‘You can feel where she is,’ Bane despaired. He burned with healing heat that had nowhere to go. ‘And you can feel her pain.’
‘Not as much as you can, by the looks of it, and only sometimes. Usually when I’m drunk or high. Maybe now I can get drunk without getting so angry. That’s got to be better, right?’
Closing his eyes, Bane could feel her slipping away. Razor-sharp nerve endings laced her skin with fire as she thrashed in savage rejection of the poison being pumped by her deceitful heartbeat. Her lungs screamed in futile effort as oxygen abandoned her the same way he had. Rent by grief, he felt her lassitude creep in like a death shroud, but she kept fighting, so he did too. Using every ounce of strength he had, he pulled against his bonds, rubbing the tape against the rough bark of the tree and scraping off layers of skin at the same time. He embraced the pain as if it could cut through the encroaching numbness that Lainie was battling.
‘Ho! She’s pulling at you too, isn’t she? Why else would we do this to ourselves? Don’t worry, my friend, soon we’ll both be free of her, and by this time tomorrow you’ll be thanking me.’
Gritting his teeth against a fresh wave of nausea, Bane refused to even speak to the sick moron, and threw his feverish appeal to Lainie’s deceitful friend instead.
‘Dallmin, what have you done? Why have you allowed him to hurt her?’ he rasped with furious tears. He was still so dizzy and all he could think of was her pain. It was enough to crush the sky.
‘He is helping me to keep you both away from the cave. I want to go home. He will release you once I have crossed the Boundary and then you can return and wake her.’
As Bane felt his world breathe out her last shuddering breath, realisation hit that Dallmin had been tricked into revealing the truth about Eden. He tried to care, but as blackness took hold again, all he felt was her death.
Chapter 58
It took Tim a few seconds to notice Lainie’s silence because he had three oranges in the air and one of them seemed to be trying to move on a fourth dimensional plane. He snatched it back in the nick of time, which caused him to rush his next toss. Laughing as all three made off in their own directions once more, he turned to his instructor, expecting to see her rolling her eyes at him again. Instead she was leaning over the kitchen sink, vomiting.
‘Hey, I told you it wasn’t normal to eat the whole apple core. But no, you were all “I’ve been doing it all my life, Tim, it feels wasteful not to”. Can I get you some water?’
Wiping her mouth with a shaking hand, she turned to face him. Her face was pasty white and there was panic in her hazel eyes. ‘You were right. I’m so sorry. He’s going to be very, very cranky with us. This isn’t your fault. Make sure you tell him I said this isn’t your—’
Before she could finish her sentence, her legs went from under her and she cracked her head on the edge of the bench with a sickening thump as she fell. Even as he lunged past the kitchen table to get to her, Tim wondered for a split second whether she could possibly be playing some new trick she’d thought up as a game, until he saw the blood flowing from her scalp. No no no no no! Now on his knees, he checked her breathing. It was short, shallow and irregular.
‘Lainie! Can you hear me? Lainie!’ There was no response whatsoever. ‘Noah!’ he roared as he fumbled around for his phone. What had happened? She’d been perfectly fine thirty seconds ago! He’d even managed to get her laughing, then suddenly this? Was it really the apples? He reached up to the bench and picked up the other half of the core she had been crunching on. It smelled weird. ‘Bastard!’ he bellowed, dropping the evil fruit into a bowl. He checked her pulse. It was there, but slow and fluttering.
Noah skidded into the kitchen with Tessa not far behind. He tripped on one of the forgotten oranges on the floor.
‘Jake’s poisoned her,’ Tim explained, wrestling his phone out of his back pocket and trying hard to stay calm. ‘He injected the apple cores with something. We need an ambulance.’
‘Where the hell is Bane?’ Tessa yelled. She threw open the cupboard above the fridge to get out the first-aid kit and tore open a packet of sterile padding.
‘He went to get Dallmin,’ Noah explained. ‘He wasn’t going far, just to the bridge. They should have been back by now. Tim, you need to call him first.’
Tim cradled Lainie’s head in his lap. Her body convulsed sickeningly. ‘Actually, the text mentioned that our friend Dallmin has found where Jake’s been hiding,’ he admitted. ‘That’s why Bane went to meet him himself instead of sending one of us. I guess he didn’t want you to know,’ he said, dialling emergency services. ‘No point trying to ring him. I guarantee his phone will be switched off while he’s doing surveillance. Rotten luck that this happened the one time he let Lainie out of his sight.’ He noticed them exchange panicked glances. ‘You think Jake planned it this way?’
Noah took the wad of cotton from Tess and pressed it against the mess of blood and hair. ‘We need Mick. Tessa, could you please?’
She hovered for a second, as if wanting to ask him something.
‘No, it’s too far. An ambulance would be faster,’ he told her cryptically. She nodded and fled from the room to get her phone. ‘Tim, ring Bane anyway. We need him here now.’
Why did these people have to live so far from town? And how many paramedic units were stationed in Nalong? What if there was some other emergency somewhere? Tim performed relentless CPR on his new friend, trying not to let the questions distract him. Trying not to listen to Noah and Tess fighting in angry choked-off whispers in the hallway. It seemed that Noah couldn’t bring himself to physically force his wife to step away from the door so he could go after Bane. Tim was getting worried too. Bane should have checked his phone by now. He considered letting Tessa take over the CPR so he could go and look for Bane himself, but he just couldn’t. Lainie wasn’t breathing. He had promised Bane he would take care of her and now she wasn’t breathing and so he couldn’t stop breathing for her. Beating her heart for her. Counting. Breathing. As well drilled as he was, it still felt surreal to be going through the movements on a real person. Someone he knew. Someone who had just been juggling oranges and telling him off for forgetting to stand with his feet far enough apart.
When Tessa finally led the two paramedics into the kitchen, Tim pulled back, deferring to them with an appeal born of pure desperation. The male and female officers introduced themselves and wasted no time in taking over, ripping open numerous packets of equipment to apply to her unresponsive body.
‘How long ago did she stop breathing?’ the woman asked.
The only breath she’d been getting for the last twenty-eight minutes had been his. Far too long.
‘I’m not sure,’ he lied, because he was afraid they might give up on her. They asked him a few more brusque questions regarding what had happened, which he answered as clinically as he could. He was trained for this sort of situation. Pay attention. Stay calm. Focus on what needs to be done.
Except that there was nothing else he could do. Very soon after she’d stopped breathing, Lainie’s pulse had dwindled away, but then he thought he’d felt it again, ephemeral, most likely imagined. There was a machine now, and no pulse spiked the monitor at all. Each shock from the defibrillator made Tim’s teeth itch and snap, and the base of his spine tingled.
The paramedics worked on her while he and the other two useless spectators stood by. Noah was muttering under his breath with his fists clenched, looking more and more frustrated by the minute, while Tessa clutched his elbow and stared at him like she was hoping for him to do something. Every now and then she would look up to the ceiling and bite her lower lip. Maybe she was praying.
Staring at Lainie’s chest, Tim silently screamed at it to move. To rise. To fall. Breath go in, breath go out.
It didn’t.
Come on, Lainie!
Somewhere outside a rooster crowed, oblivious
to the fact that it was mid-afternoon and the farm was under a diabolical shadow.
Lainie was still motionless.
The kitchen tap dripped and dripped and dripped and the washing machine started its clunking spin cycle.
No breath lifted her ribs.
Come on. Please. Just move, damn you! Take a breath, Lainie. Cough, twitch, anything. Please live.
Minutes ticked by in torturous slow motion as the paramedics worked their instruments, which beeped and whirred and puffed around Lainie’s inert form, until in blank numb shock Tim realised that they had stopped working and were looking at each other with grim expressions. The afternoon sunlight streamed through the kitchen window, shining off the reflective tape that embellished their navy overalls. The woman, Jenny, looked at her watch and wrote the time on her blue rubber glove.
Then they started packing things away.
‘No. You can’t stop,’ Noah begged. ‘You need to keep her blood moving, please!’
Tim shook his head in stunned denial, his hands tucked under his elbows to stop them shaking while the male paramedic gave the carefully scripted speech he’d been trained to deliver when someone died. His voice sounded defeated, and a bit too smooth, like he was working hard to disguise his pain at having to convey such a sickening message.
Ignoring the man, Noah pushed past and knelt down as if to continue to work on her lifeless body himself. Both ambulance officers tried to pull him away but he shook them off. His fiery eyes flashed with such a potent authority that they paused, uncertain as to how to proceed. Luckily that was when the blessed sound of a police siren began to echo off the hills, and never had Tim been so grateful to hear the sound of a four-wheel-drive come skidding through the open gate a minute later.
Sergeant Loxwood strode into the kitchen as if the whole tragic situation was a personal insult that he was demanding an explanation for. Both Noah and Tess stared at him with looks of total desperation, begging him to do something to help. Calmly he took details from the paramedics, writing them down in his old-fashioned little notebook with his jaw clenched against his obvious grief.
‘I need to speak to the coroner,’ he told them once they had finished with the official procedure. ‘So I’ll call him myself. You have other jobs to attend to. I’ll require some further details to be recorded before the body can be taken in anyway. Thanks, Jen.’ He turned to the other officer who was packing up the gear and glancing at the photos of Nathaniel that were stuck to the fridge. ‘Hamish, I know you’re probably wondering if this has anything to do with the trip you did the other week, but please try not to read too much into the coincidence. That’s my job.’
‘I won’t talk about it to anyone, Mick. You know me.’
The sergeant acknowledged him with a single nod.
They left, looking relieved that the well-respected sergeant had everything under control. The moment the ambulance pulled away, things got a little weird.
‘What do you need me to do?’ the policeman asked Noah, who had resumed CPR the second that the ambos were out of sight.
‘Find him. If he’s still alive he’ll be unconscious. Take Tim with you,’ Tessa commanded. She seemed perfectly comfortable ordering the sergeant around. ‘I’m calling Lily,’ she continued, tying her long hair back in a hasty knot. ‘Somehow I’ll have to tell her what’s happened. I have a feeling we won’t be here when you get back. Just do whatever Bane tells you, if he’s …’ She swallowed. ‘Call me when you find him,’ she said instead as she took the phone into the other room.
The sergeant beckoned to Tim. ‘You heard the lady, Reserve Officer Kolya, we have a fellow officer to rescue. I take it you have at least some idea of where we need to look?’
Rescue? What made them think Bane needed rescuing? ‘Near the bridge in the state park, wherever that is,’ he replied, following the policeman out. ‘What makes her so certain that Bane’s in trouble? He’s pretty cautious, and capable.’
‘The bridge is very close, thankfully,’ Mick said, ignoring the question. ‘I take it Jake Evans has been sighted, then? Are you going to explain to me why no one called me earlier?’ There was barely suppressed fury in his voice.
‘Dallmin sent a text saying he’d found him. Bane promised me he wouldn’t engage the …’ He’d almost said enemy. This was exactly the sort of situation they had been trained for. He had believed Bane when he’d said he was just going to check things out. Out of everyone in their squad, Bane was the most reliably professional and sensible one. But it had been Lainie’s life at stake, and if Jake had set it all up like Tessa had implied … Suddenly he felt very afraid for his friend.
‘He gave me his knife,’ Tim explained to the sergeant. ‘As a promise that he wouldn’t make contact, but he would have undoubtedly done some recon. I would have.’
‘And I would have stopped him if I’d known. Which was why he didn’t call,’ Mick grumbled.
They jumped into the police cruiser and sped off, farther into the farm, the same way Bane had gone. Tim knew the farm pretty well after the last week of patrolling, but he’d been under strict orders not to pass the bush gate into the state park beyond. They did now.
Chapter 59
‘We need to keep her blood flowing, and she needs as much oxygen as we can give her,’ Noah said, concentrating on pumping Lainie’s heart in rhythm. ‘I only need to stop her body from decaying. Across the Boundary people can stop for years and still be revived by the Fruit, because there’s no decay there—not for people, anyway. Here it’s different. Do you happen to know how soon cells begin to break down after death? I should have paid more attention in biology.’
Tessa had her fingers pressed against the wound on Lainie’s scalp, willing the heat to come, yet she knew there was really no point. ‘Cells break down all the time,’ she told him. ‘Even in life. It’s a matter of how many of them are lost, I expect. They didn’t exactly cover this in biology, Noah. I don’t know that this will work.’ Lainie’s skin had turned a pallid, sickening blue.
‘It will work. It has to. I won’t lose her again. She’s my best friend, Tess. I need her.’
It broke her heart to hear the open honesty in his appeal, knowing there was nothing she could do to help. She was built to ease his pain, but this pain was beyond her abilities. And things were about to get even more complicated. For the last few minutes she’d been feeling agitated, and had assumed it was because of Lainie, except it was getting steadily stronger. She watched Noah’s face. He looked twitchy but obviously hadn’t quite triggered to what was happening. He was in danger, and it was getting serious. Logic told her that there had to be a reason Jake was compelled to kill Cherubim. If he didn’t know who Noah was, then now that Lainie was dead Jake’s next move would surely be to try to find Eden somehow. Should she try to stop Noah from going to the cave? She ground her teeth in frustration. It was a futile idea. If he needed to go, she wouldn’t be able to do a thing to prevent him, especially with Lainie out of action.
With a regretful sigh she laid her hand on his elbow. ‘Noah. Lily is on her way. You’re going to have to explain to her what to do and then hope that Bane is alive and can get her to the cave. We can’t take her.’
‘What do you mean? Why not?’
It was heartbreaking to have to say the words that would put him in danger sooner. ‘Because we need to get there faster. Can’t you feel it?’
It only took a second of allowing his attention to wander from Lainie’s lifeless body for the compulsion to snare him like a rope thrown around his neck. His beautiful face flinched as he felt the imminent threat to the Garden, his eyes full of distress as he warred between wanting to help his friend and needing to defend the cave.
‘Keep working with her, honey,’ she soothed. ‘It will still be a few minutes before Lily gets here.’ Somehow, she held in her tears. The most precious creature on the planet had only been home for a ma
tter of hours, and already she was planning to leave him. What if something happened to them out there? Would Lily be left to raise yet another abandoned Cherub child? The thought made her want to scream, but instead she busied herself with cleaning up the remaining first-aid items. Re-fold the arm sling. Check that the lid to the antiseptic wash was on properly. Make a note in her phone to buy some more gauze.
Minutes stretched out painfully as she tried to remain focused. Her whole body was burning with the need to keep Noah safe from the unseen shadow that crept just beyond her conscious awareness. Even her intuition couldn’t suggest a way for her to do it though, so eventually she gave in and allowed herself to touch the bare skin on his arm, to ease the pull.
Noah looked up and voiced the question that had loomed silently between them. ‘What about Nathaniel? Will you stay here?’ he asked as he continued to pump Lainie’s chest. There was a thread of tremulous hope in his voice, but she shook her head, already clear on what she had to do. An unnatural compulsion was driving Jake, possibly driving him towards the hidden cave, and so that was where she was being called to go. Despite the fresh bonds of motherhood that had entranced her so thoroughly for the last few days, something primal in her seemed to know that her tiny fragile son was not under direct threat. Not yet, anyway, and she knew what she had to do to keep it that way.
Making that decision was one of the bravest and hardest things she had ever had to do.
‘He’s asleep, and not likely to want another feed for a couple of hours,’ she told him. ‘Lily will mind him. Hopefully he’ll stay sleeping until Bane can take over Lainie’s care from her.’ A sudden idea gave a shred of hope. ‘I don’t suppose you can make him stay asleep? Like Lainie did with Bane? It would be very useful.’
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