His hand withdrew and he studied me for a long moment.
“Where’s my mom’s room?” I whispered urgently.
Something in his blue eyes told me everything was going to be okay. That I could trust him despite him helping capture and carry me from the front gate.
He ignored my question. “The guest room is down here on the right. You can have that one.”
I wordlessly tracked after him while taking stock of my surroundings and searching for any sign of my mom’s whereabouts. There, of course, was none.
The long, carpeted hallway stretched before me with ominous high ceilings, just as foreboding as I remembered from my childhood. The expensive pictures on the walls contradicted my treatment thus far. Thick wooden door frames and heavy bedroom doors led into luxurious rooms with four-poster beds.
My father lived a lavish lifestyle. His nonchalance over me killing one of his staff members didn’t surprise me. It was obvious that the men on his payroll were dispensable and replaceable. I eyed Arnauld again where he stood just inside the bedroom doorway. He shifted his weight from foot to foot and kept his hands clasped behind his back.
The more I stared, the stiller he became, until we both glared.
“You shouldn’t have come here, Hallie,” he whispered.
Surprised by his advice, albeit too little too late, I cautiously angled closer with narrowed eyes. “I came for Mom. What aren’t you telling me?”
“She was safe without you here. Now…”
Ripples of unease spread through my stomach. I swallowed them down and ignored my pounding pulse.
“Who are you?” I hissed under my breath.
I reached out to touch him, only to have my wrist snagged and twisted painfully to the side. We both halted; me, barely stopping the reaction to lash out, and him, glaring in warning.
“Stay here,” he commanded. “I’ve got a meeting with your father.”
With one shove that sent me stumbling back a few paces, he quickly stepped from the room and shut the door firmly. Keys then jingled in the lock.
“Who has a lock on their guest room?” I yelled against the solid wood.
“Stay there, Miss van Staden,” came Arnauld’s muffled voice, then his receding boot steps.
I cursed and strode to one of the large bedroom windows. It overlooked the driveway and front gate, not the rear courtyard and spacious back garden like my childhood room did.
While being held here was a huge cause for concern, I took solace in the fact that Tiffany would be expecting contact from me this afternoon and would be alerted when the call failed to come. If I couldn’t get myself and Mom out of here, surely the team would. However, I was torn; this wasn’t their fight. Me being in Cape Town wasn’t Claire’s problem—not in a work sense anyway. I knew they had my back, just as I had theirs, but this was a situation I didn’t want to drag them into. This was a personal grievance I needed to settle myself, if at all possible. Not only for my mom; after the assault, for myself.
I cased the room, looking for weaknesses. My father had been smart; none of the windows opened except for the upper portion that was well out of reach and could only be opened by crank handles.
The only adjoining door, aside from the one I entered through, led to a spacious bathroom, lined floor to ceiling with large marble tiles and left no viable way to escape.
I prowled like a caged lioness. Back and forth. Around and around. Retrying both the locked door and the windows, looking for any weaknesses.
If it wasn’t a straight fall to the ground, I would have smashed the window and made a break for it but plummeting two stories onto concrete wasn’t my idea of a smart getaway.
All I could do was sit tight and hope that Tiffany raised the alarm sooner rather than later.
Chapter Seventeen
Hallie
After casing the entire room from floor to ceiling for the fifth time, I finally admitted defeat. My mind returned to the invisible taint left on my skin from Mandla.
Immediately, my skin heated and crawled with disgust. I scratched at it, trying to get rid of the sensation until it burned. Fingernail marks gouged the length of my arms. They marred my neck and chest. The red tracks crossed my thighs and disappeared under the hem of my dress, barely stopping at my panty line. Those panties, wet and soiled with the aftermath, were the first garment I tore from my body. I dry retched while casting them aside.
Despite the door being locked from the outside, I couldn’t take the chance of someone entering the room. Biting back the urge to rip my dress off, I set my sights on the heavy-framed bed. I grunted and heaved it across the room, inch by slow inch, until I’d wedged it firmly across the bedroom door. No fucker would get inside the room with that there.