A Price to Pay Page 22

  This time it was my turn to make a sound of disgust, but Alex didn’t seem to care that I was dismissing her idea and merely smiled up at me. ‘And if you can’t find it in yourself to be with me, then I’ll simply find your silly little fiancée and kill her.’

  Ice slid through my veins at her threat, and I swallowed down any caustic reply that I had been about to throw at her.

  ‘If she’s dead you won’t need to be distracted by thoughts of her ever again and you can concentrate on being where you’re supposed to be – with me.’

  I immediately realised that I was going to have to reel in my anger if I wanted to keep Robyn safe. I couldn’t risk talking back to Alex and her reacting and going after my cariño.

  ‘So, what’s it to be, lover boy? Me or her?’

  I racked my brain for a solution to this seemingly impossible mess, but with a sickening feeling rising in my chest I knew that no matter how I approached it, there was only one thing that would appease Alex and distract her from Robyn.

  Me. She wanted me.

  Numbing my mind, I did the only thing I could think of. I stepped forwards, pulled her into my arms, and shoved my hand down her skirt as if my life depended upon it.

  In reality, of course, it was Robyn’s life hanging in the balance, and as much as it sickened me to do so, when Alex’s hand moved to my groin this time I didn’t push it away.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Robyn

  It was now a day and a half since he had disappeared and left me standing in my wedding dress behind a marquee full of shocked guests. A day and a half from the wedding that never happened, and I hadn’t seen or heard anything else from him.

  We were stuck in Spain because of a lack of available flights out, and I literally couldn’t take it any more. Everyone around me was being so overly nice it was painful, but the thing was, it wasn’t real niceness; it was pity, mixed with a fair dose of worry and concern, and it was driving me insane. I wanted to scream at them to bugger off, shout, and have a flailing tantrum on the floor like a kid.

  The worst was the shock on people’s faces when I walked in a room and caught them in mid-conversation. They’d go silent and start fidgeting and it was screamingly obvious that they were talking about me and my absent groom. No doubt speculating about why he’d left me, or what I’d done wrong to prompt his disappearance.

  The exact same questions that were spinning repeatedly round and around in my head.

  Nobody knew what to say or do around me. I was the girl whose husband-to-be had dumped her seconds before the wedding; the reject, the failure, the one left behind to pick up the pieces.

  Sasha was pushing me to the point where I wanted to kill her because she was hovering so close to me all the time, talking incessantly about nothing in particular. And his family didn’t seem to know where to look whenever I came near them. I think they felt guilty, unable to believe that their gorgeous little boy had done this.

  But he had. I was alone, hurt beyond repair, and confused, and it was all because of him.

  I’d started to move forwards in tiny steps, the first of which was to avoid using his name, so he was now “him” or “he” in all my thoughts. After the painfully harsh phone call with him, I hadn’t attempted to make contact again, either. Even my mum was at a loss for what to do. She was so stressed that all she did was faff around me, bless her, and even though I knew they all meant well, all I wanted was some peace and quiet to try to absorb everything that had occurred.

  Sophia had insisted that we stay at the house, saying she knew her boy and he’d return with a plausible explanation that we would all laugh about in years to come, but I’d heard how cold he sounded on the phone and I wasn’t fooled.

  It was over, he was gone, and now it just felt alien being here with all his family and not having him at my side.

  It was awkward beyond belief, smothering and so oppressive that I desperately needed to get away before I had a major meltdown.

  I had to bide my time, though, because I knew they wouldn’t just let me leave so I had to wait for moments where Sasha was out of the room to plan my escape. When she took her morning trip to the toilet, I shoved a random selection of clothes into a small bag, then later, when she went to make us a cup of tea, I located my passport, wallet, and phone and popped them in the front pocket. Finally, later in the afternoon when she popped to the toilet again, I made my escape.

  As soon as I heard the bathroom lock click shut I grabbed the bag from under my bed and, without looking back, I snuck down the stairs, out of the side door, and jumped in the hire car to set off.

  I drove without knowing where I was going to go, but preferably I would end up somewhere nobody knew me. Right now, it felt like anywhere would be better than that pretty house on the hill and the painful memories it held.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Oliver

  I’d never experienced frustration like this. It was now day two with Alex, and I felt like a fly stuck in a web. With her threat on Robyn’s life still prominent in my mind, I’d decided yesterday that my best bet was to give up on my arguments and anger and just play her game. It was agony, and went against every fibre of my character, but I’d started acting like an obedient puppy.

  I glanced across at Alex from the corner of my eye and gritted my teeth in an attempt at holding in all the furious words I wanted to yell at her. Currently, she sat at the table in our room doing God knows what on her laptop, but no matter how much the screen demanded her attention, her right hand never left the gun which lay on the table beside her.

  The frustration of knowing that if the gun wasn’t part of the equation I could physically overpower her with ease was driving me insane, but the bloody thing never left her side, and so there seemed to be very little I could do. I wanted to attack, but the action would be almost pointless if I got shot and wasn’t around to share my life with Robyn afterwards. So, as much as it was killing me, I needed to bide my time.

  Alex stood and, after sending me a sultry glance which I did my best to return, walked into the bathroom and shut the door.

  I stared at the closed door and my mouth dropped open in shock. She had finally made a mistake – she hadn’t tied me up – and my heart began pounding in my chest as I immediately stood up and wondered what to do.

  Every single time she left the room she had handcuffed me to a solid metal pipe on the wall and gagged me, but not this time. Perhaps she had fallen for my show of obedience, or maybe she’d just forgotten, but whatever the reason I suddenly had a glimmer of hope at an escape.

  I took a step towards the exit door, but then stopped. If I ran then Alex’s threat over Robyn might never go away, and I couldn’t live knowing that Robyn might never feel safe.

  Grimacing, I grabbed the handcuffs that Alex had used on me so many times and turned back towards the bathroom door, knowing that I had to act now if I stood any chance of capturing her while her guard was down.

  Placing a hand on the door knob, I took a second to swallow down a ball of nerves in my throat and prepare myself. I knew the layout of the small bathroom, but I had no idea where the gun would be, and that thought was terrifying enough to seriously make me question my sanity. Would she still be holding it? Or would it be on the unit with the sink? Perhaps it might be on the side of the bath?

  It was a question I couldn’t answer from out here, so, pulling in a deep breath, I tried to steady myself for entry, but it was impossible because I’d never felt so anxious in my life.

  Shaking myself into action, I placed my shoulder on the door and barged my way into the room with a roar that would hopefully shock Alex enough that she wouldn’t immediately fire at me.

  Luck was on my side, and as I stumbled into the room I saw that Alex was at the sink washing her hands and the gun was on the counter beside her. Both of our gazes dropped to the weapon. A second later, we did a synchronised dive for the gun. Alex was closer, so her wet hands grabbed it first, but as she went to rai
se it towards me I swung out with the back of my hand and managed to knock it from her soapy grip.

  The gun clattered to the tiled floor and I dived at Alex. I grabbed her and forced her backwards until we both tumbled over the toilet and staggered around the room in a whirlwind of clutching hands and fiercely spat words.

  Alex dropped to her knees and my position behind her meant I could easily grab her in a choke hold, which I did, my arm like a steel band around her slender neck. Even though one of her hands managed to grab the gun I tightened my grip, confident that I now had the upper hand.

  I was wrong, very wrong. Barely a moment after I’d grabbed her I heard the muffled crack of the gun going off and something ripped through my shoulder with such heat and intense agony that I roared out with pain.

  We continued to struggle, but I could see the red patch of blood on my shirt growing larger and larger by the second. My body started to feel weaker from the blood loss until black spots of unconsciousness rose before my eyes and swamped me.

  My last thought as I slumped to the ground was of Robyn, and how much she must hate me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Oliver

  ‘Señor? Sir?’

  The voice sounded distant and muffled, and as hard as I tried to focus on it, I couldn’t quite seem to manage to bring it properly into my foggy mind.

  ‘Sir?’ The voice grew more insistent and was accompanied by the feel of someone taking hold of one of my arms and giving several hard jerks. The movement caused a sharp pain to tear through my shoulder and brought me slightly out of my stupor, and I forced my eyes to open to find out who the hell was shaking me like a tambourine.

  A man dressed as a paramedic was hovering over me. As he went to shake me again I hissed in warning and glared at him. I didn’t care if he was wearing a uniform; if he tried to touch me when I was in this much pain he would be getting a punch in the face.

  Thinking about it, why was I in so much pain, and why the hell was a paramedic leaning over me?

  My mind was blank, and everything still felt blurry around the edges.

  I lifted a hand to the agony in my shoulder and my fingers immediately slid through wetness before rubbing at a rough, torn area of skin that hurt so much when I touched it I thought I was going to throw up.

  When I pulled my hand away I saw it was slicked with crimson, and it was this sickening sight of my own blood that started to bring some of my sense back.

  The fight with Alex.

  The tussle.

  The gun going off…

  That was why I was in so much pain and currently lying on the bathroom floor.

  The man had sensibly backed away from me a little but was holding a large medical backpack as if intent on doing some tests on me. ‘Were you attacked? Can you describe who did this?’

  Who did it? I could do far more than just describe Alex; I could give him her full fucking name, address, and date of birth. My eyes frantically moved around the room, and then I almost deflated with relief when I saw she was lying beside me, also being tended to by paramedics. From the look of it she was out cold and bleeding from a head wound.

  ‘Her,’ I croaked. Clearing my throat, I gave the man a desperate look. ‘Policía… we need police… she needs arresting.’

  After giving me a shocked look, he turned to one of his colleagues and in rapid Spanish told her to go and put another call in to the police to hurry them along.

  Looking at Alex’s pale face, I could only assume that luck had been on my side during that fight, and when I’d passed out from the pain of the gunshot I had knocked Alex over and she’d banged her head. Or perhaps she’d slipped in my blood, because the tiled floor was slick with crimson.

  Thank fuck. Whatever had happened didn’t matter. I was just glad she was still here because if she had escaped and acted out her threat to kill Robyn I would never have been able to carry on.

  The police arrived barely a minute later, and once I had given a statement and was happy that Alex was secured, I lay back with a sigh and nodded at the paramedic who still hovered over me with a wad of bandage in his hand.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Oliver

  Alexandra was safely locked away in police custody, and I was patched up and desperately searching for Robyn.

  As soon as I’d been allowed to get my phone in hospital I’d called her over and over again, but her mobile was turned off. So, with difficulty – and much to the disapproval of my doctor – I’d dragged my clothes on and promptly checked myself out of the clinic.

  There was no way I could lie in a hospital bed while Robyn was still under the impression that I had left her. Besides, my wound was stitched up and I’d had fluids pumped into me for the last two hours, so I felt much better than I had.

  Unfortunately for me, there was no trace of her. My feisty little fiancée had seemingly disappeared into thin air. I’d hoped that she would still be at my parents’ house, but a quick phone call with Marcus had dashed my hopes. He said that she had been staying with my family for the days following the failed wedding, but she’d disappeared this afternoon after lunch.

  This afternoon, while I was busy getting shot.

  Thank goodness I hadn’t dared go to my parents’ house in person to look for her, because there would have been too many questions thrown at me that I simply didn’t have time to answer, not while Robyn was still AWOL.

  Marcus had been understandably curious as to where I’d been but, being one of my closest friends, he’d accepted my promise that I would fill him in later and not pushed for further details.

  I’d now been to practically every hotel in town to see if a young Englishwoman had checked in within the last few hours, but with no luck. Apparently, there was a music festival starting on Monday which meant that all the hotels were fully booked. I’d been convinced that I’d find Robyn back at the hotel we’d stayed in on our first visit here, but it too was full, and the receptionist couldn’t remember having seen Robyn in there enquiring after a room.

  Following the failed hotel search, I’d contacted Marcus again to get his help searching and had sent him to the airport with a wad of cash to bribe someone into checking today’s flight records, but that too had drawn a blank. Robyn hadn’t flown out, her rental car hadn’t been returned, and she wasn’t in any of the city’s hotels.

  While I was relieved that she hadn’t left and was presumably still somewhere in the region, I was now worried sick, because she didn’t know the city like I did and if all the hotels were full she’d soon be finding herself in unfamiliar streets at night with nowhere to stay.

  ‘Fuck!’ I threw my hands up and ran them through my hair in agitation. Spinning on the spot, I stared around the pretty square. Attempting to search the countryside outside Barcelona had seemed too daunting a challenge, so I was laying my hopes on her being in Barcelona itself. It felt like searching for a needle in a haystack, but I wouldn’t give up, and had spent the last few hours walking the streets checking any bar, hotel, or restaurant that I could find.

  The lights were starting to come on for the evening, but I had absolutely no idea where to look next, or what to do. I felt utterly helpless, which was not a feeling that sat easily with me.

  Just then I caught a glimpse of familiar bright blonde hair through the throngs of people in the square and found myself pushing through the crowds as I made a beeline for Sasha.

  Sasha and Robyn were best mates. Where one was, the other was often close by. Could my girl be here somewhere? My heart accelerated as I fought through the crowd, trying to simultaneously reach Sasha and scan the surrounding people for a glimpse of Robyn.

  After my multiple unanswered calls to Robyn earlier, I’d tried Sasha, but also had no luck. She no doubt hated my guts as much as Robyn did, but if there was even a vague chance that she might know where Robyn was, then I was willing to risk the foul-mouthed outburst she would no doubt send my way.

  When I caught up with her, I stepped around h
er tall frame and caused her to come to a skidding halt. Her eyes widened for a fraction of a second and then immediately lit with anger and her spine straightened out a few inches to make her seem impossibly tall and bristling with murderous rage.

  ‘Sasha, don’t hit me.’ I held my hands up in a gesture of surrender and tried to give her an appeasing look. From the murderous sparks still flying at me, it had failed completely. ‘I can explain everything, but right now I really need to know where Robyn is.’

  ‘I’m not telling you where she is, you utter piece of shit.’ Sasha looked lethal. Eyes bulging, fists clenched at her sides, her entire frame tense as if she were struggling to hold back from pounding me into a pile of hamburger meat. She probably was. ‘How the fuck could you hurt her like this?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to… there’s been a whole pile of fucked-up-ness going on that will take too long to explain here, but I swear to God, Robyn means the world to me and I’m going to make this right.’

  ‘The only reason I’m not punching your fucking lights out is because there are police standing just over there and I can’t afford to spend the night in jail because Robyn’s going to call soon, and when she does I need to not be incarcerated.’

  A stabbing pain shot through my heart at her reminder that my girl was out there somewhere alone, and I shifted on the spot, wondering how the hell I could pacify Robyn’s loyal best friend. I needed to know where she was. I needed to be the one to find her and fix everything.

  ‘Where is she, Sasha? Please, I need to see her,’ I stated bluntly, keeping it short and sweet but throwing a plea into the mix in the hope that it might help my case.

  ‘Why? So you can rip her fucking heart out all over again just to watch her break in person? I don’t fucking think so.’

  My hands shot to my hair in frustration and tugged, the sharp movement causing a jab of pain in my bullet wound. ‘Is she OK? At least tell me that much,’ I said hesitantly, desperate for something to appease some of the guilt I was carrying.