Souls At Zero (A Dark Psychological Thriller) (5 page)

"How long have I been out?" Edger asked.

"Less than an hour," one of the paramedics informed him. "We don't know what you were drugged with so I'm not sure what effects you're going to feel. Probably best if you come to the hospital with us, so we can do a thorough examination."

Edger rubbed at his forehead, barely registering what the paramedic was saying.

"Mr. Edger, can you think of any reason as to why this incident happened?" the blond cop asked.

Edger shook his head, still unable to think clearly. "No."

It was the truth. He didn't know why it happened, although he was starting to think it could have be something to do with him. Someone trying to get at him maybe.

"Then maybe you can come down the station and give a statement."

Edger noticed the cop was holding his wallet. "Can I have my wallet back, please?"

The cop handed the wallet over. "We had to check to see who you were."

Once Edger had his wallet back, he barged past the two cops and headed for the door.

"Mr. Edger, where are you going?" the female cop said. She stopped him by grabbing hold of his arm.

Edger looked down at her. "I'd advise you to let me go."

The cop let go immediately but she stood her ground. "Mr. Edger, your daughter has obviously been kidnapped. That's a serious crime that we have to investigate. We will require your co-operation, whether you want to give it or not."

"Are you arresting me?"

The cop shook her head. "No, Mr. Edger, not right now. But rest assured, the detectives who will be handling this case will arrest you if you refuse to co-operate with them. I would have thought you would want to do all you can to get your daughter back."

"Rest assured," Edger said. "I will be."

"You can't just take this matter into your own hands, Mr. Edger," the cop said, but Edger was already out the door and heading for his car.

As he drove towards the city centre, his head still woozy, his stomach turning over, Edger realised he had no idea where he was driving to. More than that, the awful gravity of the situation was just beginning to sink in. He pulled the car over on the Dublin Road outside a Chinese restaurant and sat, gripping the steering wheel hard as he struggled to get a hold of himself. If this was Iraq, or Haiti, or North Africa, or any of the other conflict situations he had been in, he would already be taking steps to deal with what happened. But this was his fucking daughter and for some reason, he didn't know what to do next.

He punched the steering wheel, unable to believe that he let his own daughter get taken from right under his nose.

That just shouldn't have fucking happened!

But it did happen, and all the anger and self-loathing in the world wasn't going to change that. His only option now was to wait on the kidnapper contacting him, which he would at some point. They always did. In the meantime, he would try his best to figure out who would go to such lengths to get his attention, and why.

But first, he had to do the hardest thing of all.

He had to let Kaitlin's mother know that her precious daughter had been kidnapped.

Edger took a deep breath and got himself together, then he drove towards Gemma McGuire's house.

CHAPTER SIX

Gemma McGuire sat in her living room, curled up on her favourite armchair with cup of coffee in her hand. On the floor beside her was a pile of papers and binders that she had planned to go through that day. The new semester had just started at Queens University where she worked as a lecturer and she still had to do her lesson plans for the coming week. She had started to do the work shortly after Kaitlin had left with Harry, but after five minutes she found she couldn't concentrate. She ended up abandoning the work, sitting staring at nothing while she drank her fifth cup of coffee of the day.

As ever when Harry turned up at the house, she found it difficult to concentrate on anything after he left. He turned up in her life again just over a year ago, arriving at her door one day out of the blue. She remembered being shocked to see his massive form standing there at her door after so many years away, that scowling, serious face of his staring back at her.

"Hello, Gemma," he had said, his voice as gruff as she remembered it. She had shook her head at him and asked what he was doing there. What did he want after all this time? He asked to come in so he could speak to her, but she had refused to let him in. She didn't want him in, despite the fact that somewhere deep inside herself, a part of her still loved Harry. Even when he walked away from their marriage twelve years before, she still couldn't help loving him. But he had made his choice, and he chose to go back to being a soldier rather than be with her. She tried not to hold that against him, as hard as it was. She knew who Harry was before she decided to marry him, but stupidly, she thought she would be enough to keep him away from the soldier's life. That was on her, which was why she didn't hold it against him when he told her one day that he was going to Iraq to work as a private contractor over there. He didn't say he was leaving her at that point. Gemma didn't think he was planning to. But there was no way she was going to sit every night worrying whether or not he was going get himself killed in that war zone like so many others had been. She didn't want to put herself through that, especially since she was also pregnant, though she didn't tell Harry that at the time. She was worried it might make him stay and then he would grow bitter because he felt trapped and unable to do what he wanted to do. So she kept the pregnancy from him and wished him good luck.

Of course, he eventually found out that he had a daughter. They met again a few years later at his mother's funeral. Gemma remembered the look of shock on Harry's face when he saw her with the then three year old Kaitlin. It nearly killed Gemma when little Kaitlin ran up to Harry in the church. Harry crouched down, his eyes wet with tears, and Kaitlin smiled at him and gently wiped away the tears from his cheek with her little hand. Gemma never introduced Harry to Kaitlin as her father. Instead, she introduced him as her friend, Harry. After the funeral, he came to see Gemma at the house they once bought together off the Ormeau Road. He didn't say much. Gemma knew he only came to hear her say that it was okay that he didn't have to come home just because he had a child. She told him what he wanted to hear, and he left for Iraq again. He sent money every month after that though, without fail. Still did, in fact.

Now, as she sat alone in an empty house, she couldn't help but think of Harry. Despite remarrying a few years after he left (and divorcing again), the connection she had with Harry never went away. She accepted a long time ago that the feelings she had for him would never go away, but that didn't mean she wanted him back in her life again. That ship had sailed for her, despite the fact that he was apparently home for good, and that he was done with soldering after nearly getting killed in Iraq. That news had shook her up when she heard it, she had to admit. She was actually contacted by the company he worked for out there and was told, as his emergency contact, that he was dead, having been killed along with twenty others in an ambush. The news devastated her. She came home from work and cried for hours, her grief made worse by the fact that Kaitlin would never know her father now. Then six hours after the first call, she got another phone call, this time from Harry himself, telling her that he was alive. She cursed him and hung up the phone, then cried for another few hours after. When she finally told Kaitlin about the incident, Kaitlin had cried as well, even though she didn't know her father at all. Gemma hated Harry for putting them both through so much pain.

When he finally came home not long after asking if he could be in Kaitlin's life, Gemma point blank refused for months. She didn't believe him that he was done with soldiering. It was only after he bought himself an apartment in the city and got a full time job that she started to believe he was telling the truth, and gradually she allowed him into Kaitlin's life. She owed her daughter that much. Kaitlin deserved a father, and despite his failings, Gemma thought Harry could be a good father, which as it turned out, he was. Kaitlin took to him almost straight away. The resentment Gemma expected her daughter to have for him not being there was minimal. It seemed she was just glad to have a father at last, someone she could look up to and be proud off. And Kaitlin
was
proud of her father. She viewed him as some kind of protector figure, like Kingsley Shacklebolt from her beloved Harry Potter books, saving anyone that needed saving, helping anyone that needed helping.

Harry took to Kaitlin right away as well. She brought out a different side to him, a softer, more vulnerable side, that Gemma herself had only caught glimpses off when she was married to him. It was obvious that he would die for Kaitlin if he had to.

And that was part of the problem for Gemma. His willingness to be there for both her and their daughter was at odds with the cold front she often presented to him. She was careful never to give him any indication that she still had feelings for him, lest he think there was some chance they could reunite. That could never happen. Yet even as she thought it, somewhere in the back of her mind, a small part of her wanted it to happen. She put it down to residual feelings left over from the past. The fact was, she had moved on, despite the lingering feelings. So had he probably. It was about Kaitlin now. Nothing more.

Gemma startled when she heard a knock at the door. She hadn't heard anyone come up the drive, and she figured it was probably the postman delivering yet another book that Kaitlin had badgered her into ordering for her from Amazon. But when she looked out the window she noticed the car parked outside on the street. A silver Skoda. Harry's car.

Gemma's heart started thumping against her chest.

"Harry," she said when she opened the door. She looked past him to see where Kaitlin was. "Where's Kaitlin?"

Harry stood staring down at her, grim faced. "I need to come in," he said, in a voice that was even more serious than usual.

Gemma stared hard at him as confusion and fear began to creep up on her. "What's happened, Harry?" she asked, hoping she was jumping the gun, that there was a perfectly good reason why Kaitlin wasn't with him, even though they had left together only a few hours ago. But when she looked into his dark brown eyes, she knew she wasn't over reacting. His face said it all. "Where is she, Harry? Tell me where my daughter is, please."

"We need to take this inside, Gemma."

She shook her head, but stepped back so he could come in. Her arms folded tightly across herself while she waited on him closing the door behind him. Tears were already forming in her eyes as her mind raced through a dozen different scenarios as to why her daughter was not with him, none of them good. "What is this, Harry?" Her voice cracked as she struggled to hold herself together. "You're scaring me here. Where's Kaitlin?"

Harry took a deep breath as he kept his eyes on her. She could see the pain in his face, mixed with guilt and what she took to be shame. The last time she saw him look so twisted up inside was when he told her he was leaving her to go to Iraq. She couldn't even bring herself to breathe as she stood waiting. "I'm sorry, Gemma," he said, after an interminable wait. "Kaitlin…Kaitlin's been taken."

"Taken?" She stared at him as she tried to fully understand what he was saying.

"Kidnapped."

"Kidnapped?" Her hand clamped over her mouth as her chest heaved, and she felt like she was going to be sick.

Harry went to walk towards her and she stopped him. "No!" she shouted. "Tell me where Kaitlin is right now, or I swear…"

"We we're in the cafe, on Botanic Avenue. I went upstairs to use the toilet. I came down, started eating my food along with Kaitlin. My coffee was drugged."

"Drugged?"

"I didn't know. Couldn't taste it. The next thing I knew…" He shook his head. "I was falling to the floor."

"Who took Kaitlin, Harry? Who took her?" She could feel the rage boiling up inside her, cutting through her initial shock like a knife.

"There was a man, sitting behind me near the door. I didn't think anything of it until—"

"Until he drugged your coffee?" She ran at him then, battering on his chest with her fists, hating him so much it hurt, but not as much as she hated herself for allowing him back into her life again, into her little girl's life. "I fucking hate you!" she screamed. "Why didn't you stay away? Why did you have to come back?"

He did nothing for a moment. Stood there and let her hit him. Maybe he thought he deserved it. Either way, he did nothing to stop her, even when she punched him in the face twice, splitting his lip and hurting her hand at the same time. Eventually, he grabbed her arms and firmly held her as she kept wailing, her chest heaving as she tried to breathe. "I'm going to get her back. I promise you that, Gemma, I'll get our little girl back."

"
My
little girl! You've had her barely six months and you lost her!" She twisted out of his grip and stormed off into the living room and then through into the kitchen, a constant stream of tears running down her face. "I can't believe this is happening," she kept repeating to herself as she tried to get her head around the situation. She went to one of the cupboards and took out a bottle of vodka, pouring herself a large glass of it before downing the full drink in one. Then she poured herself another and stood leaning against the kitchen worktop, as much for support as anything else, because she really felt like she was going to faint. Then she noticed Harry standing in the doorway and her anger came back again.