Burnt (28 page)

‘Everyone lost that night.' Seb's voice was flat, as cold and bleak as the night around them.

‘You recovered pretty quickly though, didn't you?'

‘Yeah, I moved on. We had to.'

Green gave a bitter laugh before inching his way closer once more. ‘You're no hero. You're nothing more than a murderer!'

‘It was a freak accident!'

‘It was your fault,' Green screamed.

Seb frowned as he noticed the unfocused gaze and the mad gleam in the guy's eye. He was completely irrational, making it hard to predict what he was going to do next.

‘Look, there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about Marty and what happened, but no matter how many ways I look at it, there wasn't a bloody thing I could do when that tree came down. I didn't even see the damn thing until it landed on us.' Seb's voice cracked as he battled to keep his emotions in check. ‘I know you miss your brother. I miss him too.'

‘Miss him?' Green spat in disbelief. Seb's gaze fixed firmly on the rifle as it shook in the younger man's hands. He sent him a measured look.

‘Yeah, I missed him, all right. Because after he died, there was no one else to take the brunt of that old bastard's backhand. It was bad enough before Martin died, but after –' Green gave a caustic chuckle, ‘– let's just say I was more than a disappointment to him. If one of his sons had to die, then he made it clear that it should have been me, the geeky one who everyone liked to make fun of – remember?'

Seb moved back slightly as Green leaned towards him, the rifle aimed at gut level once more. Flashes of memory played out in his head. Green was his best mate's kid brother and he was geeky, all right – in a disturbing, weird way that even as kids, they'd known was not right.

‘Bet you're regretting it now, huh, tough guy?'

You think?
Hindsight was a marvellous thing. If he'd known the kid was going to grow up to be a nutcase … ‘Look, let's just take a step back and calm down. I can put in a good word with the cops. We can sort all this out before it goes any further.'

‘What a good idea. Take a step back, Taylor.'

Seb glanced quickly over his shoulder and realised the edge of the bank was getting a little too close for comfort.

‘Charles Green! Lower your weapon,
now
!' The voice, booming in the darkness, came from nowhere, making Green jerk in surprise. Seb barely registered the sudden swarm of police on the scene, his gaze focused solely on the finger that seemed to be moving in slow motion to squeeze the trigger.

He heard the explosion – the pain of a bullet ripped through him and he felt himself falling through the air. Cold tentacles of water wrapped around him, dragging him beneath the torrent. One last gasp of air, a brief glimpse of the murky loneliness of an abyss, and he felt the life seeping from his body.

Seb turned his head towards the strange noise in the hallway. In the brief instant before he opened his eyes, the smell of laundered sheets and antiseptic assaulted him and he thought he was back in Germany, his burns and wounds still fresh and his mates barely cold in their steel boxes, about to fly back home to Australia.

Then, as his blurry eyes focused on the form next to his bed, relief flooded through him.

Bec.

He was in hospital. Safe.

She looked so lost, huddled in the hard plastic chair, head propped on her hand and her eyes closed. How long had she been there? He tried to gauge the time, but inside the ward, his bed hidden from the verandah, it was impossible to see if it was day or night.

His gaze roamed over her face; soft in sleep and without the strain of the last few days, she could have easily passed for the sweet sixteen-year-old he'd first fallen hopelessly in love with. Not much had changed, it seemed – he was still hopelessly in love with her.

She stirred and opened her eyes, straightening in the chair as she noticed he was awake.

‘How are you feeling?' she asked quietly, leaning forwards and running her hands briefly through her hair to tidy it.

‘I've felt better, but I've also felt a hell of a lot worse, so I guess I can't complain.'

‘Sure you can. In fact, we'd prefer that you'd complain if you're in pain so we can help you,' she told him with a frown, reaching for the cuff of a blood pressure machine and wrapping it around his bicep with practised ease.

‘Should you be at work?' he asked.

‘I'm not,' she told him calmly, her eyes fixed on the numbers as the machine took his blood pressure and pulse. ‘But as usual, they're short staffed, so while I'm here, I may as well do something useful.'

‘How long have I been out of it?'

‘A little over twelve hours.'

‘What happened? The last thing I remember …' His words trailed off as he tried to force his foggy memory to recall those last moments. The gun. Water.

‘You were shot – again. You fell into the creek and were swept downstream.' He saw a shudder ripple through her body and frowned. ‘It took them a while to find you, and at first they thought –' She stopped and took a shaky breath. ‘They got you here in time and gave you a transfusion. You've been in and out of consciousness for a while now.'

‘Green?'

She paused as she jotted down his blood pressure and pulse, then took her time hooking his chart back onto the end of his bed. ‘After he shot you, he turned his gun on the police and they shot him. He didn't make it.'

‘Now his parents have lost both sons,' Seb said, his voice sounding hollow and empty. ‘And I was there both times.'

‘His parents won't be blaming you for anything this time, Seb – Charles killed them both, the night he kidnapped me.'

He stared at her in disbelief.

‘Charles should have received help a long time ago,' she continued. ‘I'd say he's been undiagnosed with some kind of mental illness for most of his life, but we'll never really know for sure now. Most families would have sought help for their child a long time ago, but in that family, he had no hope.'

‘Wow, a whole family wiped out.' The thought shook him up more than he cared to admit. He stayed silent, trying to digest the news, and after a while he remembered Bec, sitting patiently by his bedside. ‘You should be at home, resting.'

‘I wanted to be here when you woke up.'

For the briefest of moments, his heart leapt, until he caught the shadow of pain buried in the depths of her chocolate-coloured eyes. His heart froze. Dread almost choked him, refusing to dislodge. ‘What's wrong?'

She twisted her fingers anxiously, but continued to hold his gaze. ‘Seb, it's your dad. He was badly beaten when I found him. But since then, there's been complications.'

‘What's that mean?'

‘He's had a stroke.'

His mind was filled with grief, pain, rage and disbelief. How could his father be dying – now? After everything they'd been through? He thought they'd have more time. He had to see him.

Stubbornly, he refused to be wheeled down to his father's room, brushing off Bec's concern impatiently. He forced one foot in front of the other, making his way to the end of the long hallway and then to the private room with its single bed and monitor mounted on the wall. He sank down into the straight-backed chair by the bed and stared at his father's bruised and battered face.

A surge of hatred swelled up inside him. What a waste. So much damage and havoc wreaked by one person over one cruel twist of fate all those years ago.

His father's breathing was shallow and crackled, as if someone was crushing a piece of cellophane inside his chest. Seb reached across and covered his father's hand with his own.

‘It's okay, Dad. You just take it easy. I'm not going anywhere,' he whispered, his voice hoarse against the sterile blandness of the tiny room.

Rebecca heard the car pull up outside and dusted off her hands as she stood from where she'd been kneeling on the floor. She saw Seb turn and wave at the police car that had delivered him back to his father's farm. He glanced at her car as he walked around it and she caught the frown that crossed his face.

Bracing herself for his approach, she tied the top of the garbage bag she held, and sat it just outside the back door to take to the bin on her way out.

‘I thought I told you yesterday that I'd be happy to come and pick you up from the hospital.'

‘Shackleton dropped by to give me a final briefing and offered to drop me home. You've cleaned up,' he said blankly.

Nervously, Rebecca twisted the hem of her T-shirt in her fingers and gave an offhand shrug. ‘I didn't want you to come home to it the way it was.'

‘You didn't have to do that.' He turned his back on her, and she saw the ramrod set of his shoulders. ‘Thanks,' he mumbled quietly, almost as an afterthought.

‘No worries. Do you want a cuppa?' She moved towards the jug.

‘No, thanks. I have to start making some arrangements.'

Rebecca bit her lip. ‘Can I help with any of it?'

‘No. I got it covered. Thanks.'

‘Well, can I get you something to eat then?'

‘No, Bec. I don't want you to get me anything, okay? I just want to bury my father and get the hell out of town and back to my own life.'

Her hand froze as she reached for the fridge, the sting of his words like a slap across her face. ‘Fine. Don't let me hold you up then.' She crossed the kitchen and grabbed her phone and keys from the bench. ‘You know where I am if you need anything,' she said quietly as she headed outside.

‘Bec.'

She paused as she reached the bottom step of the verandah, not turning to face him, her hand resting on the railing.

‘Thanks. For everything.'

Her heart felt as though it were weighed down with bricks; her legs felt suddenly too heavy to move. She had no one but herself to blame for allowing him to hurt her once again. She knew he was going to go back – he'd warned her on more than one occasion – but now the time had come, it hurt. She pushed away from the railing without comment. What was there to say, after all? He didn't want her around, and he couldn't wait to get as far away from here as he could – which kind of made anything else moot.

She slammed her car door shut and sat for a moment, staring out at the grass gently swaying in the breeze, allowing her memories one last moment of release before she stuffed them back in the box where they lived, deep in the recesses of her mind. This would be the last time she'd be out here.

As she drove up the driveway, she refused to look in the mirror. He wouldn't be standing there watching her leave him, and the pain of knowing that hurt far more than she was capable of dealing with. He was the master of moving on, and she had a long way to go until she was able to say the same thing.

Seb sat across from the seat his father had always sat in, out in the sun on the side verandah, and stared at the empty space.

The younger dog lay at his feet, staring up at him with large, mournful eyes. He'd been shot, but the vet had managed to save his life. The older dog, his dad's loyal companion for the last fifteen years, hadn't made it. They'd found him here on the verandah, where he'd been trying to defend his master.

Seb's mind went back to the last moments before his father passed away. The horrendous crackling in his chest had stopped. The struggle to breathe had ceased. It was quiet, almost peaceful, even though Seb felt as if his heart was being clenched in a giant hand – squashed like an empty aluminium can. He knew this was better than the drawn-out agony of disease, his father's body and mind gradually rotting away in the years to come.

It was almost easier to accept this small mercy of his father's death. It was so unlike the other senseless deaths he'd been forced to deal with in the past: Marty, Reggie, his mates in the regiment over the years, his mother – so much death. So much pain and destruction.

‘Yeah, mate, I know. I miss Dad too.' He bent down and rubbed the small dog's ears, then sat back and let out a tired sigh. The funeral was tomorrow and then he could pack up and leave. He could forget about these last few months of playing house and happy families and get back to what he was trained for – what he'd given up his life for.

Time to get back to reality.

Seb felt cold. Outside the sun was shining, it was almost hot, but inside the church he felt colder than he'd been in a long time. He remembered the last time he'd felt this way. Not when he'd been hidden in the godforsaken Afghanistan mountains in the middle of winter – although that was insanely cold. No, it was at another funeral, a long time ago.

He sat alone in the front row, staring at the coffin on the stainless steel trolley at the front of the church. He didn't know how many people were here – he hadn't turned around to check. He just sat and waited for the insufferable torment to be over so he could leave.

A flash of colour caught his eye and he turned his head to see Bec sliding into the pew beside him. She sent him a brief nod, her eyes searching his for a moment, before turning to face the front of the room.

They didn't speak. He couldn't have told her he wanted to be alone – even if it were true – because his tongue felt as though it were stuck to the roof of his mouth.

The minister took his position at the pulpit and Seb watched as he turned to the correct page in his notes, skimming past the sermons for christenings and weddings to locate the one for funerals – full circle in the life of Angus Taylor.

A bolt of surprise shot through him as a warm hand covered the fist he hadn't realised was clenched like a rock on his thigh. Just like the touch of sunshine on a glacier, he instantly felt the warmth seeping into his bones to melt through the coldness. His muscles began to relax. Her hand remained over his, grounding him, centring him, giving him something solid to hang on to while his emotions did battle.