‘At last she remembers me. I’ve been dropping hints for days, but would you listen?’ He shook his head with a wistful smile.
She threw her arms around him, amazed, afraid to let go in case he vanished. Loving her real name for the first time in a long time, because she’d found the one person with the right to use it. ‘But how? Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Would you have listened?’ He laughed at her when she bit her lip. ‘We’ll talk later, Janie-jan,’ he said softly. ‘We’ve got work to do.’
‘Ricky … oh, Ricky-jim …’
‘Flak jacket, Janie,’ he said softly. ‘Obey big brother now. We can hug all you want later.’
Caught between laughter, panic and tears, she kissed his cheek and obeyed him; but when he moved away, she stepped with him. Unable to let him go, even for a second. My brother…
With a little smile, Rick looked at Adam and Jonas, who were both still staring. ‘Sorry to keep my relationship to Elly quiet until now, Sarge, but I’m sure you get why I did.’ He glanced at Adam. ‘I know you have more experience than me, but Spencer will accept my authority without feeling threatened. He’ll accept that she came here to me, not you. It’ll keep her safer if you stay out of it. I just need ten minutes.’
Adam closed his mouth, and tilted his head. ‘Why?’
‘You’ll see.’
Slowly, Adam nodded. ‘We’re going to talk after this, mate.’ Rick punched his shoulder. ‘You’d better be wanting to ask me a question … mate.’
Adam thumped Rick’s shoulder in return, and they grinned at each other.
The other cops stepped back. If it was the rule to keep family away from hostage situations, Rick was right: he was the only one with any chance of talking Danny Spencer down without arousing the manic jealousy that led him to kill.
‘Ready,’ Elly said. Amazed, thrilled, almost unable to believe it—she’d all but forgotten anyone else was there, even Adam. The strangest, most beautiful miracle of her life: the brother who’d vanished when she was three years old had returned to her at the moment she needed him the most. Ready to protect her to the death. My brother. My family.
Rick clipped the helmet onto her head and took her hand. Still not quite believing he wouldn’t vanish if she let go, she clung to him.
‘Adam, stay out here,’ Rick tossed over his shoulder. ‘The way you look at her is too obvious. The rest of you, keep six feet back.’
He led Elly into the heart of the small hospital, murmuring soft instructions all the way.
A scream split the air the moment they reached the hallway to the OR. ‘Let her go! She’s mine!’
A man in priest’s robes stood at the end of the double row of chairs leading to the swinging doors of the hospital’s two operating rooms. In his late twenties, now red haired, the deep teak skin somehow fairer, with startling grey eyes, his nose reset—Danny seemed to be someone else, apart from those eyes, and a mouth that lost its generosity in possessiveness. But this time his mouth didn’t curl in the slow, cruel smile of ownership, but turned down in fury. He held Dr Schumacher around the neck in front of him, a gun aimed at the older man’s head, a remote detonator with a dead-man’s switch held between two fingers of the arm holding the doctor.
‘I said let her go, copper pig, or I’ll blow this place to bits! She’s mine!’
When she’d have pulled away to save him, Rick held her tighter. He smiled at the madman and nodded, keeping his other hand, the one with the cocked gun in it, behind him. ‘Hello, Danny, isn’t it? I’m Janie’s big brother, Rick.’
That stopped Danny halfway down Suspicion Street. He peered at Rick, then Elly. He blinked, shook his head, stared again. For the first time, she understood what was in Danny’s mind. The resemblance was strong enough to make her want to kick herself. She, who’d been looking for her brother all her life, had never even considered Rick’s sense of possessive protectiveness as being family oriented.
‘She doesn’t have a brother,’ Danny croaked at last.
‘Our father took me away when I was five. Janie was three. Then Dad died. I lost my family, just like you did. Like Janie did. We’ve only just found each other again.’ Rick took a step forward. Releasing Elly’s hand, he fished two folded documents from his pocket.
‘What are you doing?’ Danny barked.
After another step, Rick bent down, placing the documents a metre from Danny. Then he stepped back. ‘See for yourself.’
Danny jerked Dr Schumacher around, keeping the rifle trained on the old man’s head. ‘Pick them up, and show them to me.’ He bent at the knees as the doctor collected the papers, keeping himself hidden behind his captive.
Danny scanned the birth certificates. When he looked up, his gaze was strangely hollow. ‘All right.’ He seemed arrested by the news, not even looking at Elly. ‘Why are you showing me these? What do you want?’
Rick looked puzzled. ‘What do you mean, what do I want? I want the same thing you’d want if Janie was your sister.’
Danny blinked. Frowned, eyes clouding with confusion. ‘But she’s not my sister.’
‘No.’ Rick kept his voice smooth, moving his hidden hand a little. Elly saw her brother’s gun enter his pocket. ‘She’s my sister, my only family, and you frightened her. I need to protect her.’
‘I’d never hurt her!’ Danny’s expression turned wild. ‘You’re not her brother. You’re a copper pig. This is a mock-up. You—’
‘No, Danny.’
Danny’s head swung around to Elly, eyes hungry and despairing. Wanting to believe with a child’s fear and hope.
‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘Do you remember I told you while you were trapped in the car that I lost my father and brother when I was little, like you lost your parents?’
Slowly, Danny nodded. Licking his lips, so lost and insecure, but his hands held true to the gun and the remote of the homemade bombs covering his body.
‘Look at him, Danny. Look at our faces. Rick is my brother.’ She hugged Rick’s arm, and followed the instructions her brother had given her as they walked through the hospital. ‘I came to him when you frightened me.’
Danny’s eyes unfocused, widening with suspicion and disbelief. ‘N–no … Granddad told me you came to that other guy, the one with the kid …’
‘Why would I come for a foster brother, when my real brother was here? I was only three when he left. I’d forgotten him—but Rick remembered me. He contacted me through the Aboriginal and Islander Medical Commission a few weeks ago. Rick asked me to come to him; it was a coincidence that Adam was here at all. It’s Rick I ran to.’
‘But … Granddad said you stayed with the other guy …’
Softly, Rick said, ‘And your granddad has never lied to you or hurt you, has he, Danny?’
Danny stared at him, eyes becoming unfocussed.
Rick nudged her, and she said the next thing. ‘I came to Rick because he’s my brother, because he wants to protect me.’
‘ I’ll protect you,’ Danny said in pathetic eagerness, eyes alight, a pitiful echo of Zoe’s excitement when Elly had told her about the picnic. An insane child distracted by an unspoken promise, while wearing an armoury strong enough to kill hundreds. ‘I wouldn’t frighten you!’
A subtle squeeze told her to keep quiet. She squeezed back.
‘Janie loved that puppy and kitten you hurt.’ Rick spoke in a gentle but stern manner.
Danny blinked. ‘A dog and cat?’ He laughed, as if it was the last thing he’d expected to hear. ‘Animals are on earth to serve us. You don’t love them. They’d fulfilled their purpose—I’d come for her. We were together.’
‘Do you know anything about our family?’ Rick asked quietly. ‘Our mother taught us symbiosis with animals. I believe that. Janie believes that. She takes after our mum.’
Shaken, Elly stared at Rick. How did he remember so much that she didn’t?
‘You don’t know Janie,’ Danny scoffed, but now his body shook. The rifle moved
with it. Dr Schumacher’s eyes turned watery with terror. ‘You’ve only been with her a few days. I’ve known her two years!’
‘I’m her family. Of course I know her. She always loved animals, even when she was very little. If you found your mother again, would you remember things about her, Danny?’ Rick asked, so gentle he was almost crooning. ‘After your grandfather ran her off Gundawin, she missed you so much. Wouldn’t you spend all the time talking to her, finding out what she loves?’
‘My grandfather did not run that slut off Gundawin!’ Spencer screamed, sweat beading on his forehead, finger on the remote shaking. ‘She ran off with a stationhand and forgot me!’
‘It’s not true.’ From his other pocket, Rick pulled out a letter. ‘Your mother never had another man, Danny. This is a copy of one of a thousand letters she wrote you. Your grandfather burned most of them, but she never stopped writing. The housekeeper at Gundawin—Mrs Rowntree, is it?—kept a few of your mother’s letters back, and sent them to me to give you.’
As Danny’s mouth fell open, Rick said gently, ‘Your mother’s on her way here right now, Danny. She’d do anything to see you, to be with you again.’
Elly had to hold in her own stare of amazement. Rick—my brother— hadn’t just worked on his negotiation skills, he’d prepared for this day with a thoroughness that touched her. He’d told her the truth from the start: he’d do anything to protect her. He must have come to Macks Lake to wait for her. For the first time in a lifetime, the void in her filled—she had someone to truly belong to. Brother and sister, blood and history—and a man’s love she never had to question. Someone who brought out a love in her that would never frighten her again. Someone she could trust with her life.
‘Your mother’s on her way, Danny,’ Rick said again, when Danny didn’t answer.
‘I don’t want anything from her!’
Rick sighed gently. ‘I haven’t seen my mother since I was five. I know that if she were still alive, I’d do anything to see her again. I wouldn’t want to die wondering if she loved me, missed me. I’d want to know why she didn’t want me, if she did leave.’ A quiet, thoughtful answer, and if it mirrored all Danny’s pain, it was also exactly her thoughts about her father. Rick was more than her brother: he was the mirror of all she’d felt in her life.
Don’t let me lose my brother now I’ve found him. Please.
Danny’s jaw dropped further. His tortured gaze fixed on Rick with the kind of haunting doubt she’d known since childhood: Why didn’t my runaway parent take me? Rick was leading everyone in the corridor down an emotional path, but Danny most of all. Piece by piece, he was pulling down Danny’s paranoid defences, weakening his resistance. Her brother was a master at instinctive negotiation. Worried sick for her patients, she could only hope Rick could bring this to an end soon.
‘Once you’ve read these, we should talk.’ Rick held out the letters. ‘I’m the head of the Larkins family. Talk to me first. Let Janie help the people in the OR.’
‘You’re still a cop.’ Quick as lightning, Danny’s expression darkened; he held the gun to Dr Schumacher’s head. ‘She’s mine. Janie, come to me, and this doctor can help everyone.’
‘Danny, I’ve met your mother—Lorena,’ Rick said quietly. ‘Your grandfather kept her away from you all these years, but she’d like to meet you.’ From his pocket, he held up one more thing: a photo. ‘She’s outside the hospital now, waiting for you.’
‘Stop it! Stop it! Granddad didn’t—’ Danny’s eyes unfocused, turning inward. ‘He … he wouldn’t …’ Moments passed agonisingly slow, while Danny worked it out. Looking back to a life that had led him to this moment, with a dozen guns trained on him.
At last he spoke. ‘Mama …?’
‘She’ll be here any moment. She’s coming for you.’ Words soft as a dream, filled with meaning.
Danny closed his eyes. Then, just like elastic snapping, he woke up, turned to Elly. He kept his gun aimed at Dr Schumacher’s head as dozen guns trained on him. ‘I don’t know her. I don’t need her. Come to me, Janie.’
Elly’s head lifted. No matter how many guns they aimed at him, none of these other people mattered. Rick had done all he could. He wouldn’t risk Dr Schumacher’s life, and nobody else had a hope of talking him down. This was her fight—it was time to put into practice the instructions Rick had whispered to her on the walk down the corridor.
She made herself answer, willing the pounding in her heart to slow. ‘I don’t like men who hurt people, Danny. I don’t like you when you do things like this.’
Danny’s face mottled. ‘Come to me, and the nice doctor can save lives!’ He jerked the thin old man by the neck, making him gasp in pain and terror.
She refused to move. ‘He’s not a surgeon, Danny. If these people die when I could have saved them, I’ll never forgive you, will never love you—and that’s something you can’t control with a gun or a bomb.’
‘You won’t have to,’ he answered, with a little oblique smile—and she knew what he had planned. It made perfect sense to a man who believed Romeo and Juliet was a true story—and deep down, it was what she’d expected since he’d killed her puppy and kitten.
All abusers are cowards, deep down … hiding their crazy fears from the world …
Her head lifted. ‘No, Danny. I won’t let you touch me. Not after what you did to me last time, what you did to all those people on the way here. I’m not a whore to be used that way. You have blood on your hands.’
‘It’s your fault. You weren’t there!’
Jonas gasped, ‘Elly, you’re breaking all the rules of—’
‘Let her go, Sarge,’ Rick murmured to his boss. ‘She knows him. She knows what she’s doing.’
Another murmur came from far behind, soft as a breath. How she heard it she didn’t know. Maybe he didn’t even speak it aloud. ‘Remember what he is, Elle.’
She sighed in tension and relief. Adam knew it was vital to remain in the background, but he was here. If Danny sniffed out the slightest hint of anything beyond a kid’s history between them, someone would die. Adam trusted her to get this right.
Her eyes trained on her foe, she took a step towards him. Hundreds of lives in the balance, and Adam’s words made sense. Remember what he is: all abusers are cowards. ‘You don’t scare me anymore, Danny.’
‘I’m tired of these games you play with me, Janie,’ Danny snarled, finger tightening on that remote. ‘I’ll punish you if you keep talking like that.’
Elly, be careful!
She felt the cry in Adam’s head, felt his fear for her, but she willed him to remain quiet. Her concentration had to stay on Danny, or this would escalate into a bloodbath. She already had enough injured people on her conscience.
‘Punish me for telling the truth, Danny—or for not being scared of you anymore?’
Danny blinked. ‘Stop it! You went away with that copper pig, the one with the kid! He’s not your brother! That’s not the truth. You can’t talk to me without respect!’ He gave Dr Schumacher a vicious shove, pushing him to his knees and forcing the rifle into his mouth. The poor man sagged in fear, his eyes begging her to help him.
‘She went with me, Danny,’ Rick said softly. ‘Do you think I’d trust my precious sister to anyone but me?’
Danny threw him a wild glance. ‘No. The people Granddad sent to Longa Station said she was with the other guy.’
‘The Mirakis are liars,’ Rick said, harder now. ‘They want to see Janie hurt. Your granddad should never have sent people like them here, people who want revenge on her.’
‘Granddad …’ One foot began to twitch. ‘They’re better than the other one. All she can say is my Janie’s a slut! I hate her!’
‘No, Mrs Collins isn’t nice,’ Rick agreed without surprise. ‘Your granddad should have sent nicer people to help you.’
‘Granddad! He doesn’t care about anything but—’ Sudden anger took over his face. ‘Stop it! He’s lying to us, Danny! We’re in con
trol here!’
Elly watched Danny’s face changing as the more dangerous personality she’d only glimpsed when he’d slit her pets’ throats came to the fore. What was the procedure for dealing with this?
‘What’s your name?’ Rick asked softly. ‘The one who’s taking over?’
Danny blinked, eyes clearing. ‘No! Don’t talk to him. Leave him out of this, or everyone will end up dead!’
‘Because he has his finger on the dead-man’s switch, and the pistol?’
Danny nodded, eyes frantic.
‘He’s slipping out, Danny.’ Rick didn’t move, barely seemed to breathe as he spoke. ‘He’s coming closer all the time, isn’t he? You’ve tried so hard to control him, but he’s here now.’
Another nod, big-eyed, lips sucked in.
‘What’s his name?’
Like a child in the dark, Danny whispered, ‘Monster. Don’t make him angry … please …’ Both feet twitched now.
‘It’s when you’re alone he’s at his worst, isn’t it?’
When Danny nodded yet again, Rick took one small, careful step forward. ‘You can do this, Danny. You can win. You’re not alone.’
‘That’s why I came! I can’t do it without Janie! She’s the only one who makes Monster go to sleep.’ Danny lifted the switch, his eyes different. Confident. ‘No, she doesn’t. Is she stopping me now? I’m the strong one here. I know what to do.’
‘Do you, Monster?’ Elly started walking toward Danny. ‘You think you’re in control by hurting people? I don’t like it when you scare people, and hurt them. And you won’t hurt me. Danny’s a good person. He won’t let you hurt me.’
‘I hurt you the last time you defied me!’ he screamed.
‘What, you mean this?’ She pushed the shirt aside to reveal the scar, ignoring the fury boiling in her brother’s stance as he saw it. ‘It changed my life, Monster, but not the way you think. I’m not scared any more. I won’t run. I saved Danny’s life, worked night and day to help you both stay alive. Both of you love me. You won’t use me to get revenge on your mother.’
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