Go Seek

by Michelle Teahan

Genres: Thrillers; Crime Fiction; Domestic Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

YOU LOOKED AWAY FOR JUST A MINUTE.

Your daughter is gone, and only you can find her.
Because you know exactly who took her.
And they're making her pay for your past.

To save one child, you must leave the other.
You must return to your old life.
And become the woman you left behind years ago.

It's every parent's worst nightmare.
Now it's your reality.

Exhilarating and breathless, with an emotional core, GO SEEK is a non-stop high-octane thriller that will take you on an unforgettable journey through the darker side of Dublin's streets as one mother seeks revenge for her daughter. For fans of Adrian McKinty, Andrea Mara, K.L. Slater and TAKEN.

(P) 2023 Headline Publishing Group Ltd

Release date: July 6, 2023

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 352

Sample

Prologue

What have I done?

This was bad. This was very, very bad, she thought as she paced up and down the brightly tiled hallway.

Picking up the receiver of the mustard-­yellow phone attached to the wall, she dialled the same number she’d already tried three times.

You have reached the mobile phone number of 0-­8—

She slammed it back onto the mount, cursing loudly as it inevitably fell down, and took more care to replace it despite the shake in her hand. Running her hands through her hair, she returned to her pacing.

Her daughter had sworn blind that if she bought her a mobile phone for her sixteenth birthday, she would be contactable at all times, but in the three months since then her daughter had answered her a grand total of once.

She grabbed the receiver again, punching in the same numbers with a force that risked knocking the entire unit off the wall. A sweat had broken out all over her body.

Please, please, please, she thought, I really need this to be the second time you answer my call. It started ringing and she held her breath. Please – she squeezed her eyes shut – please.

You have reached the mobile phone number of 0-­8-­7—

‘Damn it!’ she shouted, forcing the phone back onto its mount. It fell down again. This time she didn’t bother replacing it. Instead, she returned to the path she was wearing through her hallway.

She’d never felt a fear like this before. How could I have been so stupid? Right outside his hotel.

Despite the sweat, a cold sensation had crept through her veins, and she needed to do something, anything, to stop it.

She knew what that something was, where she had to go, who she had to turn to. It wasn’t what she wanted to do, but she had been left with no other choice. Not if she wanted to ensure her and her daughter’s safety. It was the lesser of two evils. Taking a deep breath, she stopped her pacing, a sense of calm taking over. She’d be fine, there was time. She and her daughter would be safe. Everything was going to be fine.

She made her way to the kitchen and started pulling open every drawer in turn until she found a blank piece of paper. Then she repeated the process, looking for a pen, before leaning over the kitchen counter to scribble a note.

She signed off, then filled the kettle. She would need a cup of tea to settle her nerves before doing what needed to be done, but as her finger paused over the switch, the doorbell sounded. She looked down the hall towards the front door.

Maybe everything wouldn’t be fine.

1

Now

Kent, England

The toilet flushed for the second time in less than two minutes.

‘Abbie, out of the bathroom now, please. There’s no way you have to wee again.’

I sighed. There was a strong chance the toilet would flush again in the next couple of seconds. Potty training had been relatively straightforward with my two-­and-­a-­half-­year-­old until she’d developed an obsession with repeatedly going to the toilet – all so she could press the flush.

I looked down at my nursing baby, happily suckling, her hand wrapped around my hair, then towards the bedroom door that led out into the hallway. At the other end of the narrow landing was the bathroom where my toddler was no doubt gearing up to send more water rushing into the toilet bowl. I glanced at the digital clock sitting on my bedside locker. It was 8:35 a.m. My husband, Christopher, was probably finishing up a leisurely hotel breakfast on his business trip in Milan right about now.

Pushing my head back against the grey crushed-­velvet headboard of my super-king bed, I took a deep breath and looked at the ceiling. How in the name of Christ was I going to get out of here and to the GP’s surgery, which was a good twenty minutes away, for our nine o’clock appointment?

Taking another deep breath, I pushed down the overwhelming feeling of being trapped; physically on this bed beneath a feeding baby, and in this house with a toddler who had a tiny bladder, but also figuratively in this life by the titles of mother and wife.

Looking back down at the baby in my arms, whose eyelids were dipping lower and lower, those feelings drifted from me like receding waves on a shoreline. Destined to return but gone for now. Smiling down at thirteen-­month-­old Sarah, I knew I was exactly where I needed to be, where I should be. Contentment filled every inch of space inside me that had just been vacated by the feeling of confinement. How could I not be content with my wonderful family and—?

The toilet flushed again.

‘Abbie! Get out of that bathroom. NOW!’

 

My face was flushing red and beads of sweat were sliding down my spine when I finally reached the surgery and scrambled into the nurse’s office.

‘I’m sorry we’re late, it was so busy out there with the school traffic and I had to park halfway down Elmwood Avenue, and—’

Nurse Rose held up a hand to stop me while simultan­eously tapping away on her phone, without even looking up.

‘Come in and sit down, Mrs King,’ she said, finally, returning to her computer screen.

I hadn’t even crossed the threshold of her office and I already felt like a naughty nine-­year-­old being told off by her teacher instead of a thirty-­two-­year-­old mother of two.

Nurse Rose pushed the vaccination consent forms across the desk towards me as I took Sarah out of her buggy and warned Abbie to behave. I reached out and signed them awkwardly while trying to keep a wriggling Sarah, who desperately wanted to join her sister, in my arms. I could feel more beads of sweat rolling down my back. I should have taken off my coat before I took Sarah out of the buggy, but if I sat her on the floor with Abbie there would be no getting her back. Not willingly, at least.

‘Sorry for cancelling last month,’ I said, in an effort to fill the awkward silence that followed. ‘It’s just she was miserable with a head cold so I didn’t want to put her through a vaccination.’

‘It is a twelve-­month vaccine, not a thirteen-­month one,’ Nurse Rose said, rummaging in her drawers for supplies.

I didn’t know what to say to that so I turned in my seat to see what Abbie was up to.

‘Oh God, I’m sorry,’ I gasped when I realised that the reason for Abbie’s silence was that she’d been methodically emptying a wide metal cabinet of its files.

Nurse Rose looked over and sighed. ‘Could you ready the child, please?’ she asked, with a pointed look at Sarah.

‘Oh, yes. Sorry. Of course.’

The nurse tutted as she watched me struggle to remove Sarah’s tights. ‘Loose-­fitting trousers are what we recommend for vaccination days,’ she stated firmly, tapping her manicured fingernail on the syringe she held, needle pointed towards me accusingly.

I had in fact dressed Sarah in loose-­fitting trousers, but she’d leaked through her nappy on the drive over, and a pair of tights, which almost definitely needed a wash, was all I could find in her changing bag. I didn’t say any of that, of course. Instead, I gave the nurse a small, tight smile and apologised once again.

By the time Sarah was vaccinated and settled in her buggy, and I’d wrestled Abbie away from her filing cabinet destruction, I felt like the worst parent to have ever entered Nurse Rose’s office.

 

Back at the Ford Kuga, which I had abandoned earlier on a quiet street around the corner from the GP’s surgery, I had already replayed the entire appointment with Nurse Rose in my head. I hated myself and my parental inadequacies even more the second time.

A familiar sadness settled on me when I thought of my own mother and how wonderful she had been. She wouldn’t have been late to my vaccination appointment, and she certainly wouldn’t have had me wearing clothes in need of a wash.

Forcing Nurse Rose and my mother from my mind, I pushed my foot down on the buggy’s brake paddle, still gripping Abbie’s small hand. I looked at the car and weighed up my options. I could put Abbie in first, but her seat was on the side of the car out on the road, which would mean leaving Sarah alone in her buggy on the footpath. Or I could put Sarah in first and keep Abbie by my legs, but Abbie had a tendency to run off if something interesting enough caught her attention. What had I done earlier? Jesus, when had simple things become so complicated? Looking around the car at the empty road, I decided to put Sarah in her seat before she fell asleep in the buggy. Right from birth, it hadn’t mattered if Sarah had been asleep thirty seconds or thirty minutes, if you moved her, she woke, and there was no going back.

‘Abbie, stand right next to Mummy while I put your sister in her seat, okay? Arm around my leg and hold on tight. Don’t move from my side.’

I unhooked the straps from which Sarah had somehow mostly escaped and placed her in the car seat. The consequence of trading her morning nap for a brutal stabbing with a sharp needle came with a vengeance as Sarah started to scream and straighten her body. I thought of the pushy sales assistant who had tried to convince me and Christopher to fork out the extra money for a car seat that turned sideways. We had walked away laughing, thinking she had mistaken us for inexperienced, first-­time parents. Well, I certainly wasn’t laughing now as I edged one foot into the car to try to wrestle a screaming baby into her seat. How did something so small suddenly have so much strength the second you tried to manoeuvre them?

After singing her a medley of distracting nursery rhymes, completely off-­key, I sighed with relief as Sarah finally relaxed into her seat. At the same moment, the pressure of Abbie’s small arm left my leg.

‘Hold on, Abbie! Be a good girl now, don’t make Mummy cross,’ I called as I pulled the straps over Sarah’s shoulders.

The pressure didn’t return.

‘Abbie?’ Panic caused me to fumble with the seat buckles as I tried to stretch sideways to see outside the car.

‘Abbie!’

The clips finally snapped into place. I pulled the straps to check Sarah was secure and jumped out, my eyes searching the area around the car.

‘ABBIE!’

I couldn’t see her.

‘Abbie, where are you?’ I screamed, walking into the road. I started turning in circles, but it was as if the world was rotating in the opposite direction and I couldn’t process what I was seeing. How was she not there? Why couldn’t I see her?

I should be able to see her.

‘Abbie, where—?’ I stopped dead.

The familiar pattern of white daisies on purple boots was sticking out from beneath a parked car on the opposite side of the road. I couldn’t breathe. She had crossed the road. Why would she do that? What if a car had come? Had one come? Did it hit her? A barrage of questions swarmed around my brain as I ran towards those small boots. I threw myself down, feeling as if my heart was clamped in an ever-­tightening vice. I placed a hand on a boot, and instantly the sound of the most beautiful, high-­pitched giggle filled my ears. The boots pulled away and crawled out from beneath the car.

‘Abbie, Abbie, Abbie.’

I couldn’t stop saying her name, reassuring myself that she was okay. That she was there in front of me. That she was safe. It had only been seconds, but it had seemed like an eternity. In that time, the bottom of my world had fallen out, and I had felt paralysed by fear. Folding Abbie into my arms, I held her against my chest. She was mumbling something, but I wasn’t listening. I just wanted to feel her against me. Everything that had gone through my mind, the things I’d thought – but none of that mattered now. Now, she was safe in my arms.

It took a few seconds for my breathing to settle and the panic to evaporate sufficiently for me to speak. I held Abbie away from me, my hands clamped on her arms, terrified that she might disappear again. Annoyance pushed its way through my relief.

‘Why did you do that to me, Abbie? Why did you run off like that?’

My voice verged on hysterical, but reining in all that emotion was proving difficult. Abbie looked as if she was about to cry so I held her face between my hands and rubbed her cheeks with my thumbs.

‘Don’t worry, love. I’m not angry.’ I was relieved my voice sounded more natural. ‘I just want to know why you ran off like that?’

‘Sorry, Mummy,’ she dropped her eyes to the ground. ‘I was only playing hide-and-seek.’

The adrenaline coursing through my body finally abated. Hide-and-seek. That made sense. It had become the game of choice in our house. Christopher and Abbie could play for hours, with Christopher selecting his hiding places so that he had an unobstructed view of the TV. I would have to talk to Christopher when he got home. We’d need to stress the rules of the game to Abbie; when it was and wasn’t appropriate to play. He’d think I was overreacting, but if he hadn’t taught her the damn game, she wouldn’t have run off just now and scared me half to death. What good could possibly come from teaching a child so young how to hide from her parents? Just thinking about what might have happened made me sick to my stomach.

‘You can’t play hide-and-seek without telling someone, sweetheart. It’s dangerous to play on your own when no one’s looking for you.’

‘Wasn’t playing on my own, Mummy.’

‘I wasn’t playing, Abbie. I was busy with Sarah. You knew that.’

Abbie’s bottom lip pushed out in response to the reprimand.

‘No, Mummy, not you.’

‘Oh, is that right?’ A smile spread across my face, ready for her to name and blame yet another imaginary friend. ‘Who were you playing with, then, missy?’

‘The man.’

I stopped smiling.

‘What man?’

‘The man with the black, shiny coat.’

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. My heart was pounding in my ears, and Abbie’s face dimmed and darkened in front of me.

She leaned in close. ‘Your turn now.’

‘What?’ I asked, my mouth dry, everything inside of me turning cold.

Abbie smiled, a beautiful innocent smile, a complete contradiction to the words she spoke.

‘Go seek, Mummy.’

2

Every muscle in my body responded to Abbie’s words. I jumped up and ran back to the car, dragging Abbie behind me. She stumbled as I pulled her up onto the footpath, urging her towards the car door, still wide open. I threw myself around the door and stopped. I let go of Abbie’s hand.

She was gone. Sarah was gone.

The space that my younger daughter had occupied, only moments earlier, was empty. No, not empty. There was a white, blank business card tucked into the headrest. The headrest where my daughter’s head should be nestled.

I stumbled back from the car, turning in circles, a desperate repeat of moments earlier. I looked up and down the street, trying to take everything in, but terror flooded my body, dampening my senses. This time, I knew I wouldn’t find her.

The silver Hyundai parked behind us was still there, as was the green Mitsubishi in the driveway up the road, the red Ford Focus behind that, and the silver Toyota across the road, where I had found Abbie hiding. Nothing was different. Everything was the same as it had been when we’d returned from the clinic. I turned again. No, something was different. The dark blue Peugeot 508 that had been parked across the driveway of the last house in the row was gone. Had they simply left their house to go to the shop? Or had someone been waiting here for me? But there was nothing. There was no one around. No sign that something terrible had just happened – except for the empty car seat and that hateful fucking white card.

I screamed, the sound coming straight from my gut, as I fell to my knees. Abbie was crying as she rubbed my back, trying to soothe me as I had done to her so many times before. Still on my knees, I turned to Abbie and my screams became tears as I looked at her beautiful face. She had big blue eyes, just like her father, and small rosebud lips, a brush of colour against her perfect pale skin. There was a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, and a mess of red curls falling across her forehead, the only physical attribute I had given her. An older version of the baby who, moments earlier, had been safe and sound in the car.

Safe. I thought she’d been safe.

I’d made the ultimate mistake. I’d dropped my guard and the most unthinkable thing had happened. I had let it happen. All of those surreal worst-­case scenarios that kept me awake at night while I listened to Christopher’s heavy, restful breathing beside me, carefree and oblivious to the imaginary scenes in my head, and now the most terrifying one of all had just happened. The nightmare that plagued me the most had become a reality, and none of the worrying, none of those sleepless nights, had prepared me for it.

My head throbbed, but I couldn’t stop the tears. Abbie wrapped her arms around me. ‘It’s okay, Mummy. I don’t like seeking, too.’

I cried harder, so hard that I couldn’t breathe. I wanted the world to stop, to give me time to process what had happened, to let me figure out what I should do, what I needed to do to get my baby back. But that didn’t happen. The earth continued to spin, and time continued to tick relentlessly, unconcerned by my desperation.

I had no idea how much time had passed with me kneeling on the footpath, tears flowing down my face. Abbie had stopped rubbing my back and was sitting beside me, knees pulled up to her chest, hugging them tight. Seeing my toddler sat so still when she normally never stopped moving dragged me back from the dark place my mind had retreated to. I forced a deep breath into my lungs and stood, scooping Abbie up and kissing her frightened, tear-­stained face. I squeezed her little body against mine, soothing her as best I could while trying to ease the physical pain that ripped through me the second I saw those loose, limp car seat straps and that vulgar white card, so out of place.

Closing the door, with Abbie secured in her car seat, I took one last pointless look around the quiet, unchanged street. As I did, I saw how it must all have played out. The man in the black coat is crouched down behind my car, beckoning Abbie with a smile and his finger to his lips. Abbie doesn’t hesitate. Why would she? There is no one in her world who doesn’t care for her, who’d want to hurt her. She doesn’t yet see danger.

She’s walking towards him, her little fist balled up, cover­ing her mouth to keep from giggling, red curls bouncing as she creeps away from me. He’s explaining the game to her in a hushed voice, pointing to the hiding place. His hand is on her back as he guides her there, watching as she crawls beneath the car before walking off, back to his vantage point, where he watches the game he’s set up play out. And there I go, unwittingly playing the role of the panicked and distraught mother, the role I had been scripted.

I’m crossing the road, running towards those small boots, completely unaware of the other faceless person creeping towards the open car door and the unguarded baby within. And while I’m on the other side of the road, reassuring myself that my child is safe, my baby is being pulled from her car seat and taken out of sight.

Of course it was Sarah. It was always going to be her. The one who couldn’t speak, who couldn’t scream out for her mummy, kick out, wriggle away, run off or cry for help. Sarah made the most sense. She was easy to travel with, to take where they needed to go. Where I now needed to go.

Home.

I blinked, and the street was empty once again.

I walked around the back of the car, returning to Sarah’s car seat, and pulled the white card from the headrest, shoving it into my pocket before climbing into the driver’s seat and starting the engine. But I couldn’t get my body to cooperate and start driving. I couldn’t leave. It was as if I was deserting Sarah, even though I knew she was long gone.

‘Get it together,’ I muttered to myself, gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles blanched. I took a breath, in for a count of four, held it for a count of four and released it to the count of four. Box breathing; a calming technique I had learned years ago when life had suddenly become a lot more complicated than I was equipped to manage. ‘You can fall to pieces later, when your baby’s life doesn’t depend on you. You’ve fucked up already, you can’t afford to do it again, Maeve.’

It worked, something inside me slammed shut. The raw, unbearable pain that had been threatening to destroy me became trapped behind an efficient, albeit temporary, barrier. I adjusted the rear-­view mirror away from the empty car seat and focused it on Abbie.

‘Okay, time to get going.’ I was telling myself as much as her.

‘But, Mummy, we need to find Sarah.’

I forced a reassuring smile to my face.

‘Don’t you worry, sweetheart. Mummy will find Sarah. I promise.’

 

On the drive home, I obeyed every stop sign and speed limit, took care at every junction and signalled at every turn. I needed to act quickly, but that also meant efficiently. Getting stopped for speeding, or having an accident, was not an option. There was no time to waste, so I drove as cautiously as I could bear to, despite every single one of my nerve endings screaming at me to push down on the accelerator as we traded the busier town streets for quieter country roads.

As we drove through the large, gated entrance of Redmond Row, my body was vibrating with all the adrenaline I was trying to suppress. My right foot ached from keeping it steady as we passed the red-­brick homes, each with varying amounts of trees and greenery surrounding them to provide even more privacy in an already gated community.

The second I pulled into the driveway of our large, four-­bed house, I cut the engine and retrieved Abbie from her seat, keeping my eyes focused on the task at hand, refusing to glance towards the identical car seat on the other side, which was now empty.

Abbie ran off to the living room as soon as I opened the front door, no doubt to return to the mound of books and the game of ‘library’ she’d been playing that morning before we’d left.

Before all three of us had left.

Standing in the hall, I looked into the kitchen at the highchair, which was tucked in awkwardly at the dining table. Only two mornings ago, we had all been sat there eating pancakes, laughing at the flour that had found its way into Christopher’s neatly cut, dirty-­blond hair. I had looked around the table at my family – Sarah rubbing chocolate spread into her face, Abbie joining in and filling in the gaps Sarah had missed, while Christopher mock-­grimaced – and wondered how I deserved a life with such a loving husband and two beautiful daughters. Thinking back on the memory, I felt as if I was about to lose it all over again. How had everything changed so quickly? If only I’d known then that there’d been a timer counting down above our heads.

A . . .