Hindsight (47 page)

‘I thought she was blind,’ she heard Finnigan say as they overtook her position. ‘Who else would wear sunshades at night, or that colour willingly?’

A hand touched her shoulder and another gripped her mouth as strong arms spun her about and pulled her against a broad chest, but she didn’t cry out. She could tell who it was from his touch and the salty smell of his skin.

‘What will it take?’ Lockman whispered, hugging her close, cheek to cheek and with his lips close against her ear. He robbed her cleavage of the handcuffs, and then released her enough to allow her to answer.

‘Let me go in,’ she pleaded. ‘If he’s not there, I need to know where they took him.’

‘What if I clear the house first, would you wait here, where it’s safe?’

‘I’m not an invalid! I don’t care if I die trying to save him!’

‘Mira,’ he said as if she’d injured him. ‘I
do
.’ He tilted her chin up as if she might look into his face and see how much he’d come to care about her — his voice and touch betraying his relief at having found her before any of Greppia’s people — but in yesterday’s forest, he was little more than empty air. He stroked her cheek, reminding her that he was real as he brushed aside a splash of mud from her face and pulled her closer, his body remaining invisible, but his chest feeling almost steamy in the driving rain. ‘You can’t imagine what it’s been like getting to know you … watching you and knowing I can’t ever …’

She closed her eyes, better able to see him in her mind, and his lips came to hers, his mouth growing swiftly demanding yet his muscled arms engulfing her so tenderly she felt drawn by his inner strength and knew there was still so much that he was holding back from her. Guilt rose along with her hand to push him away — Ben so near and still needing her — but as his lips pursued hers, she sensed her strength waning. He felt warm and strong and safe, and she needed more, flames of desire licked up from deep within her, longing to consume as much of his forbidden touch as she could get. She returned his kiss, naïvely and sweetly at first but building, learning, trying to copy him and return a little of the raw pleasure he was giving to her. She sensed the inner music of his soul singing to hers and cupped his face, hanging onto him, hoping to draw on his strength to tame the wild animal that was growing within her. With her eyes closed she became one with him, exploring him, melting and growing together, until she felt a surge of strength and animal passion from within him that was beyond imagining.

He broke free, leaving her gasping.

‘You’re amazing,’ he whispered. ‘And I’m an idiot. I should have expressed myself more … professionally.’ His voice cracked, and she caressed his face, undaunted this time by his five o’clock shadow. She read his expression like Braille and found his brow furrowed with the deepest worry.

Mira let her hands fall away, not knowing what to say.

He sighed and leaned his forehead against hers. ‘I think I just made things worse for both of us.’

Trembling, she felt the weight of his regret but sensed the invisible bond that went deeper now between them, still lingering along with the taste of him upon her lips.

‘You have to stay here,’ he pleaded. ‘I can’t bear the thought of you getting hurt again.’ He caressed her hair where the bullet had grazed within a heartbeat of taking her life and the line of the long fresh scratch down her face and neck. ‘It makes me weak just to think of it, and I still have to …’ He gulped, as if struggling to regain his composure. ‘I still have to go in there and do whatever it takes to bring him back to you.’ Cupping her face with both hands, he held himself away from her. ‘I
need
to know you’re safe, Mira, or I’ll fail you.’ Then he swung away and was gone as silently as he’d come, leaving her desolate and worried now for them both.

‘Did you find her?’ asked Brette as Lockman approached their rendezvous in scrub near the garage.

He nodded, preferring not to talk about it.

Finnigan finished tying off a makeshift splint for his trigger finger using twigs bound by a dressing from his medi-pouch, then tossed Lockman his fishing vest, still padded to some extent by ice-water. ‘Will she stay out the way with the ranger?’

Lockman shrugged, hoping so, but he knew Mira’s allegiance belonged to Chiron, along with her heart. If she stayed back, it was only because she’d been so stunned by his own breach of her trust. She’d responded to his kiss eventually, but only because he’d become so desperately forceful to draw any response at all from her. He could still see her face, so angelic and fragile, gasping in shock. She had every right now to believe her initial resentment of him and everything he stood for had been justified, but his relief in catching her in time had been so great and his need to touch her so hot, he hadn’t been able to stop himself. Now he’d have the rest of his life to regret it, whether he brought Ben Chiron back to her alive or not.

Whichever way it went inside the house now, he was screwed. She’d never trust him again.

‘To business,’ he said, determined to end it the best way for her at least. ‘Where are Grady and the others?’

‘We’ve got all sides of the house covered,’ Brette replied. ‘Orders are to hold position unless we hear trouble, but your mate, the traffic hound, has some blue brassy balls. He’s right up in there by the front doorbell, unarmed and waiting for the signal to arrange it for us. He aims to bring one or two to the door while you sneak in from behind. The right side of the house has a laundry window with a broken lock beside the hot water system.’

Through the darkness and rain it was hard for Lockman to see the formal driveway, let alone Grady at the front door, until lightning forked across the sky, turning night into day.

‘Got him,’ he said, performing a quick weapons check. Aside from his Glock and a spare ten-round magazine, he only had a fishing knife, a mini boy-scout knife attached to his car keys, a few fish-hooks, sinkers and a razor blade to peel off his itchiest whiskers at the first opportunity.

Finnigan handed him a second Glock, almost identical to his own, and he recognised it as Grady’s. ‘He says he’s got a story about the girl that should draw out more than one of them to us, making it easier, but if that goes south, you’ll need it.’

‘Give him that, too,’ Brette said, tapping Finnigan’s helmet to indicate his night-owl visor. ‘I got a man about to arrange an accident with power, and it’ll work better in there than out here in this shitty weather.’

‘You’ll be roasted by Garland for aiding me,’ Lockman warned, since soldiers assigned to surveillance were only permitted a narrow range of initiatives, and stirring up their targets was rarely one of them.

‘Aiding who, mate?’ Brette tapped his mission recorder, reminding Lockman that he’d smashed it. ‘Only visitor I saw going in was a traffic cop on their payroll — and Finnigan’s visor must have gone troppo in the rain. That’s what the report will say. He prefers the night vision he was born with anyway.’

‘Thanks,’ Lockman said. ‘I’m good for it.’

Brette patted him on the back as he crouched to go. ‘Don’t get dead or you’ll wreck the rest of our night with paperwork.’

Lockman nodded with a wink of appreciation to Finnigan too. ‘Sorry about the finger,’ he said, and then headed off for the house, wondering why they were still pretending to help him. No doubt Garland knew he was back in her playground. She must have noticed that one of Patterson’s headsets didn’t leave with his team. So perhaps she’d decided to re-embrace him rather than having him operate alone and unpredictably?

T
hunder drummed overhead as Lockman reached the side wall of the house, and in a flash of lightning, he saw that the lock on the laundry window wasn’t just broken, it was missing.

Worn paint and polished shimmy marks on the timber ledge suggested someone had been using the alternative entrance for years, but when he tried to slide it open it during the rumble of thunder, the glass frame stuck part way and refused to budge. In the next flash of lightning he discovered the cause; someone had clogged the sliding track on the inside with washing powder. The half-empty box had been left spilled on the top of the washing machine in a room that was otherwise clean to the point of gleaming, so no doubt the culprit was someone with no respect for the occupants.

Lockman felt bad luck riding his shoulder again, just as he heard the chime of the front doorbell. No time to waste looking for another weak point of entry. In order to verify whether or not Ben Chiron and Corporal Tarin Sei were inside — as hostages, or as bait, if at all — first, he had to get in there. Silently.

He bolted back to the driveway in time to hear the front door open — timber door only, he noticed, since the metal security screen should have made a whole different sound. If the respondent was armed, there’d be weapons aimed at Grady by now through the metal screen and fly mesh.

Lockman sidled along the front wall towards the main entrance where the front door was recessed into the formal portico. He crouched low under a window, but stayed crouching as he approached, hoping Grady was professional enough not to give him away with the slip of a glance in his direction.

‘What are
you
doing here?’ asked a gruff sounding male at the door.

‘Found something you lost,’ Grady replied. ‘She’s in the car. Blind girl, so high.’ He moved his arm to demonstrate Mira’s height, using three fingers, which Lockman took as the number of occupants that Grady could see inside the house. ‘Good thing I did too. She was on her way to report Greggie for rape and abduction. He’s not answering his phone. Is he here?’

‘Maybe … How did you know to bring her here?’

‘She told me. See the uniform? This makes me trustworthy. She said Greggie had some funny idea about doing her here with a couple of others he’s been entertaining lately. And this place happens to belong to an ex-girlfriend of mine — a real crash and burn relationship — so I was kinda hoping she might be here and I could slip in a little entertainment myself, if you know what I mean.’

‘Entertainment,’ the guy repeated with a mean chuckle. ‘Yeah, right. So bring in the blind bitch.’

‘I’ll need a hand,’ Grady replied. ‘The car’s up the road a way. Tree’s down in the storm. I couldn’t get round it myself, and she’s being a handful. Had to cuff her top and tail to get her this far.’ He laughed trying to make light of it. ‘Maybe two to carry her, or three to shift the tree so I can drive the last bit?’

‘Hey, Douggie!’ shouted the thug at the door. ‘How much do you want us to help this guy?’

‘Be generous,’ came the ominous reply and Grady was already stepping back as the first shot fired. He fell but Lockman swung around the corner before he hit the ground, keeping low and aiming high through the security grille into each of the three successive kill zones, needing only three shots in quick succession to drop all three. Then, dragging Grady to safety around the corner, he heard windows smashing all around the house, and as he moved back for the cover of the portico, he saw smoke billowing out from the open door. With the screen still locked, he couldn’t get in, but he could see what was happening through the smoke using thermal imaging.

Brette’s boys were inside, proceeding swiftly from room to room, then upstairs. He heard another rapid exchange of fire, followed by shouts of surrender, and then Brette himself came to the front door and unlocked it.

‘Forget your keys?’ he asked, grinning as he stepped over the dead and wounded. ‘Rest time’s over, lads. Wipe your feet.’

Finnigan came out to help Lockman with Grady while two others cleared the hallway. Together, Lockman and Finnigan hefted Detective Innes-Grady through to the white leather lounge suite adjacent to the piano, while Brette held the door, admiring the single section of grille where Lockman had pierced all three rounds on their successive trajectories.

‘Damn, boy!’ he said, as he measured the hole against the end of his thumb. ‘Can you thread three needles in the dark at once, or what? We should rename you the seamstress.’

‘What have we got?’ Lockman asked, staying focused, but the moment he leaned to inspect Grady for wounds, the patient slid off the leather lounge onto the floor.

‘Mel will kill me if I get blood on that,’ he said, wincing in pain. It was spreading down his shirt from his shoulder with a source not far from his collar bone. ‘I guess I’m gunna have a scar to match Ben’s now.’

‘You’ll live,’ Finnigan said, reaching into his kit for his medi-pouch. Behind him, another man in their team was calling in a med-evac, while upstairs and down, the others were rounding up the wounded and stabilising their injuries, when a knock came at the front door, followed by the creak of the security screen and timid footsteps on the tiles in the hall.

Assault rifles bristled to bear around Lockman in the open-plan living room, but the only intruders came in the form of the park ranger leading Mira, hand in hand.

‘Hey, do bad guys knock first?’ Gabby complained. ‘You people need to turn on some lights in here. I feel like the blind leading the blinder.’

Brette nodded, reassuring his men that the newcomers were friendly, and sent a man to the power-box, then the house flooded with light, also taking the edge off the epileptic effect of the lightning that flooded in through gaps in the wall of drapes that had been drawn to close out the main view.

‘Is he here?’ Mira asked, sounding fragile now as well as looking it.

‘One dead, two critical and three with flesh wounds,’ Brette reported, mainly to Lockman. ‘Two of those were upstairs posing as captives.’

‘Were they
ever
here?’ Lockman asked.

‘Looks that way,’ Brette replied, then with a glance to the two women, he leaned closer to Lockman to whisper, ‘There’s a lot more blood here than we spilled.’

‘I’m taking her up for a change of dry clothes,’ Gabby said. ‘That okay?’

Lockman glanced to Brette, wondering why he hadn’t reported Mira’s whereabouts to General Garland yet.

‘Sure, ladies,’ Finnigan said. ‘Just stay out of the bathroom.’

‘Stay out of the bathroom,’ Gabby muttered as she led Mira upstairs and turned for the door. ‘How in the world does he expect a girl to clean mud off her face and hands without using a bathroom? You go in and get the hot water started,’ she said, cracking the door open quietly for Mira and peeking in to give the all-clear that nobody was hiding in there. ‘I’ll go find a fresh change of clothing.’

‘Under Ben’s bed,’ Mira said. ‘On the mezzanine level.’

‘Under
his
bed? Wow, and I thought you said you were only homework. That’s some homework!’

‘It’s not like that, Gabby. I wish it was, but it
can’t
be. He might as well be my big brother.’

‘Yeah, right.’

Gabby closed the door quietly and made off down the hall, spotting familiar colours folded on Mel’s bed along the way and returning swiftly with a bundle while the men downstairs frisked the survivors and other bodies for evidence of Ben’s whereabouts, and attended to wounded.

Knocking once, Gabby entered with a white skirt and a pretty pink top that she’d helped to buy from the surf shop. She noticed Mira at the sink holding something that looked to be wrapped in a black ribbon while the tap poured water and steam into the sink, but Gabby couldn’t help her with her hands already full.

‘For some reason these were on the bed in Mel’s room,’ she said as she closed the door and hung the clothes on the hook behind it. ‘Looks to me as if she’s been reinforcing all the buttons by hand — just one more of a million queer little quirks of that woman. I notice she’s gone mad in here with a new cleaning fetish too — everything in its place — and drawn circles around all the precise places she wants the soap and shampoo kept from now on. Mean bitch, how does she expect you to —’

Gabby heard Mira sobbing and turned to find Mira with her glasses off, cheeks streaked with tears and eyes clamped tightly shut as if her tears stung like acid.

‘Hey, honey,’ she said, rubbing Mira’s back as the room continued to fill with steam. ‘We’ll find him. All those men down there searching, they’re bound to find a clue
somewhere
!’

Mira shook her head and her body trembled, trying to hold it all in. She wiped her eyes dry before hiding them behind her glasses. ‘I smelled blood,’ she mumbled, dropping her glasses and rocking back and forwards with her eyes closed. ‘I just wanted the soap. Just the soap …’ Instead, she resumed stroking the ribbon-wrapped plastic pump dispenser in her left hand as if it was the tummy of a small pet bird that had died. In a way, the pump nozzle did look a lot like a beak, but …

‘Honey, what is that?’

‘A peace offering.’ Mira sank to her knees and hugged it to her cheek. ‘It’s all my fault. I totally misjudged her.’

‘You’re in shock. It’s just a toothpaste dispenser.’

‘I know. Isn’t it perfect?’

Turning down the hot water and up with the cold, Gabby spun on her heel to find a face cloth — and on the toilet, she saw a broad smear of blood.

Curiosity drew her closer to lift the lid, but the moment she did, she regretted it. A human hand reached up from the water, severed.

Gabby stumbled back beside Mira, gasping, and only then did she notice the congealed patterns of blood in the corners of the shower where someone had tried and failed to wash a lot more of someone’s life away.

‘We have to get out.’ She grabbed Mira for the fastest change of clothes in history, wiped her face using the insides of the ugly orange overalls she’d been wearing, dropped the wet t-shirt and overalls in the dirty clothes basket on top of a bloodied towel, and helped her climb into the new clothes, glad that Mira was too stunned to put up a fight. Then she patted Mira’s cheeks to restore colour, and hauled her out and down the hall to the stairway.

‘She looks worse,’ Finnigan said as Gabby guided her carefully down each tread. ‘So do you.’

‘Oh,
oui
? Stud, with such a pick-up line you must have girlfriends coming out of your ears!’

Men laughed all around her, both soldiers and prisoners, but Gabby ignored them, leaving Mira at the bottom of the stairs to cross the room and whisper to Lockman, ‘Did your soldier buddies tell you what’s up there?’

Lockman nodded. ‘A forensic team is on the way to confirm if it’s male or female.’

‘I warned you not to go in there,’ Brette scolded quietly.

‘
Oui
? Then next time you warn a girl not to use a bathroom,’ Gabby seethed, clenching her fists, ‘you’d better tell her why, or shake your finger and warn her “or else”!’

‘Any progress?’ Mira asked, doing a fair job at recovering her composure, and Gabby cast glares from Lockman to Brette and Finnigan and back again, also needing an answer.

Any progress?
she’d asked, and looking at her pained expression, Lockman couldn’t bring himself to disappoint her.

‘Any minute now,’ he said and scanned the room for the least wounded of the prisoners to interrogate. He spotted one with a superficial leg wound who, aside from a shaved head, had a strong resemblance to Detective Clyde Moser. Like Grady, the guy was wearing a cop’s uniform, while his expression betrayed the poisoned heart and eyes of the thug. Striding at him determinedly, Lockman drew out the handcuffs he’d taken from Mira. ‘Hey, Detective,’ he called, glancing sideways to Grady. ‘Borrow your keys, mate?’

‘Left pocket, keychain …’ He leaned, inviting Finnigan to take them and toss them across to Lockman.

‘You’re Douggie?’ Lockman asked, but received no reply.