Phoenix (14 page)

‘My brother will be here in thirty minutes,’ Nathan promised. He’d started to look edgy, glancing down the dirt track and along the water’s edge to check that there was no one nearby.

‘That’s thirty minutes too long,’ Hall grunted, keeping up the pressure on my throat.

‘I’m with Vince,’ Black agreed. ‘If we’re going to do it, we do it now.’

They were older than Nathan, they’d been round the block more times and Nathan knew it. ‘OK, but you two get your story straight for Oscar,’ he said, heading towards my car and jumping in. ‘I don’t want to know.’

‘Yeah, Nathan, you don’t know anything,’ Black mocked. ‘What are you going to do with the convertible?’

‘I’ll think of something.’

‘Drive it into the lake,’ Hall told him. ‘Then when they drag Darina’s corpse out of the water, they’ll figure it was an accident.’

Hall’s arm was around my throat, my hands were tied and they were discussing my death. I had one of those
whole-life-flashing-before-me moments – on vacation building sandcastles with my dad, starting high school, seeing Phoenix the first time he walked down the corridor. Time slowed down. I envisaged my drowned body floating to the surface in the dawn light.

Nathan drove off without saying whether or not he would take their advice. Black stepped back in to help Hall, lifting me again and slinging me over one shoulder like a slab of meat then stepping into the shallow water at the edge of the lake.

I kicked out hard, crashing my foot into his ribs. He waded on through the reeds until the water reached his waist then he slid me from his shoulder and tipped me on my back. I hit the water with an icy shock, sank under the surface, felt hands hold me down, looked up towards the glittering light. Pressing my lips tight together, clothes and hair floating around me, I kept on staring at the sun.

They pushed me down deeper. I saw their shadowy shapes above me, blocking out the light. Then suddenly, without warning, they let me go. I tilted my head and rose to the surface, my face broke clear. I gasped and breathed again.

And Phoenix was with me, surrounded by his halo of silver light, striking out at Black and throwing him backwards deeper into the lake then turning on Hall, who
put his arms over his head in a futile attempt to protect himself. Phoenix reached out, raised him and hurled him onto the shore, ran after him and raised him again, sent him crashing to the ground where he lay senseless.

But now Black was emerging from the water, staggering through the reeds, ready to throw himself at Phoenix from behind.

Phoenix turned, his face expressionless. He caught Black in a rib-cracking bear-hug and swung him around, crashed him down on the ground beside Hall. The two lay groaning and covered in mud, battered and broken by Phoenix’s superhuman strength.

He left them there and came back for me, lifted me out of the water and cradled me in his arms as he carried me to the shore. I felt the warmth of the sun on my skin, breathed clean air into my lungs. Arms around his neck, I clung to him as he strode away from the lake.

‘Believe me now,’ Phoenix murmured as he drove me home in Nathan’s old Chevrolet. His wet shirt clung to his chest and shoulders, water dripped onto his forehead and trickled down his cheeks. ‘Thorne and his guys won’t stop until they’re certain you’re not a threat.’

‘Yes, and you’ll be there to save me,’ I told him, refusing to admit how much my near-death experience had shaken
me. Images of the sunlight quivering on the surface of the lake as I stared up from the depths stayed with me, and I still felt the pressure of Hall’s arm around my throat.

Phoenix stopped the car on the hard shoulder. ‘Not always,’ he reminded me gently. ‘What happens after tomorrow – when I’m not here any more?’

I shook my head and closed my eyes. ‘Don’t. I don’t want to think about it.’

He sighed and shook his head. ‘Face it, Darina. By Friday I’ll be gone. The Thornes will still be here and they’ll want to get even.’

Forcing myself to look at him, I put on a brave face. ‘But by then we’ll have got to the truth. We’ll know the killer and he’ll be behind bars – end of story.’

‘Maybe,’ he said softly, not wanting to stray right now into the doubts and fears he’d already revealed. ‘Maybe not.’

‘We will. The more I get into this, the more I have Nathan as prime suspect. Right from the start, when Brandon put him there in the middle of things, I’ve had a creepy feeling.’

‘The kid’s a sleaze ball,’ Phoenix admitted, still non-committal.

‘And he has an army of older guys stopping us from finding out the truth – Oscar, Black and Hall for starters. They all know he’s guilty.’

‘That’s my point.’ Frustrated, Phoenix did go back to his old argument. ‘That’s exactly my point! They know, but they set up a barrier that no one can get through.’

‘So I go to Sheriff Kors,’ I decided. ‘I tell him they kidnapped me.’

‘No!’ The strength of his reaction surprised me and he fixed me with his stare. ‘If they arrest those four, you’re safe for maybe twenty-four hours. After that, the entire drugs cartel this side of the Rockies comes after you.’

‘Because I break the supply chain?’

‘Yeah, you got it. So no arrests, OK?’

‘OK.’ I couldn’t argue – I didn’t have the heart. ‘Stop looking at me like that, Phoenix. Just drive.’

Reluctantly he put the car into gear. ‘Dean wants me back at Foxton,’ he told me as we drove past the fast-food joints on the Ellerton outskirts.

Dean, not Hunter
, I thought with a sharp pang of regret.

‘Dean does a good job,’ Phoenix insisted. ‘I’ll discuss what just happened with him, get his reaction. I wish I didn’t have to leave you,’ he added softly.

‘I’ll be OK,’ I told him.

‘All I want to do is take care of you.’

‘You just did, remember?’ Trying for a brave smile, all I achieved was a tiny upward curl of my lips.

Phoenix smiled back then kissed me. ‘Darina, I love
you more every moment that passes,’ he whispered. ‘How is that possible?’

‘Say that again!’ I murmured, leaning in for another kiss.

In the end it was Phoenix who pulled away. ‘Will you promise me you’ll stay safe until tomorrow? Go home, eat, take a shower then sleep.’

I knew I would never be able to sleep or eat, but I gave in on staying home. ‘I won’t leave the house,’ I promised.
Please talk to me, let me in!
I pleaded silently.

He looked sadly at me and I had a picture of him, a solitary figure standing on a small, deserted island – a black rock surrounded by a sea of despair. He didn’t even raise his hand to wave goodbye.

Please!

With a small shake of his head he kept me out. ‘And at this point, Darina – however hard it feels, if Dean decides you should step back from this whole deal, you’ll agree?’

And leave you drifting in eternal torment?
Tears filled my eyes.
I’d rather die
.

‘You won’t have any choice,’ Phoenix murmured. ‘If the overlord says enough, Darina – you can’t do any more, the Beautiful Dead will simply wipe your memory and leave.’

Chapter 10

‘Y
ou’re telling me you left your key in the ignition?’ This was Jim’s eye-popping reaction when he heard my car had been stolen. It was Thursday morning, he was just back from an overnight trip fixing software for an out-of-state winery.

‘You know what day this is, so go easy on her,’ Laura warned. ‘It’s a mistake anyone could make.’

Jim wasn’t listening. ‘Let me get this straight. You parked your car in the mall with the top down and the key in the ignition. You went shopping for shoes. When you got back, the car was gone.’

‘Yeah.’ That was the story I’d given Laura the night before, when she got back from work, by which time I’d thrown my wet clothes in the washing machine and taken a shower. ‘And I didn’t even buy shoes. Dumb, huh?’

Jim shook his head slowly in disbelief. ‘Even for you, Darina.’

‘Listen, I don’t care how it happened.’ The night before, Laura had immediately picked up the fact that I was extra-fragile, put it down to the approaching anniversary and had held back from asking awkward questions. She’d taken on the job of calling the cops and reporting the theft. Now she moved in to protect me from my Stasi stepdad, all the time wiping at kitchen surfaces with an anti-bacterial cloth. ‘So long as Darina wasn’t in an accident, so long as she didn’t get hurt – that’s all I care about.’

‘Do you know how much that car is worth?’ Jim asked, still incredulous. ‘And what are you going to do now? How will you get by without transport? Do we even know if the insurance company will cover it?’

‘I guess I can ask Brandon,’ I mumbled.
After Phoenix
gets back to me with orders from the overlord. After I use
Phoenix’s last day on Earth to save my Beautiful Dead boyfriend
from an eternity of doubt
. Any second now I was expecting a message from Foxton.

But it wouldn’t come from the person who was at this moment pressing the doorbell.

‘Who’s that?’ Jim shot me an accusing glance, as if the visit was connected with me and was bound to turn out bad.

‘So now I can see through doors!’ I snapped back.

Laura let out an exasperated grunt, put down her cloth and went to the door. She came back with Henry Jardine in uniform and holding up a set of car keys.

He smiled at me. ‘We recovered your vehicle, Darina.’

‘Good job, Henry!’ Jim was quick with the compliments. ‘You guys work fast. Where did you find it?’

I was expecting an answer that involved Forest Lake and the whole car being submerged, waterlogged and totally ruined. That would be fine by me – the cops would build a theory around opportunist thieves who took the car for a joyride before dumping it in the lake. There would be no fingerprints, no clues, no danger of Oscar Thorne’s brother being implicated. But no.

‘A security guy down on the Centennial industrial estate called us early this morning. He was patrolling a unit where they manufactured furniture before cheap imports drove them out of business.’ Jardine had accepted Laura’s silent offer of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table.

‘I know the place,’ my stepfather acknowledged. ‘The Wonderful World of Wood – we bought a bed there in their closure sale.’ Typical get-the-facts-straight Jim.

My heart was sinking.
Stupid, bad ass Nathan! Why didn’t
you just drive the freakin’ car into the lake, like Hall suggested?

‘The security guard drove round the back of the building, saw signs of forced entry, stepped inside and found forty thousand dollars’ worth of stolen vehicle parked inside a disused warehouse.’

‘So who would do something that dumb?’ Jim asked, while I hovered by the door, looking for a chance to leave.

‘Some low-IQ kid, huh?’ So far Henry was enjoying himself. It isn’t often a cop gets to deliver good news. ‘Actually, we got clear fingerprints from the steering wheel and they matched with a set we already have on file.’

‘Cool.’ Jim still approved.

But now Henry Jardine’s expression grew more guarded. ‘At six o’clock this morning we were knocking on the door of Nathan Thorne, with an order for his arrest.’

For me, the information was like the gates of the underworld opening up and letting out a pack of Oscar Thorne hell hounds. They would be at me again, dragging me down and tearing at my throat, and this time I got the sense that I wouldn’t escape.

Laura picked up on my unease and came to stand next to me.

‘We were out of luck – Nathan wasn’t home,’ Jardine conceded. ‘He shares the house with his brother, Oscar, who wasn’t happy about letting us in. We ignored him
and tore the place apart – Nathan definitely did a disappearing act.’

‘But you’re still out there looking for him?’ Laura checked. ‘And you’ll tell us the minute you find him?’

‘We’ll do that for sure.’ Jardine sipped his coffee and steered us back to what he thought was totally positive news. ‘This time we found a whole stash of Class A drugs in Nathan’s room, measured out and ready to sell on the street,’ he continued. ‘We already built a case of illegal possession against the kid. After this the charge sheet will read like an entire book.’

Jim nodded. ‘I heard from Russell Bishop that Sheriff Kors was poised to clean up this town – seems he was right.’

‘Not only that,’ Jardine confided, enjoying himself again. ‘We found other prints besides Darina’s on the car door, and again we came up with a clear match.’

Laura saw I was shaking so much she actually took my hand and held it. ‘Are you going to give us names?’ she asked.

‘Yeah – they belong to two guys we’ve been gathering evidence on for a couple of years.’ The deputy sheriff was torn between the official line of not giving out classified information and the human temptation to share. ‘They’re definitely in the frame for a serious traffic
offence involving the death of a member of the county sheriff’s police department.’

By this time I felt so wound up and nauseous that I was hardly hearing what was said.

‘Dean Dawson at Amos Peak,’ Memory Man Jim recalled swiftly. ‘You found those guys’ prints on Darina’s car?’

‘Yeah, and at seven a.m. we sent teams out to pull them in. This time it worked out.’

‘Cool,’ Jim said, while Laura held on to my hand.

‘Robert Black and Vincent Hall,’ Jardine said with slow, steady emphasis, staring right at me. ‘Right now they’re safe behind bars in the sheriff’s office and no way will we unlock the door before they go before the judge.’

I didn’t get my car back right away – the scene-of-crime officers held it to take pictures and consolidate their evidence – so I set out for Centre Point on foot, planning to bring Zak into the loop so he knew Nathan was still on the loose – mad, bad and dangerous as could be.

I wanted to warn Zak to be on his guard but I hadn’t reached the end of my street before I felt Laura draw up onto the sidewalk beside me.

‘Where are you going?’ she leaned out and asked.

‘Nowhere. Just walking.’

‘Why don’t you stay home?’

‘Because!’ I muttered, guessing Laura was on her way to work and didn’t have time for a long heart-to-heart.

‘I don’t want you out on the streets – not until Henry tells us that they’ve got Nathan Thorne.’

I nodded and crouched beside her car. ‘OK, I’ll go visit Zoey, or Hannah – whoever’s home. I’ll take care.’

‘Let me drive you there,’ she begged.

‘No, Mom – it’s cool.’

‘Then you get behind the wheel,’ she decided, making me step back as she got out of the car and walked around to the passenger side. ‘You drive me to work and keep the car for the day. That way I can breathe a little easier.’

‘Deal,’ I agreed. I drove to the mall, dropped her off outside the clothing shop where she worked, said goodbye and doubled back in the direction of Michael Rohr’s place.

So I’d parked Laura’s dark-blue saloon near to the tower block entrance, next to an old black Chevrolet and walked as far as the elevator shaft, pressing the button for the second floor before I realized the significance of ‘old black Chevrolet’. My stomach flipped, and when the elevator whined and the doors slid open I was expecting to see Nathan Thorne walk out with Zak hooded, bound and gagged.

But actually the elevator was empty and I had enough time to backtrack in my mind to the evening before, when Phoenix had driven me in Nathan’s Chevy to the outskirts of town.

‘I can’t come any further in case someone sees me,’ he’d told me as he parked in a lot outside Blockbuster. ‘You walk straight home, stay inside and wait there for me.’

I’d promised again that I would and, taking care that there was no one around, Phoenix had done his shimmery dissolving act. I’d gone home, showered, invented a convincing story for Laura about the theft of my convertible and so far done exactly as Phoenix had told me – sit tight, wait – until Deputy Sheriff Jardine had knocked on our door.

So what had happened since then to bring the Chevy from the parking lot outside Blockbuster to Centre Point? A quick figuring out painted the picture in my mind that someone – some aimless kid ready to poke his nose into other people’s business – had called Nathan late last night to ask him was he out of gas, or else why was his car dumped in an out-of-town lot, and did he need a ride out there to collect it? Which would put Nathan back behind the wheel, driving here to see Zak, which also meant that I was right – Nathan could be here with Zak right now.

As I stood thinking this through, the door closed and
the elevator whined upwards, clunked and shuddered to a stop.

What would Nathan do to Zak if he found him?

‘This is so not good,’ I muttered to myself as the elevator whined, clunked and shuddered down once more.

‘Hey, Darina,’ Michael Rohr said to me as he stepped out. He seemed chilled and relaxed, wearing a two-day stubble and a crumpled linen shirt.

I eased back on my concerns and returned the greeting. ‘Hey, Michael. Is Zak at home?’

‘That kind of depends on your interpretation of the word “home”. Do you mean here, or his mom’s house?’

‘Here. I need to talk with him.’ I didn’t say why, or fill Michael in on the latest details connected with Nathan, Hall and Black. I didn’t tell him that since the last time we met I’d been half drowned in Forest Lake and was worried they might try something similar on his youngest son.

‘Sorry, it seems like Zak’s a popular guy. A couple of buddies already called.’

‘He went out? Who with?’

‘I have no clue. That was before Brandon showed up. I told him the same story – Zak went out early.’

‘Brandon was here too?’

Michael pursed his lips. ‘You have a lot of questions, Darina. It seems Zak hasn’t made any final decision about
where he wants to stay, so Sharon sent Brandon over with a bag of clean clothes.’

‘And this other kid – you don’t know his name, but what did he look like?’ The black Chevy in the parking lot still loomed large and I was pressing for answers.

‘I didn’t get a clear view. Zak answered the door. What is this – the third degree?’

‘No, everything’s cool. I was just curious.’

‘I only saw the kid from the window. I guess that’s his car,’ Michael said and pointed to the Chevy.

That was it – my fears were confirmed. ‘Long, black hair, kind of baby-faced?’ I asked.

‘That’s him. He was getting into the car with Zak when an older guy in a black Mercedes pulled up. Zak and his buddy changed their minds and got into the Mercedes instead. Nice set of wheels – who can blame them?’

‘OK, thanks.’ I nodded and turned, started to run towards Laura’s car.

‘Is everything OK?’ Michael called after me. ‘What happened to your convertible?’

‘It got stolen. Yeah, everything’s cool!’ I yelled back, my mind in chaos as I reached the car.

I should have stayed, told Michael the full story – I know that now.

My first thought was to ignore Phoenix’s instructions and drive straight out to Foxton. That would be forty-five minutes, maybe an hour in Laura’s car. Was that better than going to Henry Jardine? How would the cops react when they heard Nathan Thorne had visited Centre Point and his car was still there? Would they step up their search?

I drove aimlessly, trying to fix on my next move.
Jeez, Darina, tell someone!
Arizona-in-my-head came back full volume.
You know how it feels to be snatched off the street.
Do something, for chrissake!

‘OK, I go back and tell Michael,’ I said, doing a U-turn.

No way. Zak’s dad already left,
my internal Arizona reminded me.
Who knows where he is now?

‘So it’s the cops.’ I swung back round, across a line of traffic.

Or Sharon?
Arizona reminded me.
If my kid had been
kidnapped, I’d want to know.

‘I can’t get my head around this,’ I groaned. ‘Phoenix, what do I do?’

There was no answer.

Try to stay calm
, Summer would say. I listened hard for her voice from beyond the grave.
Who knows the reason
Nathan went to Michael’s apartment?

Maybe Zak is safe after all.

I shook my head. ‘He’s in trouble. I have to do something.’