Bronze: A Romantic Suspense Novel (Blackwood Elements Book 8)

by Elise Noble

  “You? You were controlling the traffic lights? How?”

  “As I said, it’s been a busy month. Brisbane City Council could do with improving its cybersecurity as well.”

  “What did you do? Turn the last light green for me and red for Shane?”

  He nodded.

  Bloody freaking hell. That split-second timing—he said the lights wouldn’t have changed, but if he’d pushed the button just a second earlier... Wait. How did he know the right moment to switch the lights?

  “I don’t understand. Were you watching us? Was there a camera somewhere?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Then how…?”

  “Everyone has their weakness, Kylie. Yours appears to be puppy pictures.”

  “What?” At first, I didn’t understand. Then suddenly I did. Those cute pictures in my email. The cuter ones on the website I clicked through to because I needed cheering up. “You hacked my damn phone?”

  He ducked to the side. “Please don’t kill me.”

  Oh, it was tempting. So tempting. But one death that day was quite enough. Instead, I spoke through gritted teeth.

  “Did you hijack my GPS?”

  “Uh, yes. And your camera, microphone, and data signal too. Then I overlaid your location on the Traffic Management Centre’s real-time map and made a few adjustments to their system. Sorry.”

  “I…I…” I didn’t know what to say. Russell had killed a man. Not with his bare hands, but he’d still been responsible for Shane’s death. “You did that for me?”

  “When it came down to a choice between you and him, it really wasn’t a hard decision.” He gave a half-smile, just a flicker. “I’ve no doubt it was the right choice, but does the guilt get easier to live with?”

  Until last month in Egypt, I’d only killed one person, a drugged-out lunatic waving a pistol who’d already fired three shots at me and my colleagues, all of whom thankfully lived. The shooting had given me a few restless nights, but to paraphrase Russell, it hadn’t been a hard decision. Him or me. Then I found out he’d been beating his girlfriend for the last two years, and any guilt I might have felt vanished into the ether.

  My time in Luxor, or rather, a small village nearby, had added five bodies to my tally. Sleep hadn’t come so easily after that, as the dark circles under my eyes showed. Again, it had been a matter of survival, but those men still had families. Children.

  No, the guilt remained strong over that disaster of a day.

  Russell passed me a crisp white handkerchief—monogrammed with his initials—to wipe away the tears streaming down my cheeks. Oh, hell, I was a mess. I’d held it together in Virginia, back when I’d still had hope, but now everything just leaked out of me. Despair at the situation I was in. A hint of annoyance at Russell for invading my privacy. Fear for the future. Remorse for dragging so many others into my mess. Residual terror from the wild ride with Mimi. Sorrow that Russell had been forced to take a life to save me. But mostly anger at Michael for putting me into that position in the first place.

  I wished it had been him on the sports bike.

  “I want to tell you it gets easier, but right now…”

  A shrug was the best I could manage. I barely even trusted myself to speak.

  This time, Russell’s hug didn’t start out awkward like before, and I sagged against his chest, my energy spent.

  “What if they realise it was you?” I mumbled into his shoulder.

  “If they work out it was something other than a glitch, which is unlikely since I doctored the logs too, they’ll trace the intrusion back to an internet café in Saint Petersburg. Don’t worry about me, Kylie.”

  Just hearing my real name hurt, and I struggled to regain my composure. Lost the battle. Why fight anymore? Instead, I gave in and lay down on the bed, broken, and let Russell hold me until I passed out from exhaustion.

  CHAPTER 7 - KYLIE

  I WOKE UP alone.

  At first, I thought I’d dreamed Russell’s presence, but when I rolled over, the faintest hint of his aftershave still lingered on the pillow. Something light—hints of cedar, saffron, grapefruit… Can you tell I worked summers behind the men’s grooming counter at a department store before I became a cop?

  That seemed like a lifetime ago now.

  And unfortunately, the presence of eau de Russell meant breakfast promised to be an awkward affair. Should I apologise? Keep quiet and pretend my meltdown never happened? I put the decision off for half an hour while I soaked in the tub, savouring the near-scalding water and a mountain of bubbles. If I got caught, I’d probably never see a bath again. I might not even live long enough to take a shower, not when I’d helped to put a reasonable number of my fellow inmates behind bars.

  I considered slipping under the water, inhaling, and ending it all right there. But then Michael would get away with what he’d done. And the only thing worse than facing life in prison was the prospect of my sleaze of an ex staying free.

  The thought made me clench my fists so hard I ended up with a row of little red fingernail-dents marching across my palm. What kind of fucked-up world let a man escape a murder charge while an innocent woman had her life ruined?

  When I slunk into the living room, I found a mug of lukewarm coffee waiting for me opposite Russell’s three laptops. Yes, three. What were they doing, breeding overnight? Soft music played in the background, but where was Russell? A shadow passed behind the gauzy curtains blowing in the breeze from the terrace, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Curiosity got the better of me, and I got up to see why he was pacing, then realised he had a phone clamped to his ear. Was there another problem with the case?

  “No, Mother, I’m not firing Finn’s lawyer. If he wants different representation, he can do the deed himself.”

  A pause.

  “Well, you’ll have to pay for a new counsel, won’t you? Just because he’s my brother doesn’t mean he deserves to escape punishment for his crimes. His actions almost got two women I care about killed, for crying out loud.”

  Two women he cared about? Tai was one of them, obviously—she and Russell had been sort-of dating before the incident at al-Nahas. Before she stopped arguing with Ren and hooked up with him instead. I was happy for them, honestly, but seeing them together in Virginia had only served to deepen the pain caused by my own failed relationship with Michael. Ren was so fiercely protective of her. So sweet with the way he put her first.

  But who was the second woman Russell cared about? Me? Only one other woman had survived, the Egyptian wife of the encampment’s cook who’d hidden behind a water tank when the shooting started, and she didn’t speak any English. So… Russell cared about me? That was…that was… Tears prickled because it had been so long since I’d had a true friend that I’d almost forgotten what it was like to be valued.

  Outside, Russell’s tone grew more exasperated. “Look, I didn’t ask him to break the law. And how the hell was I supposed to know what he was doing?” A pause. “Yes, you do that.”

  He hung up abruptly, and I didn’t have time to duck inside before he spun and caught me eavesdropping. Busted.

  “Uhhhh…”

  “Sorry about that.”

  Why was he apologising? “Was that your mother?”

  He gave me a wry smile, accompanied by a roll of his eyes. “Nobody else can send my stress levels this high.”

  “What did she want?” Actually, that was none of my business. “Forget it, you don’t have to answer.”

  “Apparently, the fact that my brother’s in jail is my fault because I didn’t stop him from—and I quote—being taken advantage of. Never mind that he hid all the bloody evidence.”

  “Well, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Welcome to my life. The biggest mistake I ever made was thinking that Finn could change into anything but the spoilt brat I grew up with. But enough about him—how did you sleep?”

  “I’m so sorry I got upset.”

 
“After yesterday’s drama, I think you were entitled to.”

  “Still…” Oh, thank goodness. A knock at the door saved us from more awkwardness. “I’ll get that.”

  I hoped for a housekeeper or even Akeem, but it was Leyton, complete with his own laptop bag and a bouquet of flowers. He held them out, quick to explain that they weren’t actually from him.

  “Akeem sent these. Apparently it’s your birthday?”

  Huh?

  “That was last month.” Then I realised—I wasn’t Kylie anymore. “It must be Kyanna’s birthday.”

  “Don’t forget to smile when he brings the cake over later. Is Russell here?”

  “Out on the terrace. Is there any news? I can’t bring myself to watch the TV.”

  As I passed through the living room, I’d caught one tearful interview with Shane’s mother on the news, the interviewer seated at a scarred wooden table in the pizza restaurant Mrs. Chapman had run alone since her husband passed on a decade ago. Even though I’d never much liked the food there, I’d often bought dinner anyway to support her. Friends should help friends, right? Or so I’d thought.

  “Hashtag bike-bitch is trending on Twitter. They’ve found the dirt bike, but from what we’ve heard, they’re no closer to locating you or Mimi.”

  “You’ve had over a million views on YouTube too,” Russell said, appearing behind me.

  Leyton gave a low whistle. “It was at eight hundred thousand when I left the office. Plus some Z-list celebrity’s arguing with the road safety brigade after he said you were hot and they took offence, and Bad Boy Clothing’s made you an open offer to become their spokesmodel.”

  Strewth. “They realise there’s a warrant out for my arrest, right?”

  “I’m not sure they’ve fully thought things through.”

  “Is there anything else? Or is the whole world treating this as a joke?”

  Leyton’s smile dropped. “I promise we’re not treating this like a joke, Ky. The team’s been working overnight. We’ve got hold of a copy of the triple-zero call reporting John’s murder.”

  “We already tried to trace the woman, but she’s a ghost.”

  “Ghosts don’t exist. Did you find anyone else who heard the gunshot?”

  “Nobody.” And believe me, I’d looked. “Why don’t we sit down? This isn’t the sort of thing we should be discussing on the doorstep.”

  Russell reclaimed the spot in front of his laptops, Leyton sat opposite him, and I pulled out the chair at the end of the table. My circumstances left me reluctant to get close to anyone, no matter how fleetingly, constantly afraid that any connection would be torn to shreds by the next disaster to come my way.

  Leyton opened his laptop and played the call back. It’d been years since I heard it, and the fear in the woman’s voice still made my chest seize.

  She kept it brief.

  “I’m walking my dog on North Street, and I h-h-heard…” A pause. Rustling. “I heard, well, it sounded like a gunshot.”

  “Ma’am, whereabouts on North Street?”

  “Farther up, s-s-somewhere near the red posting box? And I saw a man running.”

  I remembered the posting box—it was right in front of John’s house. We’d even checked inside it for the weapons. And we’d never traced the man seen running either, so we couldn’t be sure whether he was a suspect or just a jogger.

  “A car’s on its way. Can I take your name?”

  Click.

  The words took me back three years, to a time when I’d been content, when Jasper John’s murder had just been one more case out of hundreds and I’d been an ambitious constable eager to make the step up to detective. I’d still had so much to learn, and Michael was meant to be my mentor. I’d been so freaking happy when I got assigned to his squad. His solve rates, his arrest record, his network of informants—they were all legendary. But hindsight was a wonderful thing, and now I could see that while he’d given me great appraisals and said nice things to my face, I’d been little more than his errand girl. He’d taught me nothing, but he’d fucked me in more ways than one.

  Leyton brought me back to the present. “She sounds scared. Terrified even. But you know what she doesn’t sound?”

  “What?”

  “Breathless. Think about it—if you were a civilian and you’d just heard a gunshot close by, wouldn’t you run like hell to get out of there?”

  “I guess.”

  “And we know she must’ve been bloody close. You said it was a silenced pistol you found in your kitchen? Those things don’t make a lot of noise.”

  Right. Leyton was absolutely right. Why the hell hadn’t I thought of that? Probably because Michael had been careful to distract me every time I asked difficult questions. I really hadn’t been much of a detective, had I?

  “Yes, it was silenced. And Jasper John’s house had a thick hedge out front.”

  “I know—I took a look around before I came here. Our mystery woman must’ve been right outside when she heard the shot, not further along the street the way she implied.”

  “She sounded hazy about the location,” Russell said. “How dark was it?”

  I screwed my eyes shut, trying to remember. “Gloomy, but not pitch black. There aren’t many streetlights on that stretch, and a couple of the bulbs were out.”

  “And what if she hid to make the call? Not everybody can run fast.”

  “It’s a possibility,” Leyton agreed. “The houses on that stretch all have front gardens. Plenty of trees and bushes for cover.”

  “What about the dog?” I asked. “What if it had barked?”

  “What if there was no dog? She might’ve been in the area for another reason, one she didn’t want to admit to.”

  “Like what?”

  “A mistress visiting a lover, a thief casing a target, a hooker on her way to a client… Plenty of options. She sounded young—maybe a teenager out visiting a boyfriend she wasn’t supposed to have? I’ll send the recording around the office, see if anyone recognises the voice.”

  “We tried that before.”

  Unlike, say, the UK or the US, Australia didn’t have much regional variation when it came to accents. We couldn’t even tell if she was local to Brisbane.

  “We’ll keep trying. We have to—if the girl was near enough when the killer left the house, she might even be able to ID him, or at least work with a sketch artist.”

  My stomach twisted into knots. What if Leyton was right? What if there was a witness out there somewhere who could place Michael at the scene, but we never found her?

  “What about the phone she called from?” Russell asked. “Did anyone trace that?”

  We’d tried. “It was registered to a doctor from Sydney. She had no idea how her name got on the paperwork, and she had an alibi for that night.”

  “Which lends credence to the theory that there was something off about this witness, don’t you think?” Leyton asked.

  What could I do but agree? “Yes.”

  “We’ll look for the girl, but there aren’t many leads to her whereabouts, so we need to explore other avenues too.”

  “What avenues?”

  “This ‘Froggy’. He appears in some of Brenner’s other messages too, and recently. Take a look at these.”

  I dragged my chair around the corner of the table, and Russell took the seat on the other side of Leyton. Recently? I checked the dates, and the new batch of messages had been sent on Sunday evening, less than half a day before Shane plastered himself to the side of a truck.

  “How did you get those?” I asked Russell.

  “Once I’ve got access to the account, I can see everything, old and new.”

  Wow. I was never trusting an app again.

  Duke916: *************************

  Bossman: Why?

  Duke916: *************************

  Bossman: He always reckons there’s heat. Froggy’s a paranoid freak.

  Duke916: *************************

&nb
sp; Bossman: We’re not delaying.

  Duke916: *************************

  Bossman: Where’s he want to change it to?

  Duke916: *************************

  SurfsUp: *************************

  Bossman: Some bloke probably looked at him funny in the dunny.

  Duke916: *************************

  SurfsUp: *************************

  Bossman: Smokey’s already out, and the rest are running low. Don’t be a wuss.

  SurfsUp: *************************

  Bossman: We’re providing a service, and the customer’s fucking king. Tell Froggy it’s on.

  Dammit, if only we had the rest. Froggy was the one other person who might know something about what went on that night. Even if he only had an idea of Michael’s state of mind at the time, it could help to build a case for my defence.

  “It looks as though they were supposed to meet Froggy somewhere, and Froggy was worried about getting caught.”

  “Which suggests that perhaps the meeting wasn’t for entirely legal purposes,” Russell said. “Filling in the blanks, it seems as if Shane was rearranging the location of the rendezvous, and Owen wasn’t keen to go at all.”

  Leyton nodded. “And speaking of lines, Michael sure seems to cross them a lot. And he doesn’t learn from his mistakes, either. John’s murder was most likely designed to cover up some other crime, and yet still he carries on.”

  “Why would he stop?” I asked. “Nobody’s ever come close to catching him. He’s still the QPS’s golden boy.”

  “Yet. Nobody’s come close to catching him yet.”

  “What can we do? All we’ve got is one side of a conversation, and that’s so vague Superintendent Clarke would never act on it.”

  “What about following Brenner and Mills?” Russell asked. “This meeting might not have happened yet, and even if it has, they’re bound to do something else nefarious.”

  Nefarious… Russell was so…so posh. Three years ago, I’d have laughed at his accent and the way he used long words when short ones would do. That was partly Michael’s influence—he’d had a cruel streak, I realised that now. And my time away had taught me to see the good in people who might be very different to me.