Читать книгу The Manhattan Puzzle - Laurence O’Bryan - Страница 6

A creak rang out against the muffled noise of night-time London.

‘Sean?’ Isabel’s voice echoed. Her head was off the pillow. Was that a shadow moving? The moment of deep pleasure at sensing his return was replaced in a second by fear, as no response came.

She slid out of bed. Alek, who was now four, was in the next room. If that was Sean out there, playing some game, she was going to make him pay. Big time. She’d just finished one of the most demanding projects she had worked on during her time as an IT security consultant, and her brain had been fried to mush. She needed sleep.

She stood in the doorway.

There was no one on the landing.

She peered downstairs. The house felt deserted. The heating had been off for hours. She went into Alek’s room, checked his breathing and tucked him in.

Was this going to be a replay of that night a few weeks ago when he didn’t come home? The thought made her shudder. In all the time she’d known him he’d never done anything like what he’d done that night.

She remembered the creak that had woken her. What had that been about?

Had she imagined it? Her dreams had been strange recently. Images from Istanbul and Jerusalem came too often. Maybe that was what had roused her.

She went downstairs and turned on all the lights. Nothing was out of place, though there was an odd smell. A lemony tang, as if a cleaner had passed through. She stood near the front door. This was all Sean’s fault. She picked up the telephone and pressed redial. The call went to voicemail, again.

She slammed the phone down.

Bastard.

Stop it. He’ll be home soon.

She turned out the lights, headed back to bed, and tried to sleep. The icy wind buffeting the window didn’t help. Neither did the cold space where Sean’s freckled body should have been.

The matchbook-thin Bang & Olufsen docking system said it was five past three. How many years do you get these days if you murder your husband?

She lay there, seething, angry not only with Sean, but with the idiots at BXH too. And with whoever had decided to hold their stupid celebration the night before. It was bad enough that they demanded he work long hours, couldn’t they at least let him come home?

When she woke again after a disturbed sleep, London rumbled even louder. It was ten to eight. Her first thought was that he’d come back, and had already gotten up. He usually woke before she did. He could be down in the kitchen making toast with that new poppyseed bread.

He’d stick his jaw out when she asked him what time he’d come in, then run a hand through his thick brown hair and give her that blue-eyed innocent look, his secret weapon ever since she’d met him in Istanbul.

She turned.

His side of the bed was unruffled. A prickling sensation ran over her skin.

She picked up her phone, pressed his number. He’d better have a good explanation. A very good explanation.

The call went to voicemail. She wasn’t going to leave another message.

Her stomach tightened. She felt sick. Where was he?

Her life was not supposed to be like this. She was too young for all this crap. They’d gone through a lot when they’d first met, that watery tunnel in Istanbul, that hellhole in Israel, but all that was long behind them. Their life was peaceful now, family oriented.

So what about that last time he hadn’t come home?

It hadn’t been that long ago. Three weeks, to be precise. That had been a Thursday night too. He’d come home for breakfast, pleading for forgiveness, with that elaborate excuse on his lips. What had it been? Oh yes, a planning meeting that had gone on too long.

Did he think the bank’s mega-merger finally being completed would be enough to placate her? How could a celebration dinner, drinks, explain this? He wasn’t even a full-time employee there, he was a consultant, working for the Institute of Applied Research on a project that had already eaten up a year of his life.

She breathed in, told herself to calm down.

Someone would have called her if anything had happened.

He was late. That was it. That was all.

The same as last time. And she would make him pay properly this time. She listened for the soft click of the front door opening. He wasn’t going to let her down. Sean didn’t do things like that. They were going to Paris later that day. They were going to be soaping each other in a pink marble bath at the Franklin Roosevelt Hotel, just off the Champs-Élysées, before midnight.

That was his plan.

Everything was ready.

Since his uncle and aunt had invited them to stay in the hotel with them while they were visiting Paris, she’d been counting the days. And Sean knew it.

The trip was just what they needed. And such a great gesture from his uncle and aunt. They were the only people from Sean’s family that she really got on with. They’d insisted Sean find someone to look after Alek. The Louvre and the Opera House weren’t ideal places for a four-year-old, never mind one with a hyperactive streak. They deserved this weekend.

And they were booked into the hotel’s honeymoon suite. Tonight they’d be sleeping in a Louis XIV four-poster under a canopy of mauve silk. It was going to happen. No one was going to take it away from her.

Not even Sean Ryan.