Nine Liars (Truly Devious, #5)(57)

15


“SO,” STEVIE SAID, “ALL OF THESE PEOPLE SLEPT WITH EACH OTHER all the time. That’s a lot of what we learned.”

The group was seated around a large, circular booth in a restaurant in Chinatown in Soho. Over plates of Singapore noodles, ho fun, and shredded duck pancakes, they told Janelle, Nate, and Vi about the information they had gleaned from Sooz, Peter, and Yash.

“Also . . .” Izzy reached for a spring roll. “Everyone seems mad at Julian a lot. Julian Reynolds. He’s an MP from up north. He has a good track record on issues but he’s been in the papers for having a lot of partners. All of it is interesting, but it doesn’t tell us anything about where my aunt is, does it?”

“Anything new from the police?” Vi asked.

“They say they’re going to go through the CCTV tomorrow. It would be more helpful now. Anything could be happening. What the hell do I do?”

“Get the word out,” Vi said. “Post it everywhere.”

This kind of thing was very much Vi’s wheelhouse, and soon the table was in a discussion about graphics, messages, and influencers. After they finished their meal, they knocked together a flyer, got a thousand copies made, and went up to Islington together to shove them into letter flaps and post them everywhere they could.

By the time this was all over, it was almost midnight. They returned to Craven House with a heaving bag of junk food from Tesco Express and a sense of having done something in this general effort. When they reached the lobby, David and Stevie looked at each other.

“Want to hang out?” David asked.

She did, in fact, want to hang out.

They decided to go to his room. It was much like Stevie’s in layout, with a few more personal touches. But not, Stevie noted, as many as she expected. He hadn’t been able to bring that much with him to England, so most of his things were new to her, and the room was sterile and blank.

Which mattered not at all. The door was no sooner closed than he was kissing her, backing her carefully toward the bed. She was reaching for it, trying to find it so she knew where to sit and when to lean back. He was on top of her, kissing along her chin, down to her chest. He was reaching up under her shirt, running his still-cold hands over her stomach, up higher.

“All night,” he said. “We’ve been out there all night and . . .”

She silenced him by putting her mouth on his, tugging her shirt up. They were working with frantic speed. And then came the fervent rapping on the door. David broke off the kiss. He closed his eyes and shook his head, then pulled down his shirt and leaned back as if nothing was going on. Stevie did the same.

“Come in,” he yelled.

“There have been developments,” Izzy said, rushing in, paying no attention to the close atmosphere in the room. “Two things. One, Julian got information. On the night she disappeared, my aunt got a call from an unknown mobile number at 9:53. That’s right in the middle of the chain of texts. Here.”

She pulled up Angela’s texts and pointed to the spot.

9:46 p.m. ANGELA: She had the button

9:47 p.m. THEO: ?

9:48 p.m. SOOZ: What Theo said.

9:48 p.m. YASH: Button?

9:49 p.m. PETER: what?

9:50 p.m. SOOZ: I have to go back onstage. Please someone explain to me what is happening.

9:51 p.m. SEBASTIAN: Can you ring me?

9:55 p.m. THEO: Ange?

9:57 p.m. THEO: Ange can you pick up?

9:58 p.m. PETER: I just rang as well and it went to voice mail.

“So she mentions the button. That’s the last time she speaks on this chain. The call comes right after Sebastian asks her to ring. And Peter says down here that her line is engaged and goes to voice mail. An unknown mobile number.”

“That’s not hard to do,” David said. “Set up an online burner account.”

“But someone went to the trouble,” Stevie said.

“That seems bad.” Izzy wrapped her arms around herself. “Very strange. She gets this unknown call and then she’s gone. But there’s more. Tonight, they all kept talking on the chain. They’ve all decided to meet at Merryweather. Tomorrow. They’re going to spend the night. I had an idea. I texted Sooz separately, pretending I didn’t know about their going. I was saying how scary this situation is and talked my way into being invited. And then I asked to bring you. All of you. To Merryweather.”

“Us?” Stevie said. “Where is it?”

“Gloucester. Outside of Cheltenham. Only two hours or so on the train. I’m going mad here and there’s nothing more I can do. The answer is there, isn’t it? With them? We need to go where they are, and it will be all of them!”

Stevie felt stupid having to explain that tomorrow they had a boat tour of the Thames to learn about the work of someone named Isambard Kingdom Brunel who was apparently a very important Victorian-era engineer who made tunnels and bridges but who looked like the kind of guy who had a basement full of urchins. Stevie didn’t particularly care about this, but Janelle was eager and had been planning to do an essay about it.

“There’s a train at noon that would get us there by midafternoon,” Izzy said. “Please. This may be the chance to find out what’s going on.”

Stevie ran through the math in her mind.

On one hand: missing person.