The Sea Takes (DI Olivia Austin Book 10): A fast-paced crime thriller Read online

  The Sea Takes

  DI Olivia Austin - Book Ten

  Nic Roberts

  Copyright © 2022 by Nic Roberts

  * * *

  ‘The Sea Takes’

  * * *

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Some may be used for parody purposes.

  Any resemblance to events, locales, business establishments, or actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  Love to read Detective Thrillers?

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Book Eleven

  Missed Book One?

  Love to read Detective Thrillers?

  About the Author

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  The Sea Takes

  A missing celebrity, a detective on edge and a case that will haunt them forever.

  * * *

  After a mandatory two week break, DI Olivia Austin is back jumping straight into the deep end with a case so puzzling she isn’t sure what to think next.

  * * *

  And then the bodies wash up…

  * * *

  Prologue

  She shivered against the cold, logic telling her to pick up her shit and go home. But if she didn’t do it, she'd miss the trend.

  Thousands of videos had already been uploaded, and if she knew the algorithm as well as she thought she did, any later and it wouldn’t be worth bothering.

  Headlights in the distance made their way down the winding road and slowed.

  It had to be him.

  Best in the area, she remembered from his website. His videos had the ability to make you go viral. Perfect. Just what she needed to get ahead. To stay ahead. To let everyone know that she was worth paying attention to.

  She watched him make his way down the path, a large rucksack over his back.

  In a funny, nerdy kind of way, he was attractive. Dark glasses set firmly on a heavy nose. Eyes as blue as the sea she was standing next to.

  “It’s cold.”

  The first of his words. He offered a smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

  She nodded. It was true. It was. But something else had set her on edge.

  In his hands he had his phone in front of him.

  “Are you recording me?” she asked, uneasiness spreading from the pit of her stomach to her chest.

  He shrugged.

  “Sure.” His tone reeked of nonchalance as he watched her, daring her to protest.

  “Let's just get this started.” She wasn’t in the mood for his unprofessional manner. They were on a tight deadline as it was, and the sooner she could edit the video and post it up, the better. Her five thousand followers were waiting for it.

  She waited as he pulled on his wetsuit, phone positioned against a mound of dirt recording her.

  “Now.” His voice was coarse. Harsh. And he pointed to the frothy waves.

  Nerves gripped her stomach for a moment before she forced herself to remember the many other videos she’d watched of this challenge.

  She'd seen teenagers do it for fuck's sake. How hard could it be?

  Slowly, she walked forwards, lowering herself into the water one step at a time. She swallowed back the shiver that jolted over her body as the cold met with her warmth.

  “Keep going.” The voice came from behind her.

  She did as he said, pushing all doubts from her mind.

  She could see it all now. Millions sharing her video, the trend she'd start. The notoriety. The brands that would be clamouring over themselves to work with her.

  Yes! YES!

  What could possibly go wrong?

  She was about to find out.

  1

  Detective Inspector Olivia Austin stood over the Thomas family plot in Wales where Rhys had been buried.

  The wind blew in from the north, and she pulled her coat tighter around her.

  Being there felt different this time. Over the couple of years since he'd been gone, she'd visited this very spot more times than she even dared remember. Sometimes, after an especially hard case, she'd taken the next train out of Newquay, stumbled into a B&B, and then spent the next day ‘by his side’ tending to the plants, trimming the edge of the plot, and wiping down the stone.

  Apart from their spot on the southwest coastal path, this was also where she felt closest to him.

  This time, though, she felt nothing but pain. It was almost as though someone had tried to force a big ball of karma down her throat that was impossible to invest.

  But she didn’t care about all that fluff and filler. Feelings were all relative.

  All that mattered was…

  Is he actually fucking in there?

  Typically, there'd been no body to identify. No remains, and although the thought of his beautiful soul being blown apart kept her up most nights in the immediate aftermath, she found solace in the fact that she didn’t have to walk into a room and see his broken battered body, eyes closed as though he were just sleeping.

  She wouldn’t have to have that as her parting memory of him. It wouldn’t have to haunt her for the rest of her life.

  She looked down at the grass and earth in front of her, wishing, hoping for some kind of clarity.

  She wasn’t religious, but if there was a God, she prayed he'd throw her some kind of sign to show her if Rhys was still alive.

  If he was, she'd kill him herself.

  The thought made her laugh slightly to herself because she knew he would have. At the sheer craziness of it all.

  “He adored you,” Mills said coming up behind her. “You know that anyway.”

  Olivia let out a long, deep breath.

  “I thought he did,” she admitted. “I thought I’d hit the jackpot. How the hell could I have got so lucky? Now look at me.”

  She gestured to the grave, the slightly swollen mound that held all her hopes and dreams.

  Mills wrapped an arm around her shoulder and rested her head against Olivia’s.

  “Don’t let all this crap overshadow what you guys had,” she reminded her. “Innocent until proven guilty, right?”

  Liv shrugged.

  “Or alive until proven dead?”

  As much as Mills loved Max, she couldn’t argue with that. On the train ride over, they’d gone through everything, laying it all out so it was clear as day.

  Because he'd apparently been caught up in the third explosion, his full body had never been recovered. Only remains. They’d found some of his charred clothing. Even the thought of it turned her stomach.
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  But that still didn’t erase the fact that he was involved with her brother.

  Rhys, who had spent many an evening holding her while she cried over missing Alex. He’d helped her pore over potential evidence and try to piece everything together. Try to work out what had happened.

  Had he really been capable of sitting beside her, holding her hand, knowing how desperately she and the whole family had searched for Alex all the while meeting him in the pub for drinks?

  What the hell?

  It was almost as though all that time she’d been living with a stranger.

  Did she ever really know him?

  As the wind picked up, Mills managed to pull her away from the graveside in time to catch their train back, and Max was there waiting for them, back pressed against his Range Rover.

  Olivia noticed the expectant eyebrow he raised at her sister, probably trying to gauge her mood or how things went, as though Rhys would have materialised from the dirt to give her the answers she needed.

  But her trip wasn’t about that. It wasn’t about getting answers. It was more about trying to get a feeling. Trying to be as near to him as she possibly could because that was the only way she knew how to feel his presence.

  Max dropped her off at her cottage, and Mills walked her to the door as though she was incapable of doing it alone

  “I’m perfectly able to go inside by myself,” she protested, turning to her younger sister. “My ex was deceitful; I’m not ill.”

  Mills gave her a weak smile.

  “I know,” she agreed leaning against the door frame as Olivia went inside. “I’m just worried about you. We all are.”

  Her body tensed at the last comment.

  “I don’t think Mum's worried,” she offered. “I think she would have preferred it if I had disappeared instead of Alex.”

  Mills tutted, her freshly touched up pink hair standing out against the porch light.

  “You know she didn’t mean what she said,” she assured her. “Mum’s just upset and hurt. She'll be fine. Remember what I said, we all will.”

  She reached across and pulled Olivia into her arms.

  “As always, you're amazing,” Liv breathed against her sister ‘s neck. “Thank you.”

  Mills laughed as she pulled away.

  “No, thank you,” she corrected. “Thank you for getting me out of the house and giving me a break. Ru must be going through a regression or something.” She checked her watch. “I have to get back and pick him up. Will you be okay?”

  Olivia nodded.

  “Perfectly fine,” she answered. “I’ll see you at dinner tomorrow.”

  She watched her sister give her arm one last squeeze before she made her way back down the path.

  Once Mills was safely in the car with Max, Liv closed the door and went straight to her kitchen. Her bottle of ever diminishing red wine was the first thing she reached for, pouring herself a large glass before she went to the lounge and sat down in front of the TV with the remote control in one hand. She didn’t put anything on though, because she could barely sort out her emotions let alone concentrate of some daft programme.

  Perhaps it was because the last thing she wanted after coming back from Wales was to be alone.

  The silence was so deafening, and she dared not close her eyes because all she could see was the image of Rhys knelt over the fallen officer, his eyes wild with fear and worry as he looked back at her. Wishing he could run with her, wishing they could go together, but he stayed back. He put himself in harm’s way, and all this time, she’d believed he’d been a hero.

  Her hero.

  She’d spent endless amounts of energy telling everyone who would listen how amazing he’d been. Countless nights, she’d sat with his sister as they discussed all the good he had done in the world—not just with his job, but also with his active charity work.

  He was one of the good guys. Genuinely good. Made of the sort of things people barely expected to find anymore.

  Olivia took a sip of her wine and winced at the bitterness.

  Was it bad for her to wish he could have had an ounce of badness in him? Would that have made her feel better? To know that he wasn’t the angel everyone thought he was?

  She closed her eyes momentarily again and thought about the photograph. It was stashed away under her bed now, and she hadn’t had the courage to take it out and look at it since the day Alex had handed it to her.

  It made her sick to think that she’d woken up from her coma desperately pining for him. How much the pain had overwhelmed her night after night as she stood in their empty flat staring at Rhys’s seat, the imprint of his body still there. Reading glasses on the small table beside it. Book with his bookmark still inside. All the parts of him around her made her soul ache in a way she couldn’t properly describe and yet all the while he’d been alive. No. It had to be a mistake. Perhaps the pictures were taken before the OSTA?

  But that still didn’t correct the fact that he knew how much her family grieved Alex’s disappearance. They had pictures of him everywhere. Olivia had even kept one on her dressing table. He’d seen it.

  He’d have known her brother’s face.

  She pushed the thought from her mind, not wanting to solidify her already downcast mood.

  Normally, whenever she felt this crappy, she would have messaged Andrew and shagged him long enough to forget everything else, but ever since that day, she’d pushed him away. She’d pushed all of them away—apart from Archie.

  His friendship had been her anchor just as much as the cookies and brownies he’d brought round.

  With an act of calmness, Olivia turned the TV on, ready to push through her heartache and focus on the present.

  No matter how it had come about, Rhys was no longer in her life, and with tomorrow being her first day back at work, she wanted to start it all with a clear mind.

  The rest, as it always did, would fall into place.

  2

  Olivia took a deep breath before she opened the doors to Newquay police station.

  So much had happened in the two weeks she’d been forced to take a break, and as much as she enjoyed Archie’s frequent dose of work happenings, it was nice to be back. Nice to get her routine on track again and give her something to occupy the troubling parts of her mind.

  And then there was the matter of Dean.

  She’d kept in contact with him at first, checking over his injured knee, but then once—and only once—Beth had answered his phone past eleven-thirty at night, and for her own sanity, she stepped back.

  If he was in, today would be the first time they’d spoken in a week and half.

  For most people, that would have been normal, nothing too drastic, but Dean had become one of her closest friends since she had moved back to Cornwall.

  A daily conversation with him both calmed and entertained her in equal measure.

  Slowly, Olivia stepped over threshold, out of the cold sunshine and into the police station. Two weeks felt like a lifetime. Clive had been caught and recovered in hospital; his investigation was still ongoing. And despite zipping off after Alexander when he fled, as was typical for him, he’d never been found.

  Her body had caved with relief when she’d heard, because as much as she’d have loved to put an end to it all, his frightened eyes and the look on his face told her that maybe he was better off away. Maybe if he came back, he’d have ended up like William.

  Her mother hadn’t seen it that way though, and Linda had all but stopped speaking to Liv, insisting that she should have done more when she had come face-to-face with her brother. She should have grabbed him until the officers got there and held him in place.

  Maybe she should have. Maybe she was weak for letting him go, but either way, it was a burden she had to live with.

  For a change, she headed to the stairs and climbed them pensively. Her floor was bright and airy as usual. The sound of the printer provided a steady ambience as people talked about cases and laughed. r />
  A tray of cookies sat beside the post tray, and Liv recognised the writing that said, ‘help yourself’ as being Archie’s, their resident baker.

  “Whoops, excuse me!” Trina smiled awkwardly, manoeuvring around her. “Welcome back ma’am.”

  Olivia smiled at her, aware that while she’d been off, the rumour mill had been working in overdrive.

  “Good to be back,” she replied, hurrying past the kitchen where most people hung out so that she could make a beeline for her team’s office and avoid bumping into Dean.

  “Well, if you aren’t a sight for sore eyes.”

  Liv warmed at the sound of the posh voice that greeted her as she pushed the door closed and rested back against it.

  She gave Archie a gentle smile as she crossed the room and sat at her desk.

  “The answer is no,” he said when she opened her mouth to speak. “He’s out on scene. Left as soon as he came in.”

  Olivia inwardly sighed with relief.

  “I wasn’t going to ask about, Dean,” she playfully scolded at him, though they both knew she was lying. “But thanks for the heads up. Still working on that case?”

  Archie reached over to his desk and handed her a manila folder filled with paper.

  “Collins was supposed to give us a bit of a briefing,” he explained, “but he had to rush off to a meeting. Peter went out to get statements. What do you think?”