Limbo (37 page)

‘Did your little psychic friend tell you?’ he sniggered.

Dash ignored the insulting tone. ‘Joy has been helping me with the investigation, yes.’ He glanced at her. She was sitting forward in her chair, clearly trying to make out the entire conversation from just one side. ‘Listen, I’m about to email you a comprehensive report along with supporting documents and photographs.’

Dash pushed off the sink and prowled over to the bed, sitting down on the edge. ‘Everything’s in there. It’s her, Baz. It’s
definitely
her.’

Dash didn’t have any compunction about the definitive statement. There was, he supposed, a remote offside chance that the child they’d seen
wasn’t
Isabella Richardson.
But it sure as shit wasn’t Keisha Stewart.
And Baz knew Dash well enough to know that he’d never been known for making rash statements or false accusations.

It was ironic that three years after being kicked off the force his reputation for wanting to find the
right
bad guy was finally playing in his favour.

There was silence on the other end for long drawn-out moments and Dash swore he could practically hear the cogs in Baz’s brain spinning around. That was fine by Dash. He understood what he was asking of Baz and that his ex-partner had been the one who had copped the most flack after Dash’s disgraced departure.

He didn’t have any reasons to believe or trust Dash on the surface — the corruption allegations had seen to that. Except for the five years they’d worked together and had each other’s back.

‘Fine. Send it to me.’

Dash slowly let out a breath, pushing a hand through his hair. ‘Thank you.’

Baz grunted. ‘Don’t thank me yet, if any of this is bogus I’ll be calling bullshit on it.’

Fair enough. Dash leaned his elbows on his knees and looked at his feet. ‘It’s not.’

‘I’m going to my laptop. Email it to me now. I’ll get straight back to you.’

‘Will —’ The disconnect tone beeped and for a few seconds it reverberated in Dash’s ear, then he hit the end button and pushed himself off the bed.

‘He said yes?’ Joy asked, looking up at him.

Dash nodded as he prowled to the table and pulled up a seat in front of the laptop. ‘He said yes.’

Dash wrote a quick email to Baz, attached the report and the photographs, then hit send. The laptop made a soft wooshing noise as the email began its trip through cyberspace.

‘And now we wait again.’

Dash looked up at her and smiled. ‘Oh it won’t take him long to realise what he’s got.’

Much to his surprise she reached out her hand and slid it into his, giving it a squeeze. ‘Thank you for this. Your faith in me over this…’

She didn’t finish. She didn’t have to. He slid his other hand over hers. ‘It’ll be over soon.’

They sat there for a few seconds with their hands joined, staring at each other. His eyes roamed over her face. Over the plain chunk of chestnut fringe, that-ever present v, her cheekbones, her mouth.

God, her mouth
.

The heat from earlier flared again, travelling up his arm and tingling in hot ripples down his body. When they were finally free to get to the sexy times, he was going to devour that mouth.

‘Do you want another coffee?’ she asked, pulling her hand away as if she knew that if she didn’t the sexy times would be right now. They needed to wait.

‘Sure. Just let me get rid of the other five first.’

Dash headed for the bathroom as Joy picked up their mugs. His phone rang as he returned to the living area. Joy, who’d just put another steaming mug on the table, picked it up. ‘It’s Baz,’ she said, passing it to him.

Dash took it and pushed the answer button. ‘Baz.’

‘Yep. I reckon it’s her too,’ he said without any preliminary greeting. ‘I need to get a team together so we can go over this properly, it’ll take me a few hours. Where are you?’

Dash gave Joy the thumbs up because she looked like she was about to burst out of her skin. ‘We’re in a hotel in Gympie,’ he said as she sank into her chair. ‘The Gympie Palms.’

‘We?’ Baz laughed. ‘You
are
fucking her.’

Dash bristled at the little-boy glee in the statement. The fact that he was absolutely going to fuck Joy five ways to Sunday tonight only pissed Dash off more. He walked away from Joy, settling himself on the bed again, his elbows on his knees.

‘I need to go higher up the chain with it too.’

Dash nodded. He understood the unspoken meaning. Or was that warning? Baz needed Rasmussen’s approval. ‘That’s fine. But just so you know, if this hasn’t been acted on by tomorrow arvo then I will take this somewhere else, to people who
will
take action.’

‘You’re fucking kidding me,’ Baz swore. ‘You’d take it to the press? Those vultures?’

‘Isabella Richardson has spent far too much time away from her family as is. I’m not going to let her be a victim any further of some fucked power struggle. One way or another, she’s coming home this weekend, Baz.’

‘Fine,’ he huffed.

‘Ring me later when you have a game plan.’

‘You think I’m going to tell you about a Queensland police operation?’ he spluttered.

Dash gripped the phone. ‘I want to know Baz. I’m not insisting on being there when it goes down. But I want to know before it does. I want a heads up.’

‘No. We don’t give
Joe Public
the heads up.’

‘There wouldn’t
be
an operation without me and I’m not just
Joe Public
and you know it. Pulling this off, bringing home a kid — a baby — that everybody,
including you guys by the way,
has given up for dead is going to make Rasmussen and you fucking famous. They’re going to give you medals for this shit and neither Joy nor I want any credit. Just a little heads up is all I’m asking for. Before you go in and after… so we know she’s safe.’

More silence on the end of the line. ‘Fine. Expect a phone call.’

The line went dead again. Dash threw his phone on the bed and looked at Joy. ‘They’re going to get her.’

She stood and took a few paces towards him then stopped as if she was suddenly nervous. He knew how she felt. ‘When?’

‘I don’t know. They need time to get organised. If it was me I’d go in at first light before anyone has a chance to be up and about, to be alert. The element of surprise and all that.’

She nodded, taking another small step then putting her hands on her hips and dropping them to her sides again like she just didn’t know what to do with herself. With the nervous energy he knew she was feeling because he felt it to. The same nervous energy that always gathered at the first whiff of an operation and built steadily until you were buzzing on adrenaline.

Luckily for her — for them — he knew a very good outlet for it.

‘So…’ She licked her lips and his gaze zeroed in on her mouth again. Now the capturing-bad-guys business had been dealt with, they could get to the sexy business. ‘More waiting.’

He smiled at her. He could almost taste her mouth. ‘Whatever shall we do?’

Her return smile wasn’t as enthusiastic and she suddenly looked really pale. ‘I think I’m going to throw up,’ she said.

Dash took one look at her and concurred. Adrenaline could do that to you too. He stood and took a pace towards her. ‘Joy?’

She held her hand up. ‘Sorry…I’m just…can you excuse me please?’

He nodded and watched as she dashed to the toilet.

***

Joy didn’t vomit. Although she dry retched enough she could have won gold had it been an Olympic sport. She pulled the toilet seat down and sat on it, her legs shaky as the nausea passed.

Nice, Joy. Way to go to impress the guy whose brains you want to fuck right on out of his head.

She just hadn’t realised how stressed she’d been, how much pressure she’d put herself under these last few weeks, trying to fulfil Hailey’s promise. But she clearly had been if the thought of Isabella being back home with her family soon was so overwhelming. It had felt like a cork being removed and the relief and the vindication had rushed out.

She stood on still shaky legs and looked in the mirror. She hadn’t gotten used to the lack of pink. She’d usually had some splash of colour or other in her hair and to be back to plain old brown — chestnut, as her mother has insisted all through her childhood whenever Joy had lamented it —harked back to those days.

It should have been some kind of portent for her. After all, she’d been eight years old when she first met Dash. But she wasn’t a child anymore. She’d given up her virginity a long time ago and Dash had already partaken
very nicely thank you
of what she’d had to offer as a
woman
. How they’d met, and how old she was when they had, didn’t matter now. Their age gap didn’t matter. Their circumstances didn’t matter. Their on-paper compatibility didn’t matter.

Well…it sure as shit didn’t matter
right
now.

Right now, tonight, was something that had been building since they’d entered each other’s orbit again. They were both adults and she wouldn’t apologise for wanting him or for going after what she wanted.

It was like that night three years ago. Acting on attraction. Even an unwise one. One that wouldn’t — couldn’t — go any further than this hotel room. He had Katie and divorce baggage and she had Chris baggage and he knew her brother and there was twelve years between them — practically an entire generation.

But right now none of that mattered because it was about scratching an itch.

Although he must think she was a complete idiot dashing into the bathroom to throw up. Nothing like a vomiting woman to put a dampener on the old libido. Especially as Dash always seemed to be Mr Cool Calm and Collected. She could hear a low murmur of voices and she’d bet even now he was sitting out there flipping through the television channels all cool as you please while she was hiding in the bathroom, a complete freaking nervous wreck.

She’d been like that on stage for a long time in the beginning. Nerves would chew her up and spit her out. That was until she’d learned to deal with them, how to control them and use that nervous energy to her advantage.

But nobody’s life had depended on her before. This was a lot more serious than hitting the wrong note or missing her cue on stage.

Joy startled as a knock sounded on the door followed by, ‘Are you alright in there?’

And it was exactly what she needed to pull herself together. Now wasn’t the time to fall apart, with Isabella nearly free and a hot guy wanting to have even hotter sex with her just outside the door.

And Joy didn’t fall apart. She
never
fell apart. Joy kept her shit together and soldiered on.

‘Yep,’ she said, her mind made up. ‘I’m just going to have a shower.’

There was a moment of silence. Of hesitation? ‘Okay.’

Joy smiled. She’d bet her last cent it had cost him a lot not to suggest he come in and watch. Maybe help her scrub her back. And that was certainly something they could think about later. But right now she felt like she had half the bush and most of a perfume factory competing for control of her bodily odour and she didn’t like either.

When she and Dash got naked, she wanted to smell like herself. Like a woman. And then she wanted to smell like
him.

All freaking night.

She stripped off her shirt and almost yelped out loud at the unexpected sight of a big black leech stuck to an area just above her navel.
Ugh!
God alone knew how long it had been there — since their foray into the bush, obviously. She hadn’t felt the bastard but it was nice and fat.

A lot of women she knew would have started screaming but Joy just pulled off the rest of her clothes, did a quick inspection of herself in the mirror in case there were any more then stepped into the shower recess and turned the hot tap on as hot as she could stand.

It was satisfying to see the ugly little fucker shrink and detach quickly, falling to the floor and sliding down the drain hole. Joy looked down at the red mark it had left and recognised the faint ache at the site for the first time. There’d just been too damn much going on in the last few hours to register anything else.

She soaped up quickly. Now she’d pulled herself back from the brink of hyperventilating wreck she wanted to get back out to Dash as quickly as possible. This was one stolen night and she wanted to it to start ASAP.

Five minutes later she’d washed, towelled off and finger combed her damp hair in front of the mirror. She dithered about putting her clothes back on but she didn’t really see the point. They’d been subjected to the loamy, leafy,
leechy
floor of the bush and she was scrubbed and clean and about as pristine as she was ever going to get.

And she was going out there to get laid. It was a little late to pretend some kind of false modesty she didn’t feel. Dash had seen her naked, had been inside her body before, and she was comfortable enough with it and with her needs to think
screw it.

Joy wrapped herself in a fluffy white towel and walked out of the bathroom. The television provided background noise as she spied Dash sprawled on the bed, his legs lazily akimbo while he balanced the laptop on one meaty thigh. A stack of paper that had been on the table sat on the comforter beside him, his mobile phone weighing it down. He sat up abruptly as she appeared in her towel.

‘Oh Jesus,’ he muttered.

Joy smiled. It was
good
to feel like this. To put the rest of the stuff out of her head because she knew it was going to be okay and just think about her and her needs and what
she
wanted.

And that was him.

He shoved his laptop aside and swung his legs over the side of the bed. She strolled around to him an arm’s reach away.

‘You look…fresh,’ he said.

Joy smiled. It was kind of cute to see him so hesitant. She was positive under different circumstances, more familiar circumstances, he just would have reached over and flicked the fastening of the towel at the juncture of her breasts undone.

Hell, under those kind of circumstances she wouldn’t have even bothered with the damn towel.