by Mel Teshco
Thunder rumbled overhead. He swallowed back a sob. His dream had shown darkness at the scene of the crime. If only he’d realised it’d been a storm covering the sun, not the late time of day.
He sprinted from the café and towards the street, his backpack bouncing against his spine. A fat raindrop hit his face, then another. Seconds later, thunder seemingly ripped the sky in two and the clouds let loose with a deluge of rain that caused people to scatter for shelter.
An oncoming hatchback braked sharply, but Jessie barely noticed or cared as he raced across the road. His only intent was stopping Dawson … Cameron from driving.
He slipped on the bitumen at the rear of the parked sedan, grazing his knee through his pants. He got up, swiping the rain from his eyes as the drunkard cursed the storm and everyone in it as he jabbed a key into the door, and then opened it with a triumphant shout.
Jessie got to his feet. With an inhuman growl he pushed back into a sprint, though everything seemed to slow to a dramatic crawl. The world was a whitewash of rain and shadow, yet he detected the jagged scar on Dawson’s brow, the week or two’s worth of stubble on his jaw and the snail trail of body hair beneath the tattered blue shirt that didn’t quite cover his gut.
Jessie lowered his head and slammed into the man in a body tackle that sent Dawson sprawling against the opened door, before they both hit the ground hard.
The drunkard slurred curses as Jessie climbed to his feet, his backpack dangling askew from one unbroken strap. He shrugged it off his shoulder and let it fall to the ground, all his attention on Dawson who was climbing unsteadily to his feet, his eyes bleary and bloodshot.
Jessie didn’t move. ‘Step away from the car and you won’t get hurt!’
The other man swiped rain off his brow and smirked as recognition dawned. ‘Oh yeah?’ He bellowed above the rain. ‘You wouldn’t have the balls or know-how to stop me, chef-boy.’
Jessie frowned. Even in the downpour and thoroughly intoxicated, this screwed-up monster recognised him? But if Dawson thought being a cook made him less of a man, he could think again. Jessie didn’t spend every minute of his day prepping food. He lifted his hands and motioned him forward. ‘Try me.’
The other man charged, then swerved and dived for the backpack. In less than a nanosecond Jessie understood Dawson’s intention. The gun had slipped free from the backpack and lay on the sidewalk in easy reach.
Shit. In his haste to get to the drunkard he’d completely overlooked the fact he’d stashed away the gun. Fists or even a knife he could handle, but a bullet … not a chance.
As Dawson climbed to his feet with the gun in hand, Jessie dived and rolled. A shot sounded, missing his head by bare millimetres. He swung a leg out low, knocking the other man off balance. Dawson fell heavily. Another gunshot sounded, followed this time by a startled grunt.
Then nothing but thunder and rain.
Fighting off dread, Jessie staggered to his feet. Dawson was sprawled unmoving on the ground, with crimson leaking from his body and melting into the rainwater washing across the sidewalk. Jessie knew without a doubt the man was dead, but he bent and checked for a pulse anyway, praying there was one and finding nothing.
Dawson was dead, killed in Jessie’s dimension, just like many of the other dimensions. Except Jessie hadn’t killed him here … he wasn’t a murderer. Could the same thing be said in those other dimensions and he’d been falsely accused?
His own pulse thudded a staccato in his ears, for a moment drowning out the sound of the storm. He scanned the now empty street. Holy shit. Not one person was around as witness, not one person knew he hadn’t shot Dawson. Most probably everyone was inside the bar and shops along the street and assumed the gunshot had been thunder.
He darted a glance up at the café verandah. The old sedan would have blocked whatever view a diner or waitress might have had. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or alarmed. Either way, he had to get the fuck away from the crime scene.
‘Jessie!’ Lolita ran towards him, hair streaming and her pink blouse sticking to her torso. She darted a glance at the man on the ground, the eyes that moved back to Jessie going round with shock. ‘Oh my god,’ she gulped loudly. ‘What happened? Are you all right?’
He shoved the firearm back into the backpack where it belonged before he shouldered it and nodded. ‘I am now.’ He leaned close to her ear and muttered, ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’
Lolita nodded, aware that he was in trouble. Big trouble. His arm curled around her quivering shoulders as they crossed the road, leaving behind the body of Dawson who lay unmoving and hidden behind his own car.
The driver of an SUV braked hard and shouted an obscenity at them. Another car horn blared. But Jessie had faith his sister wouldn’t be hit by a car any time soon. Besides which, they had to get away as fast as possible and back to the hospital.
They climbed into the back seat of the taxi and the Indian driver turned down his music and shook his head at the wet mess they made in the back seat. Jessie ignored the other man’s displeasure and instructed him to take them back to the hospital. The driver gave a resigned nod, completely oblivious to what had transpired almost directly across the road from him.
Jessie dropped low in his seat when the taxi did a U-turn and pulled away. Bloody hell. He hadn’t killed Dawson, but everyone would assume he had. One thing was certain. Soon enough the police would report that he’d shot the man and the entire country would hear about it. He’d be a wanted man with no hope of getting back into another dimension.
If that happened, Tara would die.
His hands fisted. He wouldn’t let that happen.
‘What the fuck, Jessie?’ Lolita hissed under her breath as the wipers whined forwards and back across the windshield and the Bollywood music continued in a slightly more subdued volume.
He shook his head. How to explain? She’d think he was nuts. ‘It’s not what you think, Lolli.’
She shook her head. ‘Then you’d better start talking!’
He had around ten minutes to explain himself before he had to find a way to get Tara and get the hell back to Mirraway. He swallowed, and then looked his sister in the eye. ‘The day I was meant to open my new restaurant in Brisbane … was the day I got lost.’
‘Yes,’ she prompted.
‘I mean, really lost.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I was directed to a shortcut from some old guy who owned a mechanic shop in this little town called Mirraway. Except the shortcut came to a dead end … and a little old house.’
‘What has that got to do with you shooting someone?’ she whispered in a strangled voice, her eyes glittering.
‘I’m getting to that,’ he said tightly, willing her to listen; to understand. ‘I went inside the house, hoping against hope someone might live there. It was abandoned, but then I heard a voice in the roof. There was a ladder going up into a manhole and, against my better judgement, I climbed it.’ He brushed a hand over his face. ‘The roof didn’t end, it just continued on and on.’
‘Jessie, seriously?’
‘It’s the truth, Lolli.’ And he hadn’t even started yet. ‘I climbed down a different manhole, and came back to Sydney to discover I was in another dimension.’ He took her hands in his. ‘You weren’t even alive in it … in any of the dimensions I visited. A drunk driver called Cameron Dawson killed you.’
Her mouth dropped open. ‘The man you shot back there?’ she whispered.
He nodded. ‘I came back here to save you.’
The hospital was coming into view through the rain when Lolita whispered in a horrified voice, ‘My god, what happened to you? Is it drugs? Has the pressure been too much? Are you seeing a doctor for … for a mental illness?’
He shook his head. ‘None of that.’ At least not in this dimension. ‘Everything I’ve told you is true. And I can prove it if you’ll just give me a chance.’
She pressed back into her seat, her bottom lip trembling. ‘The police will lock you up and throw aw
ay the key—if the psych doctors don’t first.’
‘You might be right.’ He blew out a heavy breath as the taxi slowed down. ‘Look, I know how this must sound, but you’re going to have to trust me right now, okay?’
She nodded, but didn’t look convinced. Not by a long shot. Still, she whispered, ‘I’ve never doubted you before.’
Jessie pulled some cash out of the purse in the backpack and paid the driver, adding a nice tip before asking him to wait for them once more. At the driver’s appeased nod Jessie strode into the hospital, Lolita hot on his heels.
His sister caught hold of his arm. ‘What are we doing here?’
He kept going. ‘A woman from another dimension is here. But she’s sick and needs to go into her own world so she can get better again.’
Lolita dug her heels in to make him stop and he turned to her and said tightly, ‘Look, I haven’t got time to allay all your doubts and fears. Just try and remember I’ve never let you down before.’
‘You’ve never really been there for me, either,’ she snapped back. ‘You were always too busy at work, breaking your neck to better ourselves. Honestly Jess, I’d have been happier staying in our old family home and just barely scraping by. At least I would have had someone to look out for me.’
They weren’t really having this conversation now, were they? With authorities no doubt already on his tail and his girlfriend dying from being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He swallowed back a dozen curses. ‘Everything I ever did was to help you. Believe me when I say I realise now just how little I was there for you when you needed me most.’
Her mouth snapped shut and all the fight went out of her. ‘I guess if that’s an apology, it’s better late than never.’
He nodded, unwilling to say anything more and start another debate on his merits as a substitute parent. He’d tried his best, and that was all he could have ever done. Besides, the whole mother slowly killing herself on them thing hadn’t been easy on him either, not to mention the father who’d abandoned them. Jessie had had to be the strong one, the rock in a bed of quicksand.
Maybe one day his sister would comprehend that too; even thank him.
A wheelchair that had been left in a nook in front of a room with four empty beds caught his eye. Without missing a beat he took the wheelchair, pushing it in front of them to Tara’s room.
In the next room ahead, a nurse walked out of Tara’s room, the vague ‘squeak’ of the nurse’s shoes headed in the opposite direction. Jessie let loose a relieved breath. Maybe luck was finally on his side?
Tara was completely out to it and his heart fluttered with anxiety as he carefully scooped her up and bundled her into the wheelchair, draping a blanket around her to help keep her in without wasting more time tying her in with the seat harness.
Lolita watched on, her eyes flitting to the door and back again. ‘Jessie, she looks seriously unwell. Don’t you think this hospital is the best place for her?’
He looked up from tucking the blanket around Tara, inwardly pleading that this once Lolita would listen, would understand. ‘In her own dimension this would be where she should be. In this dimension, definitely not.’
Lolita didn’t say anything more. She was a silent spectre beside him as he wheeled Tara out into the corridor. He held his breath, his belly clenched in dreadful anticipation for the moment an observant nurse or doctor called out for them to stop.
But no one looked twice at them as they pushed the wheelchair with the sleeping woman through the hospital foyer and outside into the rain.
The taxi driver was still waiting for them as he’d been directed, though his bushy black brows rose a little at seeing the state of his new passenger. ‘Iz-she-okay?’ he asked in rapid-fire English that was barely comprehensible.
Jessie nodded. ‘Where we’re going she’ll be better in no time.’
If the driver was suspicious he didn’t let on. Instead he waited until Jessie had carefully placed Tara in the taxi, and Lolita sprinted in the wet to return the wheelchair to an accessible place under the eaves at the front of the hospital.
Lolita took the passenger seat at front, swiping back sodden hanks of hair and trying hard to look as if she wanted to be there. Jessie supported Tara in the back seat, hoping and even praying a little that his sister wouldn’t give them away.
‘Where to?’ the driver asked.
Lolita swivelled to look at Jessie, then gave him a wink before turning to the driver and saying, ‘North.’
Relief that his sister was at least playing along for the moment, was offset by her recklessness. ‘We can’t afford to pay a twelve-hour taxi fare—’
Lolita turned to face him again. ‘Don’t worry about the cost. Your girlfriend needs to get home in a hurry and I know a man who owes me a favour.’
Jessie’s frown deepened. He didn’t even want to know what she’d done for the man to owe her a favour. ‘He’d be willing to drive us to Mirraway?’ he asked instead.
She smiled a little, as though reluctant to divulge her plan. ‘No, but he’d be willing to fly us there.’
Chapter Eighteen
His sister knew his aversion to flying. But even he couldn’t argue against the logic of her decision. There was no way of knowing if Tara would make the long drive to Mirraway and then to the old house and her own dimension.
His throat dried, his heart palpitating in little fits and starts at the thought of going into the vast sky in a little metal aircraft. ‘Then you’d better phone ahead and get it organised.’
Lolita’s smile softened, a glimmer of pride and respect in her stare. ‘She really must mean a lot to you.’
He smiled back, his fear receding as love for the woman beside him filled him from the inside out. ‘Her name is Tara. And yes, she means more to me than I ever thought possible.’
Lolita took her phone out and pressed a preset number. While she waited for the number to connect, she arched a tawny brow at Jessie and muttered, ‘I’m just glad she’s not Mercedes.’
He looked out at the rain still pelting down, the leaves of big eucalyptus trees shivering in the wind. How had he ever thought Mercedes was a good role model for his sister? It seemed everyone had recognised her self-centred and mercenary core but him.
When Lolita began chatting to whoever was on the other end of the phone in a sultry, sexy voice, Jessie deliberately tuned out. It was enough that his sister wasn’t falling to pieces at what he’d done, and that she was placing all her trust in him even after he’d told her what must sound the most farfetched story in history. Jesus, he couldn’t have dreamed up a more bizarre tale if he’d tried.
With Tara’s head on his shoulder, he leaned back against the seat that smelled of age and a thousand other passengers. In these weather conditions he guessed they’d have perhaps an hour or more of driving before they boarded a plane somewhere near Gosford.
His belly knotted at the thought of the flight ahead. A car could be pulled over to the verge if there were problems; a boat would simply float on the water if its engine died. But an aeroplane would simply fall from the clouds if its engine ceased, making the chance of survival probably less than a million to one.
He closed his eyes, almost weary beyond caring. Pushing innate fears to the back of his mind, he slipped quietly into sleep …
Jessie pulled his Hummer into the dirt drive of an old tin shed that appeared to be the town’s one and only mechanic shop and petrol station. A gnarled old man wandered out, his skin leathery from too many years under the Australian sun, his white-grey hair peeking out from beneath a tartan cap.
His rheumy eyes glinted with recognition, but Jessie had had a long, anxious drive and was in no mood to listen to the old man going on about cooking and reality television and anything else he probably thought Jessie should hear, like it or not.
Funny how the general public thought it was their god given right to vent their opinion to him on anything from recipes to reality TV and everyt
hing in between.
He looked up, the blue sky endless and the bright sun baking hot. Already he yearned for the air-conditioned cabin of his SUV, but he needed even more to stretch his legs and shake out the weariness that’d descended a good handful of hours ago.
‘You don’t know me, do you?’ the old man asked as he pushed the nozzle into the Hummer’s fuel tank.
Jessie frowned at the faint resignation in the other man’s voice. Had he met the man in one of his restaurants? Had he maybe autographed a cookbook for him? Jessie swallowed back another flash of irritation. All he really wanted was to get to the opening of his new restaurant. ‘Sorry, no.’ He cleared his throat and elaborated, ‘You probably recognise me from television.’
The older man gave a noncommittal shake of his head. ‘No. I don’t watch TV except for the news and sometimes the rugby.’
Jessie swiped a line of sweat from his brow. The other man would have probably seen him on a commercial break. No big deal. ‘In that case, I’m Jessie. Jessie McCormick.’
The other man grabbed hold of his proffered hand and gave it a firm shake. ‘I know who you are. And my name’s Bruce. Bruce Mayfair.’ His eyes peered at him speculatively. ‘You seem to be in an awful hurry. If you’re heading to Brisbane I know of a shortcut.’
Jessie woke with a start, barely registering the swishing wipers and the grey-tinted world outside. Tara’s head was askew on his shoulder and he gently fixed her so that she was comfortable, while the whole time his mind reeled and his heart hammered.
The old man who’d directed him to the shortcut had been Tara’s grandfather. Damn it to hell, why hadn’t it registered before now? The mechanic had the same surname as Tara and his eyes had lit with recognition because … why? Had one of his other selves met Bruce in his own dimension? Or had Bruce known about the house and been to other dimensions and met him?
Holy shit. Had Bruce directed Jessie to that house because he’d wanted him to meet and then save Tara?