The Living Canvas (Master of Trickery, #2)

by Pepper Winters

  I couldn’t hold back the cold snort. “Me?” Fuck, what a loaded question. My life was completely out of bounds. No one must know that I’d failed my daughter. The child who was born of rape and threats.

  “Yeah, what have you been up to? Getting much sleep?”

  “Ah, you know.” My eyes once again trailed to the exit. My legs bunched to get up and leave. He’d told me all I needed to know. He wasn’t with O. He hadn’t married her and given her a family in some white picketed home where she would never be lonely again.

  Instead, he was with a girl called Colleen, and O was off dancing in London.

  There was no connection between the three of us anymore.

  And I was done.

  Standing, I worked out the crick in my neck. The past two weeks of no sleep, barely any food, and the stress of Olive’s kidnapping had turned every fist and kick from my youth into a delayed injury. I should’ve been too young to suffer arthritis, but I swore every joint and muscle had crept past eighty and no longer knew how to work. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Busy night painting?”

  “Something like that.”

  Justin stood too. “I’ll walk you out.” Throwing a tenner onto the bar, he waved his arm, waiting for me to stride ahead first.

  Hiding my annoyance, I stalked to the exit and bowled into twilight.

  Justin crossed his arms against the slight chill in the air. “Who do you paint for?”

  I’d hoped he’d quit with the questions the moment we’d left the bar, but he didn’t. “Myself.”

  “Do you have a business name?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Why?”

  “I’d like to pop by sometime. See your work.”

  “My work is different. My canvases are...not what you’re used to.”

  “I’d still like to come by.”

  “Why? To check up on me?”

  “Maybe.” He smirked. “What do you paint?”

  I looked down the street, past the milling pedestrians and smiling shoppers, and only saw a world that didn’t care that my daughter was in the hands of a monster or that I was screaming inside for goddamn help.

  I couldn’t enlist the police.

  I couldn’t go to the media.

  I had no family or friends to help me make decisions.

  All I had was a fat bank balance that was waiting for me to withdraw a hefty amount for ransom number two.

  “Come on, tell me.” He laughed. “I’m a boring accountant. O has her dance and you have your art. Both of you followed your passions, not a paycheque. Share a piece with me, so I can live vicariously through you.”

  I sighed, wanting this meeting to be over. “I paint women.”

  His eyes lit up. “Naked women?”

  “Knickers on but breasts mostly bare, yes.”

  “Wow, that’s a career choice they don’t mention at school.” He punched me lightly in the shoulder. “Good for you, mate.”

  I stepped out of his reach. “I have to go.”

  “Fine. But we should do this again sometime. Soon.”

  “Why would we bother doing this awkward attempt at conversation again?”

  For a second, he paused, no doubt annoyed that I’d spoken the truth about this farce, but then he nodded with sincerity. “Don’t get mad at me, Clark, but...I think you need someone you can have an awkward attempt at conversation with every now and again.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “It means you look half-starved and the black circles under your eyes are either from working way too many hours or worrying about way too many things. Problems are better shared, mate.”

  I bared my teeth. “Keep your guesswork to yourself, all right, Miller? I’m fine. I don’t need you or anyone—”

  “We all need company at some point in our lives.” Pulling his phone from his pocket, he quickly typed in something before scrolling through lines of text that appeared. It only took him a second before looking up with a triumphant, almost pitying look. “Master of Trickery. Cool name.”

  “How...how did you find that?”

  “I googled man who paints naked women in Birmingham. You’re on the first page.”

  Shit.

  Was Olive mentioned on there?

  Was my past and what’d happened with Tallup printed for the world to see?

  Snatching my phone, I did the same search, relaxing when only business-related stuff and my website popped up. Reviews of my work and chatter on Facebook feeds about my time-lapse videos cluttered the search results, but there was no mention of my personal life, who I was, and what I’d lost.

  Justin put his phone away and turned to leave. “I’ll be seeing ya, Clark. I’ll pop by with a takeaway sometime. Make sure you’re not a starving artist and eating something occasionally.”

  “I don’t need your charity, okay? Just back the fuck—”

  “Who said anything about charity?”

  “I don’t need you sticking your nose in at my warehouse when I—”

  “Cool, you have a warehouse? Definitely popping round now.”

  “Don’t want you there, Miller.”

  “Too bad. I’m a nosy git and already issued myself an invitation.”

  I crossed my arms. “Don’t you have some other helpless stray to smother with good intentions?”

  “Nope.” He smiled. “Just you for now. Colleen is getting a bit annoyed with my mother hen routine, so I need someone else to bug.”

  “Count yourself successful.”

  He laughed. “I will when you’ve lost that tortured, haunted look.”

  That won’t happen until I get my daughter back.

  Until I can stop thinking about O.

  Until I’m no longer such a fuck-up.

  I backed away. “Like I said, I don’t do pity. This is where this ends. Got it?”

  He just smirked. “I don’t call it pity. I call it being a friend. See ya next week, Clark.” Waving goodbye, he vanished in a sea of tourists and pedestrians, his threat lingering on the air.

  Chapter Four

  ______________________________

  Gil

  -The Present-

  I WAS A bastard.

  I knew that.

  I’d known it since I was born: a self-centred, down-to-his-core bastard.

  But being a bastard was necessary when raising a little girl on your own. I had to suspect everyone, protect her from everything, and be on my guard at all times.

  Because if I didn’t treat the world as if it was my enemy, it wasn’t me who would get hurt.

  It was Olive Oyl.

  It’s almost over, little spinach.

  I promise.

  I stopped the car.

  The engine idled as I stared into the dense blackness of Lickey Hills Country Park. Rugged and wild, the trees silent and savage. He’d brought me to this forest when he’d first taken her. It’d been the only information he’d given me—taunting me with her safety every day of my godforsaken life since she’d been stolen.

  And it was all my fucking fault.

  I should have stayed true to my rules.

  I should never have trusted him.

  The past seven years, everything I’d done was for my daughter.

  I’d learned how to paint with every medium to give me the best chance at employment. I’d accepted small commissions and badly paid work to get noticed. I’d slowly gone from penniless to middle-class, earning enough to keep Olive warm and fed.

  And then what had I done?

  I’d failed her.

  In the worst possible way a father could fail his child.

  My scratchy eyes landed on my hands strangling the steering wheel. They still held colour-splatters from painting O while she’d lain unconscious in my warehouse.

  I wanted to cut out my heart for drugging her.

  I’d rather give up my life instead of hers.

  Who knows...you might.

  He’d told me to paint her with the shadows of
bracken: greys and greens, blacks and browns. The perfect camouflage to make her disappear in a woodland, leaving her to die alone and unprotected.

  I’d disobeyed.

  Instead of nondescript concealment, I’d painted every inch of beautiful skin in a personal punishment.

  Punishment for me.

  I’d used the colour palette he’d requested...but the symbolism airbrushed into her skin reminded me that tonight...it all ended.

  One way or another.

  Turning to study O, a suffocating wave of guilt wrapped around my chest. She lay sprawled and sleeping in the back seat, her eyes closed, lips slack, her beauty even more radiant thanks to the earthy colours she wore.

  She looked as if she was the queen of an olive grove. Crowned with a wreath of silvery leaves, her arms and legs entwined with the supple branches of an olive tree. Thousands of olives. Black and green, brown and purple hung heavy on the interlocking, protecting foliage that crisscrossed and hugged her chest and stomach.

  It’d been the worst commission of my life.

  Painting a lifeless lover with the emblem of my daughter’s name, all because if I didn’t have the blatant reminder of who I was doing this for...I wouldn’t have the guts to go through with it.

  My daughter came first.

  That was how it should be.

  But O...fuck.

  The urge to vomit rose again.

  The back of my throat was raw. The taste in my mouth disgusting. I hadn’t eaten properly in days and couldn’t keep anything down.

  I was fighting for both of them...but there was a chance this might not work.

  I might lose my daughter or my soul-mate.

  I might lose both.

  I would rather lose my own life than allow that to happen.

  You’re late.

  Turning off the engine, I climbed achy and beaten from the shitty hatchback I’d bought after selling my expensive 4WD when the bribes kept coming and I no longer had disposal cash to pay them. I opened the back door and bent to untie the ropes around her wrists and ankles so they were looser.

  Rubbing away the redness my knots had caused her, I swallowed down another avalanche of guilt as I re-tied them, looser and not nearly as imprisoning.

  Hopefully, she’d be able to wriggle out of them and run if this all went to shit.

  I’m sorry.

  Gritting my teeth, I slipped my arms under her legs and back, pulling her from the car and into my embrace.

  She remained unconscious. Her paint had dried enough not to smudge. The weight of her in my arms made me suffocate and stumble in horror.

  Fuck!

  I couldn’t do this.

  I have to do this.

  Hoisting her higher into my arms, I carried her paint-naked body from the small glade I’d parked in and entered the midnight wilderness.

  My boots—that had been witness to my many crimes—once again squelched through mud and forest debris. The number of hours I’d trekked through woods trying to find Olive couldn’t be calculated. Days at a time, midnight to dawn...always coming home empty, drowning my sorrows in liquor—the medicinal vodka burning my throat with hypocrisy.

  I’d walked the entire length of England and back, searching, searching, always searching. Hoping I could find her before the next ransom came in. Before the next murder. Before the next threat.

  O stirred in my arms.

  Her eyelids fluttered upward, fuzzy and hazed pupils meeting mine as I carried her through the dark.

  “Gil...” She swallowed. Her face scrunched up, fighting the nitrazepam the doctor had given me for my insomnia.

  Ever since Olive had been taken, I’d turned into a total insomniac. The only sleep I snatched was filled with nightmares of chasing after Olive, promising her I’d find her, protect her, save her, only to slam me back into loneliness.

  I’d crushed a few into O’s sandwich, knowing the punch they delivered when they kicked in.

  “Shush. I got you.” Tears scalded my eyes as Olin shivered.

  “I’m c-cold.”

  “Go back to sleep. It’s warmer in your dreams.”

  She shook her head, sluggish and slow. “I don’t wan—” Her eyelids drooped closed again, sucking her back into false hibernation.

  “I’m so sorry, O,” I murmured while silhouettes of trees swayed around us, spectators at a funeral.

  Her funeral.

  My funeral.

  His funeral.

  Anyone’s but Olive’s.

  I had a long walk in front of me, off the marked trail and hidden from hiker’s knowledge. My heart ached with grief that I couldn’t stop this. My body trembled with every step. And the rotten bastard inside me couldn’t just let Olin rest peacefully in my arms.

  I treated her as my confessional. A priestess who had the power to absolve me.

  Looking down at her lovely face, I whispered, “I have no excuse for what I’m doing, but...I was broken when I left you, O. Damaged beyond repair. If it hadn’t been for Olive—” I slipped on a wet section of decomposing leaves. “I’ve been such a traitor to you. The worst kind of monster. You trusted me. You tried to help me. And this is how I repay you.”

  She murmured sleepily; her slumbering, gentle face ripped my heart out. Lax and young, innocent and pure. Her dancing dreams had been stolen. Now, thanks to me, the rest of her life might be too.

  Nausea swarmed, prickling sweat under my shirt and making sourness coat my tongue. “I won’t let him have you. I promise this will all work out.” I raised my arms, bringing her close enough to kiss her cheek—the softness of her painted olive grove skin. “Once you’re safe and Olive is safe...I’m going to kill him. And once he’s dead, I’m going to confess everything to the police. I can’t live with this anymore. I deserve to be punished for what I’ve done.” I laughed hollowly. “After all, I’ve always been destined to go to prison. I’ve avoided it longer than I expected. I was born to a pimp, whore to a teacher, and now, I’m a collector for a murderer. The first two crimes weren’t my fault. But the third...I’m guilty.”

  My voice thickened. “I’m guilty, O. Those girl’s deaths smear my hands, and I’m done. Tonight is the last time he’ll ask me to kill.”

  Olin mumbled something in her sleep, her lips working with mysterious words.

  I needed to believe she’d heard me and understood.

  In reality, if she had heard, she’d condemn me to the devil and rightfully so.

  My fingers feathered over her hip where her painted-lacy underwear ruined the perfection of smooth branches and tiny, silver olive leaves. Inside the seam rested the GPS tracker. I prayed to everything holy that it worked and didn’t fail me.

  I was placing all my faith in its accuracy.

  I was gambling my daughter’s life as well as O’s that Jeffrey would return to his unfindable location with Olin and keep her alive long enough for me to hunt.

  The small piece of technology hadn’t warmed from her body; it didn’t feel like a friend...merely another foe I couldn’t trust.

  “I’m a bastard, O, but I’m not giving up. He’s bled me dry of everything. I hate what I’ve become. But he can’t have Olive, and he can’t have you. It’s over. It’s time for him to feel what it’s like to die.”

  My hands curled into fists, tasting the black satisfaction of murdering a murderer. I had the perfect weapon to do it. It sat quiet and unassuming in my left pocket, ready to steal his life.

  Once he was dead, I’d gather my daughter and soul-mate and walk back into the light.

  And if he kills them before you get to him?

  My rage once again became brittle with fear.

  My plan was flimsy and chaotic, but it was the best I had.

  I’d been backed into a corner and was willing to do whatever it took.

  Including sacrificing myself if it comes to it.

  My eyes continued to trace O’s prettily painted face while I shifted her weight into one arm. Stopping for a moment, I pulled
my phone free from my right pocket.

  It was time to send plan B.

  Bringing up the message I’d typed to Justin moments before O arrived at my warehouse, I fought the urge to be sick all over again.

  To see what I’d become in black and white...to re-read my crimes.

  Fuck.

  This sort of message wasn’t meant to be sent. Justin and I didn’t exactly have the sort of relationship where any of this was acceptable.

  We’d just bumped into each other by chance, and instead of him walking away like he should have, he’d barged into my world and refused to take no for an answer. Our ‘friendship’ consisted of him being far too forgiving and me being a fucking asshole.

  He reminded me too much of O’s kindness—constantly tormenting me with memories of them together...kissing.

  But each time he’d turned up at my warehouse, his presence somehow gave me the energy to keep going. To paint another commission. To pay another bribe. To keep my secrets hidden because, despite my outward unwelcome, he’d become needed.

  Needed to keep me human so I wasn’t a total monster when I finally rescued my daughter.

  I owed him so fucking much.

  And this message...well, it sold me into debt that I would never be able to repay.

  Miller,

  I have so many things to say, but I don’t know how to say any of them.

  I’ll begin with the simplest one.

  Thank you.

  You’re a better man than I’ll ever be. You’ve had my back. You’ve helped me book commissions. You’ve nodded when I’ve snarled at you. And you never once asked why I was such a twat.

  This message should end here. It should be a simple thank you.

  Unfortunately...I have a favour to ask.

  I’ve named you executor of my estate.

  Why?

  Because I’m involved in the painted murders.

  I’ve helped take lives to save a life.

  The life of my daughter.

  Olive.

  The story of her origin isn’t important, but what is important is, I will do whatever it takes to save her.

  And this is the part where you’ll hate me all the more.

  I know you cared for O.

  I love her with all my fucking heart, but...I need you to help her.

  Along with this message is a link to a GPS tracker. The device is hidden on Olin. She is the next victim, and I’m doing everything I can to keep her alive.