Her Temporary Boss

Chapter Sixteen

**CHAPTER SIXTEEN**

 Luca looked at his watch and frowned. It was 4.30pm and Amelia had not returned from upstairs. Surely it did not take the better part of two hours to retrieve something? Or perhaps she had returned and had not let him know.

He stood and walked into the front office. No Amelia. Looking around, he could see no sign of recent activity.

A dark sense of foreboding settled over him. He quickly strode down to the elevators and punched the button for his appartment.

There was no sign of her there, either. Luca stood in the middle of his lounge, listening to the silence. It was almost oppressive. He whipped out his phone and began to dialed a number.

"Marco, something has happened. Amelia came upstairs to my appartment two hours ago but she has not returned. I have just checked and she is not there or in the office."

Marco swore succinctly. "Ok, I can be there in half an hour. In the meantime, I will send up the men I have stationed outside the building." Hu hung up and Luca waited.

Two men arrived and immediately began searching the appartment. Luca watched as they methodically moved from the kitchen and the lounge into the bathrooms and bedrooms. He felt useless just standing there but knew he would only be a hindrance if he tried to help.

Marco found him deep in thought, looking out his window to the Thames.

"Where is she?" Luca whispered without turning around.

"I do not know," Marco replied. "But we will find her."

His men came into the lounge and Marco turned to them and began speaking rapid Spanish. Marco set up his laptop on the dining table. "I have had your security people send me the footage from your security cameras. If she has left the building then we will know soon enough."

Luca stood behind him, watching over Marco's shoulder as video began playing on the screen. Five minutes later and Luca shook his head. "She was not on any of that. So she is either still in the building or she somehow managed to avoid the cameras."

"Are there any exits that are not covered by cameras?"

"No."

"Marco," one of his men called him over to their computer. On the screen was a frozen image of a woman pulling a suitcase. Her hair was pulled up into a bun and the hint of a uniform peeked out from beneath a winter coat.

"Do you know her?" Marco asked his brother.

Luca studied the screen intently. "No, I do not recognise her. That looks like my housekeeper's uniform but she is too young and too brunette to be my housekeeper."

Marco hit a few keys on the computer's keyboard and a new programme opened up. A head shot of the unknown woman appeared on one side of the screen while other head shots began flashing up on the other side of the screen. "It may take some time until we find out who she is but in the meantime we can start tracking her movements within the building," he said.

Luca paced as the three other men focused on their computers. Ten minutes later, one of the men raised his head. "I have her."

They crowded around the screen, examining the picture of the same woman entering the building. The time stamp said the image was captured at midday, two and a half hours before Amelia had gone up to the appartment. There was one glaring difference to the picture they had found earlier.

"Why would she enter the building without a suitcase and leave with one?" A shiver went up Luca's spine.

Amelia had a headache. A bad one. She tried to raise her hand so she could rub a forehead but her arm refused to move.