Beautiful Lies (27 page)

The man's reply was deep and rumbling, but too low for Matthew to understand.

The girl raised her voice. “It's my money. I earned it. I don't want it all, just—”

The rest of her sentence was interrupted by a cracking noise and a screech.

Matthew sat bolt upright and peered through the trunks of the evergreens. In the dim glow of the streetlight he saw a man shaking a slight young woman by the shoulders. This time he understood the man's words.

“You think you know what's best? Well, you're a silly bitch, aren't you? I got ten just like you, and not a one of me others whines all the time. I told you, tell the old lady I'll pay her tomorrow. She makes trouble, tell her the next time I see her, I'll give her more than a couple of quid!”

He shoved the girl away, but she recovered quickly and came at him, striking out with both hands. “It's my money! And you were supposed to take care of me if I gave it to you!”

If the man had ever had patience, it was exhausted now. He grabbed her arms and twisted them over her head. Then, in a lightning quick maneuver, he slammed her in the belly with his knee. The girl shrieked and crumpled, but the man held her up and repeated the blow.

Matthew had seen enough. He sprang from the bushes and ran toward the street. “Hey, you! Leave her alone.”

The man dropped the girl's arms, and she fell to the sidewalk like a rag doll.

“Just who are you ordering around?” The man grabbed the iron bars in front of Matthew and rattled them. Then he tilted his head back and howled with demented laughter.

Matthew didn't think. He had never seen another human being abused. He grabbed one of the man's wrists and pulled it through the bars, then he twisted the man's arm over his own shoulder and slammed it back and forth from bar to bar.

The man wasn't laughing now. He scrambled for Matthew's hair with his free hand, but Matthew ducked and tugged harder, bending the man's arm backwards as he did. His only intention was to give the girl a chance to escape,
but as he pulled the man's arm back toward the rail, he heard a loud snap. Horrified, he released it immediately. The man screamed and fell to the ground.

Matthew didn't know what to do next. He was stunned at his own strength, his rage and its aftermath. He was more stunned when the girl lifted herself to her knees, grabbed a rock from a garden edging the sidewalk and hit the writhing man in the side of his head.

He stopped writhing and lay perfectly still.

The girl looked up. The face was familiar, but not the triumph in her green eyes. “We've got to get out of here. Somebody'll call the cops.”

Matthew looked down at the man. “You killed him.”

“Nah, I don't have that kind of luck.” She leaned over. “See? His chest's still moving. Are you coming?”

Matthew tried to think. Somebody had to stay with the injured man, didn't they? But even if he wasn't dead, Matthew had probably broken his arm. How could he explain that to the police? How could he explain who he was and what he was doing in Australia? Why he was sleeping in bushes? How he knew this girl? The police would put him in jail and take all the time they needed to investigate.

And he would never finish what he had come so far to do.

He peered at the girl through the bars. “You stole my wallet.”

“Right-o. And I'm about to pinch it again. You want it back, you'd better come with me.”

From somewhere in the distance Matthew heard sirens. “But my backpack's in the bushes.”

“There's no time!”

She was right. The sirens were rapidly getting closer, and he heard voices from one of the apartment buildings
up the street. He climbed the fence as she searched the man's pockets. The wallet she retrieved was Matthew's.

“Got it, let's go.”

He grabbed the wallet from her hand and shoved it in his front pocket. “Are you all right? Can you run?”

“Me? No worries. I've been running since the day I was born.”

 

“Name's Tricia.” The girl offered Matthew the last bite of fish he'd bought her at a kiosk at Sydney harbor. He wolfed it hungrily. His own order had disappeared in record time.

“Matthew,” he mumbled, swallowing the last of her fish in one gulp.

“That's not what it says in your wallet.”

He was learning to think fast. “Simon Matthew Van Valkenburg. My friends call me Matt.”

“Hmmm…” Tricia leaned back against the bench and closed her eyes.

“You don't think they'll find us here?”

“They won't even know who to look for. When Charlie wakes up, he won't tell them anything. Even if he did, they know him at the cop shop, and they wouldn't believe a thing he said anyway.”

Matthew was beginning to feel more like himself. He had his wallet back, even if most of the money was gone. But there was still seventy dollars inside, minus what they'd spent on dinner. That was something, anyway.

“Why'd you steal from me?” he asked.

“Because I could.”

“No, I mean why did you choose me instead of somebody else?”

“You were an easy mark.”

He squirmed, but he could hardly refute that. “How could you tell?”

“You had that look. Like somebody who can't figure out where he is and what he's doing.”

That was true enough. He silently vowed to be more careful.

Tricia shrugged. “I thought you'd go back to your mum and dad and they'd take care of you. I didn't know you'd end up on the street.”

Anger flicked through him. “And I didn't know you were a hooker.”

She giggled, a surprisingly innocent sound. “I could tell that. And here I thought I was pretty good at it.”

“Why do you do that, anyway? The lady at the bookstore said she offered you a real job.”

“Old Mrs. Duff?”

“I was trying to find my wallet.”

“Oh, she offered me a job, she did. If I wanted that kind of job, I could have found one back in Humpty Doo.”

“Well, it sure sounds better than what you do.”

“Most blokes like what I do just fine.”

“You're too young to do it.” He was surprised at his own tone. He sounded the way his mother did when she lectured him about picking up his dirty socks.

She didn't seem offended. Just curious. “How old do you think I am?”

“I don't know. Twenty?”

She giggled again. “Har-dly.”

“Well, if you're older, you're still too young to—”

“I'm sixteen.”

He wanted to ponder that, but he didn't know where to start. “How long…?”

“Last year. I got tired of the Territ'ry. Nothing there ex
cept flies and cows and willy-willies. You ever been there?”

“No, but I'm going.”

“Beyond the black stump?” She sounded incredulous. “Why?”

“I'm going to see my grandfather. Roman Llewellyn. He has a ranch there…” He remembered that his father and Aunt Mei had always referred to his grandfather's land as a station. “A station called Jimiramira.”

“Yeah, I know Jimiramira.”

“You do?” For the first time since he'd broken Charlie's arm, his mind moved solidly to something else. “How?”

“No reason.”

“Do you live nearby?”

“Nothing's near anything else in the Territ'ry. Don't you know that?”

“What did you call the place you lived?”

“Humpty Doo. And don't look at me like I'm blathering. I didn't just think it up. It's a real place. My mum and dad have a bit of land there. Mango trees. We lived on a station when I was younger. They saved everything they could to buy their bloody mangoes. Said they were doing it for me.”

Matthew thought of his own mother, who claimed
everything
she did was for him. He supposed this was one of those things that had nothing to do with international boundaries. “Don't you miss your parents?” Tricia was silent, but he persisted. “Come on, don't they worry about you?”

“It's too late to think about that, isn't it? Besides, you don't think they'd want me back the way I am now.” It wasn't a question.

Matthew thought about Liana. There would be hell to pay when he returned home, but never any question that he was wanted.

Tricia folded her arms. “Besides, I don't want to go back. I'm never going to live in the Territ'ry again.”

“Can you live here, with Charlie looking for you?”

“I can stay out of his way.”

“Doing what you do? You can't do that just anywhere, can you? And next time he might kill you. Why'd you hook up with him, anyway?”

“The bastard told me he'd keep me safe. He told me if I made good money, I could have anything I wanted.”

Matthew was trying to understand. “If you made good money and kept it all, you would have been further ahead.”

“Too right. But then I would have been alone, wouldn't I?”

Matthew was aware of Tricia's hip, warm and solid against his. Until he'd seen Charlie beating her, he'd been sure that if he caught up with this girl, he would feel nothing but anger. Now, incongruously, he was trying to convince her that there was more to life than standing on street corners earning money for Charlie. It was as unlikely a scenario as he could imagine, considering that right now he couldn't manage his own life.

“What's your story?” she said at last. “And don't tell me you're not a Yank. I saw your driver's license. San Francisco, it said.”

He considered what to tell her. “That's where I live. But my father lives in Australia, so that makes me half-Australian.”

“Which half? Top or bottom?” She flashed the smile he remembered from their first encounter.

He could feel his cheeks heating. “I came over to visit my grandfather. I've never met him, and I wanted to. That's all.”

“Why didn't you ring him and ask for money so you didn't have to go bush last night?”

“He doesn't know I'm here. It's a surprise.”

“Then why didn't you ring your father?”

“He's in the States right now.” Matthew had tried not to dwell on the way Cullen must have felt when he didn't show up in New York, or about the accusations that were probably still bouncing from coast to coast. He just hoped that by now his mother had found the message he had left for her.

Tricia was still gazing at him. “Your father's there. You're here. Your grandfather doesn't know you're on your way to meet him. Does anybody know where you are?”

“Sure,” he said too quickly. “How else would I have gotten here?”

She left it at that. “Well, what are you going to do now? You can't get to the Territ'ry without money.”

“I guess I'm going to find a ride.”

“How will you do that?”

“I guess I'll take the bus or train as far as I can, then start walking and see if anybody stops.”

“You've really gone off your brain. There's nothing in the heart of this country but roos and dingoes and heaps of flies. I reckon you'd die by the side of the road and nobody would ever find more than a bone and a tooth.”

“I'm going to my grandfather's.”

“You don't know a thing about how to survive out there.”

Matthew waited. She seemed poised on the brink of something.

She finished after a long pause. “Well, I'm not going back to the Territ'ry. Not ever.”

“That's too bad. You need to get out of here so Charlie won't find you. And I bet you could show me a lot of tricks.” His cheeks flamed brighter as he realized what he'd said.

She didn't seem to notice. “What would I do when I got there, anyway? I couldn't stay. I'd have to come back here alone. And it was hard enough getting out the first time.”

“After we got there, my grandfather would buy you a ticket if I asked him. A ticket to someplace where Charlie wouldn't look for you.”

“You don't even know your grandfather.”

“Maybe not. But he'd help. My father says…” He cleared his throat. “He says he's a man of high principle.”

“High principle? Maybe it would be worth the trip just to meet a man with
any
principles.” She rolled her eyes like the girls back home always did, and for the first time in days he didn't feel far from San Francisco.

Matthew didn't know why he wanted Tricia to come with him. The desire was mixed up with his fear that Charlie would find her and beat or kill her. But there was more to it. He was lonely and unsure of himself after everything that had happened.

“I don't suppose I have anything better to do in Sydney until Charlie settles down.” She swatted at the crumbs dotting her skirt. “Maybe I'll give it a go. But I'm not going home. Just to Jimiramira. Not one kilometer closer to Humpty Doo.”

Matthew knew he was good at figuring out what people were really saying. Both his mother and father struggled to be honest, but too often he sensed emotions they wouldn't admit to. Now he suspected Tricia meant something else, too.

“Not one kilometer,” he agreed. “But this time, keep your hands off my wallet.”

She grinned. “Too right. We'll be mates.”

His heart lurched. It seemed to have something to do with the way her lips curled over her crooked front teeth.

She got to her feet and finished brushing the crumbs away. “I know a place we can sleep for the rest of the night. Then we'll figure out what to do next. I have a couple of ideas.”

“Not your place…”

“No. I can't go back there. And that's crook, too, because now Charlie will pinch all my stuff.”

“Did you have much?”

“No worries.”

He got to his feet, although he was rapidly growing too tired to move. “Looks like we'll both be starting off with nothing.”

She shook her brown hair back over her shoulders and straightened her skirt. “I'll be happy to share my half of it. How about you, mate?”