by Jaye Ford
Max saw the opportunity, knew he might not get another one. He shoved Hayden sideways and lunged for his cousin. James barely moved as he made contact. Christ, he had nothing more than anger and instinct and he hoped it would be enough. As Hayden shuffled with indecision at the periphery of his vision, Max found the underside of James’s gun arm and shoved upwards.
*
Rennie burst from the scrub as James pushed back, ramming the heel of his other hand at Max’s ribs.
Life on the run hadn’t taught her to fight – no one stood a chance if it got to that with her father. But she knew how to put a person down for long enough to run and that’s all she needed to scoop up Max and haul him and Hayden out of sight.
She came in from behind James, watching the semiautomatic arc skywards, still clutched firmly in his hand. Dropping a shoulder as she reached him, she opened her arms and launched herself. Pushing off the ground with her good leg, wrapping herself around his thighs, driving at the back of his knees. She felt both legs buckle and his weight tip slightly back before pitching forwards. Then she was falling with him, thrusting down, making sure he got all the way to the dirt. Until now, he’d been slow to react, thinking and deciding before acting, and as air burst from his lungs on impact, as she lifted her head in search of the gun, she wondered how much of a fighter he was when the tables were turned.
He landed face first, his free arm underneath him, the gun arm outstretched on the ground above his head, the weapon still in his palm. He was tall and bulky, he had long arms and legs and from where she’d landed with her shoulder jammed into the back of his thighs, he seemed mountainous and the gun a long way away. But he moved like a big man, too, as though the messages took a long time to reach the muscle, and he was dazed and caught unawares. As he started to roll backwards, releasing his free arm first, she moved faster, off him, slipping in the dirt as she pushed to her feet, clawing forward, trying to get to the pistol before he came to his senses. Before he aimed and fired.
She met his eyes briefly – saw them narrowed with anger, then flaring with surprise and recognition. He thrust sideways and she dived – for his hand, his wrist, his forearm, anything she could reach that would stop the message she saw in his face reaching his finger on the trigger. She didn’t know where he planned to aim, figured it was probably at her, figured the bullet would hit before she got to his arm.
The blast was deafening. She didn’t hear her own scream, felt his body underneath her as she fell, assumed the pain would come later and kept stretching, reaching for the weapon while she could, flung upwards again from the recoil. She thought the shouting was about her, some kind of panicked, desperate yelling, until Hayden’s high-pitched voice sliced through it.
‘Dad!’
47
Rennie lifted her head, saw Max on the ground in front of Hayden, curled in a ball, both hands clutched to his side. Blood was shiny and bright in the glare from the headlights, seeping through his fingers, spreading across his shirt, staining the waistband of his dirty jeans, spilling on the earth.
His howl of pain finally reached her. And Hayden’s terrified shriek – and she remembered her own screams. And Jo’s. And her father’s bellows and the cops shouting and the arsehole who hit her. And the sirens that took her mother away. A cacophony of sound that filled her up and blurred her vision and fired adrenaline and rage into every cell.
Then James was shunting her back, trying again to turn the gun on her. She rose to her knees, lifted her elbow and slammed the tip of the bone into his cheek. She was wiry, smaller than him by more than a head, with the fine, lean arms of a runner. The blow didn’t knock him out but it threw his face to one side. She flung herself across his chest, arms outstretched, still too far away to reach the gun so she dropped her chin, opened her mouth, found the thick flesh high up on the outside of his chest and closed her teeth on it.
His scream was shrill and she knew if he’d had any kind of experience or training, he would have followed through with the pistol and knocked her senseless. But the pain made him panic. He dropped the weapon, swung his hand instead, pushing at her forehead, trying to get her off him, squealing like a goddamn kid. She wanted to bite right through, make him bleed and hurt and wail some more but she let go, the gun in her sights.
He was faster. With his large palm on the crown of her head, he shoved her, the force of it crunching in her neck. And he kept coming, rolling, heaving her off him. He might have been slow to act but he was strong enough to lift her up and dump her on the hard-packed earth beside him, the impact rattling through her joints.
Maybe he finally realised his physical advantage, maybe it was some kind of male instinct or maybe he’d watched a lot of movies but he got over her, on his knees, and swung like a boxer. A big, roundhouse thing, lots of backswing, a huge fist – and plenty of time to see it coming. Cringing as she spilled away from him, pushing to her feet, she turned, lifted her uninjured shin and drove the toe of her shoe deep into his gut.
It was her big hit, the one learned at her mother’s side, the one designed to drop a man and run like hell. The swing was strong and aggressive. She felt ribs and soft gut. It might have knocked him down if she’d waited to see. She might have had time to haul Max off the ground with Hayden’s help. It’s what instinct told her to do but something else took over.
It came from deep inside. The same thing that drove her father. Illogical, hate-filled, red-hot and consuming. She’d been ashamed and fearful and haunted by it. Now she welcomed it, breathed in the rage and hurt and loss and madness – and directed it at James’s gasping, tipping body.
She struck out with her foot again. In the ribs as he hit the deck. Breaking his nose as he lifted his head. She wanted to hurt him and stuff him in a tunnel. Make him pay for what he’d done to Max. To Hayden. To her. For deceiving her, for making her want to run. For all the times she had. For the arseholes who’d threatened her and terrified her and made her bleed.
She slammed down hard, aiming for a shoulder joint and he grabbed her leg, dragging her off balance, pulling her to her knees, hands grabbing for her throat.
‘Stop! Just stop! Fucking stop!’
Hayden’s voice was full of fury. The gun trembled slightly in his hands but he held it straight and double-fisted like a TV cop.
Rennie wasn’t sure if he was pointing it at her or James. It didn’t matter. The sight of the crying, terrified, angry teenager with her semiautomatic less than a large step away was more frightening than when James had aimed it at her. And as though a pause button had been hit, her rage and insane bitterness froze – not erased, not rewound, just held in check like her fingers entwined in James’s collar.
‘Hayden, no,’ she said, not letting James go, the consequences of any sudden move by either of them playing through her mind.
‘He was going to kill Dad.’
‘No, I wasn’t. I wasn’t going to use the gun,’ he said slowly, clearly. ‘I just wanted him to understand. It was Rennie who made it go off.’
‘Bullshit. Fucking bullshit. I saw you. You were pointing it right at him. At us.’ The pistol swayed and jerked. ‘You were gonna fucking do it!’
Rennie flinched, saw James do the same. She released her grip on him and eased away. If Hayden fired, she didn’t want to be too close.
Max’s voice reached them, a whisper from beyond their angry clutch, weak with pain, tremulous with fear. ‘Hayden. Put it down.’
Rennie saw it then, what was coming, how it would end, and she wanted something different for Hayden.
For Max. For herself.
It was too late for a happy final chapter, however this finished. But it could be better than the one where Hayden pulls the trigger. Where he kills his uncle and has to live with what he’s capable of.
‘Hayden, put the gun down.’ She pushed her butt along the dirt, sliding away from James. He must have figured
he was safer with her closer and snapped his hand out, grabbing her wrist.
It made Hayden jump, the gun with it. ‘No! He’ll hurt you. He tried to shoot you before. I saw him.’
‘Then give the gun to me.’
‘Don’t give her the gun,’ James said. ‘Didn’t you see her? She’ll kill me.’
Hayden didn’t answer, his eyes flicking between Rennie and James, breathing in short, shallow gasps.
Fear and impatience filled her words with her mother’s tone. ‘You promised to do what I told you, Hayden. Now I’m telling you to give me the gun.’
‘But my dad . . .’ His face crumpled as fresh tears streamed down his cheeks. The gun wavered. James’s hand tightened on her arm.
Rennie understood her mother now, how the desire to protect grew with sharp edges. But Hayden didn’t respond to orders and she hoped she’d learned enough from Max to give him something better than her own mother had.
‘You’ve already saved your dad, Hayden. You got into the computer, you showed me where to find him, you kept your brain in gear and you got the gun away from James. You’ve done great. You should be proud of yourself. Now you need to do something else to help your dad. You need to call the police and an ambulance, okay? Detective Duncan won’t believe me. It has to be you.’
He licked his lips, swallowed hard. Kept the gun where it was.
‘I’ll hold the gun on him, Hayden. I’ll make sure he looks at it long and hard. He won’t hurt anyone else.’
Another swallow, another moment of thought. ‘Let go of Rennie,’ Hayden shouted.
James lifted both arms in the air like a footballer showing his hands to the ref. ‘You don’t have to give her the gun. I won’t do anything.’
Rennie shoved him hard with the flat of a shoe as she backed away. ‘Don’t listen to him, Hayden.’ Pain shot through her shin as she stood. A quick glance down and she saw blood had soaked the lower half of her jeans and was leaking over the white of her runner. A flick of eyes towards Max told her he was conscious, holding his side and watching them with an agony that wasn’t caused only by injury. She wanted to rush to him, get him to a damn hospital but she limped to Hayden’s side, aware the danger wasn’t over yet.
‘Come on, mate,’ James tried again, a touch more agitation in his voice. ‘She tried to kill me. Don’t give her the gun. She shot her own father, for God’s sake. She’ll shoot me, too. She won’t even think twice about it.’
Hayden didn’t move. The weapon trembled in his hands, tears glistened on his face. Over the last two days, she’d yelled at him and gone a little crazy. She kept a gun and running money, had told him she needed them because she wasn’t a good person. She had shot her father. Plenty of reason for Hayden to listen to his uncle. Still plenty of opportunity for the moment to turn bad. A three-way tussle for a loaded gun was very bad.
She wanted to find a way to make him trust her, to tell him his uncle was worse, that blood ties could be deadly but she didn’t need to. As she put a hand on his shoulder, he turned and passed her the weapon. Just like that, like he’d been waiting for her to get there.
‘You shouldn’t have done that, Hayden,’ James started. ‘She’s . . .’
‘Don’t speak to him!’ she yelled, pulling Hayden behind her.
Relieved to have the weight of the Glock in her hand at last, she curled her fingers around the grip, straightened her arm and pointed it at James. ‘Go to your dad, Hayden. You need to put pressure on the bullet wound. Use the palm of your hand and push hard. It’ll hurt but you need to do it, okay?’
‘Okay,’ he said quietly.
She pulled her phone from her back pocket and held it out to him. ‘Use the other hand to call an ambulance. Wound first then the ambulance, okay? Now go.’
He skidded softly across the dirt. Rennie kept her eyes on James, his attention now where she wanted to be – with Max. She listened, relieved to hear Max’s soft murmur, not unhappy for his groans, knowing it meant Hayden was doing his job properly. But as she watched James focus on his cousin and nephew, his eyes narrowed and his lips tightened, resentment and contempt contorting his face until it was hard and callous – and the pause on her anger released. Not wild and uncontrolled now but taut, sharp, hot.
She spoke loud enough for James’s ears only. ‘You want to revise your perspective of me now?’
He swung his head and met her eyes. The alarm she saw in them made her smile with satisfaction. ‘Look, Renée . . .’
‘Don’t. There’s nothing you can say that won’t piss me off.’
He closed his mouth.
‘My father was going to kill my sister and she’s a pain in the arse. You tried to kill Max and I love him.’ It was a slight movement but she made sure he didn’t miss it, slipping her index finger inside the trigger guard. ‘He was my father and I shot him. You’re just a greedy, condescending arsehole.’
He sucked in a breath.
For five seconds she thought about it. It would be loud and messy. She’d seen it before, had been brought up expecting to do it. The concept frightened her and soothed her. James had shot Max, had almost killed him before that. He had a lot to answer for – and there were no cops here to stop her.
For five seconds more her heart thumped and her index finger tingled with adrenaline.
And then she thought some more. About Max and what he’d want. About Hayden and the way he’d handed her the gun. About her life here and what she’d just fought for. About Naomi and her baby, Trish and Pav, Brenda and Mike – their faces when they looked at her if she pulled the trigger.
She thought about Katrina and Renée, too. The two people inside her. The one she wanted to be and the one thrust on her. She’d been both tonight, had needed to be – to love Max enough to stay, to be hardened enough to save him. Katrina would pull the trigger and bury the shame where it couldn’t be found until she was backhanded across the face. Rennie hadn’t been tested yet.
Both of them had her father’s blood running through their veins.
As the seconds stretched, as Hayden spoke urgently on the phone, a bead of sweat gathered on James’s temple, trickled down his cheek and dropped off his chin. He’d done enough damage. Tonight, two nights ago, for weeks and it wouldn’t end here. Did she want to add to it? She had a home here. A life, people to love.
‘An ambulance is coming,’ Hayden called.
‘Good work,’ she told him.
‘Dad keeps saying he doesn’t mind being shot. He keeps talking about Dallas. I think he’s delirious or something. Is that bad?’
Rennie smiled a little. He didn’t want to join his friend; he wanted his approval. ‘No, I think it means he’s okay.’
She held James’s gaze for a moment more then removed her finger from the trigger, replaced it on the guard. Not for Max or Hayden, not for Naomi, not even for herself. But because she didn’t need the cops to stop her. Maybe she never had.
‘You need to make another call, Hayden. Phone Detective Duncan and tell him we found your dad. His number’s in my message bank. Tell him he was wrong. Tell him to get his arse up here. And tell him there’s no time to stop for a toasted sandwich.’
48
Rennie opened her eyes to the soft morning light, listening to the whisper of Max’s breath, enjoying the warmth of him at her back, the weight of his hand on her hip, like she’d dreamed every night he was gone.
Six of them in all – two in the tunnels at the point, four more in hospital. It was good to have him back. Despite the gunshot wound, severe dehydration was the worst of his injuries but there was also blood loss, shock, infection, a hairline fracture to his skull, six stitches to his scalp, whiplash, two broken ribs, concussion and amnesia. It was better than dead.
Slipping out from under the sheets, she pulled on clothes and moved quietly to Max’s side of the bed. A wad of gauze didn’t qui
te cover the patch of shaved head where the sutures were still in place. The yellowing bruises looked as though they were leaking out from underneath, oozing across his eye and down his cheek.
She brushed her lips across his hair, not wanting to wake him, filling her lungs with his sleepy, slightly antiseptic hospital smell before she left. In the hallway, she heard the shower running, guessed it was either Mike or Brenda up, tiptoed across the floor and poked her face into the living room.
In the half-light, she could see Hayden sprawled on the sofa bed, sheets twisted around him as though they were tying him down, the TV remote just out of reach. The kid had been smacked in the face with cold, hard reality but some things never changed.
He’d held it together with anger and adrenaline until Max was taken into surgery, then he’d sat in a chair and cried so hard and for so long that Rennie finally joined him. In the following days, Rennie saw how the terrifying hours up at the point had changed him in ways that made her wonder about herself after her mother’s murder. It hadn’t made him any neater or more polite or less moody but the resentment was gone. There was fear in his eyes still, a little wariness in the way he moved at times and something more respectful when he spoke to Rennie. She was grateful for that, if nothing else.
The evening after Hayden gave his official statement to the police, his mother and Brenda tried hard to talk him into going up to Cairns to join his stepfamily.
‘What do you think I should do?’ he’d eventually asked Rennie.
She didn’t know what he’d wanted from her, possibly just a vote either way but Brenda looked at her as though she expected support.
Rennie disappointed her. ‘You should do whatever you need to do.’
‘I want to stay here with Dad.’
‘Then stay.’
‘But it’s all so upsetting here,’ Brenda insisted. ‘I don’t think being around all this is good for a young boy.’
‘He’s not a boy anymore.’
Hayden had watched Rennie for a good few seconds, as though weighing and measuring what was assembled inside him now. ‘Yeah, I’m going to stay, Gran.’ He said it without a hint of antagonism. Something else new.