Leopard Dreaming (30 page)

‘
Bordel de merde
!’ Gabby swore, and grabbing Mira by the ears she wrenched her closer for a better look. ‘More like diamonds. Most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen!’ She gasped and cupped Mira’s face, angling her to catch the light. ‘You’re straining as if it’s painful. Is your vision not clear?’

Mira blinked hard as she slid her hues back up her nose. ‘It depends how far back through time I’m looking. It’s either foggy, blurry, or both.’

‘Seeing back through
what
did you say?’ A twig snapped as Gabby stepped back a pace.

‘I warned you about sounding crazy, but if you think about it, you can see through time too. The normal light you see takes eight minutes to get from the sun to you, and bounces off every object, so everything you see is slightly time delayed depending on how far away it is. Stars can be dead for millions of years, and yet we still see them. Same goes down here on earth, except the light bounces between you and me so fast that most people never notice — unless their adrenaline rises fast enough to let their brain process things as if time is the thing that’s slowed down.’

‘You. See. Through. Time,’ Gabby repeated as if every word filled its own sentence.

Mira reached to find and pat Gabby’s shoulder. ‘Whatever face you’re making right now, it’s invisible to me here, until tomorrow.’

Silence answered for a long moment.

‘And you knew this?’

If Lockman answered, he did it silently.

‘Okay, let me get this straight. There’s normal light. And slower light?’

‘A whole spectrum. I can see back millions of years, depending on which coloured filter I use. But you can probably sense the different radiations too, once you know what to feel for. Everybody’s skin is sensitive to light. That’s why cancer can start below the surface. Your whole body is a sensory detector, and as for the slower light … Ben said he could often sense his father in the house long after he’d died.’

‘Oh, oui!’ She clapped excitedly. ‘Like an afterglow! I’ve been in there and know what you mean!’

‘Same happens in my grandmother’s house,’ Lockman said. ‘She refuses to leave since my pop died. Says he was the light of her life, and in that house, he still is. If ever I see her again, I’ll owe her a hug instead of an argument.’

‘She’s lucky if she only gets the warm feeling.’ Mira shoved away from the tree and kept walking. ‘And if people don’t label her as insane for sensing that kind of energy.’

‘That’s what happened to you?’ asked Gabby.

Mira laughed. ‘I’m blind, and yet I can read lips, so long as they’re in the past. So yes. It sounds crazy, even to me.’

‘Oh, but so amazing! What a trick for peeking at secret codes and safe combinations! Oh, and murder! You’d be able to see hue-dunnit! Get it? Who. Done. It.’

‘Hilarious.’ Mira sighed. ‘Try seeing all the nasty little things people get up to every day when they think nobody is watching, and then see how long the shine takes to wear off.’

She emerged first from the forest into a small tropical garden near the house, and in the driveway she saw the ghosts of a pale unmarked van with two men loading a pair of empty wheelchairs. They climbed into their vehicle and began to back out before she could glimpse their faces. Both lean and hard-looking men.

Bursting forward, she ran out hoping to see inside the van, but Lockman caught her around the waist just as it drove through her.

‘Satellites,’ he reminded her, and spun her under the shelter of the nearby portico. ‘Eyes are everywhere, remember? Stay under shelter.’

She nodded, shaking and hating that he could be so right, but she couldn’t help reacting from instinct. She’d caught only a glimpse of two bodies lying flat under sheets in the back, so she recoloured time by adjusting her hues until she saw the van again, and committed the faces of the two muscled men to memory. Far too angular and lean to be ordinary civilians, with hair trimmed far too short to be ordinary general hands retrieving hospital equipment. And those bodies in the back looked too much like Ben and his mother, Mel.

Mira ran to the front door of the house and banged on it, making the metal security screen rattle.

‘You have to be here,’ she complained. ‘You have to be!’

No answer.

‘I can slip through the laundry window.’ Gabby spun on her heel and called out for Ben, but Lockman caught her against the wall beside Mira.

‘It’s not uncommon to wire a house with motion or sound activated surveillance,’ he explained. ‘Let Mira do her thing out here first. See what happened, precisely.’

Gabby complied silently, while Mira rubbed her temples, preparing herself for more pain. She didn’t dare to ask Lockman for another shot of endorphins, and never would again, she decided. She distracted herself instead by describing the van and the men she’d seen. ‘Steely-eyed, thick necks and tattoos of tally counts on their upper arms. Or maybe some kind of bar code.’

‘Sounds like a pair of sergeants we used to know.’ Lockman made a familiar metal click as he checked and cleared his Glock, and only then did Mira realise that he’d drawn it from his holster already. ‘Sergeants Patterson and Pobody. The tallies are body counts of their kills in action.’

Mira shook her head. ‘As much as I’d love to nail them for something, I’ve seen their yester-ghosts before, and it’s not either of them. Their body counts were eight and nine, while this pair only had six and five.’

‘Yester-ghosts,’ Gabby repeated. ‘Be catchier to say yester-spectres.’

‘Phantoms, after-glows, whatever.’ Mira remembered Emmett Patterson as a heavy smoker, who stank of cigarettes and musk aftershave, and who shook her hand like a dog shaking a rag doll; while Pobody looked tall and skinny, took an instant disliking to her too,
and reeked of sea breeze aftershave, which had iced up his narrow pocket of air like the Arctic. ‘Invisible together, they smelled like whales humping. But these guys looked far more professional. Like mercenaries. Or more serious soldiers.’

Lockman shuffled his feet again. Embarrassed or guilty. Hard to tell which, but sounded like coffin loads of it, and she wondered what his tally would be if he’d had the same tattoo. Or maybe he did, and she’d never been in a position to notice.

‘Okay, so if you had to place a bet,’ Gabby asked, ‘would you lay money on men working for Kitching? Or just orderlies who take their jobs seriously?’

‘I don’t need to bet.’ Mira backed against the wall and braced herself. ‘I can look inside their pockets for ID.’

Except first she had to endure the pain to find them standing still long enough.

M
ira stared down the sandy gravel road after the van, changing hues by fiddly degrees until she caught a clearer glimpse of the vehicle’s ghostly registration number.

One twitch too far and she saw two ambulances arriving. From the shift in the sun, she guessed it to be roughly two or three hours earlier. Gabby’s ghostly Landcruiser was already in the driveway, off to one side. Her yester-ghost held open the front door, while the medics unloaded Ben and his mother from separate ambulances, and behind them, a dumpy, grumpy older woman took delivery of the wheelchairs from the unmarked van.

A nurse from the hospital. Mira recognised Willow Springs from the sour expression and tight bun that restricted her hair.

‘They were spaced when I brought them home from the hospital,’ Gabby whispered. ‘Ben was on Pluto with meds so he could handle the rough roads, and they both threw up when they started to come around.’

Mira nodded. She saw Ben take barely one groggy look at the house before he started shaking.

‘I warned them to stay away longer,’ Gabby said. ‘But you know Ben. He wanted to try. If he couldn’t settle in, maybe their nurse took them back to hospital after I left around ten. Or else Ben’s mum has a rental house on the mainland. If it was empty, it’s possible they shifted there, temporarily.’

Mira couldn’t tell where they went from her sheltered position in the driveway. The van drivers never came near the house or garden. Not during delivery, or pick-up a few hours later, so she couldn’t look inside their wallets or pockets for ID after all. It seemed too risky for her to go that far out in the open, especially if Lockman was right and the house was a hot spot for satellite surveillance. She’d never be able to meet Kitching if General Garland took her into custody for questioning.

She turned time forward a little faster and jumped to the moment when Ben and Mel had been taken away. Both sedated again or still, under the watchful eye of that sour-faced nurse, who wore a fob watch on her collar like a war medal.

Reading it as she came through the door, Mira noticed it was upside down so Nurse Springs could see it without needing to turn it.

‘Time was 10:35,’ Mira reported, ‘and the two men who picked them up were different to the team of six who delivered them with Gabby. Different vehicle too. It took two ambulances and a van to bring them home, but only one long van to collect them. It looked like a civilian medical bus with room in the back for two gurneys and their wheelchairs. The driver had a block-shaped head and no neck, while the other was taller and had a dark mole on his left ear. Looks like a stud earring.’

‘Sounds like a pair of medics I’ve crossed paths with before,’ Gabby whispered. ‘Met me at my boat once with Mira. Based at the hospital, so they should
be okay. Can you tell if Benny and his mum left voluntarily?’

‘Not from out here. I need to get inside.’

‘Wait here.’ Lockman headed for the corner of the house, padding softly along the path, and Mira imagined him with his Glock drawn, taking every step cautiously.

‘Wow, he’s quiet,’ Gabby whispered.

Mira shrugged. She could still hear him faintly, around the corner and as far as the laundry. The length and pace of his stride warned her that he was worried, while the pause before sliding open the small pane also told her he’d be equally cautious inside. She heard him jump and slide through.

Silence befell the home for a long moment, aside from a brief creak of floorboards upstairs. Then Lockman’s boots thundered down to the front door, a latch clicked, the invisible timber creaked, and the metallic screen door rattled — although both ghostly doors stayed closed to Mira.

‘They’re gone,’ he reported. ‘Come in, leaving your shoes on. There’s broken glass around the piano.’

Her heart plummeted to the pit of her stomach. Fearing the worst, she followed the sound of his footsteps down the hall to the large open-plan living room and entertainment area. To her left, the kitchen. To her right, the stairs up to the bedrooms. Continuing dead ahead, Mira passed the sofas and wall-sized TV, to the slightly higher level where Ben’s ivory grand piano commanded the best views of the ocean through a wall of windows.

A slight twitch of her hues caused the sour-faced nurse to appear between the piano and a narrow brick column, while Ben and Mel both sat semi-conscious in their wheelchairs, lined up for the hallway. ‘The nurse made a call from her mobile, right there.’ She pointed. ‘Strike that. Tried to make a call. No reception that day.’

‘Willow Springs,’ Gabby said. ‘That’s her name. She worked with Mel for decades in geriatrics, so she’s an old friend of the family.’

‘Determined old buzzard. She’s texting …’ Mira crowded beside her, trying to read the screen. Silly, she realised, since she could simply stand in the same position and look down, but that seemed too weird. ‘Two words only: leaving now.’ She read out the number for Lockman to check later.

‘I’ll try it now,’ Gabby said. ‘I’ve got reception.’

‘No!’ shouted Mira and Lockman together.

‘Switch it off,’ Lockman said, managing to make it sound more like a polite request than an order. ‘And take out the sim card. You can’t use it here.’

‘But if I do that, my phone pings the network with a warning that it may be lost. If I don’t get to my laptop in time to respond, it can wipe all my personal data.’

‘If you don’t, you’ll attract trouble, guaranteed. Mira needs to stay off the grid. It may be too late already if you’ve been spotted with us. The first thing they check is availability of tracking devices, so your phone would blip on their screens like a ship on radar. Not many people know this; phone satellites have visual capabilities that are often commandeered by defence and emergency services. So they can be used to see the precise situation of lost hikers, as well as track them. Best for us to move on soon, to ensure we stay invisible.’

‘Wait. I need to find where they went and why.’ Mira adjusted time again in fiddly movements, wishing she hadn’t lost her last pair of shades in Moreton Bay when she’d leapt off the sinking cargo ship. ‘I only wish these new glasses weren’t so touchy. Everything seems blurrier.’

‘That can’t be helping your headaches,’ Lockman said. ‘If you need anything …’

‘Ben’s got a kick-arse med kit in his car,’ Gabby suggested. ‘Shall I fetch a painkiller?’

‘No!’ Lockman and Mira chimed together.

‘Okay, okay!’ Gabby backed away, making a crunch where a vase had smashed. ‘I don’t need it in stereo.’

‘She’s a little touchy about drugs,’ Lockman explained. ‘Even mild ones.’

‘Oui, no kidding?’

Mira stepped around the shattered glass and braced herself against the nearest brick pillar. With a stained timber roof and skylights over two storeys above her, the home should have felt cavernous, and yet Mira’s memories and her understanding of what else had happened here made the room seem far more intense and claustrophobic.

Inside the house, the air still smelled of lemon disinfectant. The same thing happened in the wards after staff members cleaned up blood and other body fluids. The smell always lingered then too, and the memories made her gag more than the smell.

She could imagine how Ben had felt. Sick and dizzy, she tried to scroll time to find any hint of where they had gone. She bumped against Gabby as she turned. Jolting yester-week to yester-month while facing the window, she found brief relief in another time, a happier place. She saw herself outside on the beachside balcony with Ben for their first kiss. The light from his body lingered out there with hers, standing ever so near to her at the time. Beside the table.

About your first kiss
, she read from his lips. He leaned nearer and she recalled the warmth of his breath on her cheek. Watching it again now from a distance through the glass made the scene seem so much more like a dream. Disjointed in time. Only now could she see how nervous they’d both been.

He leaned away briefly and glanced in from the piano, staring directly at and through Mira, as if he somehow knew she might be standing there one day, watching him. On impulse, she turned to see Mel’s
ghost at the kitchen phone, and realised he was only checking to ensure his mother wasn’t watching them. Yet somehow it also made her feel less important to him, as if his mother’s feelings mattered more. Although that was easy enough to forgive when keeping the peace had cost him so much.

Mel’s back remained turned, and he seized that moment to brush his lips against those of Mira’s yester-ghost. She’d flinched at the time, caught off-guard, and so had he.

He drew back briefly, and smiled down at her. Such a handsome expression on his deeply tanned face — until he glanced again at his mother to ensure her back remained turned.
That was only a peck
, he said without looking at Mira.
This is a kiss.
He found her lips again, this time with increasing purpose and passion, his arms lifting her gently against him, and instinctively, she’d opened her mouth to him. And yet seeing it again now, she noticed something was missing. A fire. A spark. Instead it came from the flash of a gun behind him in the wild garden. Far side of the neighbouring lagoon. At the time, she’d only heard a
puh
, like a fist hitting a wet mattress. But now she also saw the face of the sharpshooter. Colonel Kitching, and behind him crouched an Asian man with a long ponytail.

Ben stiffened, then slumped against her, his mouth and arms falling limply away from her.
Run
, he gasped, as if winded.

Mira went down with him, trying but failing to hold him; his body too tall and heavy for her. His head struck the deck and bounced to an awkward angle. She remembered smelling blood, but now she saw it spreading across his chest in a broad stain, as if kissing him had made his heart burst.

Ben!
She shouted his name again now as she had then, but her voice croaked, barely audible,
while her yester-ghost fumbled over his body with hysterical hands. She felt Gabby’s kind arm around her shoulders, but saw Kitching’s ghost bolt out of the garden for her, and while her yester-ghost opened her mouth to scream, he grabbed her over the railing and silenced her with his hand gripped tightly over her mouth.

Mira spun away into Gabby’s arms, unable to bear watching the rest of it. He’d abducted her away to his camp on the mainland, but made the mistake of stashing her in the same cell where he’d been torturing Lockman.

Fate had brought her full circle. More like a spiral, with the matron taken this time instead.

Mira tugged at her hair, overwhelmed. She heard Gabby calling her name and saying something — until Lockman’s voice finally brought her out of it.

‘Water.’ He helped her hands around a tall chilled glass that wept down the sides. ‘You’re dehydrated, and that won’t be helping your headache.’

She nodded, licking her lips first. So dry and cracked. She’d barely noticed. Too worried about Ben, Mel and Maddy during the hike, which had been much further than she’d expected.

Idiot!
She chided herself, wondering how she’d ever help anyone else if she couldn’t even look after herself. She gulped down the water as fast as she could swallow.

‘Hey, slowly!’ Lockman stopped her within seconds. ‘Don’t make yourself sicker.’

She barely felt the drink go down, but as it hit her stomach, she knew he’d stopped her just in time. Reducing her intake to regular sipping, she kept her eyes closed to give herself a brief time out and recover a little more fully.

‘Thanks,’ she conceded, and handed the glass back to him. ‘Can’t believe I didn’t know that.’

‘Can’t learn everything from Braille books. It’s commendable you know as much as you do.’ He headed for the kitchen, where she heard him fill another two glasses from the fridge and return.

‘Thanks,’ Gabby said, as if he’d handed a glass of water to her. ‘If the house is likely to be watched, should we clean up our fingerprints?’

‘Wouldn’t hurt,’ Lockman replied. ‘Can you handle that? I really need to get her out of here.’

Mira grabbed hold of the brick pillar to stay — a reflex from her time in orphanages, when staff would try to drag her back to her room after each escape attempt and she’d grab for the nearest fixture she could find. ‘I haven’t got what we came in for yet.’

‘Oui, honey, but you’re not up to it. Leave it to me. Wherever they’ve gone, we’ll find them. The local police sergeant here is a close personal friend.’

‘Ben doesn’t have any police as friends. Not even his mother’s last known boyfriend.’

‘Oh? See, that’s because they had a wee tiff as kids. Cassie’s a pro,
mon amie
, and she’d love nothing more than to get him out of trouble, if he’s found it again … so she can rub it in.’

Gabby chuckled, but Mira saw nothing funny about it. She
needed
to find the moment in time when someone in the house had made that decision to leave.

Reaching to change shades just as Gabby’s arm went round her shoulders again, her finger bumped the hue controllers.

‘Don’t!’ she cried, but too late.

Time swept back another week and Mira found herself amidst the worst of it.

Two ghostly men in dark suits leapt up onto the beachside patio, brandishing the distinctive shapes of Uzi machine guns. Their trousers were soaked up to the knees as if they’d waded ashore.

Beyond them in the lagoon, Mira saw their ghostly yacht anchored too near to shore with all its sails furled.

Knock knock,
Mira read from their lips.

Grinning and aiming the hollow ends of their ghostly weapons at the glass door, they shattered it with a silent hail of bullets.

Mira jolted as if they’d shot through her, while behind her the ghostly metal rain spat splinters out of the piano. The large glass vase shattered atop the instrument, and the room snowed with rose petals.

Lockman grabbed Mira’s arms to help steady her, but she shrugged him off and straightened herself — while down at the shore, four more ghostly thugs hurled Ben overboard into the water. Shirtless, barefooted and both hands tied in front of him.