I yanked my hands off the bar, curling them into fists between my legs. “I broke her heart, but you took advantage of her. You jumped straight into her bed.”
True anger highlighted his normally rational face. “Fuck you, Clark. It wasn’t like that. I offered to be her friend, that’s all. To be there for her, seeing as you refused to be.”
My eyes narrowed. “Don’t give me that bullshit. I caught you two kissing. I saw your goddamn hand up her top.”
His gaze filled with calculation, doing math on our past and forming conclusions he shouldn’t have. “You sound as if you’re not over her.”
“It was years ago.” I looked away, wishing everything was different. Wishing O was mine, and Olive was safe, and I’d never made such a fucking mess of everything.
Justin muttered, “Yeah, but time doesn’t matter when hearts are involved.”
My eyes flickered to the exit again, weighing up the options of running. Olin wasn’t with him. He couldn’t provide me with any comfort knowing she was happy or safe. She was out there. Alone. Somewhere.
My back tensed. “Why did you break up? If you were such good friends, what went wrong?” My voice had way too much bite, but Justin ignored my temper, being gracious with his reply.
“She was hurting. I’m not going to deny that we kissed a few times or that I asked her out for real. I seem to like damsels in distress. It makes me feel good to help them.” He shrugged. “Still does if I’m honest. I’m with a girl right now, Colleen, who I found crying at a bus stop after her twat of an ex broke up with her at the movies and drove off with her handbag. I took her home, gave her a shoulder to cry on, and asked her out the next day. I dunno how it happens. I see someone hurting, and I have to help.”
“You get off on helping?”
He scowled. “It’s not sexual. It just...makes me feel like I have purpose. Like life isn’t all about me.”
I had no reply to that. How could I respond to someone who I’d nursed a teenage hatred for? I couldn’t hate him because of how genuine he was. I couldn’t despise him for taking O away from me when I’d been the one who pushed her into his arms. They were similar. They were both good people. And I was the bad guy all over again.
I wanted to punch him in the jaw. “O was never a damsel in distress, you idiot. If you think that, then you didn’t know her at all.”
Justin blinked. “Yeah, you’re right.” He took another swig, his beer rapidly vanishing. “After we broke up, O threw herself into dance. Became obsessed with it. You know her parents weren’t really in her life, and the moment school finished, she left and joined a troupe in London. I didn’t see her again.”
London?
Had our paths crossed when I’d lived there with my infant daughter? Had we walked the same streets and not even known it? Had I brushed past her and not realised my soul-mate had been right there?
Fuck.
The gnawing, clawing pain of missing Olive tangled with the hot poker of loss from O. I grabbed my untouched beer and shot it down my throat. Alcohol wasn’t welcome in my world. But my world had become unbearable.
The nights were the hardest while I lay unable to sleep in Olive’s bed, smelling her favourite strawberry body wash, hugging a pair of her small pyjamas, wondering if she’d been fed and hugged, showered and tucked into bed.
I needed something to numb that pain. To slam a door on the horrors and grant silence from the nightmares.
Maybe beer could grant that peace.
Maybe that was why alcoholics abandoned their life for the numbing prostration that liquor provided.
I struggled for something to say. Justin kept looking at me far too intently—almost as if I was his next victim in his ‘gotta help someone in need’ crusade.
“Well, I’m glad she followed her dreams.” I pushed away my empty glass, feeling sick to my stomach. I had ransoms to pay. Daughters to save. Ex-girlfriends to forget.
I couldn’t fucking afford to drink.
Justin nodded slowly. “How about you, Clark? Everything okay with you? You don’t look so good.”
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 thr
ough 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.”
The Finished Masterpiece (Master of Trickery Book 3) Page 46