She was nearing the top of the hill. Her legs were burning from the bursts of uphill running and she was out of breath. The land ahead plateaued towards the trees she knew obscured the house. She walked, now, across to the edge of them. Still listening for sounds that never came. She reached the trees and through them saw a dim glow of electric light.
She stopped. But there were no voices, no flickers of moving shadow through the dark trunks. Still, she waited. She wasn’t going to charge forward in what could easily be a lull, a moment between changing guards.
Seconds passed, then minutes. Still, no sound outside the natural.
Maggie slipped forward through the dark. The trees parted ahead. She stopped intermittently as the house became clearer. It was a hut, really, low and squat, a dark green with a corrugated-iron roof. There was only one window that Maggie could see, situated above a pile of chopped firewood in overgrown grass. Without the light, it could have been an abandoned hunters’ cabin.
Metres from the edge of the trees, Maggie listened again, watching her surrounds. Still, no sound or movement. She knew the road was on the other side of the hut from her, but it stood to reason that the bikies would at least have somebody watching the rear, just in case. But there was no sign of life outside the house.
Closer again. She stopped in the last bit of shadow coverage given by the trees. She could see the house clearly now, the scratched paint, the cracked window. She took a risk and closed her eyes, focusing only on sound. By now she would have expected to hear a low rumble of voices from inside, or else the shuffling of feet. Those walls couldn’t be thick. But still, nothing.
It was around nine, now. An hour before Cooper’s deadline. The lights being on indicated that somebody was here. Unless the Scorpions had caught wind of Cooper’s death and killed Aaron already. The thought turned Maggie’s stomach.
She lifted the gun. Moved forward in a crouch, into the open. Looked left then right. The trees were still. There was no shape of a watching bikie.
She darted forward. Tensed, ready for gunfire. None came. She was at the chopped wood. She turned and looked across the grass behind her, back to the trees. Swept it all with the gun. Still silence.
She needed to look inside. She could be quick, could glance through the window and be down again before anyone saw. Only the worst of luck would lead to somebody noticing, although Maggie knew not to count out the worst of luck.
But she had been expecting to come across at least a few guards out here. Without knowing what waited inside, she couldn’t proceed. She could throw a rock, but while that might draw the bikies into the open, it could also have the opposite effect, leading them to hunker down, now on guard and ready for an attack. Catching them unawares, however doing so played out, was likely her only advantage.
She rose, still listening. Her head was now just below the window. She gave herself one last moment, then stood, looked and dropped.
The room was empty. She had glimpsed bottles, moth-eaten furniture, ashtrays – but no people.
What the fuck?
Had Dean given her false addresses? Surely not; the BD/Bonnie Doon link was far too clear. But if Aaron wasn’t here, then where the fuck was he?
She went to turn, and as she did something closed around her throat.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
It was hard and biting, cutting off any air. The gun was gone from her hand. Maggie didn’t even have time to gasp as whoever it was yanked her hard backwards and onto the ground. Her vision blurred and she grabbed at what she now realised was thick metal wire, but then her wrists were tugged together by the burn of rope. Her fingers still scrabbled uselessly at the noose but then with an awful constricting pain in her throat, she was moving, dragged by the wire around her neck across the hard ground. Grass and twigs scratched her face but it didn’t matter, it was nothing compared to her throat closing, to the unrelenting tightness of the noose.
Lights, harsh and sourceless. The ground below her now flat. Dragged through bottles now. She was inside.
Then she was still. She managed to get her fingers under the wire and pull it slightly loose. It was still eye-watering, still too tight, but she could breathe.
She saw now the shape of her attacker, dressed in black and moving around her. He had been dragging her by a long stretch of wire that ended in the noose around her neck. The other end he was now binding to an old-fashioned wall-mounted heater. Maggie tried to stand. He kicked her in the stomach and she was down again. She felt the pipe tugged from her belt and heard it clatter on the floor metres away.
She blinked, trying to clear her vision. He had run to the door and slammed it shut. Items became solid and formed. Bottles. A table in front of the old couch. Lying on it a needle, spoon, lighter, ashtray.
Maggie looked up at him. Half his face was covered by a bandanna, the rest obscured by shoulder-length hair. He wore a leather jacket that, as he paced, she saw had the Scorpion insignia on the back. He was tall and lanky; something in his movements suggested youth.
He lingered near the door, muttered something behind the bandanna, then ran back to the table, picked up the gun and pointed it at Maggie.
‘Where is Harrison Cooper?’ He was struggling to hide the unsteadiness in his voice.
Maggie managed to sit upright. She looked at him. His blue eyes were wide. Terrified.
‘Aaron,’ she said.
She hadn’t phrased it as a question, but the sudden rigidity to his stance answered it for her. He seemed uncertain as to how he should proceed. He tugged down the bandana.
He was unmistakably the young man from Cooper’s photos, but his features were pinched and hollow. He had lost weight; his skin was flaky and his lips were chapped. His cut was too big for him.
Maggie tugged at the noose again. Aaron raised the gun but Maggie just looked at him until he lowered it.
‘I need to breathe if I’m going to speak,’ she said.
‘Where is Harrison Cooper?’ he repeated.
‘Dead.’
A stricken look crossed Aaron’s face. He tried to speak but couldn’t. He lifted the gun again without looking sure of why. Then, shaking, he turned away.
‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’ With a scream, he slammed the gun into the wall.
Maggie’s thoughts and feelings were grappling with each other as she tried to sift through not only the situation but the rising ice and fire in her gut, the mess of scalding emotion that built with every second she looked at Aaron Cooper.
The specifics eluded her but the truth was clear. The Scorpions had never kidnapped Aaron. Aaron was one of them. And Harrison Cooper, desperate to save his son, had charged blindly to his own death without ever realising that Aaron was part of the con.
Aaron, breathing heavily, was leaning against the wall. He was shaking badly. Whether because his plan had blown up in his face or because his father was dead, Maggie didn’t know. And it didn’t matter. She was stuck here with somebody clearly unstable, somebody who was not thinking straight and being far, far too cavalier with that gun. Her eyes swept over the room, looking for something within reach, something she could use as a weapon, something—
The young man spun to face Maggie, the gun up again. ‘You,’ he said. There were tears in his eyes. ‘You killed him.’
Maggie shook her head. ‘One of yours did that. Nipper.’
‘Fucker,’ Aaron’s voice was high and pinched.
‘What, you’re angry?’ Maggie could hear the note of fierce amusement in her voice. ‘Even though your bullshit led him there?’
‘His own bullshit led him there,’ Aaron spat. ‘I just . . . I . . .’
‘What?’ Maggie said. ‘Faked your own kidnapping to lure him here? For what?’
The empty room. The lack of guards. The terror on Aaron’s face.
‘Rook doesn’t know about this,’ Maggie said.
Aaron didn’t reply.
Maggie’s voice was low, dangerous. She was keeping the fire at
bay, but barely. ‘What the fuck is this, Aaron?’
Realisation seemed to cut through whatever was going on in Aaron’s head. He pointed the gun at her face. ‘The hard drive. Where is it?’
‘I don’t have it,’ Maggie said. ‘Neither did Harrison.’
Aaron’s face crumpled. He crossed to the couch and collapsed onto it, dropping the gun on the table as he put his head in his hands.
Pieces were falling into place but not fast enough. Maggie was trying to keep a clear head, to focus and connect the dots, to work out just what the fuck she had landed in the middle of, but with every second the fire built.
‘Why don’t you explain what you were going to do if your father did turn up?’ Maggie asked.
‘Explain yourself. Who the fuck are you?’
Maggie just looked at him.
A glimmer of clarity in his eyes. ‘You’re her. Eric’s kid. Maggie.’
Maggie said nothing.
‘So you should get it,’ Aaron said. ‘Byrne told us how my – how Harrison brought you back to Melbourne for the hard drive. Even though he knew you’d be arrested.’
‘Because he thought you were in danger.’
Aaron’s laugh was wild. ‘What, you’re fucking defending him? He would have sold you out in a second—’
‘For his son!’
Aaron stopped, staring at Maggie.
Maggie looked away, trembling. ‘For you. You know how much I would have killed for that? For a parent who loved me enough to put everything on the line for me? But instead you, you took advantage. Tried to lure him here, to what? Impress your cool bikie friends? Jesus Christ. You snivelling piece of shit. You know why I came here? To help you. Because it was the last thing your father said to me. Help him. But this . . . you . . .’ Maggie didn’t have the words. The scope of the betrayal, the scorching loathing she felt just looking at Aaron’s dumbfounded expression, the fact that she could have just left with the hard drive if she hadn’t been stupid enough to try to do the right thing, stupid enough to stumble into the exact same trap that had killed Cooper.
Aaron had fallen silent. Even the shaking and the tears had stopped. He looked at the bottle in his hand, as if considering something. He drank, then stood.
‘He wasn’t what you think he was,’ Aaron said.
‘You have no idea what I think he was.’
Aaron shrugged. ‘Sure I do. The hero cop. The good guy. And he hung that over my head my whole childhood. Any time I got in trouble, any time I acted out. Oh man, the disappointment.’ His laugh was bitter. ‘Because Harrison Cooper would never behave that way. And oh the shame that his fuck-up son brought on him. You know, when I was eighteen he let me spend a night in a lock-up because I was caught with some weed? No, not only that. He told them to lock me up. With the drunks and the junkies and the rest. The cops were gonna let me go with a warning, but Cooper told them to make sure it was on my record. Said it would teach me.’
Maggie glanced at the needle.
‘That wasn’t the only time either,’ Aaron said. ‘I’d get into trouble, try to keep my dad out of it, then some well-meaning cop would think to call him and Harrison, in his infinite wisdom, would always advocate for the harshest possible punishment. That would beat it out of me, right?’
‘What a shame you couldn’t stop getting in trouble,’ Maggie said flatly.
Aaron shook his head. ‘You have no idea. You don’t know anything about me. I might have acted like a dickhead, but that was only ever because of him. My whole life he told me what to do, who to be. What subjects to do at school, what career I should be pursuing, and if I deviated from that for even a second . . .’ He exhaled. ‘First came the guilt. I haven’t spent my life upholding the law for you to throw it back in my face. And whenever he could make it worse, make me suffer, believe me he took that chance and then some.’ He leaned against the wall, eyes unfocused and distant. ‘You know, for a long time, I thought that was what parenthood was. That being a father was just this uncompromising, fucking drill-sergeant way of approaching things. But none of my friends’ dads were like that. And eventually I realised I wasn’t his fucking son, I was a project. Something to be fixed and shaped in his image. God forbid I wanted to be anything else.’
He drank.
‘I owed money,’ he said. ‘Rook bought my debt. But he didn’t hang it over my head. He told me he got it. Knew my old man, knew what he was like. He understood.’ A flickering smile. ‘I’d never ever seen anything like that before. That was a father. You know he said no when I asked if I could join the Scorpions? “Too dangerous.” He actually cared. But I convinced him.’ His eyes were alight with fervour. ‘I showed him I deserved my patch.’
Nipper’s words rang in Maggie’s ears. That fucking prick who joined up this year, got his patch straight away.
Jesus, Rook was clever. He had lured in Aaron the same way he lured in his father. Even rewarded him immediately with something the rest of the bikies had to work for. Convinced Aaron he was a special case, in the process securing the eternal loyalty of a wayward cop’s son.
Aaron sat again. Now he had started he wasn’t going to stop. He’d never had the chance to tell his story fully, all his childish resentments and false victories. And Maggie, bound here, was the perfect audience for his cavalcade of grievances.
‘Try to imagine,’ Aaron said. ‘How I felt when I found out that after everything he had told me, Harrison Cooper was in the pocket of the bikie gang. That he fabricated evidence for them. Covered things up. Took their money and kept his mouth shut. The fucking hypocrisy. How dare he tell me how to live my life. How dare he punish me for dumb shit that paled in comparison to what he had done? No. No. Fuck that and fuck him. He was a criminal, and maybe it’s time people knew.’
‘You were going to frame him,’ Maggie said. ‘For the killings.’
Aaron nodded. ‘I mean, it seems far-fetched, right? The serial-killer cop. But fuck, Harrison didn’t do himself any favours. He tampered with evidence, sent your father on a wild goose chase, even brought you back to Melbourne to try to get the hard drive before the cops did. Rook wants to destroy the drive and leave it at that, but it’ll never be enough. I was going to give him someone to blame.’
‘What now?’ Maggie said. ‘You’ll give him me instead?’
A moment of silence. Aaron leaned back, watching Maggie. His eyes weren’t unfocused anymore. He went to speak, then stopped. He looked towards the door, then down at the gun. His mouth twitched in the beginnings of a smile. He nodded, apparently in response to some internal suggestion.
‘Yeah,’ he whispered. ‘Yeah. That could work.’
‘What could?’ Maggie said.
Aaron flinched, as if he’d forgotten she was there. But his smile was growing, turning exhilarated with some wild new possibility. ‘The plan. Actually, you’re the perfect missing piece.’ He shifted down from the couch, so that he was sitting across from her. ‘Think about it. Your father finds evidence on this missing killer, tells Harrison, then goes down the stairs. The case gets reopened and Harrison brings you back to help him. What if the truth was fudged a bit? What if, for example, he brought you down here at gunpoint? Made you try to get the keys from that lawyer, but you escaped? You could testify. Tell the cops all of that. Get yourself off the hook and pin the lot on Harrison. We plant a couple of incriminating things to back up our story; the police get their culprit and they drop the investigation into the Scorpions and the hard drive, end of. Harrison was the murderer Eric was trying to find. Which is why Harrison killed him. He was responsible for all of this.’ There was something chilling about the hopeful, almost innocent expression on Aaron’s face. ‘Think about it, Maggie. It makes perfect sense, right? A few white lies and you don’t have to run anymore. You get a normal life.’
She wanted to tell him to get fucked, to explode and give this petulant little shit what he deserved. But.
Cooper was dead. He would never know. It wouldn’t really matter, in th
e end. She could take this chance now to side with the Scorpions and her time as a fugitive could be over. They didn’t even need to know she had the hard drive. She could take off and find her mother. Even the scrap with the police in the library could be explained away as self-defence driven by fear. She could claim to Dean she had lost the hard drive, make up some story that implicated somebody else outside the Scorpions. And with their help, bring this all to an end that worked out for everyone. No more bloodshed.
She closed her eyes. Tried to imagine it. Tried to imagine a world without that constant, needling fear of her past finally catching up with her. A future where her past belonged to somebody else, somebody no longer here to claim otherwise.
Help him. Please . . .
Cooper’s last words. And she would be helping Aaron, after a fashion. She would be diverting attention away from the Scorpions and, in turn, Aaron. Cooper had been willing to die for his son; was the posthumous destruction of his reputation really any worse? And in the end, didn’t he owe her? For the blind eyes he turned, the ignorance of the kind of man Eric was, his own betrayal in bringing her back to Melbourne.
Even if she didn’t take the offer, she could play along. Tell Aaron she would, and use that to her advantage. The lucid part of her brain was screaming that possibility at her, telling her to play the part and escape.
But.
Maggie looked at Aaron, at the expectant expression on his face. ‘Once you lured Cooper here, then what? You’d catch him the way you did me, and then?’
Aaron said nothing.
‘You’d kill him,’ Maggie said. ‘Your own father.’
Aaron just watched her.
Something in Maggie’s chest tightened. ‘That’s different.’
‘How?’ Aaron asked.
Maggie didn’t reply. She was thinking of Cooper’s face, at the end. Of his desperate, painful desire to help his son. Of the love that was evident even through the pain, the love that stung so badly because Maggie had wanted it so much for so long. And Aaron, who had had it all along – and had done this with it.
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