag me across the room.
‘I’ve told you over and over again that I’m not interested in you!’ he shouted. ‘You were just an easy shag, I never wanted anything more.’
‘I just want to be with you!’ I cried. ‘You can’t deny it, Chris, we’re meant to be together!’
We’d reached the door in the corner now. Ford pushed me up against it and leant in close until his face was only inches from mine. He’d fallen right into his role, because his expression was frightening.
‘Whiny, pathetic sluts like you are the reason I’m still single. If you don’t stop sniffing around me like a bitch in heat, you might find you have an unfortunate accident,’ he drawled. ‘Now get the
