Floored (36 page)

“A precaution.”

“Why are you—”

“Someone had to.”

“Are you—”

“Fine. You might like to sleep. I assume you didn’t get much.”

That told her everything else. This threat to her safety was real. He’d drawn the short straw, and he wasn’t up for a chat. These were his rules now. Odd how much they felt like hers in reverse. She watched him navigate through the city traffic, constantly checking the mirrors. When they moved onto the highway he appeared to relax, settle more comfortably. He didn’t glance in her direction once. Behind her sunglasses her eyes felt swollen, felt red and gritty but watching him, so remote and shut off, hurt more than the lack of sleep. She closed her eyes and let the comfort of the leather, and the vibration of one hundred and ten k’s lull her into oblivion where no imagined scenario could be tougher than the one she found herself in.

When next opened her eyes the clock on the dash told her it was lunchtime and her stomach was on board with that.

“There’s a sandwich and a bottle of water in cooler bag in the back seat.”

“I can eat in the…?”

“Don’t play cute, Driver.”

“Ah—” Like all her sentences since she’d seen him in the hanger this one was stuttered and incomplete, stalled somewhere in her throat. She hadn’t meant to annoy him, thought he might smile at that. But he had no lightness in him. She ate a salad roll and watched the flat orange earth of the Nullarbor roll by while his silence weighed down on her with everything he didn’t say.

Still a good hour out of Kalgoorlie he shocked her by speaking. He had to clear his throat first. “Are you all right after last night?”

He never took his eyes from the road. They’d seen kangaroos and emus and it was prudent not to be distracted, but that’s not why he ogled the bitumen. Everything about him was a promotion for distance, for clinical, detached reserve. He was much further away than the width of the car and so much more separated them than the centre console. The vastness of the Nullarbor wasn’t enough to describe it.

“I still don’t understand what happened?” Too much had happened. She felt like she needed the crib notes to make sense of it, because her own eyewitness account was full of great whopping gaps.

“No one got badly hurt. Justin is fine. He got away with Wacker, but we arrested Johno Breznicki and Greg Grumble Hayes.”

She spun around to face Sean, the seat belt sheering meanly across her neck. “You think I care about Justin?”

“I don’t know what I think, Driver.”

She pulled the belt away. “That’s funny because I do. You think I set you up. You think I lied to you out of—I don’t know—spite, one-upmanship. You think I played you for a fool.”

He didn’t reply. He ate kilometres. He was using cruise control so only his hands on the wheel made any movement at all.

“I didn’t set you up.”

Only because she was watching did she see his nod, a quick, tight bounce of his chin, a flicker in the muscles around his mouth. She sat back around in her seat. A least he believed that. But there was nothing she could say in her own defence about why she lied or how she’d trashed his feelings. It made her stomach clench and no amount of bottled water washed the bad taste of it out of her mouth.

Sean picked a motel on the outskirts of the town and checked them in while she waited by the car. He handed her a key. “You’re in ten. I’m in eleven. There’s a connecting door. You’re to leave it unlocked.”

“I—”

“Don’t worry I won’t come in unless you scream. Try not to have a nightmare.” He went to the boot and pulled out their bags.

“Is all this really necessary?” Her first full sentence in hours and it wasn’t what she’d meant to say. She came across like a low rent diva stamping her foot over a broken fingernail. If the shuffle at the airport hadn’t convinced her she was in danger, the way Sean had driven out of the city would’ve clinched it. He’d driven like he thought they might be followed.

“Why don’t you tell me? Your fiancé is in business with the country’s most well organised, most ruthless and lawyered-up crime gang and you stole nearly half a million dollars from him.”

He put her bag down at her feet. He still had his sunglasses on but she didn’t need to see his eyes to know he was holding tight to his aggression. If the other side of love was hate, he was the flipped coin, and there was no split result like in a game of two-up to allow for an alternative outcome. And every nasty thought he had about her, she deserved in triplicate.

“Why did you volunteer to escort me, guard me, whatever this is?”

“I didn’t. I’m following orders. So are you. Don’t open your door till I knock in the morning. I’ll bring you meals. We leave at 8am.”

She picked up her bag. Stud said he hadn’t ordered Sean to do this, but maybe someone else in the chain of command had. Sean watched her open her door. He was still watching when she shut it. She dumped her bag and leaned against the door, then jumped when he said, “Lock it and use the chain.” When she didn’t, he barked. “Now.”

She flicked the latch and put the chain in place. She heard him enter his room. She went to the connecting door and checked the lock. She could hear him on the other side doing the same thing. She flattened her hand on the plywood. If she screamed now he’d open the door and he’d be on top of her in a second. She felt like screaming till her voice cracked, till her throat was raw and her lungs gave out. Instead she stifled a sob, and another and another until she was choking on them.

She ran to the bathroom and turned on the shower. She would have gotten under the water fully dressed but for Tracy’s boots. She sat on the toilet seat to pull them off. Her feet were sore, her calves stiff. She should’ve changed into her own shoes, but she’d not thought about it earlier and had been too proud to ask Sean to pull over so she could get to her bag in the boot. She stripped and got under the water, sitting to let it flow over her. It thundered down on her back and shoulders, it rinsed away the stench of the longest day of her life, and it masked the sound of her sobbing so Sean would never need to know how scared she was.

38: Mongrel

A sob was not the same as a scream.

But
fuuck
it hit him the same way. Made his internal organs seize up. Sean put both palms against the door and leaned his weight into it. He was not opening that door for a sob. He’d made it clear the door only opened for meal delivery and dire threat. And since he’d lay money in the fact she wouldn’t bother eating, and the ruse at the airport had done the trick of allowing them a clean escape from Perth, that door wasn’t opening.

So why was his hand on the latch?

She was standing right on the other side, right against the door; he could hear her trying not to break down. Well, probably what she needed was a good cry. She’d been so strong through all of last night and today, holding it together, not cracking up. So the fact that her trying not to cry felt like course sandpaper being rubbed all over his body was something he had to deal with, like how angry he was with her, with Stud, with Justin Cumberland, with Wacker and himself. Mostly himself.
Shit
.

He should never have allowed her to become bait. Bait when she drove for him in Sydney, then again last night, and bait now with the ever present reality of a gang member taking a shot at her because she knew things they’d want buried.

When he heard shower water running, he pushed off the door, went to the window and peered into the motel car park and the well-lit street beyond. All quiet.
Thank Christ
. The follow car, a Land Cruiser, was parked next to the Statesman. Tracy’s partner David Stolly would be on first watch. He still wasn’t sure about this idea of driving back. It was unexpected, for all the same reasons he’d chosen that way of getting out of Sydney after the stand-off at Milo Newberry’s house. But it was still a risk. Even though they’d have a follow car the whole way; a different team, co-ordinated by Stud, meeting them at various locations.

He probably should’ve let David or one of the others drive Cait. That would’ve been smart, might’ve been a more pleasant experience for her especially since he was intent on being such a shithead. Stud had suggested that, but he’d shut him down. He’d started this thing with Cait; he’d finish it. He didn’t trust protecting her to anyone else.

There was no sparing the irony of that. Now she was the one on the run and he was setting the rules. She was desperate for a kind word, a taste of normal, and he was putting up the barricades.

That would be the reason she was in the room next door, anxious, frightened and friendless, probably bawling her eyes out in the shower, and he was here, burning up with righteous indignation. If he wasn’t on duty, he’d be drunk. So totalled he couldn’t see straight.

Who was he kidding, he couldn’t see straight now
.

All he could see was how he’d screwed this up. He’d known from the moment she agreed to his road trip it was more than greed, the simple cash economy of the opportunity that locked her in step with him. He knew she was running from something, but he’d been too complaisant, too wrapped up in his own issues: getting made, getting set-up, getting sacked, he hadn’t looked past the idea of a bad relationship break up and some creative but low level stalking. When she confessed to using the road trip as an excuse to move states it’d helped solidify that view. But finding the gun, then knowing her bank account had been hacked, he should’ve paid more attention. He’d been too stupidly love struck, leading with his dick instead of being smart about things. All that did was put her in danger.

What the fuck was he supposed to have done? He’d been so there for her and still she’d lied, shut him out. He was the one person she’d run into since she’d run out on Justin who could’ve helped her, yet she’d chosen to freeze him out.

It wasn’t simply a timing issue. He’d heard what she said about wanting to tell him in Kalgoorlie, about wanting to tell him the night they’d arrived in Perth before everything went mad. He just wasn’t sure he believed it.

Jesus
, he needed a drink.

That story about her old man, hell that would’ve screwed up her childhood, fucked with her ability to trust anyone. Stud was looking into it. The timing of it was about right to fit with police corruption scandals that rocked the whole NSW force back then. What Justin did to her, given her history, must have ripped her to pieces. But she could’ve told him about the blonde being a cop. Detective Carolyn Martin was likely being questioned now. Assuming she was dumb enough not to have skipped the country. Cait should’ve told him so much she kept secret. Why the fuck had she done that?

And what was her deal giving money to Victims of Crime? Stud had let that drop but it seemed pretty obvious what she was trying to do was wash the money she’d stolen bit by bit through a charity set up to support the families of violent crime.

Christ
. It tore him up to think about what her life before he’d jumped in her car had been like. Shock, crippling hurt, fear, and the lonely work of trying to hide herself and her crime because she thought she’d been abandoned by anyone who could protect her. Then he’d come along and abandoned her too.

Abandoned her—he’d dressed her up as dinner and thrown her to the wolves
.

She could so easily have been shot and killed out there in the park. She’d been so brave, when she could’ve been hysterical. He’d been the hysterical one. He could easily have killed Justin, if the shooting hadn’t started, if only for the way Cait’s face showed every fear she’d ever known. The guy was lucky it had. He’d had to use Justin as a shield so the killing didn’t visit Fetch instead, and that’d proved how important old Jussy was to Wacker’s plans.

Justin would be nursing more than a sore face after last night and Wacker would be calling a war council and his infamous legal team would already be on the clock. The whole sting would be characterised as entrapment. Stud was going to have to make a call on how they responded next. Used the information they already had to break the clubs up or continuing to go after the cyber crime expert, one Justin Cumberland.

Sean quit the window and sat on the end of the bed with the room service menu in his hands. He had a stunning headache. He’d snatched some sleep on a cot at the station, but had skipped lunch and his face ached where he’d caught a punch and a headbutt from Grumble before he could get away.

At least this meant he was out. No more Fetch. Not ever. Fetch died in the Bold Park showdown, despite coming out of the fray unscathed. Now, if he played any role in bringing down the gang it would be on the sidelines. He didn’t feel unhappy about that.

This trip had changed him. Cait had changed him. Shown him how precious normal could be. Not that they’d had run of the mill, eggs on toast, put the garbage out on Sunday nights, you never change the toilet roll, normal; but he’d glimpsed it, riding on the horizon, just near a vivid orange sunset.

But that made him a bigger fool than not seeing through her lies, because she had no intention of giving that sunset together that wished for suburban home with the picket fence or romantic tropical island holiday a chance. Sure as he knew anything, he’d known she was getting ready to scarper on him. He’d have finished his undercover stint only to have faced the mystery of where she’d disappeared to.

But at least then she’d most likely have been safe. She’d have relocated, started working again and continued to make her regular payments to VOC in her own version of reparation and twisted justice.

He scrubbed a hand over his face, wincing as his thumb grazed the bruise on his cheekbone. There was nothing on the menu he wanted. What he wanted was rum or bourbon or vodka, something to take him out of his head for a night. Help him forget he should’ve tried harder with her, been different with her, so she trusted him enough to let him in, let him help her. What he wanted was something to help him forget she’d decided he wasn’t worth it.

He dumped the menu on the bed and went back to the connecting door. There was light shining underneath it. There was only dumb pride stopping him knocking on that door, then opening it and going through to ask her what she’d like to eat, to ask her if she was okay. To look in her eyes and know if she was. But then that was the problem—he’d thought he knew her, how to read her looks and moods, but in all the ways that counted he’d gotten that wrong.
Fuck
.