by Sandy Vaile
“Can you go there and check?” He sidled into his car and screeched the wheels as he put his foot to the floor. He hadn’t decided where he was going yet, but knew he needed to get there fast.
“Luca, what’s going on?”
He ignored Kate’s question. “What gym was Mya was going to?”
“She didn’t say. Wh—”
“Try her mobile. And Natalie’s. Then phone dispatch and find out if a car is still on Kevin’s house. I’ll call you shortly.” He hung up and, with one hand on the steering wheel, searched the business directory on his phone with the other. There were two gyms near Mya’s house. The closest was three kilometres away. He pressed his foot harder on the accelerator.
Chapter 36
The gym was on the other side of the railway track, in the industrial area of Croydon. Luca passed Jenny’s Snack Bar and parked in front of All Car Motors. Railway Fitness Centre was the third shop in a long, besser-block building with pigeon poo streaked gutters. He pushed the door and an electronic beeper sounded, causing several sweaty heads to turn his way.
He scanned the room: blue threadbare carpet, old gym equipment with chipped white paint, a boxing ring with sagging ropes, and a punching bag with a dark stain from years of abuse. Definitely Mya’s kind of place.
“Can I help you?” A muscle-bound guy with cropped hair and one of those singlets that gaped to the waist held out a hand.
“Do you have a member by the name of Mya Jensen?” Luca sidestepped the guy’s swollen bicep to continue his visual search.
“Who’s asking?”
He pulled his badge. “Detective Patterson. Do you know her or not?”
“Yeah, MJ’s a member. She was in this morning.”
He recoiled from the pet name. Why the hell did this guy get to call her MJ? “What’s your name?”
“Tommy. I own this place. Hey, is MJ in some kind of trouble?”
“She might be in danger. I need to find her right away. What time did she leave?”
“About ten, maybe a bit before. She was with a chick called Natalie, who I’ve never seen before. I gave her a self-defense lesson on the house.”
Luca tipped his head to the side in confusion.
“Me and MJ go way back,” Tommy explained.
Luca narrowed his eyes and reassessed Tommy’s bloated body, from the trapezius attached halfway up his neck to the waist-thick thighs sticking out of his silk shorts. Not that he had the least idea what Mya’s “type” was, but he couldn’t picture her with this pumped-up poser. When he caught up with her, he’d quiz her about how Tommy fit into her life.
“Did she seem upset at all?”
“MJ usually works out a couple of times a week. Seemed okay this morning. Gave the bag a beating it won’t forget.” Tommy laughed.
“I’ll bet she did. Did you see her leave with anyone?”
“Just Natalie.”
Where the hell was she? “Did she say where they were going?”
“Nah, MJ’s pretty private. I’ve known her for a decade, and I’ve never seen her bring a friend in before.”
Good, Mya didn’t share everything with this guy. Luca pulled a business card from his wallet and handed it over. “Call me if you see her.”
He scanned the gym once more and then headed back to his car. If the girls left at ten, they should be at the apartment. It was eleven thirty now and only a ten-minute drive. Chester Bennington started singing in his pocket, signalling a call from Kate.
“Luca, I’ve tried Mya and Natalie’s mobiles and they ring out. No one’s at the apartment or my house and neither is my car.”
He rotated on the spot, searching the car park. The sun glinted off a gold roof at the far end. His Adam’s apple lodged in the back of his throat. Kate’s Torana. He jogged through the car park, scanning the ground and other cars for clues—of what he didn’t know.
Thank God the Torana looked intact, door closed, but—
He stepped around to the boot and crouched. The left rear tire was flat, with the sidewall slashed. Okay, so maybe the girls walked to a garage to get help. But it was only next door so he would have seen them by now.
“Luca? Luca, are you still there?” Kate called from the phone dangling in his hand.
“Hang on.”
Mya and Natalie would have come out of the gym and walked to the car, but Mya noticed the flat. She’d be machine savvy enough to know it wasn’t a road puncture, so would be on alert. Someone must’ve jumped her from behind and incapacitated her with a single blow, because if she saw them coming, she’d be swinging and kicking before they knew what hit them.
Of course, if Melanie/Rhonda had been watching her, she would know enough not to give Mya that chance. But where was Natalie when this happened? Melanie must’ve had help. Maybe Kevin or Evan.
He raised the phone to his ear again. “Get over to Kevin’s house and check it again.”
“Where are you going?”
He heard the resignation in her voice. Once this was all over, he’d have to shout Kate dinner or something, to apologize for being such a tyrant. “Your car is at the gym, but Mya and Natalie seem to be missing. I’m going out to rural Balhannah again and take a look at Evan Smith’s house.”
The two women must have been taken against their will. Rage burned through his veins. Something glinted in the sun and he bent to pick it up. A hair tie. Mya’s? An image of luxuriant caramel hair spread like a halo around her face stopped his lungs from expanding. His fist clenched around the rubber band until his short nails dug into his palm.
They’d had only one morning together, and a couple of kisses. Hardly any time, but something wrenched inside him at the idea that he’d failed to protect her.
Just like he’d failed Olivia.
Not again. He couldn’t lose another person he cared about. It wasn’t fair. He’d barely lived through it the first time.
The force of his emotions took him by surprise. Did he care about Mya? Enough to need to see her again. At least to have the chance to tell her how he felt.
“I have to find her.”
Chapter 37
Mya drew a long breath in through her nose and huffed it out. The air smelled funny, like two-stroke fuel, dust, and rubber. The side of her head felt damp, and when she tried to open her mouth to take a deeper breath, she couldn’t.
Her stomach lurched as her whole body rocked from side to side.
I don’t remember getting on a boat.
A steady crunching sound grated at her nerve endings. Carrots in a blender? Sand and shells under a boogie board as it slid into the shallows? No, it was tires on gravel. Her body rolled again and something hard dug into her back. She groaned and opened one eye.
“The skank is back with us,” a female voice said. “You didn’t hit her hard enough.”
“Don’t worry, I will next time,” a deeper voice replied.
A blond Ken-doll was driving the car, so Mya figured she was in the back. A woman with frizzy ginger hair sat beside him, then turned half around, smiling. There was something familiar about that malicious smile and those faded hazel eyes.
The woman limping by the lake, a black four-by-four driving straight at her, frizzy red hair.
Fuck!
“It’s payback time, Lara. Or should I call you Mya? You did a nice job of disappearing, but karma’s a bitch. Imagine my surprise when I started working at Rich Haven and recognized Jean Roach. But she didn’t go by that name either, did she? I was tempted to hold a pillow over her face there and then, but I’m too clever to get caught, so I started planning my revenge.
“And boy, is it going to be sweet. You know, it was a newspaper clipping my mum kept about Jack’s death that tipped me off. It mentioned Jean Roach, which is how I made the connection. Little Lara Roach is all grown up now, and you’re well off too, with a house and a nice job. I’ve seen that hunky cop coming and going from your place, but he won’t be able to help you anymore.” Rhonda faced forward again, gigg
ling like a schoolgirl.
Mya shivered against the dirty corrugated floor in the back of the vehicle. Her lips wouldn’t come apart and there was a rubber and glue smell under her nose. Her arms were bound behind, making her shoulders ache. What was the last thing she remembered? Leaving the gym with Natalie.
Natalie!
With wild eyes, she searched within her limited field of vision; a small red jerry-can in one corner and a pair of white sandshoes with blue stripes down the side. The thin legs rose to Natalie’s tear-streaked face. The teenager sat atop a metal toolbox, her hands behind her back and silver duct tape across her mouth. Her eyes were bright red and there were clean tear trails down her dusty cheeks.
Mya stared into Natalie’s terror-stricken eyes. It was the same look on her mum’s face the last day Cockroach beat her. All Mya wanted to do that day was get out of the house and ride trains, so she wouldn’t have to listen to the yelling, but she couldn’t leave without trying to get her mum out, too. In the kitchen her mum sat on the floor with a bright red welt on her pale cheek. Cockroach towered over her with a clenched fist.
“Mum and I were going to the supermarket to get steak for dinner,” she lied.
Cockroach was partial to steak, and his arm dropped to his side as he glared. Lara hid her shaking hands behind her back and walked past him. She tried to help her mum up, but he swatted her out of the way and she crashed into the cupboards shoulder first. The thin, metal handle dug into her flesh, but she straightened defiantly. She was as tall as him, but he was a damned sight meaner.
He turned his attention back to Jean.
Crazy as it was, she couldn’t give up.
“Get out of my way,” she yelled. Anything to make him stop.
He did. His eyes narrowed and his hairy knuckles connected with the top of her cheekbone, ramming her head into the cupboards and splitting the skin above her temple. She crumpled onto the floor, struggling to right her blurred vision. Gasping for breath.
Needed to get back up.
Now that she was on the floor, too, she was on the same level as her mum. They looked into one another’s eyes. Desperation, fear, hopelessness—it was all there, reflecting back at her.
Natalie snivelled, bringing Mya out of the daymare. She squeezed her eyes shut to stop the images. Her stomach lurched as the vehicle slowed and then stopped.
Rhonda and the bloke got out, and she heard the tailgate open behind her. Natalie’s eyes widened and she cringed against the side of the car, her scream muffled by the duct-tape. Two big hands grabbed Mya’s biceps and dragged her backward.
When her feet hit the ground, she was spun around. A wave of vertigo made her surroundings rock, but the hands kept her upright, so she tried to focus on the man in front of her. His male-model face was unfamiliar. She turned her head toward the creak of a car boot, just in time to cop a slap across her cheek.
“You’ve got a lifetime of payback coming, Lara,” Rhonda sneered. “All I wanted to do was talk to you all those years ago, but you wouldn’t give me the time of day. Thought you were so much better than me. Look at you now.” She took a step back. “Lay into her, Kev.”
Kev’s face was beautiful but blank. He let go of one bicep and she watched his arm draw back. It rocketed forward, fist connecting with her jaw, and a shard of pain exploded in her skull. Her head lolled sideways and she dangled from his iron grip. Rhonda’s laugh echoed in her ears. No doubt the groggy nausea felt similar to being drunk.
There was a dark red pattern on the knuckles of Kev’s left hand. Warm fluid trickled down the side of her head. She wondered what the bastard had hit her with in the gym car park. Everything hurt.
Natalie whimpered in the car.
Kev’s arm drew back again, and this time she tried desperately to track its trajectory. At the last minute she dodged, still catching a glancing blow. With her hands bound behind her, she used the only weapon available. She lifted her right knee as high as it would go and thrust it into Kev’s gut. He stumbled back a few steps, losing his grip on her arm. She followed up with a side kick to his ribs and delighted in the dull thud.
Rhonda squealed and kicked Mya in the shins. “You bitch!”
She turned to face Rhonda and—
One cheek exploded with flaming pain. The side of her face scraped along rocks and dirt and spots danced in front of her eyes. How the hell did she get on the ground again? Her cheekbone felt shattered where Kev hit her. He rolled her onto her back with one foot. Then he knelt on her, his knees pinning both arms, his hands around her throat, squeezing.
Kev’s face morphed into Cockroach’s ugly mug, and Mya’s anger gushed out of the coffer. There was no way to tell if her sight was red from blood dripping into her eyes or anger, but she wanted to kick and bite and maim.
Someone screamed. Rhonda was bent over Mya, dangling a strip of duct tape between two fingers.
“Hope that hurt, you tramp.”
At least she could finally open her mouth, but the scream died on her lips. Kev’s grip on her throat wasn’t letting any air into her lungs. The spots in front of her eyes got bigger. Her brain grew foggy. Cockroach would have the last laugh after all.
Chapter 38
It took Luca thirty-five minutes to reach the rural township of Balhannah. Time during which Mya could be getting further away from him, or suffering. He turned left onto a potholed dirt road. In the daylight the letterbox was easy to find, and this time he boldly followed the deeply rutted driveway to Evan Smith’s house. No need for stealth. He parked in the shade of a pine tree, beside the olive-green garage. There were no cars in the driveway.
He strode up the paved path to the panelled front door and banged his fist against it. No sound from within. Swiftly he circled the long house, peering into and tapping on windows. He jumped back from the laundry window when a fluffy white face materialized. Just a cat.
The garage was unlocked, but there was no one hiding inside and no secret trap door in the floor. The sound of his mobile phone made him grab at his pistol, heart racing.
Damn! “Kate?”
“I’m at Kevin’s place and it’s quiet as a library. What do you want me to do next?” She sounded terse.
“Sit tight for the moment.”
“An unmarked car is parked out front. I don’t need to be here. What’s going on?”
“Hang on. Give me a minute to think.”
He paced in the driveway, sending up little puffs of talcum-powder fine soil with each revolution. Rhonda had to be the key to this mess—to the deaths in the nursing homes, the jewelry thefts, Mya and Natalie’s disappearance—but where the hell would she take them?
Across the valley Luca spotted a quaint cottage nestled amongst a copse of trees. He stopped pacing. “Where did you say Rhonda’s property was?”
“Birdwood. Luca, what’s so urgent?”
“I have a hunch that Rhonda and Kevin have kidnapped Mya and Natalie.”
“Rhonda? Melanie is the one working with Kevin—”
Luca jogged back to his car. “Melanie is Rhonda. This morning forensics confirmed that Rosalie was poisoned. If Rhonda has Mya and Natalie … I need you to email the address of her property to my phone.”
“I’ll do it right away.”
Luca relaxed minutely. At least he had something to focus on. “Thanks, Kate. Can you tell the squad at Kevin’s house to stay put and call me if anyone turns up?”
“Sure. I’ll meet you at Rhonda’s.”
He waited for Kate’s email—a Google map pinpointing Rhonda’s property—studied it, and then stuffed his mobile into his shirt pocket. He threw the car into reverse the second it started. The gear box crunched in protest and a shower of gravel hit the garage as the tires spun.
“Don’t let me be too late. Please don’t let me be too late.”
• • •
Muffled screams startled Mya. She dragged in a grating breath. Her throat was as rough as steel wool, and cold stones poked into one hip. There was
a whimper to the right and she turned her head, but couldn’t focus. A big blur dragged a smaller blur with white sandshoes.
Natalie!
Mya wiggled her hands in a see-saw motion. Whoever put the tape around her wrists was in a hurry, because it had some give.
“I can’t get her in the boot by myself,” Rhonda sniped.
Mya’s heart pounded, her breathing shallowed. She was lightheaded, but that wasn’t the only reason panic was taking hold.
They’re going to put me in a metal box, just like Cockroach used to. No! I’m not going in there again. I cried and pleaded, struggled in the dark, and claw until my nails broke, but he only laughed.
Mya pulled hard with her left hand and pushed with the right one. The glue from the tape felt like it was tearing off the top layer of her skin, but she kept going. Every time she lifted her head to see what Kev and Rhonda were doing, the world whirled and her stomach lurched. Bile surfed her throat, so she rested her head on the ground again.
“Don’t worry, honey, everything is going to plan,” Kev purred. “I’ll put Mya in the boot of the rental car, then stash jewelry girl somewhere she won’t be any trouble. Hold this.”
Natalie fell as Kev let go of her arm.
He bent and grabbed Mya, throwing her over his shoulder as easily as a sack of flour. She wiggled her wrists harder. Loose, but not loose enough. Her feet dangled in front of Kev; could she kick him in the groin? No good if he hit her again, broke her other cheek, and then she couldn’t fight back. He grunted as he dropped her into the car boot.
The effort of trying to make her limp body move was making her sweat. She started to hyperventilate. Sure, her chest expanded, but no air was being sucked into her paralyzed lungs. She’d scream if she thought anyone would hear, but Kev wouldn’t be lugging her about in view of the public.
If she could get out of the boot, get her feet on the ground, she’d run. Run and never stop. Ah, but there was Natalie—she couldn’t leave the girl to fend for herself. If Mya couldn’t make her body move, they would both be dead.