The Australian (Crime Royalty Romance Book 2) (29 page)

I swung the door up and scrambled out without hesitation.

Crouched, I ran toward the body. As soon as I drew close I realized my mistake. This man had a shirt on. Jace had been shirtless. Oh, I wanted to whimper, covering my mouth.

Turn back!

And I did, but a flash of something had caught my eye. A distinctive bald spot.
Jimmy
. I dashed back and crouched down near the body. Yes, it was his blond hair. I pushed him over, with great difficulty. One of the eyes in his puffy red face opened. He was alive.

“Where’s Jace?” I asked him desperately.

He murmured something. I leaned over.

“Get in the boot,” he growled at me, startling me with the clear, nasty reprimand.

Jace had told him where I was. Was he still alive? Maybe.

Jimmy groaned, evidently in pain.

Blood had stained his stomach. I almost touched it. His eyes were half-closed. He groaned like an animal.

Whoosh-pop
noises behind me shot adrenaline straight through me.

He was right. I should be in the trunk. We should all be in the trunk.

So . . .
get back to the trunk! You’re out in the open!
My brain realized our error.

I grabbed Jimmy by the wrists and attempted to haul him back with me. My heart sank at his weight. It was tremendous. Oh, it sped up. He was using his heels, knees bent, pushing against the ground, to help. He still had a gun in his hand, and I stared down at it with disbelief. I tried to keep my breath steady but realized I was gasping.

Too loudly. I pursed my lips and tried to breathe through my nose. We neared the vehicle I had been hiding in. I had no idea where to put Jimmy as I did not believe we could both fit in the narrow trunk along with the weapons. He helped himself, sliding underneath the SUV, hiding in the shadows.

“Boot,” he mumbled, barely audible.

I clambered back in quickly, closing the hatch behind me.

Silence.

No, my beating heart, thumping rapid in my ears.

I was
not
getting out of the trunk again.

There was an element of relief, knowing Jimmy was there with me, tucked underneath the vehicle, head propped up on the inside tire, holding a handgun across his chest, perhaps, if he was still conscious, ready to fire at anyone.

But . . .
Jace
. Where was he?

Jimmy was hurt.

They shot him.

What if Jace was hurt, out there, alone?

I could not bear the thought.

Excruciating silence. I leaned back in the space slowly, as the sharp jabbing pain of the guns on my side was no longer tolerable. The metal made the faintest clang as I shifted. Relief poured into the pressure spots that had formed on my hip.

Shouting! I sucked in my breath.

Russian. It was definitely Russian. Dmitry. I thought instantly of the callous words he had voiced on the boat—the reference to Jace getting what he deserved.

I was . . . immobilized.

Was this it, what Jace deserved? Was this what Dmitry meant? To kill him? But why?

Selfish rage surged inside.

How could Jace not have prepared for this?

Always twenty-six steps ahead, he had said back in Port Douglas.

My mind was a sudden whir of activity, demanding, needing to know, maybe even distract itself from the torment of waiting.

But—I shifted again, horribly uncomfortable—he
had
prepared. The guns.

I sucked in air. Yes. He knew, or at least suspected, this was coming, and he did not tell me. That was . . . unforgivable.

I heard footsteps again, this time pounding close. A flesh-on-flesh impact—bodies colliding. The sound of men grunting,
fighting
!

Oh, I covered my mouth, because the terrible desire to scream and scream and scream was rising inside me.

Flesh smacked against flesh, a horrible soft thud . . . and then a repeated gasping noise. Terrible rasping. Someone was being . . . choked.

What if it was Jace? The men were very close.

I opened the lid and peered out.

Jace! Alive! Naked chest, his long arms flexed, hands clutching . . . choking the life out of someone, whose hands just flopped out to his side.

Jace remained there, straddling the man. He glanced up. Our eyes met. The look on his shadowed face . . . relief.

He slumped forward, and, I realized with sheer horror, he was hurt. I lifted the lid and clambered out, hearing a grunt beneath the car. Jimmy. I ignored it.

“Jace.” I reached his collapsed body and rolled Jace off the dead man and onto his back.

His eyes were barely open. “Call number nineteen,” was all he said before they shut.

I clasped his sweaty face. I leaned over so my head was near his mouth. Breathing. My heart wrung itself dry. I fumbled around his pants pocket and found his phone. Trembling, I realized I was moaning quietly. It sounded like deranged humming.

My hands were so shaky, kneeling there, not knowing if there were others still out there, not knowing how badly Jace was hurt, our lives depending on these fingers, running through his contacts.

There was a number nineteen. No name. I pressed the call button.

The phone rang and rang and I laid a hand on Jace’s arm. “It’ll be okay,” I said quietly, over and over.

“Hello?” answered a woman with an Australian accent.

“Please, help us,” I blurted into the phone.

“Who’s this?”

“Charlie. Jace’s . . . he’s hurt. He said—” I tried to collect myself. “He said to call number nineteen. That’s you, right?”

The silence chilled my bones.

“Yes,” said the voice, stiffly. “Where are you?”

“Ayers Rock, resort Longitude 131°.”

“Hang up. I’ll ring you back.”

The line went dead. I stared at it.

What?

Jimmy’s eyes were watching me. I stared back at the phone. I listened for Jace’s breath, still there, and for any noise around me. I cannot say how much time passed.

Ayers Rock no longer felt safe to me. It had been violated. It was angry. A fiery orange, flashing yellow.

We needed to leave.

When the phone buzzed, I jolted and quickly hit
answer
.

“Drive dead northeast,” said the woman. “Don’t stop for anyone except a white pickup truck. Leave all your electronics where you are now. Destroy Jace’s phone.”

The line went dead again.

I stared at it. The words “fucking hell” came to mind but I did not say them. Drive? I glanced at Jimmy. No time.

I pulled the battery out of the phone and, thinking quickly (I must say, given the circumstances) placed it and the rest of the phone under the front tire. I would drive over it.

“Get in the truck if you can,” I ordered Jimmy after opening both the front and back passenger doors and making sure he did not have a phone on him. I tried to drag Jace by his arms. “Jesus, Joseph, and Mary” also came to mind when I realized I had to get him up and into the car.

“Jace!” I hissed. I smacked his face. “Jace! You’ve got to wake up.” His eye opened. “You have to get in the car,” I said, moving around behind him, getting my arms under his armpits. I tried to lift him. I gritted my teeth and dug deep, managing to get him up against my legs. I leaned backward into the passenger side, and, using my legs, pulled him backward onto me. He must have helped, with his own legs, because I managed to get him onto the seat. I slid out from under him, across the driver’s seat, and ran back around to shove his legs in. I closed the passenger door, my breathing shallow and rapid.

I turned to the next one, shaking. I swear I was seeing in black and white. My brain was on basic operating capacity. Jimmy had managed to get himself upright, leaning on the trunk. I dashed up to him. He placed a heavy arm around me and we navigated to the open rear passenger-side door. I shoved him in, panic completely running me thin. I slammed that door, and feeling close to safety, I dashed even quicker back around the front.

I waited for the sounds of silenced gunfire. But . . . none. Maybe Jace was the last one alive.

I climbed in the driver’s seat and put on my seatbelt, running through my routine with Mr. Cooper. I put my hand on the key in the ignition, suddenly realizing how lucky we were that the keys were still right there waiting, and turned the engine over. The car started. Lights. I found the lights.

“No lights,” grunted Jimmy.

“But it’s pitch black!”

“No lights.”

I complied and shifted the gear stick to Drive and pressed on the gas very gently. We inched forward and I did not hear or feel a telltale crush of the cellphone. I had to hope I had crushed the phone as I was not getting out of the car to check. I remembered suddenly there had been a vehicle parked right in front and braked hard. Jace slid forward and down into the footwell. Jimmy hissed.

“Sorry! I’m sorry!”

I shifted into reverse, backed us up rather quickly, shifted back to drive, turned the wheel, and the vehicle crawled forward.

I glanced at the rearview mirror after I knew we were away from the camp, and turned the vehicle until the little digital compass in the rearview mirror said NE, and straightened out the vehicle.

After a short while of intense concentration, Jimmy said, “Faster.”

I swallowed and did as he said, gently pressing harder on the gas pedal, driving blind, waiting at any moment to hit a giant rock. It was like a Niagara fog, only black instead of white.

When I could not take it anymore, I turned on the outside lights. Jimmy did not say anything. I sat stiff, forward, rigid, readying to brake at any moment, watching the clock, waiting for what, I did not know—how could I trust a voice on the phone to help us?

Who was number nineteen? Was she coming for us? I glanced down. I was covered in clay, my bra and thong barely visible. I shifted, my ass cheeks sticking to the leather.

I glanced at Jace yet again. He was still unconscious.

How badly had he been hurt? How had this happened? We were on vacation.
Why, why, why?
rolled around my head, in my mouth, my throat, my chest—as if the answer might change the course of events.

Headlights flashed in the rearview mirror.

I braked hard and fast, and when the truck behind us stopped, I undid my seatbelt. In a rush I opened the door, but the car moved forward. I had forgotten to put it in park! I leaned back in, hit the brake again, immobilizing the vehicle properly, and nearly threw myself out of the door.

A man had gotten out of the white pickup truck. Words died on my lips. He was scary. An older man, large, wearing farm pants, a checked shirt and a hat. He barely glanced at me, despite my appearance, crusted in red clay, nearly naked. “How many?” he asked in such a thick Australian accent I almost couldn’t make it out. He was here for us!

“Two!”

He headed to the passenger side. I followed him rather like a dog, keen to help but unable to.

“Cunt,” he said, eyeing Jace, spitting something sideways. He grabbed hold of him and, with some shifting and more c-bombs, shifted Jace over his shoulder, carrying him to the white truck’s passenger side. Next, he walked Jimmy over, said “cunt” twice more, and struggled to put him in the back of the pickup.

“Get in,” he ordered me, eyeing my body with great disdain. Did he mean in the back of the pickup?

He left me there as he headed straight to the driver’s seat, like he couldn’t care less whether I complied or not. I wondered why our rescuer held me in such low regard, and realized perhaps he thought my state of undress somehow made me a lesser person. That riled me to no end, if you can believe it, after everything I had been through, but I did as he said, as I was not so bold or stupid to deny myself salvation.

I climbed in and lay down beside Jimmy, taking in a distinct putrid scent all around me. I suspected the bed of the truck had recently contained animals, and their fecal matter had not been properly removed. We began an arduous journey, tossed and bumped around on that hard metal . . . interminably.

At some point I started to cry, quietly. It was all simply more than I could process, and, perhaps knowing that I was no longer responsible for ensuring our safety, I “lost it,” as they say.

It was not just an emotional outpouring—a result of shock. I believe it was a result of the hard, cruel lesson I had always known to be true but never experienced. Thomas Hobbes, the great philosopher, wrote famously that life is “nasty, brutish, and short.” In that particular moment, I could not resurrect memory or draw to mind one single truth to refute that summary and temper the extremely defeated feeling that had overwhelmed me.

I had tried to prevail over my lot in life. I had sought to expand my knowledge, and, more recently, strengthen my weaker capacities. I had sought to care for my family, and to have a home. And what did I have to show for it? There was nothing I could call my own. I had bounced around homes three times in two short months. I had succeeded in planting doubt in my relationship with Jace. Even my job, while fulfilling, no longer struck me as a safe or an assured element I could be proud of. I could not even be certain I had landed the job for legitimate or respectable reasons. Yes, I thought I might scream, which would not be heard over the roar and rattle of the truck anyway.

I felt a thick, hard hand on mine.

Jimmy was watching me cry.

I pulled my hand away and wiped my face. And there was the worst: I could not abide self-pity, and yet here I was wallowing in it, with a witness near at hand no less.

On the few occasions in my youth when I had been unable to succeed at certain pursuits, such as making friends or taming my mother’s issues, she would sit down beside me on our sofa, and say, “Life ain’t fair, Charlie, so don’t waste your time feeling sorry for yourself.”

A rage burst out of me. I had always longed to shout at her, “Then quit doing it yourself!”

She pretended not to care for herself, her well-being, when in truth that was
all
she ever cared about. She lived her entire life tending to her ghostly ego, dependent on no one, not even me. When she was really high, she often shouted at me that she did not need me around, that I should “fuck off and get a life.” I always thought it was drugs making her weak, but maybe, maybe I was wrong. Maybe the drugs made her strong, propped up what little fortitude she had.