The Fall by Louise Jensen

Author:Louise Jensen [Jensen, Louise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Beth

What has Tegan done?

Beth has to protect her daughter. Clear her name, but she does not know where to start.

Her eyes are gritty with tiredness, hands cupping a mug of cold coffee. The hours slide by, shadows creeping across the walls in the creamy moonlight until, finally, outside the kitchen window dawn streaks the sky peach and lilac.

Above her, the floorboards creak. Tegan is awake. Probably hasn’t slept either. How could she after the trauma of her arrest yesterday? And it is the ache for all that her daughter has been through that brings some clarity to Beth’s exhausted, muddled mind and she knows exactly what she needs to do today.

Find Travis.

He’s the one with the record. The one who has disappeared. Why aren’t the police focusing on him?

Find Travis.

But she doesn’t know how. It isn’t as though she hasn’t searched online. Asked at the local pub. Is this what the police have done? They have more resources than her. Have they located him yet? She doesn’t think so because, if they had found Travis, there is a good chance they would want to talk to her and Matt because Tegan isn’t the sole reason that she needs to find Travis.

He’s screwed them over.

Not just them.

Victor Kent.

A man you definitely didn’t want to mess with.

A man who is running out of patience.

Beth’s stomach violently plummets again the way it did when Matt told her the news – the worst news – on the phone. It was during that call he also told her that Travis’s cottage was being searched. Her vision tunnels as she remembers encouraging Matt to be honest with Victor on Sunday afternoon, naively thinking that Victor might help them find the farmhand. Beth grips the edge of the table, taking deep breaths to steady herself. Sometimes she feels she is hanging on by her fingernails, just seconds from falling.

She tells herself that Victor would have found out eventually, but if only they’d kept quiet they’d have bought some time to find Travis.

But how?

Think.

Travis doesn’t have social media accounts.

Think.

No one in town has seen him.

It seems impossible to find someone who doesn’t want to be found but it can’t be. Not in this digital age where everyone leaves a footprint.

Think.

When was the last time she saw him? At her and Kate’s fortieth birthday party. She opens up the photo app on her phone. She had asked Tegan to take pictures but, with everything that has happened since, she hasn’t looked at them yet. Could they hold a clue somehow? Could Travis be wearing something with some sort of logo indicating where he came from? A local football team or …

Something.

Desperately, Beth begins to scroll through shot after shot.

There she is, balanced on a hay bale, face pressed against Kate’s, cheeks gin-rosy. Her parents sitting by the Bluetooth speaker, anxious expressions on their faces, probably worried it would stop streaming and then what would they do? Technology is so beyond them. There’s Caily. Beth’s breath catches. This is probably one of the last photos of her niece before her fall.

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