I promised if I survived today, that’s the first thing I would do. Save Murdo.
It all seemed a hundred years ago and yet it had only been this morning.
I looked at the clock. Only ten minutes had passed. Had the car arrived for Dad yet? Was he being forced to leave the house? I could have almost cried as I imagined him trying to organise a babysitter for Margo. He’d never leave her alone under any circumstances. Never had since he’d come out of prison. While Mum worked he had cooked and cleaned and looked after us and I had never appreciated anything. The job at Burgers A GoGo must have been as humiliating for him as it had been for me, but he had been willing to suffer it just to have a job. And what had I done? Made things even worse for him. Just as I was doing now.
And what was he doing now? Was he struggling with the men Magnus Pierce had sent to collect him? Was he being dragged out to a waiting limousine? Maybe the neighbours would see. His struggles would alert them. They might call the police.
But of course, they wouldn’t. They knew Dad’s past. Who he had been involved with. They would probably think he was just being arrested again by some plain-clothes police.
There was no way out. The car arriving at the house would have taken him by surprise. Magnus Pierce had given him no chance to contact the police himself to tell them what was happening.
It took me all my time and effort not to cry.
And suddenly, after an age, he was here! I could hear him pounding up the stairs before bursting into the office, his eyes wide with alarm.
‘Lissa!’ He dragged me close to him. ‘Did they hurt you!’
‘Of course not.’ Magnus Pierce sounded offended. ‘What kind of people do you think we are?’
‘I know exactly what kind of people you are.’ Dad held me even closer. ‘Magnus, let Lissa go. Please. That’s all I ask.’
I struggled. ‘No. I’m not going to leave you. It was me who got you into all this.’
From behind us Esther was laughing. ‘Let you go? Are you joking?’
And Magnus Pierce just shook his head sadly. ‘I’m afraid, Jonathan, that is out of the question now.’
I began to shake, I couldn’t help it. Dad pulled me closer against him.
‘What are you going to do with us?’ he asked.
We never did find out.
Because at that instant all hell broke loose in the office. The whole place was suddenly swarming with policemen and women, bursting through doors, pounding up stairs.
Esther gasped and tried to rush past them but she was grabbed and held.
Magnus Pierce’s face was ashen. He took a step back and looked from Dad to me, puzzled. It was all over in panic-stricken seconds. Handcuffs were snapped on Magnus Pierce’s wrists. He didn’t struggle. He looked straight at the detective who held him and said coldly, ‘I’ll be out of this in days. You know that.’
The policeman grinned at him, and glanced at Dad. ‘Will he, Mr Blythe?’
Dad’s voice was sure with his answer. ‘Not this time, Magnus. You were holding my daughter against her will.’ His voice was unforgiving. His glance moved to the policeman. ‘I’ll tell you everything you need to know.’
Magnus Pierce’s eyes narrowed viciously and didn’t leave Dad until he was pulled out of the office.
When he had gone, Dad let out a long, exhausted breath. ‘How did you know we were here?’ he asked the policeman.
‘We’ve had a man watching this office for weeks,’ he told Dad. ‘When he saw this young lady,’ he managed a smile in my direction, ‘running inside, looking, shall we say, slightly upset, he contacted us and even before we got here he saw you being escorted into the building by a couple of Pierce’s heavies. He said you looked even more upset than your daughter. It wasn’t too hard to put two and two together.’
Dad held me close, and for the first time, I let him. He was shivering. ‘I was so frightened he’d hurt you. I couldn’t think why you’d gone to see him.’
‘I thought you were going back to work for him,’ I mumbled. ‘When you read my diary you changed. As if you thought all I wanted was money, to go to Adler Academy, to get my old life back.’
He squeezed my arm. ‘It was reading your diary that did change things, Lissa. I realised the same thing that had happened to me was happening to you. You were being drawn into doing things by someone you thought was a friend. Keeping your mouth shut. Protecting Diane Connell the way I had protected Magnus Pierce. You made me see how wrong that was. That’s when I decided to tell the police everything I knew. No matter how dangerous it might be.’
When he spoke again, his voice was choked with tears. ‘You’ve been caught up in a horrible world, Lissa, and it’s all my fault. No wonder you can’t forgive me.’