As if that would help, as if she could drink it without choking. Dear God, she couldn’t do this.
‘I need to talk to Laura.’ Biting back her fury in the face of a man whose pallor was now the colour of death, she squeezed the words out and tried hard to remain rational. Laura wouldn’t hurt him; she loved him – that was the hope she was clinging to.
‘She’s … not here.’ Steve told her what she’d already established, his voice ragged, his breath rasping. ‘I took some painkillers, early this morning. I was out for the count. I didn’t wake up until I heard you hammering on the door. When I looked for Laura, I realised she wasn’t here.’
‘And you don’t know where she is? What time she went out?’ She stared hard at him, saw the rise and fall of his throat as he swallowed.
‘No,’ he admitted, his gaze drifting down and back. ‘What’s going on, Sarah? Where’s my son?’ He took a step towards her, the look in his eyes a mixture of terror and confusion.
‘Did she sleepwalk?’
He evaded the question, looking apprehensively away again.
‘Steve!’ she yelled, causing him to jolt. ‘Did she sleepwalk?’ She had to find her. Ollie had not disappeared from the face of the earth. He had not! She’d taken him. She was the only one who would take him, her fevered mind compelling her to. Where had she taken him?
‘Yes.’ He sucked in a breath. It appeared to stop short of his chest. ‘I found her in the garden.’ He moved away from her, his face etched with pain as he turned to sink heavily to the stairs.
Sarah wanted to go to him. Wanted to tell him everything would be all right. Wanted someone to tell her it would. Please God … where was her baby? ‘Did she say anything?’ she asked past the excruciating lump in her throat.
Steve ran his hands over his face, then nodded slowly and closed his eyes. ‘She usually searches for Jacob when she goes out there. She wasn’t this time,’ he said, his voice hollow. ‘She was looking for Ollie.’ He stopped, his eyes haunted. ‘She thought you were going to take him away from her. She said he was in danger.’
She knew it. She just knew it!
‘Sarah, wait!’ Steve called after her, struggling to his feet as she raced back to the front door. ‘Where are you going? Have you called the police?’
‘Yes,’ she shouted back. ‘They’ll most likely call here.’ Halfway to her car, she didn’t stop. She was acting on instinct, drawn to what she knew Laura was drawn to. She’d been reliving her life with Jacob through Ollie, that much was clear. Sarah’s heart beat like a terrified bird in her chest as she wondered: would she relive his last moments? Moments she was sure had something to do with water. Why else her morbid fear of swimming pools?
Fifty-Six
Joe
Hearing someone quietly talking, Joe kept still, trying to make out what was being said above the pounding in his head. ‘Wake up, M-M-Mother. It’s time to face the music.’ He heard that clearly. Laura, unmistakably.
Pain searing through his neck, he tried to shift his position, to see what the hell was going on, and then groaned inwardly. She had to be joking. He was secured to the leg of a table with his own bloody handcuffs. A weighty farmhouse table that stood in the middle of a large kitchen.
Guessing she would know he’d come round soon enough anyway, he shuffled across the flagstones, manoeuvred the cuffs up the leg and managed to pull himself to a half-sitting, half-lying position. Her back towards him, Laura was kneeling on the floor three or four yards away from him, Sherry Caldwell’s body half obscured behind her. His heart rate ratcheting up, he scanned the room. No sign of Grant Caldwell. How long had he been out of it?
‘Laura,’ he said carefully, ‘what’s happened? Is your mother all right?’
Jerking, as if she might have forgotten he was there, Laura didn’t answer immediately. Then, ‘She’s just sleeping,’ she said with an apathetic shrug. ‘She accidentally swallowed some of my tablets. It was a bit of a struggle to get her to take them, but she’s so much easier to t-t-talk to when she’s quiet.’ She leaned further over her. ‘Aren’t you, Sherry?’
Shit. Joe tugged uselessly on the cuffs. He knew he had no chance of getting out of them. His only hope would be to lift the table.