Free Stolen Lives by Jassy Mackenzie Page A

Pamela might throw up again, this time inside his vehicle.
    She asked him to take them to The Seasons.
    The Seasons was a small, exclusive hotel in Morningside. It wasn’t well signposted or advertised, and the only reason Jade knew about it was that she’d met a client there a few months back.
    The Texan woman had been visiting South Africa for a breast augmentation, face-lift and tummy-tuck. While she was recovering, she’d wanted to trace an ex-employee who had apparently conned her out of a sizeable sum of money.
    She’d given Jade the information from her bed in the dimly-lit room, speaking with some difficulty because her face was swathed in bandages. What little skin had been visible was mottled by bruising and swollen to disfiguring proportions.
    Jade had returned to the hotel a few days later, after managing to trace the absconding staff member. By then her client’s bandages were off and the swelling had subsided. When Jade arrived at her room, she found her eating smoked-salmon sandwiches under an umbrella on the balcony, looking out over the well-kept gardens.
    Jade didn’t know how the client had used the information. It had been a fifty-fifty chance, she guessed, whether she would have got the police involved or paid a couple of goons to beat him up.
    If she had to call it, Jade would have guessed the wealthy Texan would have gone for the hired thugs. She’d had that look in her eye.
    Through that assignment, Jade had learned that the reason that The Seasons had such a low profile was because of its clientele, who demanded the highest levels of privacy. The place was used almost exclusively by rich women, travelling from Europe and the States to have various types of cosmetic surgery done at the nearby Morningside or Sandton clinics, following it up with a recuperative week at its sister hotel, a luxury safari lodge in Mpumalanga.
    Security at The Seasons was indeed extremely tight. It was as safe and private as a hotel could get.
    They had a room available, and Jade booked them in under her own name.
    The taxi driver dropped them off in a secluded spot near the covered walkway that led to the hotel’s reception. Pamela was walking as slowly and hesitantly as a woman who had just had radical plastic surgery might have done. She had her hands clasped so tightly her knuckles had gone blue-white, and she was muttering the word “No” to herself over and over again.
    When they were safely inside the large, comfortably furnished room, Jade sat her down on the bed and spoke to her in a gentle voice.
    “Pamela, I’m going to try and find out where Tamsin is. I’m also going to make sure that everything is all right at your house, and bring you a change of clothes.”
    She nodded.
    “Do you have your house keys with you?”
    “In my bag,” Pamela whispered.
    Feeling rather self-conscious about looking through another woman’s handbag, Jade searched the Gucci tote until she found a set of keys attached to a gate buzzer.
    “Don’t open the door to anybody while I’m gone,” she warned. “Put the latch on when I leave, and keep it fastened until I come back. Don’t even let room service in. And please, don’t turn your phone on. If you want to check your voicemail, dial into it using the hotel phone.”
    Pamela nodded almost imperceptibly.
    Jade left her sitting on the bed, hugging herself tightly, staring at the carpet and shaking her head. She informed the receptionist and the uniformed security guard who stood at the entrance to the bedrooms that the lady in the de Jong suite was not, on any account, to be disturbed.
    After the strained silence in Pamela’s hotel room, the buzz of hair-dryers in Salon Rose Anglaise in the Thrupps Centre was deafening.
    Through a thick mist of hairspray, Jade could see Raymond putting the finishing touches to an elegant, blue-black hairdo. When the air cleared, Jade saw its owner smiling at her reflection in the large, gold-framed mirror, obviously pleased with