Shiver Sweet (20 page)

“It gives them a glimpse into a household.  If they like what they see, I reckon they break in and install more reliable cameras.”

Tears came to my eyes.  Oh, hell.  Poor girl.  Touching her... well, I couldn’t help but mentally flick through her pain, it was almost palpable.  She’d been brutally attacked, scared witless and tight-lipped about it through fear. 

I wished I had known. 

A voyeur website.  Masked men.  Nicola attacked.  John stabbed and even tortured in death.  Jeez.

“You’re shocked,” she said, squeezing my shoulder.

“You think?”

“I understand.  You should have seen the state I was in last night falling asleep in a corner.  But you have to be silent and contain it.”  Her voice dropped.  “For the cameras.”

Contain it?  Is she mad?  How could I hide my feelings about this?

I wanted to take her in my arms and soak up some of her torture, but there was no time.  This had to end.  Now. 

I pushed up off the floor, legs weak, body still quivering.  The fresh, immediate horror pounded like a hammer on my head. 

“Where are you going?”

“Stuff silence,” I told Nicola, wiping my tears as rage at those men took over me.  “I’m phoning the police.  Why the fuck have you left it this long?” 

“If you wanna get us all killed, then go ahead.  Call the cops, or pack a bag and rush out the door so they can see you’re doing a runner.  I guarantee you they’ll storm straight round here.”  She clenched her teeth.  “They’re watching every move we make.  No police.  That’s what they said.”

“Of course that’s what they said.”  I looked into her eyes.  We were sharing the same air, touching skin, but we were planets apart in the head.  “No.  We need to ring the police.”  I bustled past her.

Nicola grabbed my arm and stopped me leaving the office.  “You have to calm down.  They’ll pick up on your body language.”  She glanced around.  “We’re off camera here, I think.  But listen, think hard, Christa.  We can’t afford to piss them off again.  That stunt with John on the sledge, it was a warning.  They must have seen the note, or–”

“What note?”

“The one I chickened out of giving to you.”

“What have you been doing all day?” 

“Well, once I got myself together, I started doing what they asked.  Uploading the spy software to computers in your office.”

“Jesus!”  I couldn’t keep the frost out of my voice. 

“And-“  She tightened her fingers around my arm.  “-and blocking a few of the upstairs cameras to protect Sarah.  I had to upload the software, Christa.  I didn’t know what else to do.”

Her activities were straining our relationship.  “Let go of me.  You’ve put everyone at risk by... by...”

She pulled me closer and spoke against my ear.  “Believe me.  I’ve wanted to pick up the phone many times to cry for help, but these men have eyes all over the place.  God knows how many homes are being filmed.  But it’s a lot.  It’s not just us they could have threatened.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve killed before.” 

“You should have told me!” 

Her expression took a nosedive.  “Shout at me if you have to, but all I’ve tried to do is stop those perverts from seeing you and Sarah naked on camera, uploading spy software from the memory stick they gave me to your customers’ computers like they told me to do so that–”

“So they can spy on even more people.  Jeez.”

“No.  So that they don’t hurt our families like they threatened to do!  I’ve been driving myself nuts working out how to screw them over.  Is it so terrible to want to protect the people I care about?”

Why was I losing my cool with her?  She’d been through so much.  It was those men who deserved to suffer.  I locked my stormy eyes onto hers, realised my anger was seriously misdirected.  “Oh, Nicola.  Of course it’s not terrible.  Poor thing.  I’m sorry.  You’ve been through hell.  I’m just shocked.”  I pulled her into a hug, wrapping my arms around her like ivy.  “I’m sorry.”  I held her, squeezed her, kissed her cheek then leaned away.  “Show me the website, will you?”

“I can’t.”  She frowned.  “For one, it was those men who cut the phone line, so we have no internet.”

“It was them?  Okay, I’ll search on my mobile, don’t need the phone line to use 3G.  What’s the site called?”

She shrugged.  “And secondly, I didn’t look at the web address.  We just wanted to escape.”  She touched my shoulder.  “Listen, I know John’s given you a rough time lately, but he really was a hero last night.  I just thought you ought to know that.” 

A tear came to my eye for him.  All John’s threats to spill the truth to Sarah, his breaking into my home to frighten me into leaving...  In the end, he’d come good and died saving Nicola.  “I’m glad he saved you.”  I had to light a mental candle for him, for that selfless, brave act.

“We can’t stand here,” she whispered.  “They might get suspicious.”  She gestured to the hall and motioned for me to follow. “Don’t look around for the cameras, and try to act normal.”

I followed her, trying not to let my eyes dart to every wall in search. 

“I was trying to protect us by doing what they asked.  Trying to save our lives.  I still am!” She looked at me for a response.

I pressed my lips into a half smile.

She kept her voice at a whisper.  “Find me a way out of this mess without anyone else getting hurt, Christa, and I’ll grab it by the balls.”  Along the way, she picked up two jackets and handed me one.  “They know about the cove at the back of this cupboard so we can’t sneak in there.”

“How could we not have realised this was going on?  We have to shut them down.”

“Shush.  Keep your voice down.  They must earn a shit load of cash from their website.  They’ll not let us wreck it without a fight.” 

I tugged her to a stop.  “So what do we do?”

Her fearful look intensified.  “Hush.  Let’s move outside so we can talk.”

“But Sarah!”

“That’s why we’re going outside.  If Sarah overhears she’ll be hysterical.”

I chewed my lip in thought.  What if the men burst in and grabbed her while I was outside?  I moved to the front door to ensure it was locked, then followed Nicola to the patio doors in the kitchen.  “Let’s be quick.  I daren’t leave Sarah for long.  Not now.”  

Nicola unlocked the door and led me outdoors into the biting chill of winter twilight where our breath made white plumes on hitting the air.  “We have to change this lock.  They have a key.” 

A key?  I was meant to change it yesterday, and boy, did I wish I had. 

She dashed to a corner in the garden and returned with two garden shovels in hand.  “Shift the snow off the patio.  For cover.  Just in case.”

I took a shovel from her.

Nicola stared at my hands, prompting me into action.  “Come on.  Please.  Look busy.”

“Okay, okay.”  I scraped a patch of snow into the bushes.

As I worked, I glanced at Nicola’s increasingly paranoid expression; watery, flickering eyes, flushed cheeks.  She was barely holding it together.  Why hadn’t I picked up on that?  I thought she was just suffering from a hangover.

“We can’t do anything that rouses suspicion,” she whispered, her head bowed.  “One wrong move and they could... Just keep shovelling in case they’re watching, or it could be one of us on that... that sledge.”

We were under surveillance outdoors, too?  Oh, crap.  “Is there a camera in the garden?”

She gave me a subtle nod.  “The man who attacked me left a tablet computer in the kitchen.  When John arrived, he found it, and saw the other men approaching the house on the web feed before I actually saw them through the patio doors.” 

My heart softened for her again.  “I love you and I’m sorry for shouting,” I said in a hushed voice.  The thought of people watching Sarah bathing and dressing was almost paralyzing.  “What’s up with your cheek?  Did they hit your face?”

“Got a tooth knocked out last night.”

“No way.  Which?”

“A back one.  I can’t show you or they’ll definitely know I’ve told you what’s going on.” 

“Does it hurt?”

“Like a bitch.  I can barely eat.”  Hell-bent on maintaining our cover, Nicola shovelled snow off the ground until she got to bare concrete.  “Anyway, we need to discuss what to...”  She paused and bent to pick something up from the piled up snow. 

“What have you found?” I asked.

“A receipt.”  She pursed her lips, unfolding the soggy slip of paper.  “It’s from Sally’s diner, soggy and not all of it’s readable.  Ink’s run a bit but...”

“The diner where Amanda works?  The one on the outskirts of town?”

“Yes.”  She glanced at me.  “This receipt is from a couple of days ago.  You been there recently?”

“Not for ages.  You?”

“Two weeks ago - keep shovelling the snow - that’s where I met Dave.  You know, the guy I went on a date with last weekend.  I was on the phone with him when they attacked me.”

“Really?  And he didn’t phone the police?”

She shrugged.  “I lied about where I was.  Didn’t want him to think I was...  Never mind.  I feel so stupid now.”

“So why is this receipt here?”

“More importantly,
who
dropped it?”

“John?”  I shivered as my murdered husband’s name left my throat.  “He grabs lunch there sometimes if he’s over on that side of town.”

“Possibly.  Or one of my attackers.  It’s a large order.  Four flat whites, one... tea or...?  I can’t read the next bit, it’s too smudged.  Oh, and chicken sandwiches, and a BLT, extra crispy I think it says.”

“We should ask Amanda,” I suggested.  “If it was John’s order, she’d remember.  Knowing her, she’d have spit into his drink.” 

Nicola stuffed the receipt into her pocket.  She glanced around, then signalled deeper into the back garden, into darkness.  “Quick.  Over here.”

She leaned the garden tools against the wall, then corralled me across the lawn to a large leaf-less tree situated amid a tangle of frosted foliage.  We were safely away from the light spilling from the kitchen. 

“I’m sorry, but I really need one.” Nicola pulled a cigarette out and patted her pockets.  “Damn.  Where’s my lighter?”

Bundled together under the tree, with this news ripe in my head, I stared up at my home.  It looked so different now, had an ominous slant to it. 

Even if a camera was pointed at us here, the shadows would conceal us.  I was glad to be away from the house, the horror.  It gave a moment of respite.  But I’d have to go back.  Soon.  Sarah was inside.  I gasped.  Sweet Jesus.  I hoped she hadn’t got out of bed to undress.

Nicola located her lighter, lit up and took a couple of deep drags.  “Ooh, that’s better.”

We stood near the edge of the garden, beneath white-capped tree limbs, with frozen roots, stones and uneven soil beneath my feet.  The tree seemed lifeless and lost in time and stripped without its jacket of leaves.  A bit like how I felt right now. 

But we were invisible here in the spiky shadows.  Hopefully.

“I’ve been trying to think of a way to screw these guys over,” Nicola said, a ghostly cloud of cigarette smoke around her.  “I just can’t come up with anything.”

My fingers stiffened in the cold.  I cupped my hands together and blew warm breath into them.  “How will they know we’ve phoned the cops?” 

“Trust me,” Nicola said with a shiver.  “They’ll know, or at least figure it out.”

“Does the website have sound?  Are there microphones in the house.”

“Erm... I don’t think so.  But I could be wrong.  So be careful what you say in the house, and on the phone.”

Nicola was clearly terrified that those guys might even overhear our phone calls for help.  Perhaps they were bugged.  I had to trust that her fears carried weight. “Okay, Nic.  So phone calls are out.  We could text, be discreet.”

“I guarantee they’ll be monitoring us.  Closely.  We’re safe so long as we behave as normal.”

“Texting under a duvet is not necessarily abnormal.”

“But the cops showing up twice in one day is.  You’re willing to take that risk after what they did to John?”

I made a noncommittal hum while mulling it over.  Perhaps she was right.  “Fair point.” 

A relieved sigh escaped Nicola.

If the men noticed a dramatic change in our behaviour, there’d piece it together.  But then my mind shot to Sarah.  No way could I let her stay in this house, nor did I want her out of my sight.  Perhaps we could all disappear to a hotel... or I could get Brian to pick Sarah up and whisk her off to somewhere safe.  He may have shit on me from a great height, but he’d always have time for Sarah. 

“We need to decide what to do,” Nicola said.  “They’ll wonder what we’re doing under here.”

“Just a minute.”  I hooked her arm.  Something didn’t add up about last night.  “So those men thought this house would be empty yesterday evening?”

“Yes,” she answered.  “That’s what I heard one of them say.”

“How?” 

Nicola touched my shoulder.  “It’s your birthday.  Besides, like I said, they have eyes everywhere.” 

“Then why didn’t they see you come back into the house?”

“Maybe they were already on their way.  I don’t know, all right?  I don’t have all the answers.”  She drew on her cigarette again.

“I’m sorry.”

“What I do know is, they’ve threatened, me, you, Sarah and our families.  If we breathe a word...  Look, the police won’t be able to guard everyone we care about.  I’ve already thought about this.  While we’re talking to the cops, those bastards could be on their way to hurt our families.  I’m not willing to risk even one person slipping through the net.  Are you?”

I shook my head.  Absolutely not.  What to do?  Stalemate. 

It may not have been the most thrilling of lives, but it was mine and I wanted it back, without anyone else getting hurt.  I so ached to pull this voyeur ring down on the unscrupulous heads of those running it, but right now...  “Then we ensure our families are safe first and foremost.  Drive round, pick everyone up, take them to a neutral place, then phone the police.  Agreed?”

Nicola’s lips twisted with uncertainty.  “I’m not even sure my dad will be home from work yet.  He’d have to drive to meet us.  And my gran’s in a nursing home.  But, wait.  Those men will see us leaving.”