Beneath the Skin

by Melissa James

  CHAPTER

  12

  The dawn light sent searching fingertips through the eastern window, and Elly opened her eyes to a rose-gold world. A gentle awakening, unfurling like flower petals, filling her heart and spirit. Adam’s heart beat beneath her hair. She’d never known this, the simple happiness of having someone holding her, someone who cared for her. Bliss so delicate, a yearning so ethereal she dared not name it, whispered inside her soul.

  This is how much I love you, Janie …

  A scar that went deeper than her skin. An innocent puppy and kitten dead, because of her, and now two men were dead.

  The exquisite rapture shattered. Danny’s closeness crawled beneath her skin. If he discovered her with Adam, he’d do much more than carve a possessive brand on Adam’s skin.

  A Jepson family picture sat in pride of place beside the bed; the only photo Adam had with his son. Sharon held Zack, Zoe sat on Adam’s lap.

  This is belonging. And you don’t. You never will.

  She slipped out of bed, dressed in silence and left the house, always the quiet shadow she’d become over the past two years. She vaulted the fence, bolted to a paddock, and crossed it in a strong, steady run—but she’d learned long ago she couldn’t outrun her memories, or the terror that stalked her wherever she went.

  In the middle of a paddock, she fell to her knees. Oh, God, please keep Adam and Zoe safe!

  Then she got up and kept running.

  When she returned half an hour later, a hoarse demand assailed her. ‘Where the hell have you been?’

  She blinked at a pale, blazing-eyed Adam, half-dressed and fully furious. ‘Running.’

  ‘Why didn’t you take your phone or text me, let me know?’

  ‘You were asleep. I thought I’d be back before you woke up. I never take my phone on a run.’

  Terrified she was a target, even here, he dragged her into the house. ‘You can’t do that.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what to do.’

  ‘Elly, you’re being stalked by a lunatic, armed and bloody dangerous. He could kill you!’

  ‘You think I don’t know that? I’ve had his knife at my throat, and my breast. But I can’t live my life in fear. He’s taken everything else—I can’t even do follow-up treatments at the places I visit. All I have left is my morning run—I won’t let you take it from me!’

  ‘I was worried sick he had you.’ He held her up against his chest, holding her so tight she could feel the pounding of his heart. ‘When I woke up and you weren’t in the house—’

  Wouldn’t she have felt the same in his place? Tenderness flooded her now. ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured against his shoulder. ‘I should have texted you.’

  ‘Damn straight. Don’t scare me like that again, hear me?’

  ‘I won’t.’ She smiled and moved away with slow deliberation, terrified he’d see how needy a simple hug made her. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, hearing the huskiness and hating it. ‘But never being alone drives me crazy. I needed space to think.’

  ‘So long as it wasn’t thinking about leaving Macks Lake.’ He spoke in a voice of fierce protectiveness that melted her resolutions like chocolate in summer heat. ‘What’s that?’ He pointed at the bag she held.

  Here it came, the fight. She spoke lightly. ‘Restocks for my kit.’

  ‘What was open at six am?’ he asked.

  ‘Dr Schumacher’s house.’ Hating what was to come, she made herself say it. ‘I made arrangements to do a clinic run at Kutringal today. The pilot from the Aboriginal and Islander Medical Commission comes in at nine at the airstrip. Have my tyres been replaced yet?’

  He stared at her in disbelief. ‘You can’t go to Kutringal, or any Aboriginal town in the region! By openly visiting a Koori community, even one a hundred and fifty kilometres away, you might as well call Spencer to tell him where you are!’

  Her temper flared. ‘These people need help. I’m going to Kutringal today, whether you like it or not.’

  ‘And you’ll visit the local hospital too, I suppose? Why not take an ad in the paper? Koori doctor available to help anyone in need. Just don’t call me Janie!’

  Teeth gritted, she repeated, ‘I’m going to Kutringal. These people haven’t seen a health professional except the fly-in nurse in almost a year.’

  He frowned. ‘Why hasn’t Dr Schumacher been?’

  ‘He has an unstable, painful arrhythmia that escalates when he’s stressed, and flying scares him. He’s only done it all these years because there was no one else.’ She waited, but when he didn’t answer, she looked at him, a quiet challenge in her eyes. ‘Would you refuse to attend a murder scene if someone threatened you, Claudius?’

  ‘Somehow I knew you’d turn it round to me.’ He pulled a wry face. ‘Yes, your car’s ready. We’ll take my car to get yours, then head to the airstrip.’

  ‘We? Aren’t you working today?’

  ‘You are my work from now on.’ His grin was crooked, rueful. ‘So I will take care of you, whether you like it or not.’

  Like it? She averted her face from the sight of him, fierce, protective, half-naked. Hating what he did to her, because the treasured emotions would soon become just another hurtful memory she couldn’t outrun. ‘Bodyguard duties in the police service? That’s unusual, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m off the case because of our past. I could just do other work, but because of the potential for danger to me as well, Sarge has put me on paid leave. I’ve been ordered to stay with you night and day. You’re our only concrete link to Spencer. He’s following your trail all right. Another body was found last night at the western edge of Pitjantjatjara lands. His throat was slashed. He’s been ID’d by the owner of the roadhouse on the Gibson Desert Road. He gave a woman a ride in his truck from Mullalabuk to the highway near Mount Magnet.’

  She felt the colour drain from her face. ‘Peter?’

  ‘Can you give us a surname?’ He all but jumped on her for the information.

  ‘Davidson,’ she croaked. ‘Peter died for giving me a lift?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ His voice was grim. ‘The man bragged he got it on with you. He said you did it in the cab of his truck. He told anyone who’d listen, apparently.’

  ‘Poor Peter liked to brag. He didn’t have anything much else.’ A tear trickled down her cheek. ‘Killed for a harmless lie.’

  He reached for her, but she broke away. ‘I need a shower—and if you want to catch that flight with me, you’d better haul your daughter out of bed and into preschool.’

  ‘We have to go to the station first, give evidence and our statements.’ He gave her a penetrating look. ‘I’ll get your clothes.’

  Another reminder of last night, and the danger she’d put him in. Her stomach tightened. ‘I need a long skirt and covering top, and a hat. The heat could be a killer out there.’

  He pulled on rubber gloves before he entered her room, back in cop mode again—the side that distanced him from her. She sighed, reaching for her waist to twist the curls no longer there. She refused to look at him as he emerged from her room with a skirt, a top and her underwear.

  ‘I had you picked as more of a lace and satin girl.’

  From man to cop, repressed Jepson to Sharon’s widower to her Adam—did he even know which he was? From aching with loneliness to fierce sexual need in seconds, and then a love so pure it was a warm, sweet light in her darkened world.

  If Danny sees what Adam does to me, he’ll kill him.

  She plucked her plain cotton underclothes from his hand, taking care not to touch him. ‘The me you’ve seen the past few days, or the me you knew as a kid? I haven’t changed much since then.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that. You still surprise me every time.’

  She closed the bathroom door in his face, and leaned against the tiled wall, shaking. The trucker was dead. Peter was dead. She had to keep her distance.

  Two and a half hours later, she released a sigh as the small plane lifted off the bumpy red o
utback runway into the blazing sky. ‘I love flying. It feels like nothing else exists.’

  ‘The “nothing exists” being Spencer?’

  Her mouth quirked. ‘You know me.’

  ‘Better than probably anyone else. You don’t give much away.’

  The hurt his remark invoked jolted through her. ‘Then why am I going to Kutringal?’

  ‘I didn’t mean you’re selfish.’ His answer held a sense of care, of choosing each word before he spoke. It was a barrier that hadn’t been between them as kids, and this time it wasn’t because of Sharon. After they’d given their statements about the attack last night, Jonas had taken Adam aside, telling him something that had made the friend and cop mingle. ‘You never stop giving, even to people you don’t know. But you hide your heart. You don’t let others know what you’re thinking or feeling.’

  She looked out the window, squinting at the bright morning sun in a glittering sky. ‘I haven’t met all that many people who are interested in what I think, or feel.’

  His hand covered hers, lifting it inside his palm. ‘Any time you want me, I’m here.’

  When he spoke like that, she ached with the need to hold that light and warmth inside her—

  But Danny’s face, pleasant enough, almost handsome, with beautiful grey eyes made ugly by desperation, appeared in her mind, a wall between them. As did Sharon’s beautiful, heartless face.

  ‘Thank you, Claudius. I’ll remember that.’ She smiled and withdrew her hand.

  Kutringal lay in the middle of nowhere on the western side of the Darling River. Dust and grit, red earth and straggling scrub, with a creek running through it that filled only after a dumping rain. One hundred and eighty-eight residents, mostly young families and the elderly. Most young, single people were long gone, to cities, or working on huge properties, or in prison.

  As was the case with the other communities she’d visited, the welcome given to her was reserved. With the help of Adam and the pilot she set up a rough clinic, using a small tarpaulin stretched out on poles from the plane to give the illusion of privacy. For confidential matters she used the plane itself, keeping the windows and blinds closed, enduring its sauna-like atmosphere with the cheerful calm that soothed her patients’ embarrassment at exposing their weaknesses and intimate problems to a young woman not yet thirty.

  Warned by the Aboriginal and Islander Medical Commission about the conditions here, she’d brought an extended kit with immunisation shots, insulin and vitamins, her gynaecological kit, and all the eye, ear, nose and throat equipment and medications she could get from Dr Schumacher at short notice.

  It took six hours to attend everyone in the community. The pilot, a trained paramedic, used syringes to wash eye infections with saline solutions, bandaged injuries and handed out pills. Adam, who had an updated first-aid certificate, sorted out the most urgent cases. After that he became her usher, showing the next patient in, providing glasses of water to the patients from the fifty-litre tank of bottled water they’d bought in town, fixing shelter for the patients with a spare tarpaulin cover when the arid heat threatened them with dehydration.

  To her relief, most people here spoke English and Pidgin as well as their own language. She listened carefully, watching for cues on how to cause the least offence, picking up key terms in their language and using them to gain trust and respect.

  ‘Four with hypoglycaemia,’ she informed the pilot, after drawing up blood for further tests than the finger-prick kit allowed. ‘Can you get the information leaflets on diabetes and the insulin kits? The local teacher or the fly-in nurse can explain the routine again, if they forget later. The boy with suspicious headaches probably just needs glasses, but we’ll take him back to the hospital with us to get him checked out. There are general vitamin deficiencies. They’ve planted a new orchard over there, so ask them if they want the vegetable seedlings to add to it, and the Kakadu plum seedlings. The ground’s fertile enough since the rain, and it’s optimal time now, with more wet weather on its way.’

  The pilot handed out the necessary information, insulin kits, vitamins and seedlings. Elly showed people how to self-inject vitamins and insulin, and handed out info on the relevant Aboriginal health organisation to contact for further help.

  She accepted the elder’s offer of a late lunch with a smile. She returned to pack up as the people moved to their homes—a mix of trailers, pre-fab houses and mia-mias, traditional wood and bark housing—to begin the meal. In deference to the visitors, it would be conducted outside, a community event.

  Adam watched her clean up, an inscrutable look on his face. ‘That was incredible.’

  ‘As in incredibly boring and hot?’ she teased, wiping the perspiration from her brow.

  ‘No. Just incredible. You love this life, don’t you?’

  Her shrug was defensive, a cover for her shyness. ‘I didn’t become a doctor to get a flashy office in the city.’

  ‘You could have, though.’

  His observation, filled with admiration and belief, warmed her right through. ‘This is what it’s all about for me. Knowing I make a difference to the lives of people out here makes me feel complete in a way treating people with hundreds of other doctors in the vicinity to choose from never could.’

  ‘If you’d gone into a specialist city practice you’d have a home, a steady income.’ He added abruptly, ‘You’d never have met Spencer.’

  ‘I take the bad with the good. My heart, my spirit, is whole. It’s enough.’

  ‘More than enough,’ he guessed, touching her face. ‘You were born for this life. You make a difference. I understand now why you insisted on coming today.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She nestled her cheek against his hand for a moment, revelling in his pride in her. ‘Like you were born to be a cop.’

  ‘Maybe.’ He turned aside to pack up the tarpaulins. She turned to the water dispenser, wishing she knew what was bothering him. For once, it didn’t feel like it was connected to Sharon.

  Lunch was a simple affair, meat buried on coals and slow baked, onion and hot damper with the wild honey called sugarbag, bush potatoes and cups of tea made from a campfire billy.

  Adam wolfed down the potatoes, bread and honey, but hesitated over the meat. ‘What’s this?’ he asked her after the first bite. ‘Tastes like lamb, but—’

  ‘Kangaroo,’ she mumbled, eating her portion with relish.

  He almost dropped the plate, his face showing his revulsion. ‘I’m eating our national symbol and one of the world’s most beautiful animals?’

  She grinned, her mouth full, and didn’t speak again until she’d swallowed. ‘Yep. Hunted especially for our visit, I suspect.’

  He recoiled. ‘I can’t eat this. It’s indecent.’

  A brow rose as her smile faded. ‘Indecent?’ she drawled. ‘Always the Jepson. You don’t object to the slaughter of six-week-old calves for veal, or buying a chicken that had three months of life crammed in a cage in unsanitary conditions, but a decently hunted adult kangaroo is a problem for you? Before you despise this offering—and it’s quite an honour, since these people don’t hunt very often—make sure your double standards aren’t hanging out. Just because you buy meat packaged in a supermarket doesn’t mean the animal lived or died well. At least this one had the life it was meant to live before it got to us.’

  After a long moment, he lifted the meat to his mouth again. ‘Tastes like lamb,’ he repeated. ‘It has a subtle flavour.’

  She rewarded him with a glimmering smile. ‘No fat or cholesterol, either.’

  Grinning, mouth full again, he touched her cheek with his index finger. ‘Thanks for putting up with me.’

  Her heart softened with tenderness. The man had a gift of making her melt.

  If I fall in love with you, it could kill us both.

  With a brief sting of regret for the normal happiness she’d probably never know, she turned to the woman beside her, asking about her life.

  After lunch the elder, Miny
enbarra, came to them, thanking them in English for their time, for her care. Elly replied in a fumbling attempt at his language, making the thin old man smile and hold out his hand. She shook it in grave courtesy.

  Seeing Adam hulking behind Elly, the elder’s wife, Mirimi, asked in Pidgin, ‘So is this your man?’

  Without thinking, and withering with embarrassment, Elly turned to Adam. He moved to stand beside her and took her hand in his, almost aggressive in his protection.

  Mirimi laughed. ‘Does he know what he just did?’

  Her head lowered, Elly shook her head. ‘Please don’t.’

  ‘Look at me, girl,’ Mirimi said quietly.

  Compelled, Elly obeyed—and whatever the elder’s wife saw there satisfied her.

  ‘He made the statement.’

  ‘Please don’t,’ she repeated, but the elder’s wife said a few quick words to the group of women behind her, and they scattered to their homes.

  When they returned, Minyenbarra touched their linked hands. He looked at her, and spoke in Pidgin. ‘Don’t play with this one. He cares—maybe too much. He’s hurting.’

  Her head drooped. ‘It’s not a game to me either, uncle.’

  ‘We all know that. Wasn’t sure you knew it, too.’ He turned to Adam, his watery gaze both stern and questioning, and spoke in English. ‘She’s a good woman. Look after her.’

  Looking lost, Adam nodded.

  The women handed Elly a basket, two mats of dried and dyed grass, woven in circular fashion, and a traditional dot-painted digging stick. The men gave Adam a ceremonial spear, the spoon-shaped woomera needed to send the spear true to its target, a boomerang and a fishing net.

  Struggling to hold in the tears, Elly received her gifts with quiet thanks.

  Adam asked her for the local words of gratitude and spoke them.

  The pilot, Mike, received his gifts last.

  When Mike left to start the plane, Elly started packing her kit. From the corner of her eye she saw the elder approach Adam, speaking in a voice as gnarled as his fingers.

  ‘She’s a good woman,’ she heard him say again. ‘Alone too long, though. Needs more care than she’ll show you. The strong ones do.’