Ridge Creek

by C L Green

  I consider a words for a short while. “We’ll get it delivered. Or perhaps we could buy a ute to carry it in?” Today, the skies the limit, I’m starting my new life and there will no barriers.

  Emma perks up suddenly, her eyes flashing with excitement. “Ooh, yes, lets by a truck. A monster truck or something really cool. Something to make a statement, something kick ass.”

  I roll my eyes at her. “We are not buying a monster truck Ems. I’m supposed to be living under the radar. No big statements.”

  “Haven’t you ever heard the saying ‘hidden in plain sight’? I say go big – the bigger the better, you’ll be so obvious no one will notice you.”

  I start to rub one of my eyes and shake my head at her. “I’m not buying a monster truck Ems. I wouldn’t be able to park it anyway.”

  “Kill joy,” she mumbles unhappily picking at the label on her bottle. “On a brighter note, did you get lucky last night with Mister Hot as Fuck?”

  “Well… no. Quite the opposite, I got a firm knockback. I doubt I’ll be going there again.”

  Emma scrunches her brows again and looks confused. “How weird is that? He looked hot to trot. Every time he looked at you I could have sworn he was the guy dying of thirst and you were the fresh water. What the fuck?”

  At least I’m not the only one who thought he was keen. My newly tuned ‘man-dar’ isn’t that far out of tune.

  “What’s weirder,” she continues, “is Zane knocked me back too. What was with that? Are they fuckin’ gay?”

  Brief visions of Jake and Zane getting some man action cross my mind and I cringe.

  Crap – no way.

  How did we miss that? Surely not?

  “Nah, Jakes married,” I share remembering one of our conversations.

  “He’s what!” Emma snaps out loudly. “Fuck no. What an asshole. I swear he was flirting with you. He can’t do that if he’s married. Asshat, assclown, asswipe…”

  I cut her off. “Settle down Ems, he’s explained he’s trying to divorce her. He’s not happily married.”

  “Mm,” she stops her tirade to look thoughtful again, “maybe so, but have you seen her?”

  Good point. Men can be liars. For all I know she could be waiting at home living the happy wife life and he’s just gadding about doing whatever he likes. Or worse still, he is trying to divorce her but still feels something for her and can’t bring himself to move on. He could be with her right now for all I know.

  Jesus.

  “No I haven’t,” I reply and decide to leave it at that.

  I watch as she purses her lips and nods. I can see her mind working overtime but she too decides enough has been said.

  “Oh well, there’s plenty more treats for us to snack on. Did you get a load of Luke? Or that other guy, Nick? Now he was hawt too. I had no idea the hotness that biker men were hiding beneath their helmets, face scarves and leather jackets. Jesus, it’s like we’ve landed in our personal man garden and we just have to pick the crop.”

  Shaking my head at her again, I realize that she is in her element here. Men a plenty and lots of excitement. I start to roll from the bed, the pounding in my head slightly lessening as the pills start to kick in. “Time to hit the shower, I need you to take me to a bank and help me set an account up. I need a credit card too.”

  “Sure, you shower, I’ll find food. Where do I look?”

  I stand and turn back to face Emma. “That’s another issue that needs correcting. There’s no food here. The guys go out and buy take-away, or order it in for every meal. We are living in a shop Emma, a place of work. The place is not set up for permanent living. I had some decent food early on when I got here, cooked by Jake and Zane’s mum. Since then, crap. When I asked if someone could take me to the supermarket I received blank stares. Biker men don’t do groceries. We need to go grocery shopping and set up a kitchen.”

  Looking appalled Emma mutters, “Christ, right, lets add grocery shopping to the list.”

  *****

  “You just let him sit up there crapping on stuff while you drive around?” I question Emma as we pull away from the kerb out the front of the shop in her gorgeous burgundy, 2008 Maserati Gran Turismo. I am astounded that she is happy to let her parrot have free reign of her leather interior and polished timber trimmings.

  “It’ll clean,” she chuckles as she leans across to give Jambo a chuck under the chin. The crazy bird is sitting front and center in the middle of the dashboard. “He loves it. I think he was a race car driver in his previous life. Check out the way he leans into the corners. It’s just another thing he does that makes me laugh. He’s a hoot.”

  And she’s not wrong. The bird is hilarious. From the moment he’d laid eyes on Emma this morning, he hadn’t shut up. He appeared to be overjoyed that she was alive from the moment we entered the communal room this morning. He had demonstrated this by jabbering in Swahili, singing songs in English, swearing in English and also doing stunts in the air and on the ground. He genuinely seems to love his new female owner and is doing his best to please her and keep her close.

  As soon as he laid eyes on her, he opened his cage and made a beeline to his new girlfriend. Since then he’s stuck to her like glue. Either riding on some part of her anatomy or sitting on an object nearby paying out on whoever is closest with a stream of obscenities. Sometimes his tirades were even directed at inanimate objects. These outbursts were even funnier.

  I am now watching the little guy strutting up and down the dashboard as she drives. The only time he stops his strutting is at intersections where he plants his feet, looks out the windscreen and leans with the turns. Once the car is moving in a straight line again, he resumes his strutting.

  “Where are we headed?” I finally decide to ask as Emma starts slamming through gears in her car and we shoot out of town at well over the speed limit.

  “Desmond,” she replies without taking her eyes from the road. “It’s about an hour away and the closest place I could find with a staffed bank branch on a Saturday.”

  “Do you think it will be busy?” I ask nervously. This is my first trip out since that night and I’m feeling edgy. Even though Emma has assured me multiple times that no one will be looking for me here, I can still feel a ball of fear clamping my stomach tight.

  Perhaps I should have just stayed at the shop – it’s safe.

  “Nah, it’s full of farmers and outbackers, you’ve got nothing to worry about,” Emma replies confidently. “There is no way you are going to run into anyone you know in Desmond.”

  The saying, ‘famous last words’ crosses my mind and I hope to God she is right. Then there’s my other stress factor. “You sure this ID is going to work?”

  “Positive baby, its rock solid. I normally get paid fifty grand for a set of documents as tight as yours,” she mumbles absentmindedly as she starts fiddling with the satellite navigator built into the center console.

  “Fifty grand!” I screech loudly as I swing to face her in my seat. “Did you say fifty grand?”

  “Fifty grand!” Jambo echoes with excitement as he starts bobbing up and down on the dashboard.

  I flick him an annoyed glance, returning my eyes quickly to Emma to see her grinning at her little green partner in crime.

  “Yeah,” she mumbles as she checks the road ahead before returning to fiddling with her navigation system, apparently unaffected by my freak out.

  “You’re telling me you’ve done this sort of ID before and you get paid fifty grand to do it?”

  She can’t be serious. I knew she was a hacker and that she did some other illegal stuff on the side but fifty grand ID’s?

  What the fuck?

  What is it with the people that I hang around with? I appear to be the central pivot point for the people who make appearances on Australia’s Most Wanted.

  “Yeah,” she says again, pressing one last setting on her navigation screen before leaning back into her seat, her body calm and relaxed. It would appear she does
n’t have a worry in the world.

  I stare stupidly at her for a few moments and realize she is not going to elaborate much further without prompting. Calming down slightly, I resume a more normal tone of conversation.

  “Are you joking with me?”

  “Nah,” she replies keeping her eyes on the road.

  And that’s when I spot it. The one tell-tale sign that she’s not as calm as she looks. She’s nibbling on the inside of her bottom lip. Something Emma has done for as long as I have known her. It’s something she does when she’s bothered and is either covering something up, or holding something back.

  “What aren’t you telling me Ems?” I find myself almost whispering, the hair on the back of my neck is starting to lift.

  “A lot,” she mumbles as she continues to chew on her lip.

  “What’s a lot?” I ask, wondering if I really want to know.

  “More than I’ve got time to explain today but suffice to say, I have quite a few computer skills I’ve never discussed with you and I probably need this fresh start just as much as you.”

  Oh my god.

  “Are you a criminal too?” I blurt out, a sick feeling roaring up from my stomach as I suddenly face the harsh reality that not only Tony has been keeping things from me over the past ten years.

  “Sort of,” she mumbles, not taking her eyes off the road and not looking at me. Clearly she senses that this is quickly becoming an issue for me.

  “What the fuck do you mean sort of?” I start yelling again. “Are you going to get me bashed and raped too? Will there be more people out looking for us than just Tony and his goons? Jesus Christ, how’d I miss this? How the fuck did I not know that my boyfriend was a gun running pimp and my best friend was a… What the fuck are you?”

  “I’m an IT specialist, Ari. You know that,” she says softly as she finally swings her eyes to me. And that’s when I stall. All the breath leaves my body as I look at her eyes and see what’s showing there. Remorse.

  She looks truly remorseful that she is only telling me this now.

  “But you do a bit more than hacking for your friend’s and making fake ID’s for schoolkids yeah?”

  I watch her lips twitch slightly as she returns her eyes to the road.

  “I never said I made fake ID’s for schoolkids,” she mumbles.

  “No, but you let me assume you did. Why did you do that?” I ask as my mind flies into overdrive about what she means by an IT specialist.

  “Because how do you explain to your best friend that you’ve made millions doing some dodgy shit with your computer?”

  “Millions!” I’m screeching again.

  “Millions!” Jambo shrieks loudly as he lifts himself up slightly and spreads his wings out. A sure-fire sign that he is getting excited at the conversation. Emma leans over and scratches him on the head to settle him. The last thing we need is him doing crazy aeronautics in the cabin of the car while she is driving.

  “I thought you inherited a trust fund from your parents?”

  “I did,” she confirms as she returns her attention back to the road again. “But that ran out, quickly. I have rather expensive tastes.”

  Which is something I had noticed. Emma sure does know how to spend money. Her car is just one small example of the fact. Money means nothing to her. She spends it and enjoys it, wanting for nothing. I’d just assumed she was spending her trust fund all these years.

  “Are you into gun running and prostitutes as well?” I find the words dribbling from my mouth before I have time to think about whether I want to ask them or not.

  I watch as she starts chewing her lip again. “Not directly… I don’t think... Maybe. It’s not up to me to ask why people need their ID’s or need me to get information from certain places.” She swings her eyes back to me. “Ari, can we please let this go? For now? What I do is not all clean as you might say but I don’t think it’s exactly dirty either. I’m not selling heroine to schoolkids or anything like that. It’s hard to explain and something I had hoped that I would never have to explain to you. Which I doubt I ever would have. Until that fuckwad Giotti did what he did to you. Now everything has changed and we both have a chance to start a clean slate. New lives. New lives where we can be whoever we want to be and live however we want to live. Let’s just do that yeah? I promise I’ll tell you one day, I just need to get it straight in my head first? Yeah?”

  Looking at her sad eyes it suddenly hits me.

  What do I care?

  Why would I care what the hell she does for a living or has done in the past. She’s my best friend. The only person I have right now and the only person I can trust. She’s my lifeline and there is no way that anything she has done in the past could possibly make me love her less. I nod to and give a small smile to let her know I’m letting it go.

  I watch as relief floods her face and she reaches out to grab my hand. I take her hand and squeeze.

  “I’m sorry he did that to you,” she whispers softly.

  “It’s not your fault, you don’t need to apologize for the rat bastard.” I return instantly, squeezing her hand again.

  “I do,” she says softly again. “I should have looked into him and investigated your website better. I didn’t do it because you were my best friend and I’ve always tried to keep you separate from my other stuff. I didn’t take your concerns seriously. I thought it was a small, silly problem. I underestimated what was going on. I was just mucking about and enjoying the doughnut eating stakeouts. It didn’t occur to me that you could be sitting in the middle of something big. I just thought he was a controlling asshole. A fish and chip entrepreneur doing something dodgy with your website. I also thought he was a run-of-the-mill cheating asshole too. How wrong was I? I should have known better. If I’d have checked him out earlier, I’d have known who he was. What he was doing. We could have prepared you to deal with him. I could have got you out of there. I could have done something. I won’t make the same mistake again. No one comes within a kilometer of you unless I have checked them out fully. Which means I have my work cut out for me because now you’ve managed to successfully surround yourself with so many people that I don’t know where to start.” I watch as a look of concern fleets across her face. “Which is another issue. I’m not convinced Jake and Zane’s Harley Shop is as simple as it looks. There’s something else going on there and you need to be ready to either accept what I find out or be ready to move on. Have you thought about the future? About moving on?”

  I let go of her hand and sigh.

  The million dollar question. What to do? Do I continue living in the back of a biker's shop with strangers or do I need to move on and start somewhere else. Buy a house? Get a job? I just don’t know, it’s too early to think about all that. I’ve barely started registering that I’m alive.

  But I am hearing what she is saying about Jake and Zane. I sense it too. I get the distinct feeling the shop is not just a shop and the constant activity is more than just the delivery of Harley memorabilia. But who am I to comment? The person who built and managed a website that sold women and guns? Even doing it unknowingly, I am no longer ‘clean’. I’m as dirty as anyone on the wrong side of the law. Aren’t I? Even setting up my new life with fake identification and new bank accounts is illegal. I’m already breaking the law and I haven’t even started my new life.

  Should I be throwing stones from my glasshouse?

  “I don’t know,” I decide to answer honestly.

  “Fair enough,” she says softly as she puts her hand back on the steering wheel and refocuses on the road. “Let’s deal with the immediate and talk future when we know what cards we have to play with, yeah?”

  I have to agree with that. Especially when I already feel a sense of attachment to them and without even knowing them. They saved me. They’ve been taking care of me, no questions asked. They know my background and haven’t hesitated to look after me and keep me safe. Compared with what Tony did for a living, could they be that bad?<
br />
  “Yeah,” I agree as I file any concerns about what we may find out about Jake and Zane into the back of my mind. Swinging my attention back to her fully I decide to ask, “What does a fifty grand ID package consist of?”

  I watch as a cheeky grin stretches across her face.

  “Under your seat, grab out my laptop. You should probably start familiarizing yourself with the new you.”

  Bending forward I reach under the car seat and search around with my fingers. Locating her laptop I slide it out and onto my lap.

  “Go to the file manager and look up the Arianna Davidson file. It’s full of files and references. I’ve built you a complete life baby. Right through from birth to now. Kindergarten records, school files, previous employment records with fake companies I’ve opened and closed over the years. Previous addresses and even a dead family. Orphaned at eight years old, you’ve been living in Foster Care all your life. Even with this rough start you were a star at school by the way…”

  Holy shit.

  I start scrolling through the files on the screen.

  “Jesus Emma, you’ve even built hospital records. You’ve repeated my appendectomy under my new name. Fucking hell. You even created court order documents to certify my Foster Care? And I have a tax file number? How the fuck did you do that?”

  “Don’t ask… Just understand, I have you covered. They won’t find you. Arianna Davidson exists.”

  “Jesus,” I mutter as I continue scrolling and read the new story of my life.

  *****

  I watch as the perfectly presented woman behind the counter continues tapping away at her computer screen. My new birth certificate and driver’s license fanned out in front of her.

  “And how much will you be opening your account with Ms. Davidson?” She asks politely as she continues tapping away and scribbling down numbers on a writing pad next to her keyboard.

  A good question.

  I don’t have any money on me. I don’t even have a purse. Blinking rapidly at her I find my next panic attack creeping up on me.