by Candice Fox
I stopped somewhere near Byron Bay and bought a couple of sausage rolls at a little roadside service station, stood outside the car looking in at her looking out at me while the pastry cooled. When I offered her the roll she didn’t even sniff it. Just took it into her jaws in two gulps. Gone. Impressive.
Near Burleigh Heads I noticed a flea crawling in the hair on my arm, pinched it and put it out the window. The dog lifted a paw, acquiesced as I reached over and examined her belly. She was crawling with them. Flashes of black between the strands of white. I gave her a rub on the head, reached down and lifted the battered tag from the front of her throat.
“Pig,” I read aloud. The dog’s ears swiveled, mouth drawing closed, ready for my command. I gritted my teeth, tugged the tag. It came right off the tattered old collar.
“Sorry, honey,” I told the dog. “‘Pig’ isn’t gonna work for me.”
I chucked the tag out the window. We rode together in silence.
Near Mackay, a song came on the radio. Celine Dion’s “Think Twice.” I jolted at the sound of the dog’s howling, having forgotten she was there. The dog looked at me. Paused. Lifted her head and howled again, a low, sad, lilting sound perfectly in keeping with the song on the radio.
I drove and watched. The dog sang and sang. And when Dion’s song was over, the animal beside me fell quiet, that pink tongue appearing again, jiggling with the vibrations of the car.
“Is it just that song?” I asked the beast, taking the phone from the center console. I typed into the search bar as I drove. Something by Ronan Keating had begun to play. I cut of it off to play Celine Dion’s “The Power of Love.”
I watched the dog. Nothing. And then, just when I’d turned back to the road, she lifted her chin and began to howl. She sang and I grinned.
“‘Celine’ it is, then,” I said. I fell into long overdue laughter.
* * *
She came in the afternoon, not bothering to announce her intentions in any way, just walking around the side of the house and leaning her bike against the fence like she usually did. I was standing with my shirt off, the humidity such that even the menial task of painting was making me sweat. I’d decided green was best for the goose house. I didn’t want it to stand out too starkly from the rainforest surrounds of my property. The birds were sitting all around me on the grass, beaks tucked into backs or feathery breasts, round, featureless stones. I’d finished the sides and stood dabbing paint onto the front façade of the playhouse when I heard the unmistakable tread of squeaky sneakers on the lawn behind me.
Two weeks. But already some of the bruises and grazes Amanda had come away from her ordeal with were easing, sinking back into her colorful flesh, swallowed by the flowers and portraits and leaning, curving buildings on her skin. If there was one thing Amanda did well, it was heal. She still had two black eyes, but those eyes were smiling, as always. I glanced at her, raised my brush in greeting. She stood and watched my work for a while, squinting in the sun, before Celine raised her head from where she lay curled in a ball among the birds, a camouflaged creature revealing its true form.
“Oh lord!” Amanda grabbed at her chest. “That was a good trick.”
“I think she thinks she’s one of them,” I said. Celine had indeed integrated with the birds, but it hadn’t been smooth sailing. As I’d knelt by the bathtub, pouring warm water from a jug over the stiff-legged dog, I’d heard the indignant slapping of webbed feet on the floorboards behind me. The soapy water was swirling with dead fleas. I’d turned and spied two geese jabbering in their strange language, instinctual confusion at the sound of the water in the bath and the distinct lack of Neil Diamond in the air. The birds had eyed the intruder dog, clicking, tittering. Celine had barked and they’d fluttered away, a frenzy of panicked wings. Over a couple of days, the animals had come to some kind of silent agreement. It became obvious to the birds, I supposed, that Celine was too fat and too awkward to chase them. And to Celine, perhaps, that Bitey Bulger was going to bite no matter what she did, but it wasn’t all that hard.
Amanda had left me alone for the time I’d been back. She’d found out somehow, in her almost supernatural way, that Kelly had asked me to come home. It didn’t take me or Kelly to tell her that. Amanda might have heard it, the anguish in my voice when I called to tell her what had happened to Kevin Driscoll. When I’d told her, Amanda had joined the small, select crew of vastly different characters who knew. To the rest of the world, what happened to Kevin was unclear.
There were clues, of course. Police had found Kevin in the warehouse, slumped on his side, minute by minute cooling as his body adapted to its filthy surroundings. Beside Kevin’s body they’d found a man, someone resembling, but wholly different to, the Dale Bingley who’d existed not long before. Dale had been sitting with his knees drawn up, his arms hanging loosely around them, calm. The gun was gone. In the dust nearby, there were shoeprints, some of them very large, some of them very expensive.
Outside the warehouse, police had found Kevin Driscoll’s car with the driver’s side door open, the cabin light on. No prints. On the passenger seat, a journal and a pen, long scribblings in a heavy hand. A diary.
I’d seen Dale Bingley on the news only the night before, standing with his wife on the steps of a police station. He’d shaved. The shirt he was wearing was immaculate. Rose Bingley was holding his hand. All around them stood important people, people I didn’t recognize. Lawyers. Detectives. Specialists, probably. I didn’t know. He’d made bail.
The man who’d stolen my life was dead. In time, the media would release details of the diary, and that would go some way to exonerating me, at least for people who wouldn’t go so far as to believe that Kevin and I had acted together and that he’d deliberately kept me out of his writings. The police had kept me in Sydney for a week, wanting to talk about Dale, Khalid Farah, Kevin. Why I’d been at a house the police knew Kevin had been at only hours before he had been murdered. Why I’d called his ex-girlfriend, and what we’d spoken about. Whether or not I believed Dale Bingley had set out to murder Kevin, and whether or not I’d been there when he did. I’d brought Sean to the interrogations and enacted my right to silence. There was no case against me. The police couldn’t put me at the scene of the crime. I’d reported my phone stolen and thrown out my shoes, and no witnesses had seen me or Dale driving there that night. The case against Dale also had major problems. There was no gun found at the scene or anywhere near it. Dale wasn’t talking. His lawyer was one of the country’s top QCs. If he got into trouble, there would always be a provocation defense. Temporary insanity. Self-defense. Whatever they liked. I didn’t think the case against Dale would hold up. Or that he would care if it did.
Amanda knew that my wife had offered to give me back something of what I had lost. In the week I’d been in Sydney, I’d seen Lillian again, this time alone with Kelly at a McDonald’s, Jett nowhere to be seen. She’d asked me again to come home. I’d given her my answer.
Knowing all these things, Amanda stood beside me saying nothing, chipping old paint off the cubby beside her with her thumbnail. Maybe she was afraid to ask if I was going back. I didn’t know what fear was like for her, my strange little partner.
“I’m sorry about Sweeney,” I said. Amanda turned toward me too fast, betraying the terror I knew was there. I dipped the brush in the paint. “I know you liked her.”
“I did like her.” Amanda nodded. I saw her glance at my bare ring finger, quick as a flash. She looked away again. Cool and distant, or trying to be.
“They’ll be angry at us,” I said. “The Crimson Lake cops.”
“Mmm,” Amanda agreed.
“On the next case, we’ll have to keep our heads down,” I said.
I felt Amanda watching me. Tried not to smile. In time, the stiff, upright strip of color that she was in the corner of my vision seemed to slouch. She was leaning against the cubby, smiling, looking at the animals on the grass, feathers and fur gleaming in the dying sun.
What Kevin had done had changed me, too. I wasn’t the same man. And to think that Kelly and I could go back, two completely different people trying to love each other in the same way we always had was a decision that was destined to fail. I didn’t want to have to leave that house again, packing my bags, saying goodbye to my daughter, starting over with that awful loss and loneliness newly heavy in my chest.
I belonged here. A different man with a different life. Displaced, but defiant, resolved to grow. I would work it all out eventually; how I could still be in Lillian’s life the way I needed to be. How I could form a new relationship with Kelly, if not as her husband, as her friend. How I could accept never being free of my accusation. I’d just work on it, one bit at a time. I wasn’t alone. There were people in my new life who would help me.
“The dog,” Amanda said, drawing me away from my thoughts. “What’s her name?”
I put down my brush, slipped my phone from my back pocket. I was already laughing as I brought up the music player.
“Watch this,” I said. “You’re gonna love this.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As always, in acknowledging the people who helped me reach this point in my writerly life, I must mention the creative writing teachers in my past who armed me with the necessary tools of my trade. Those wonderful scholars were James Forsyth, Dr. Gary Crew, Dr. Ross Watkins, Dr. Roslyn Petelin, Dr. Kim Wilkins, Dr. Camilla Nelson, and Dr. Christine De Matos and their colleagues. Without you all, I would never have become what I am.
I will forever be indebted to the founding members of Team Fox, those sassy ladies Gaby Naher, Bev Cousins, Nikki Christer, Jessica Malpass, and Kathryn Knight. Thank you for listening to me, believing in me, and putting up with me. I admire you all more than you will ever know.
To those other wonderful publishing people all across the world who have joined the team, I owe you just as much. Some of you include Lisa Gallagher, Lou Ryan, Jerry Kalajian, Kristin Sevick, Linda Quinton, Michaela Hamilton, Thomas Wortche, Susan Sandon, Selina Walker, and the rest of you know who you are.
Thank you to my fellow author buddies Adrian McKinty and James Patterson for always being ready to lend an ear.
All my love and thanks to my readers all over the world, who never leave me feeling lonely or unappreciated. I have treasured every review, letter, and comment, and it has been so wonderful meeting some of you in real life.
And as always, to my wonderful Tim. Thank you for being there whenever I needed you, word by word and page by page. You are a true delight in my life.
FORGE BOOKS BY CANDICE FOX
Crimson Lake
Redemption Point
WITH JAMES PATTERSON
Never Never
Fifty Fifty
Black & Blue
(BookShots novella)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CANDICE FOX is an award-winning author and cowriter, with James Patterson, of the #1 New York Times bestseller Never Never (and its Bookshots prequel, Black & Blue) and is currently working with him on the sequel. She lives in Sydney. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Begin Reading
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Forge Books by Candice Fox
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
REDEMPTION POINT
Copyright © 2018 by Candice Fox
All rights reserved.
Cover photography by Deposit Photos
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Forge® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-9851-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-7653-9853-6 (ebook)
eISBN 9780765398536
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].
Previously published by Bantam Australia in trade paperback in January 2018
First U.S. Edition: March 2019