by Jaye Ford
Inside, Hayden was sprawled on the sofa, the telly on again, a glazed look on his face. He didn’t move as she grabbed her key ring from beside the TV. She stood at the front door, hit the auto lock, watching the rear lights flash and remembering Detective Duncan’s question about Max having his car keys with him.
‘Did you go out to the car this afternoon?’ she asked Hayden.
He didn’t bother to peel his gaze from the screen. ‘No.’
‘The driver’s door wasn’t closed properly and the automatic light had been turned off.’
‘I said no.’
She walked quickly through the house, locked the back door, pulled the roller blinds down. Checked the windows in the study and the bathroom and Hayden’s room. Went to her bedroom, shut the door, pulled the blind, picked up the phone from the backpack that she’d left charging by the bed and dialled. It was late, after ten now, but she’d called at worse times.
‘Evan Delaney.’ The voice was deep, gruff and slightly irritated.
‘It’s Katrina Hendelsen.’
There were seconds of silence. Maybe he was gathering his thoughts, maybe he getting out of bed, maybe he was clenching his teeth in dread. Whatever the reason for his pause, there was pleasure in his tone when he finally spoke. ‘Katrina Hendelsen. That’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time. I’d ask how you are but it’s late so I figure we’ll get to that. Where are you?’
‘Haven Bay.’
‘It’s, what, coming up to six years now?’
‘Five.’
‘Good for you. How’s Joanne? Still cranky?’
She smiled, despite the question that was bitter in her mouth. ‘Of course, she doesn’t know any other way. She’s up north. We haven’t spoken in a while.’ She wanted to get to the point but couldn’t bring herself to start or to break the fond familiarity of the moment, feeling calmer just for speaking to someone who knew all her secrets.
Either he sensed her reluctance or he wasn’t ready yet to hear the reason for her call. ‘Still running?’ he asked.
‘Every day. You?’
‘Only five or ten k now. I’m getting old, you know. You working?’
‘At a cafe. And I paint.’
‘Houses or pictures?’
‘Pictures. Huge ones. People actually pay money for them.’
There was a quiet chuckle. ‘You finally graduated from those dinky little notebooks, huh? I’ve still got one here, you know. Have you got a fella?’
She paused, closed her eyes. ‘Yes.’
‘You better tell me, Kat.’
‘Where’s my father?’
PART TWO: DARKNESS
19
Max gasped. Shuddered as consciousness arrived. And the pain hit like a torpedo. Searing, howling, shoot-me-and-get-it-over-with pain.
A cry pitched from his throat and the hollow echo that ricocheted back made panic buck inside him. Eyes bursting open, he blinked fast, hard. It didn’t help. There was nothing there. Just black. Dense, suffocating black.
What the fuck? What the fuck? When had the roof come down? He hadn’t heard it. He should have heard it. Last time . . . rumbling, cracking, thudding as it started to drop.
‘Dallas?’
Raising his voice hurt. He was wrapped in hurt. So much of it he couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Maybe he’d been crushed. Christ. Not that. Not again.
‘Dallas!’
He tried to listen for him, for a sign it was about to fall on top of him. All he heard was the hiss of his own breath, rising dread turning it fast and uneven.
‘Dallas!’
He twisted a foot, then the other. Both clear. So were his legs.
How long had he been out? How much air was left? Did he need oxygen?
He snapped an elbow out to grab for the self-rescuer at his belt and toppled sideways, the movement firing sharp, hot missiles. Ribs, neck, head. Something really wrong up there. He could feel the thickness of swelling on his face and his nose was throbbing. No air moving through it. Broken for sure.
Trying more gently for the breathing gear, he stretched out his fingers, felt upwards and sideways and . . . No mask. No belt. Where the . . .?
And he was out. Gone. Consciousness snapped off like a light switch.
It came back, slowly, a tide coming in. Then it was gone again, flip of a switch.
In like a tide, out like a light. Over and over. And over.
A pattern to it, he told himself in brief seconds of acuity. Hiss of breath first. Sharp pain in his hip next. A starburst pounding in his skull. Then a gasp of panic that made him want to get up and run, made him fling an arm, scrabble for . . .
Out like a light.
Next time, maybe it was ten more times, he didn’t know, but he heard the hiss of breath. Don’t move, he ordered himself, braced for the panic, gritted his teeth when it arrived, concentrated on the air he was pulling in and out of his lungs instead of the terror of being trapped, lost.
Breathe, Max.
Good.
Last time, Dallas had . . .
Last time . . .
Oh Christ, last time.
His agonised cry rebounded into the blackness. Pain, but not from injury. At least not a new one. And not one that could be pinned or stitched and worked off in rehab. Memory hurt like hell.
Dallas wasn’t here. He was gone, crushed under rock years ago.
You were never going back, Max. What the fuck are you doing in a coalmine?
*
‘I retired eighteen months ago,’ Evan Delaney told Rennie. ‘I can’t get access to the files at this time of night but I’ll make some calls in the morning. First thing, okay, Kat?’
She sat on the edge of the bed, the phone clamped to her ear, an arm wrapped tightly across her waist. She could make calls, too, but retired or not, he’d get the answers faster. ‘How long will it take?’
‘Depends. If he’s still in maximum security at Goulburn, it’ll be ten minutes. If he was released, it could take a while to find him. I’ll probably have to track down a parole officer.’
Rennie had told Evan everything. The facts first, in chronological order, starting with the kid at the roundabout, finishing with the search of the car. Then she listed everything she’d discovered today: Max’s other disappearances, the missing money, the women, the password protection on Max’s computer files. Then she padded it out with her own fears, relieved to tell them to someone who didn’t need an explanation, who wouldn’t tell her not to be negative, who understood where she’d come from, what she’d done to survive it and the facts on the man behind it.
Evan had assumed, like Rennie, that Anthony Hendelsen was in prison, eleven years into his fifteen-year sentence for the attempted murder of his two daughters. He didn’t know, though. There were processes for informing victims of a prisoner’s release and Rennie and Jo had an arrangement, beyond Evan, to make sure they were notified. Release was unthinkable but Evan was out of the loop and it wasn’t inconceivable that Anthony was on the street and had found them before news of his freedom had.
Age was a consideration for early parole and her father was sixty-three now. Not your average sixty-three, Rennie guessed. He’d been wiry and strong and tenacious his whole life, he’d run and sparred and lifted weights to stay that way – more than a decade with access to a prison gym wasn’t going to reverse that.
‘I always hoped he’d piss someone off and get knifed or he’d just rot and die in there. Christ, he could be walking the streets,’ Rennie said.
Evan sounded the same as he always had – calm, solid, trustworthy. ‘Don’t pull the plug yet. It might not be what you think.’
‘“Might” doesn’t cut it right now.’
‘Give me your phone numbers and just sit tight, Kat.’
She gave him both
mobile numbers, the landline and two email addresses. ‘And it’s Renée Carter now. Friends call me Rennie.’
‘Nice name. It suits you.’
‘Thanks. I like it.’
She hung up, clenched her hands in her hair and felt panic take flight inside her like a large bird spreading its wings. Her father was a violent, disturbed, terrifying man. If he was out, there was every chance Max was bleeding, injured, maybe dead already. The thought made her want to cry out in rage and fear but it was something else that crushed the air from her lungs.
She didn’t want to go back. She always knew she’d have to but, now it was here, she wasn’t ready – for the dread, the running, the disconnection, the loneliness – and already it was tugging at her like a rip in the surf.
Her breath scraped and rasped in the silence of the bedroom. She clung to the edge of the bed, head bowed, teeth tight, inner voices screeching and berating as she fought the urge to howl out loud – for Max, for herself, for everything she’d found and loved and was suddenly too fragile to survive.
Get your backpack. We’re leaving.
She’d heard the words countless times from her mother. Rennie had said them herself. Joanne would say them to her now. Even the possibility that their father was free was reason enough to hit the road.
She shoved the hair from her face, stood and dutifully went for the backpack. It was a lightweight, heavy-duty, black pack with padded straps, reinforced stitching, pockets and zips. Not the kind student travellers bought to lug around the world; that would mark her out as a tourist or visitor. It was small for blending in and moving fast – and she could live out of it if she had to. This afternoon, when she figured the memories were all that would come back, it’d been a comfort. Now the sight and the weight of it made her want to flinch. She knew what was inside and didn’t want its lethal coldness in her hands again, didn’t want to be the person who was capable of firing it.
She carried it from the wardrobe but didn’t lay it on the bed like she’d planned. Just stood for a moment in the centre of the room. Max’s room, Max’s house. Her home. And thought about the last time she’d hauled it out in a hurry.
When she’d thrown it in her car and almost left him.
They’d argued. She couldn’t remember why, just that there’d been yelling. He’d thrown a newspaper across the room, stomped out the back and it had rattled her: her response, not his. She’d felt a familiar heat rise, remembered what was in her DNA and did what she’d always done when it didn’t feel right – grabbed the backpack and headed out the door.
Then Max was at the car, breathless, trying to jump into the passenger seat as she headed down the driveway. She slammed on the brakes, not wanting to run him over, surprised he’d made it around the house so fast with his bad hip.
‘What are you doing?’ she said.
‘Going with you.’
‘You don’t know where I’m going.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ He clipped his seatbelt in and looked at her. ‘So where are we going?’
In the silence of her reply, his eyes did a quick tour of the car, finding the backpack on the rear seat. It was the one and only bag she’d brought when she’d moved in and he realised its significance. ‘You’re leaving?’
‘I always said I would.’
‘Because we had an argument?’
‘I won’t argue.’
He didn’t speak for a moment, as though her words were moving in slow motion across the space between them and he was waiting for them to arrive and sink in and make sense. ‘Okay,’ he finally said. ‘Then we better get going.’
‘What?’
‘You said you were leaving – you didn’t say I couldn’t come. If we have to leave to sort this out, then let’s get started.’
‘There’s nothing to be sorted.’
‘Then come back inside.’
‘No, Max, I’m going. I never lied about that.’
‘Then explain it to me again. I get that you’ve never lived in one place for long, that someday you’ll need to move on. I get that, I do. But why leave when it’s good? Okay, we had a disagreement but it was three minutes of frustration in a year and a half of quality stuff. Superior, A-1 relationship stuff, Rennie. I mean, if you’re unhappy or bored, fine, go. It makes sense, I wouldn’t want you to stay. But we’re good together. Why would you leave that?’
‘I don’t want to . . . fight.’
‘It’s not a prerequisite.’
She’d smiled a little then. He could make her do that.
‘Look,’ he reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, ‘I don’t know what happened to you before we met and I’m not going to ask what you don’t want to share. It was bad, I know that much, and I figure this . . .’ he waved a hand around, taking in the pack in the back, ‘has got something to do with that. I’m the last person to tell you what to do. I’ve fucked up just about everything that can be fucked up. I just know that the past doesn’t have the right to stop you from enjoying what you have now.’
The memory of Max’s words, his actions that day, made Rennie flick her eyes around the bedroom. ‘It’s not the bad old days. Not yet,’ she said out loud to herself. ‘I’m not Katrina Hendelsen. Not yet.’
20
Rennie propped the backpack against the wall by the bedroom door, then lifted her head at the noise coming from the living room. Tyres screeched and something crashed and exploded somewhere in Hollywood. You are Renée Carter tonight, she told herself. Responsible for Max’s son.
She brushed her teeth and washed her face then went to the living room. ‘It’s late. I’m going to try to get some sleep,’ she told Hayden. ‘You should think about it, too.’
‘I’m not going to bed,’ he said as though she was threatening to make him.
‘Okay. Can you leave the lamp on in the bay window when you do? In case Max comes home.’
His eyes flicked to the lamp and back to her, his tone softer when he answered. ‘Yeah.’
It encouraged her to probe a little. ‘Were you looking for him this afternoon?’
He shrugged, his eyes dropping from hers.
‘Where did you go?’
‘Around the bay. This fishing spot we go to sometimes.’
‘Where?’
He looked up, his focus not quite making it to her face, as though he was prepared to have the conversation, not ready to admit it was with her. ‘On the south side of the point. I didn’t think anyone else would look there.’
‘Did you find anything?’
He shook his head. ‘I searched all around the rocks. I kept thinking his watch might’ve fallen off. You know how it’s got that dodgy clasp?’
‘Yeah, I looked for it, too. Is that why you went to the gun emplacements?’
‘I didn’t really think he’d be there. It’s just that, well, it’s right above the fishing spot and on the way back I figured . . .’ The explanation trailed off to another shrug.
She imagined him up there doing the same thing she’d done – searching unlikely places because she’d already searched the likely ones. ‘Did you get to all five of them?’
‘Yeah.’
Then maybe he got mad and upset and felt sorry for himself, like she had out in the studio. If she was Trish or Naomi, she might offer some words of wisdom, maybe a bit of sympathy, but she was Rennie and Katrina and all she had was her own brand of empathy. ‘We’ll keep looking tomorrow.’
His eyes found hers then, something young and needy in them.
‘Good thinking today,’ she added, cringing at the echo of her mother’s no-nonsense tone. Oh, that’d make him feel a whole lot better.
*
Max felt like he’d been crumpled on the gritty, unyielding surface for hours.
It could have been days.
Or minutes.
He blinked to be sure his lids were open. Pitch didn’t describe the blackness. It was a substance in itself, filling his nose and mouth. One he’d lived in fear of for six and a half years. Twenty-two hours he’d spent in dark like this, pinned by rock, Dallas dying slowly at his side with nothing but Max’s fingers to hold onto. Then he’d just laid there, waiting – for rescue or death.
He didn’t know where he was now or how he got here or whether there was anyone who knew he’d gone. All he knew was that it was a different day and a different place and he wasn’t dead yet.
Moving gingerly, he lifted fingers, ran them across his pockets, his wrist. No phone, no watch, nothing to shed light. He lowered them to the ground, felt the floor underneath him. Small stones, loose earth, not coarse dirt but soft like sand – and dry. He raised his other hand, met a hard, flat surface centimetres from his hip, going straight up. Rough. Not regular enough for concrete. Cut but not hacked up. Intact, not crumbly. Solid and immovable and stretching as far as his fingers could reach. He pressed his leg against it, felt it at his thigh and ankle. Still rigid and solid down there. Like the wall of a mine. Or a cliff face. No, wherever he was, it was too silent and black to be outdoors.
A tunnel then? Or a cave? An underground airhole? Chamber? Dungeon?
Fuck.
A stone under his hip was the source of the sharp pain there – not crushed this time. He scooped it out then used fingertips to prod at his sore bits. There was rib damage, possibly a crack but nothing dislodged. His nose was a mess: swollen, tender, the nostrils crusted over. Blood, he assumed. He traced more dried blood up one side of his face to a gash that ran across his temple and into an eyebrow. Feeling gently across his scalp, he found the source of the starburst thumping at the spot where his skull met his vertebrae. He pressed it, felt pain explode and his stomach lurch with nausea – and froze, wondering if turning his head would sever his spinal cord.
What now? Stay here like a corpse, hoping someone came to get him? The Grim Reaper would, no doubt about that. Whether anyone else would, he had no clue. But he’d waited to die in the dark once before – he wasn’t doing it again.