Empty Heart

By Elisabeth Rose

One honeymoon, one vanished husband, one desperate wife–and the cop who is tasked to help her, but can't seem to keep his thoughts on the job.

Honeymooner Nikki Spenser emerges from the surf at Surfers Paradise and can't find her husband, her towel, or her clothes on the beach. Carlos has disappeared from her life as suddenly as he entered it.

In despair, Nikki returns to Sydney where she is contacted by Detective Luke Emerson, a reminder from her past she thought never to see again. Luke informs her that the man she married so recklessly in Las Vegas three weeks prior doesn't exist. Everything she knew about Carlos is a lie, and Nikki realises she knows nothing about her husband–not where he is, not even who he is.

As Nikki and Luke chase down tenuous leads, they soon find themselves plunged into an ever–widening sea of international crime and violence, and Nikki is faced with the hard questions–how much of her love is based on lies, and how much is true?

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Feb 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9780857992253

Elisabeth Rose

Multi-published in romance, author Elisabeth Rose lives in Australia's capital, Canberra. She completed a performance degree in clarinet, travelled Europe with her musician husband and returned to Canberra to raise two children. In 1987, she began practising tai chi and now teaches tai chi classes. She also plays and teaches clarinet. Reading has been a lifelong love, writing romance a more recent delight.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Nikki struggled to the surface gasping and coughing, dragging hair clinging like seaweed from her face, feet searching for a firm hold on sliding, shifting sand. Another huge green wave curled and broke. Tons of salt-tang foam tossed her body heedlessly along the bottom to scrape elbows on gritty gravel and choke drowning lungs full of Pacific Ocean. She surfaced again. Where was Carlos? Other heads bobbed about, other swimmers splashed and played. Had he gone ashore already? Was it too rough for him? Another wave crashed in a frothing mass around her body. She squinted into the glittering light, searching for the familiar dark hair.

Two strong hands gripped her ankles, tipping her off an already shaky balance in the tumultuous seas. She shrieked as her head went under again and impotent arms flailed.

Water roared in her ears, swirling white bubbles spun by as another wave crashed onto her helpless body. Arms dragged her upwards and Nikki was clasped tightly against the broad, tanned chest of her rescuer. She laughed and spat out a mouthful of water, tried to thump him with her fists, but he ignored her protests and kissed her salty lips instead as water thundered around them. She flung her arms around him and together they fell laughing into the sea. This time when they surfaced Carlos had had enough.

‘I’m going in,’ he shouted over the roar of the surf and pointed to the beach where their towels were spread amongst a thousand others.

‘Wimp,’ she yelled after his retreating back. He turned and grinned, waving his fist in a teasing threat and her heart did the familiar flip-flop at the sight of his flashing white teeth and the way his lips curved in the thin, tanned face. Water dripped from his slick black hair and ran down the fine lines around his eyes and mouth. Happier than she’d ever seen him. Carefree, boyish.

‘I love you,’ she shouted, treading water as the swell lifted her off her feet. He put his hand to his lips and blew her a kiss, which floated and twirled through the warm air between them to land on her mouth.

‘Love you too.’ She watched him dive into the next wave and bodysurf towards the beach, then turned and struck out with a strong crawl towards the horizon, relishing the bite of salt in the air, the fresh invigorating chill of the water, the way her relatively frail body was able to master the raw strength of the waves. The Pacific was different to the Indian Ocean, a continent’s width away to the west were she’d grown up. The deep grey blue of the vast Indian Ocean stretched the mind towards Africa, and the wild winds battering the West coast roared up from the no man’s land between the Antarctic and Australia. A distant shore, another life.

But ocean swimming was still her joy. Carlos liked it too, although not as much. He tired easily still, his leg wasn’t completely better from the accident. That accident puzzled her if she allowed herself to think about it. She didn’t really understand how it had happened. He said it was a crash on the Aspen ski slopes last winter, before she met him, but the scar looked more like a bullet hole. A bullet hole as seen on the countless TV forensic crime shows. A puncture wound in the thigh from a ski pole sounded unlikely, but she’d never been skiing, so what would she know?

Nikki stopped stroking and trod water, breathing hard. She’d swum out a long way. The lifeguard whistle shrieking from shore was probably for her. Deep, endless blue out here beyond the line of breakers. Hypnotic. A board rider sat patiently a few metres away, legs dangling, waiting to catch a wave and glide in on the stretch of beach designated for surfing not swimming. Must have drifted south as she swam. She began to work her way back, the beach appearing and disappearing as she was lifted high by the heavy swell then plunged into a deep valley with walls of green blue glass.

Carlos would be toasting his body in the sun. She tried to tell him the Australian sun was more dangerous than his native Mediterranean, but he shrugged her objections away and pointed to his dark complexion and richly tanned skin. Nevertheless she insisted on rubbing sunscreen all over his body, an action that quickly threatened to turn erotic, especially when he grabbed the tube and began with expert fingers to massage the cream into her exposed skin, of which there was a lot given the bikini she wore.

The pleasures in store when they returned to the hotel and commenced washing the salt and the sunscreen off each other made her kick harder and her weary arms increase their pace. She caught a big wave and rode it right in amongst the swimmers and paddlers until the water was knee deep. Straightening, she adjusted her bikini top, tugged at the pants and rubbed her hands over her face and hair. She ran her fingers down the wet strands, squeezing out the drops, looking around to get her bearings.

The red and yellow flags indicated the safe swimming area. She and Carlos had claimed a spot about ten metres to the left and level with the light pole and bench, up on the grass verge overlooking the sand. He’d laughed when she made a point of fixing her bearings but it was too easy to become disoriented on such a vast expanse of dazzling golden sand, especially on a crowded Sunday like today. Everywhere she looked bodies lay on towels, coloured beach umbrellas offered shade, children built sandcastles, beach balls bounced, humanity in all its shapes and sizes enjoyed a day at the beach. As were they, she and her brand new husband, Carlos Villegas.

Husband! She could hardly believe the concept as applied to her. There was a time when she thought marriage and the prospect of a family an impossible dream. But things change, the world revolves and time can make the impossible seem possible. Nikki held up her left hand quickly to check her ring was still there. A slim gold band glinting in the sun. No engagement ring, the romance had been too quick for an engagement, the whole thing had taken about five minutes. Well, three weeks. Love and marriage. Plenty of lust.

Nikki scanned the area for his familiar lithe and sexy body in navy trunks. She threaded her way between other sunbathers, careful not to kick sand onto their towels or their suncream sticky limbs. A toddler staggered across her path, a beach ball hit her legs. She tossed the ball to its owners with a smile and checked her landmarks, looked for the family group who had set up beside them with a red and white umbrella.

There. Mum asleep, Dad studying the paper in the shade, daughter lolling with a magazine and iPod, little brother slurping a melting ice-cream, towels, hats and clothing strewn about.

Carlos wasn’t there. Nothing was there. Sand was there. Nikki walked in a tight, bewildered circle. The soles of her feet burned. She shaded her eyes with one hand and stared about. This must be the wrong spot. But she was certain… Were they the same people?

‘Excuse me.’ The father looked up, eyes obscured by dark glasses. Hard to read his expression. She attempted a smile, but it faltered. ‘Do you remember me? I mean, my husband and I were next to you and now he’s gone. Did you see him?’ How pathetic did that sound?

‘No, sorry. The kids and I’ve been watching the volleyball down there.’ He pointed towards a distant crowd. ‘The wife’s asleep.’ He stared at Nikki with blank black lenses. Couldn’t care less.

‘Thanks.’ She turned away. The elderly couple on the other side had gone. Someone new was spreading a towel, settling with a novel virtually on the spot where she thought Carlos should be sunning himself, waiting for her to run her hands over his brown skin with its dark, tightly curled hairs, kiss the lips that were always ready to return the embrace. She absentmindedly took in the cover of the woman’s book — Agatha Christie’s Murder most Foul — and shivered.

Perhaps she was completely wrong. Perhaps she had misremembered her landmarks. Where was her towel? Where was her husband?

Nikki swallowed the panic rising inexorably from the depths of her body. Carlos had to be here. He wouldn’t leave without her. He might have gone in for another swim. Be logical. She spun around, strode to the water’s edge and stood shading her eyes with her hand, foam lapping around her ankles, teasing her. She studied every bobbing head she could see, systematically. He wasn’t there. Drowned? No, he was a good swimmer, she was being ridiculous.

He probably went to the shower block to use the toilet, or he may have gone to get a drink. They hadn’t brought drinks with them. Or maybe to buy those mints he’d discovered soon after arriving in Australia that he declared were now his only addiction next to her. The ones that helped him stop smoking. He’d even given up cigarettes for her when he discovered she hated the smell and the taste of them on his clothes and breath and mouth. Tears pricked at her lids. He loved her. She adored him.

The hotel! Carlos had gone back to the hotel. But he wouldn’t do that without her. Unless he was ill. And surely he’d leave her towel and her sarong and shoes, wouldn’t leave his new wife in her revealing bikini to make her way to the hotel alone.

The men’s toilet. Nikki hovered, dithering by the door with its old-fashioned sign, ‘Gents’, for a few minutes, then summoned up the courage to ask a kindly looking elderly man in Bermuda shorts and socks if he would mind inquiring inside for Carlos.

He studied her for a moment from under his straw hat as if trying to decide what sort of weirdo she was but nodded when she said Carlos was her husband and she was worried about his health. He reappeared two minutes later, shaking his head.

‘Ask the lifesavers,’ he suggested.

What should she ask? Have you pulled any drowned men out this afternoon?

As it was, when she reached the lifeguard station she blurted, ‘I’ve lost my husband,’ and burst into tears.

The two strapping bronzed men glanced at each other and sprang into action. One produced a towel and wrapped it around her shaking shoulders, complete with comforting arm, the other offered a tissue. Embarrassed beyond belief, Nikki sniffed and snuffled and managed to pull herself together enough to answer their questions. Had she checked the toilet block? Did she check the beach thoroughly? Did she find her own things? Would he have left without her?

‘Yes, yes, no, no,’ she answered. They conferred quietly. One spoke into a two-way radio connecting to, she presumed, the shark watch helicopter that buzzed up and down the coastal beaches. Had he been eaten?

‘We would have seen if he’d got into trouble in the water,’ said the one with spiked blond hair confidently. ‘Did he know to swim between the flags?’

‘Yes, we’d been swimming and he went to have a rest because of his leg. He was in an accident,’ Nikki said. ‘A skiing accident.’

‘He’s probably searching for you right now,’ said the other, an older man with dark glasses, a calm manner and a cloth sunhat jammed on his head, white zinc cream on his nose and cheeks like war paint. ‘I suggest you go back to where you were set up and wait a while. Then go home.’

‘I haven’t any money. I couldn’t find our things.’ Stupid tears pushed at her lids.

‘Come back if he doesn’t show and we’ll loan you the fare home, or you can call someone to pick you up. All right, love?’ He smiled and patted her arm.

‘Thank you.’ She attempted a weak smile. There was no-one to pick her up. Not here, they were on their honeymoon — sort of. The honeymoon that had lasted since their wedding.

‘That’s what we’re here for.’

‘I’ll go with her,’ said the younger one.

‘My name’s Nikki Villegas.’ She held out her hand and the towel slipped from her shoulders. ‘My husband is Carlos.’

‘Paul.’ He scooped up the towel and tossed it onto a canvas folding chair. The older man said, ‘Brett.’ Warm, strong fingers clasped hers for a moment.

Nikki walked slowly along the beach with Paul to where she was sure she and Carlos had been sitting. The family had gone, as had the woman with the book. A cool breeze had sprung up, whipping grains of sand into a million stinging missiles. Most families were packing away their umbrellas and towels, counting the children and trudging back to their cars.

‘Sure it was here?’ asked Paul.

‘Positive. I always get my landmarks fixed, especially on a strange beach.’

‘Holidaying?’

‘Most people at Surfers are, aren’t they?’ She walked between the now sparsely scattered groups towards the edge of the beach and the steps leading up to the grass and the road. The hollow space in her stomach grew bigger with each step. Carlos had gone. They had been inseparable since they first met, now he was gone and it was an amputation, a disembowelling. She’d had her insides sucked out, just the shell of her body remained. She stopped walking, helpless.

‘Maybe he moved,’ suggested Paul. ‘He might be up on the grass watching. As a joke.’

A rush of anger. ‘He wouldn’t do that without telling me. He’s not cruel. He’s not a practical joker.’

Paul held up his hands in apology. ‘Sorry.’

Nikki stomped away along the sand close to the low stone wall. The flash of anger spurred her into action. Carlos was kind and gentle, he didn’t tease her that way. Never had he done anything remotely like this before.

A young couple were flapping their towels and she stopped, averting her face to shield her eyes from the flying sand-laden wind. They folded the brightly coloured towels and stuffed them into a bag, but left another as they began to walk away. Nikki stared. Hers was the same colour. She darted forward and picked it up.

‘Excuse me,’ she called. ‘Is this yours?’

The man turned and shook his head. ‘No, we only had two. Cheers.’ He waved and took the girl’s hand.

Nikki held the towel up. Bright blue with large yellow fish and paler blue wave patterns. Definitely hers. She’d bought it in Hawaii on one of her investigative trips for the travel agency. She turned to Paul.

‘It’s mine.’

‘So what else did you have with you?’ He grinned. ‘Apart from your husband.’

Nikki glanced at him and frowned. ‘He hasn’t left me here deliberately,’ she snapped. ‘And I haven’t been looking in the wrong place!’

‘Okay. You have a good look around and come back to us if you need to call someone.’ Paul looked out towards the ocean and its swimmers. ‘I’ll have to go and get those kids back between the flags. Sorry.’

‘Thanks,’ called Nikki as he strode between the scattered groups towards the water’s edge. His shrill whistle screamed over the cries of the gulls.

With the towel wrapped around and knotted over her chest she felt a little more secure, less exposed and naked. But where were the rest of their things? They’d only brought the barest minimum with them to the beach. Carlos had carried a small bumbag with a couple of dollars, the hotel key card and the sunscreen. They’d carried their towels and worn rubber thongs on their feet. Nikki had a soft, red patterned, cotton Fijian sarong, Carlos wore shorts and a T-shirt. Nothing worth stealing, nothing valuable to be left alone on the sand while they swam. They’d both put their dark glasses in the bumbag and folded their clothes on top.

People were streaming off the beach now. The wind had picked up in strength, blasting the sand at bare legs. Nikki walked slowly next to the sea wall scanning the ground. She reached the steps leading up to the promenade and reversed direction, walking a few metres parallel further out towards the sea. With less people, large areas were clear. A scrap of red cloth caught her eye and she pounced. Her sarong, half-buried fairly close to where they’d been sitting. The light fabric must have blown in the wind then been covered as people walked over it.

She let it fly in the air like a flag. Sand whirled in a cloud as the red cotton square flapped wildly. She replaced the towel with the sarong, knotting it securely over her breasts. The towel she pulled around her shoulders as protection against the now biting chill of the wind. Storm clouds were piling up on the horizon, dark and threatening.

Encouraged, she continued her methodical search. She found a shining hot two dollar coin, which she kept, and a child’s pink T-shirt, which she left. A pair of rubber thongs might not have been hers, but she took them anyway because she didn’t fancy walking back to the hotel in bare feet. No way was she going back to those two lifesavers to ask for money. Friendly and polite as they were, she knew exactly what they were thinking. ‘Silly hysterical woman. Had a fight, her husband’s gone home or she’s just plain too stupid to find him. Probably on the wrong section of beach.’ They must deal with those things every day.

She clenched her fist around the tiny coin. She wasn’t hysterical. She was worried, upset, slightly annoyed, but not in the wrong place and not stupid. Something had happened to make him leave. Something…what? Illness?

He’d be at the hotel, waiting, full of apologies, wanting forgiveness. Blindingly obvious now. His leg was aching or the sun had hit him suddenly. She’d been swimming way, way out of reach and for a long time. Well, she’d make her own apology after she’d scolded him, then they could spend the rest of the evening and night making up, laughing over how worried she’d been and how they’d had the shark watch helicopter searching for him.

She hurried across the sand to the steps and ran up them, pausing at the top to slip her feet into the thongs. Only across the road and along a block. A short distance they’d strolled together hand in hand. Reception would give her another key card.

And Carlos would be there waiting.

Riding up in the lift, relief allowed her to indulge in a little unaccustomed rush of anger at his thoughtlessness. She’d been so worried…almost frightened.

The green light flicked in the lock. She pushed the heavy door open. Injecting sternness into her tone, she called, ‘Darling? I’m back. Why didn’t you…’ The sentence trailed off. He wasn’t lying on the bed reading his book or watching TV.

She dumped the beach towel on the floor and rushed to the bathroom. The door was open, the room silent and deserted. She stood, bereft of air, surrounded by cool white tiles and thick fluffy white towels. The spa bath taunted her. They’d spent a wonderful few hours in there last night, drinking champagne and making love, then stumbling, laughing and dripping, to the king-sized bed in the other room to begin all over again.

Her hand lifted to her face, touching her mouth, felt the tremor of her lips. The movement of her arm reflected in the full-length mirror behind the door caught the corner of her eye, startled her. She cried out and spun around. Carlos?

No. Just herself. Distraught wild eyes, crumpled red sarong, blonde hair windblown and messy, touches of pink on the face and shoulders where the sun had made its mark. She stripped off the sarong and her bikini with clumsy fingers, leaving them in a sandy, salty heap on the floor. Stepped numbly into the shower to soap and scrub and shampoo until all traces of the beach had been erased. Where was he?

Had he left her? No! He loved her. They were happy — deliriously so.

She pulled on the bulky hotel robe and dried her hair with the hotel dryer, staring blankly at herself in the mirror as she combed and poked and fluffed. A rumble of thunder, louder than the shrill whirr of the hairdryer, startled her. She switched it off and went to stare out the big windows at the approaching storm.

Jagged streaks of lightning hurtled through the massed, purple black clouds, more thunder growled and grumbled. Far below, people scurried for shelter as the wind blasted across the wave tossed ocean and the now deserted stretch of beach, tugging at the palm trees and pines lining the beachfront road, whipping at the flags and awnings of the hotel and cafés next door. Then the rain came swooping down in thick, grey sheets. She shivered and hugged her arms tightly across her chest.

What if Carlos was still out? Gone from the beach for a walk or shopping. Caught in the storm. He’d be back soon, wet and laughing, exclaiming over the violence and suddenness of the summer storm. He might have come in already and gone down to the bar, it was about that time. He enjoyed an aperitif. Cocktail hour.

Nikki drew the curtains across the bleak scene.

She went to the small room safe to retrieve her purse, phone and watch.

Carlos’s watch, phone and wallet were missing. He hadn’t taken them to the beach, just his bumbag. He had come in! Not much point calling his phone, he rarely had it switched on. ‘I only use it for work,’ he said. ‘And I’m on my honeymoon.’ A continuous honeymoon since they’d met.

But she called anyway. His phone was off. She left a voice mail message.

Where was the bag? She glanced around the room but couldn’t see it. That didn’t necessarily mean anything, Carlos was tidy to the point of obsession. She teased him about it sometimes and he said in his American tinged accent, ‘Tidiness is the sign of a sharp mind. I am always prepared.’

‘Were you prepared for me?’ she asked, sliding her arms around his neck. He laughed and gazed into her eyes.

‘Nothing could prepare me for you,’ he whispered. The seriousness of his tone and the depth of the feeling behind the light words made her breath catch in her throat.

He’d be in the bar, waiting for her, smiling, her favourite gin and tonic ready.

She pulled a long-sleeved silver blouse and tight black satin