Page 78 of The Forbidden Billionaire
As I sign my statement, Aurelia is just coming out of the Ladies’. She looks extremely pale, and I wonder whether she threw up in there. She walks back, and instead of standing with her family, she comes over to me.
“Thank you,” Constable Parish says, and he takes out his phone and turns away to answer it.
I pull Aurelia to one side. “Are you okay?”
“No.” She swallows. “You?”
“Not really.”
We both give wan smiles.
“I thought…” she says softly, “I didn’t ask you whether you’d go with me to Evermore. I’m sorry to have assumed.”
“It’s not a problem. You’re my priority right now.”
She smiles properly then, warming me through. Everything’s going to be okay if she continues to smile at me like that.
Ella was talking on the phone to one side, but she ends the call now and comes over to us.
“I’ve just heard from Rick,” she says, looking at her phone. “He’s emailed the full day’s footage from both corridors, but he’s sent me some clips from just before three p.m.”
She scrolls through, then pulls up the footage and presses play. It’s the camera in reception, set above the desk and trained on the waiting area and beyond it, the main doors. The timestamp says 2:53 p.m.
A guy walks up the steps, taps a key card to the pad, and comes inside. It’s Roy, about to start his afternoon shift. He approaches reception and says something to Ed—the guy whoworks the morning shift. Ed walks to the left side of the desk, and Roy joins him there, and they stand talking.
Aurelia presses her fingers to her mouth as another figure appears outside. He has a man’s build, with wide shoulders and narrow hips. He’s wearing black boots, jeans, a black hoodie, a baseball cap, and a face mask, the generic kind everyone wore during COVID.
He taps a key card to the pad and lets himself in.
Ed is collecting his jacket, and Roy is walking around the desk, talking to him. They’re both facing the other way. The guy in black times it perfectly to get to the elevator without them noticing. He doesn’t run, though—he strolls across the floor, keeping his head down.
“He knows the camera’s there,” I say, heart racing.
Next, the scene changes to the corridor leading to Aurelia’s door. We watch him exit the elevator. Now he’s pulled the hood up over his baseball cap, and when he stops and turns to open her door, his face is obscured. He goes inside, and the door slowly shuts.
The scene cuts to him exiting at 3:16 p.m. He reverses his steps, going back to the elevator, and then we watch him exit the carriage, cross the lobby, and go out. Roy glances at him but goes straight back to looking at his magazine.
We watch it twice more.
“I’ll talk to Roy,” Ella says, “but I’m betting he won’t be able to tell us anything.”
She goes over to the Ashfords and shows them and then shows Constable Parish after he finishes his call.
“It doesn’t tell us anything,” Caesar says, disappointed.
“It tells us a lot,” I comment. “He knew exactly when to come in so Ed and Roy were likely to be distracted. He knew where the cameras were, and how to angle his body to avoid being seen. He wasn’t improvising. He’d planned every step.”
“What does it mean?” Marcus asks impatiently.
“We don’t know yet,” Ella says. “But they’re all clues. Something will give him away.”
“Constable Wilson says you’re free to go,” James says to me and Aurelia. “We’ve got your phone numbers, and it’s likely that CIB will call you tomorrow and go through some details. Your head of security can go up now, if she wants to.”
Ella nods. “I’ll stay in touch,” she says to all of us. She looks at me. “Take care of her. I’ll log the deployment. Once you’re on site, confirm your location with the team.
I nod, and she walks away to the elevator.
“I’ll take you back home to pick up your clothes,” Caesar says to Aurelia. “Then I’ll drop you off.” He glances at me. “Meet us at Mechanics Bay Heliport around eight p.m.?”
