Abduction
PART ONE
The rain had eased to a fine Cheshire mist by the time Ianthe Chambers left the offices of the Blackmere Herald that evening. The high street lay quiet, its black-painted timber frontages glowing softly with the amber light from The Fox in the Mere. She pulled her light cardigan tighter around her shoulders, auburn hair catching the damp as she walked. At twenty-three, fresh from her Masters, she still felt the thrill of her first proper job, notebook tucked beneath her arm like a talisman. Nathaniel Carrington’s latest planning application had seemed straightforward enough—another glass-and-steel eyesore rising near the Roman ruins by the mere. Nothing more.
She never heard him.
One moment the cobbles stretched ahead beneath the street lamps; the next, a large gloved hand clamped over her mouth, cutting off her cry. An arm like banded steel wrapped around her waist and lifted her clean off her feet. She kicked, twisted, but he moved with terrifying speed, carrying her into the shadows of a narrow alley that smelt of wet stone and old secrets. A van door slid open. Darkness swallowed her.
When Ianthe woke, her head throbbed with a dull, chemical ache. She lay on a sagging bed in what appeared to be an abandoned bedroom. Dust motes danced in the thin beam of light slanting through a boarded window. The air carried the stale scent of old ale and damp plaster. An abandoned pub, she realised—the Pig in a Poke, that crumbling wreck a few miles outside Blackmere. She had driven past it often enough, always thinking it looked like the sort of place ghosts might linger.
Her heart hammered against her ribs. She sat up too quickly and the room spun. That was when she saw him.
He stood in the doorway, filling it completely. Six-foot-five if he was an inch, broad shoulders straining beneath a black tactical shirt, dark hair silvered at the temples. His face was all hard angles and shadowed stubble, the sort of face that had seen too much and forgiven nothing. Dark brown eyes watched her with an intensity that stole the breath from her lungs. He held a pistol loosely at his side, as though it were no more remarkable than a mobile telephone.
Ianthe’s mouth went dry. Fear, sharp and metallic, flooded her throat. Yet beneath it stirred something else—something treacherous and unwelcome. He was beautiful in the way a storm was beautiful: dangerous, unrelenting, impossible to look away from.
“Who the hell are you?” she demanded, her voice steadier than she felt. She swung her legs off the bed, bare feet meeting cold floorboards. “Let me go this instant.”
The man—Pike Roman, though she did not know his name yet—tilted his head, studying her as though she were a rare and fractious creature he had decided to keep. From the moment he had first seen her weeks ago, poring over documents in the Herald’s archive with that fierce little frown, something inside him had shifted. He had taken contracts on men and women across Europe, ended lives without hesitation, and told himself the ledger could never be balanced. Yet the instant he learnt there was a price on Ianthe Chambers’ head, the decision had been simple. He would not let her die. Whether he saved her for her sake or for his own possessive hunger, he could not yet say. He only knew he had to have her. Even if that meant saving her from herself.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he said, voice low and rough, carrying the faint flattened vowels of someone who had spent years away from Cheshire but never quite left it. “There’s a contract out on your life. Someone wants you dead, love. I don’t know who yet. But until I do, you stay with me.”
Ianthe laughed, a brittle, disbelieving sound. “This is mad. I’m a journalist, not some bloody spy. Let me go or I’ll scream the roof off this place.”
She lunged for the door.
He caught her easily, one large hand wrapping around her wrist, the other steadying her waist. The heat of his palm burned through the thin fabric of her summer dress. She felt the solid wall of his chest against her back, the steady thud of his heart. For a terrible, dizzying second she was aware of how small she was next to him, how completely he could overpower her if he chose.
“Easy,” he murmured, breath warm against her ear. “You’ll only hurt yourself.”
She struggled harder, elbow driving back, heel stamping down on his instep. He grunted but did not loosen his hold. Instead he pulled her closer, almost gently, until her back was flush against him. The scent of gun oil, rain, and something darkly masculine filled her senses.
“Listen to me,” he said quietly. “I’ve done things… terrible things. Saving you won’t wipe that slate clean. But I saw you and I wanted you. Not for them. For me. And that means keeping you alive, even when you fight me like a wildcat.”
Ianthe’s breath hitched. Tears of fury and confusion stung her eyes. She hated how her body trembled, hated the unwelcome flicker of heat low in her belly at his words. This man was a stranger. A kidnapper. Possibly worse.
“I will get away,” she whispered fiercely. “I don’t care what you want. I’m going home.”
Pike Roman looked down at the top of her auburn head, at the way her small hands curled into fists against his forearm. A dark, possessive satisfaction curled through him. She would try. He would stop her. Again and again, until she understood that in this game of shadows, he was now her only shelter.
Outside, the wind moved through the overgrown beer garden of the Pig in a Poke, rattling the old pub sign. Blackmere lay only a few miles away, its Roman ghosts and Sunday roasts and familiar faces blissfully unaware.
But Ianthe Chambers was already gone. And the man who had taken her had no intention of letting her go.
Pamela Chambers closed the front door of the little terraced house on the edge of Blackmere and leant against it for a moment, listening to the silence. The clock on the mantelpiece in the parlour ticked steadily past ten o’clock. Ianthe should have been home by now. She usually texted when she worked late at the Herald, but the screen of Pamela’s phone remained stubbornly dark.
She told herself not to worry. Her daughter was twenty-three now, a proper journalist with a Masters degree and opinions sharp enough to cut glass. She had her own life. “She’s probably at a friend’s house,” Pamela murmured to the empty hallway, slipping off her shoes. “Sapphira’s, maybe. Or she’s followed a story and lost track of time. Best not smother the girl.”
Still, the unease lingered like damp in the old walls.
She moved through to the tiny box room she used as an office, switching on the desk lamp. A stack of ledgers waited beside her ancient laptop, the pages filled with Titus Baron’s careful, coded handwriting. Illegal bets, mostly. Football, horses, bare-knuckle fights out near the Roman ruins. The sort of business that never appeared on any tax return. Pamela had kept these books for years, her neat figures hiding far more than they revealed.
She sat down, rubbing her temples. At fifty-five her white hair was pulled back into a severe bun, and her green eyes— the same shade as Ianthe’s, though lighter now— looked tired in the lamplight. She opened the first ledger and began entering the figures, her fingers moving automatically across the keyboard. The pay was pitiful. The hours were long. But she endured it all for the sake of quiet.
Because Titus Baron had photographs.
Old ones, taken in the back rooms of Manchester clubs when Pamela had been young, desperate, and working the streets as a sex worker just to keep a roof over their heads. She had never told Ianthe about those years. Never wanted her daughter to carry that shame. Baron had made it clear what would happen if she tried to leave: the pictures would find their way to the Blackmere Herald, to Ianthe’s colleagues, to the whole bloody town. So Pamela stayed. She smiled when Titus’s enforcer, Hercules Gates, dropped off the latest batch of paperwork. She kept her mouth shut and her head down.
A floorboard creaked overhead and she glanced up, heart jumping for a second before she remembered the house was empty. Just the old timber settling. Still no message from Ianthe.
She stared at the phone again, thumb hovering over her daughter’s name. No. Let the girl breathe. She was not a child anymore. Pamela had fought hard to give her a better start than she had known— university, a respectable job, a chance to walk down Blackmere High Street with her head held high. She would not ruin that by turning into a clinging mother.
With a sigh she returned to the ledgers, the green glow of the screen reflecting in her eyes. Outside, the wind moved through the narrow streets, carrying the distant chime of St Augustine’s Church bell. Blackmere slept on, peaceful and pretty beneath its Roman ghosts.
Pamela told herself Ianthe would be home soon. She had to believe it.
Because if she let herself think anything else— if she let the fear take root— then the careful walls she had built around her secrets might start to crack. And that, she could not allow. Not for anything.
