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to.’
    ‘Did she take her handbag?’
    ‘They wouldn’t let her.’
    ‘Fuck.’ He slammed his hand against the elevator wall.
    My phone started to ring but I ignored it. I knew Mum’s phone would be in her handbag. It felt like forever before the elevator informed us we were on the ground floor. We squeezed through the still-opening doors, scanning the surroundings for any sign of Mum. A large group of Chinese were checking in, trolleys full of their bags blocking a large portion of the walkway.
    ‘There,’ I said, pointing at the front doors.
    We moved as quickly as we could through the milling tourists. I tripped over the edge of a trolley, banging my knee painfully. Trent hauled me back to my feet and dragged me through the crowd behind him.
    ‘They’re getting away,’ I said, urgently. ‘What’s the plan?’
    ‘We see what car they get into and follow them if we can.’
    ‘That’s it?’ I asked in outrage.
    ‘Were they packing?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Then that’s it. If they wanted to kill her they would have done it in the hotel room.’
    I felt sick at the thought of letting Mum go with those goons. Panic was clawing its way up inside me, threatening to take control. We broke free of the tourist group and sprinted to the front in time to watch a black car pull away from the curb. I could see Mum’s flaming hair in the middle of the back windscreen.
    I turned towards the cab rank. It was empty. Unfucking believable. There had been at least four queuing when I came back from the pharmacy, and now, when we actually needed one, there were none.
    Trent groaned and muttered some numbers, which I realised a second later were off the number plate. I had to rely on Trent to get the make and model – beyond being black with 4 doors – I had no idea what it was.
    ‘2011 Cadillac CTS-V,’ Trent said.
    ‘What do we do?’ I turned towards him.
    ‘We find her.’
    ‘How? How?’ I could hear my voice, hysterical with fear.
    ‘We need to stay calm.’ He turned to face me and placed his hands on my shoulders. ‘We need to talk.’
    ‘Chanel,’ I could hear Martine calling my name from the hotel entry. ‘Since when did you stop answering your phone?’ She trotted over to us, took a look at my face and said, ‘No go with the fake tan?’
    I shook my head as tears started to roll down my cheeks. I wanted to act. I wanted to fight. I wanted to claw the eyes out of the men that had taken Mum. But I couldn’t. I was useless. Worse than useless. I had let them take her.
    ‘It’s not your fault,’ Trent said, shaking his head.
    ‘Well she did go to sleep while it was still wet,’ Martine said.
    I opened my mouth to talk but a low gurgle came out as my crying became more hysterical.
    ‘Is that a… snot bubble?’ Martine asked, staring in fascination at my nose.
    I wiped the back of my arm across it.
    ‘It’s all right,’ she said, ‘we’ll fix this. It’s not worth tears.’
    ‘They took Mum,’ I wailed.
    ‘Shhh.’ Trent looked around nervously. ‘It’s all right, we’ll find her.’
    ‘It’s my fault,’ I sobbed. ‘If I hadn’t been there, she would have already left to meet you.’
    ‘If you hadn’t been there we wouldn’t know she was gone,’ he said. ‘This isn’t your fault.’
    ‘It is, it is… I should have stopped them.’
    ‘It’s not your fault,’ he said again, ‘it’s mine.’
    Martine was staring from one to the other. ‘Somebody took Lorraine?’ she asked.
    ‘No,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘They took Tess.’ I turned back to Trent, anger starting to replace my tears. ‘I knew it,’ I said, ‘in my hospital room. I knew I heard you call her Tess. How do you know her?’
    ‘I think we should go somewhere more private to talk,’ he said, glancing meaningfully at the group of Chinese tourists that were staring at us.
    ‘There’s a diner up the road,’ I said, pulling my shoes out of my bag and slipping them on.
    Martine walked quietly by my side as I