Still Image

by Allie Parker

  Meg smiled a watery smile and Byron waited patiently. Besides Avery, Meg hadn’t talked about this to anyone outside of the police and the insurance investigators. But it felt good to talk about it with someone who was on her side. Someone who believed she was innocent and could see the injustice.

  ‘It would seem that I was part of an elaborate con. Patrick conned me into both romantic and business partnerships. I’d like to think that some of the personal side of the con was actually real. It’s a lot harder to think otherwise.’ Meg swallowed hard at saying his name. ‘He invested a significant amount of money into my business, which I didn’t question, and bought in some high-rolling clients. I didn’t have much to do with those clients and have since learnt they were all in on an elaborate money laundering scheme, of which my business was just a small part. Anyway, it turns out that one of his associates was under investigation by the police and that lead to the police being curious about their business dealings. One can only speculate that this spooked Patrick and he fled. He drained all the bank accounts, leaving me with $500 to my name, and left.’

  Byron admired Meg’s strength and tenacity to get where she was today. But he couldn’t see her like this anymore. He was the one who started this trip down memory lane, after she was doing so well with the Madden job and everything. He had to get her back out of this depressing recollection. He hugged her for a long time and then suggested ice-cream and a stroll along the boardwalk where conversation turned back to the Madden job and safer ground.

  After Byron returned to the studio, leaving Meg in a better state and texting Avery asking her to check in on her, he rang Grace and asked her to come to the studio. Byron wanted to fix the situation; he never wanted to see Meg look like she had as she was telling him that story ever again. But he knew he couldn’t.

  ‘Meg’s world fell apart overnight after the police knocked on her door and shed light on the situation, her partner gone, along with all her hard earned money.’ Byron relayed the gist of the situation to his brother and sister.

  Grace filled in the gaps she’d uncovered. ‘She lost all faith in her network of clients, many of whom were also friends, and basically went underground. Her old accountant, who Heathcliff stopped using early on in their partnership, felt for Meg and found a loop-hole in her insurance policy and advised Meg to lodge a claim to try and recoup some of the money he stole. It would seem Meg had little choice as to her future, so she lodged the claim and braced for the barrage of questions and interrogation from the insurance agency. I imagine she thought it couldn’t possibly be any worse than that of the police.’

  ‘She basically stopped working and didn’t trust anyone except Avery after that,’ Byron added.

  ‘Then you hassle her into coming to work with us. No wonder she didn’t seem very interested,’ Simon said, joining the dots.

  Byron stood and paced the room. ‘It would seem that all of the dodgy deals were Heathcliff’s connections, of which he kept her at arm’s length. She met me at a function Avery had invited her to and therefore held a level of trust for. And now we’re second guessing her.’

  ‘No we’re not, Byron, we’re looking out for her. For all of us,’ Grace added. ‘She opened up to you, so now she knows you know. Don’t feel guilty about protecting your family’s business.’

  ‘The question now is what do we do about James Madden and the potential PR nightmare,’ Simon asked.

  ‘I’ve spoken to James and he’s already aware of Meg’s troubles,’ Grace continued before Byron could object. ‘I didn’t say anything, he approached me about it. Don’t underestimate his own PR team, they’re thorough. He’s confident it won’t be a problem, and I have some ideas of my own.’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The following morning, Meg woke up feeling emotionally hung-over. She rolled towards the window and gazed up into the clouds rolling through the light blue sky. She hated waking like this, it meant she had a lot of work to do to try and shift her frame of mind to somehow lift her mood. She took a deep breath to try and ease the feeling of darkness pushing down on her chest.

  Even though she had just woken up, her mind was full, like it had been churning all night. Fragments of memories floated around as she closed her eyes to ward them off. But she saw Patrick’s face, smiling at her with kind, playful eyes. Then a stab of devastation rolled her stomach, the humiliation and heartache he had caused her. She saw the quality of work she had been doing a year ago; winning awards and pushing her own creative boundaries. She’d believed that Patrick made that possible and then overnight, without him, she didn’t know if she would achieve that level of creativity again.

  She saw James Madden telling her she wasn’t good enough. She felt the rest of the team watching her, waiting to see if she would fall apart. She saw the look of pity in Byron’s eyes as he listened to her woes and wanted desperately to fix things which were beyond his reach.

  Worst of all she felt in the pit of her stomach that she’d let Avery down. By cutting all other ties, Meg had put all of her weight on Avery’s shoulders. She had not listened to Avery’s advice, even though she spoke with great experience in loss and heartache. Meg felt her problems, although different, were insignificant in comparison to Avery’s but she couldn’t help feeling what she felt. It wasn’t just self pity, it was a painful thing to second guess every decision you made, to be unable to trust your feelings and intuition. However, Meg felt some resolve in the fact that she was in a better place now than she was three months ago. A day at a time she was getting better. She decided there and then that she was going to make it up to Avery. She was going to show her appreciation for having to put up with her misery for so long, staying by her side and supporting her unconditionally.

  Meg opened her eyes. She’d been honest with Byron, unleashing the burden of her past to not only clear her conscience with their partnership on the project, but in some way ask for help to move forward. Talking to Byron about her past bought Patrick to the forefront of her subconscious. Meg had even imagined seeing Patrick the afternoon before. When Meg went out to meet Avery for dinner, she thought she saw a man’s profile identical to Patrick’s and then later she could have sworn she heard his laugh.

  It was definitely time to channel her experiences into strength. If Avery could move past the devastating death of her fiancé and find happiness in her world; if the Cassidy’s could move past the death of their father and enjoy their lives and work; then Meg could find strength in the death of her partnership with Patrick Heathcliff.

  She pushed herself out of bed and walked through to the bathroom, shed her pyjamas and stepped under the shower spray before it had the chance to warm up. As the cold water plummeted her senses, Meg realised she was stronger than she gave herself credit for, she had found a reserve that she hadn’t known was there until she needed it. She decided to look at her life from a new angle, what Patrick had done to her was unforgivable, but it wasn’t her fault. She hadn’t asked for it. She had gone over the facts so many times with detectives and investigators that she knew now she was not to blame. Whilst during her darker times, she wondered if being gullible made her guilty. But at that moment, in the shower with steam rising up from the water turning a soothing hot, she felt something shift from her soul and wash away down the drain. She owed it to Avery to be strong and turn her fear and anger into strength. She owed it to Byron to remove thoughts of Patrick to the very back recesses of her mind. She owed it to the team to see if she could really rekindle her creative spark. But most importantly, she owed herself the freedom to move forward and step out of the cloud she’d been walking around in for too long.

  *

  By the time Meg was getting up and deciding to take charge of her life, Simon had been in the studio for hours. He’d had a call from a friend in England who’d noticed some very dodgy activity on one of Cassidy Designs’ websites. Simon, although peeved to be woken up at four in the morning, was grateful for the heads up. He pretty much had the problem u
nder control by the time Byron got in at 8:30.

  Byron noticed Simon’s rumpled appearance and the coffee mug long since empty. ‘What’s going on,’ he asked his brother.

  ‘The Wild Life website’s been hacked.’ Simon didn’t look up as he spoke.

  ‘What do you mean hacked? How?’ Byron moved to look over Simon’s shoulder but all he could see was coding he couldn’t read.

  ‘Jenny called from London early this morning to let me know she’d gone on to the site to check out the video enhancements I’d told her about. When she got there she noticed disturbing images and animal rights text that she knew didn’t belong. When a pop-up asked her to authenticate her user name and password she called me to let me know. We’re lucky she did too; otherwise we wouldn’t have found it until an unsuspecting customer made a complaint. From what I’ve found, it was hacked at approximately eleven o’clock last night. I pulled it off the server as soon as I got in and I’ve managed to reset the content to the latest back-up from a few weeks ago. I’ve been on the tech-blogs looking for recent activity and it would seem we’re not the only target recently. There have been a few other similar attacks on animal related sites, though mostly linked to medical research.’

  ‘So we’re putting it down to animal activists? It’s a stretch from medical research but I guess it’s still a connection,’ Byron said.

  ‘I’ve changed the passwords and I’m keeping an eye on site traffic. There have only been two visits to the site in the last hour. But one may very well have been the hacker checking on our response time.’ Simon stretched his back and rolled his shoulders to loosen the tension that had settled between his shoulder blades. ‘I’ve checked our other sites, it seems to be localised to the Wild Life page. Obviously I’ll be keeping a close eye on all of them over the next few days.’

  ‘The last thing we need is bad publicity about this given everything else that’s going on right now.’ Byron put his phone on speaker and typed in Grace’s number. After they had filled her in, she told her brothers that she was meeting with her contact from Madden Enterprises later that morning and would report back as soon as she could.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Flynn’s anger was palpable to anyone who was within earshot or eyesight. The remaining contractors on site were keeping a wide berth of him. A discrepancy with the air-conditioning unit was threatening a two week delay and the fire alarm system had decided to malfunction every night that week, leaving Flynn’s nerves frayed and his optimism of an on-time on-budget delivery hanging in the balance.

  Avery made a mental note to stay back later than usual that evening to see if Flynn was ok. He seemed distracted and irritated and Avery didn’t want to approach him while other workers were onsite. She’d overheard him on the phone yelling at the air-conditioning company while she was preparing her workspace that morning. It made her wonder who Flynn talked to at the end of the day to vent his frustrations. Avery had Chadwick at home, who was an exceptional listener, and Meg and Simon were good to vent work-related issues with. As Flynn literally lived, worked and slept at the building site, where did he go to let off steam and who did he have to talk things over with at the end of a long day, Avery wondered. She knew he wouldn’t be too pleased if she turned up just to see if he was ok. He was too proud and male for that sort of blatant show of compassion. Avery needed a diversion but little did she know that Flynn himself would provide just the right opening.

  As the sun went down, Flynn sat in the stairwell just off the second floor. He had a lot to figure out, with time running out. He was deep in thought about how the security system might be interfering with the fire alarm when he heard the door open behind him. He really wasn’t in the mood to deal with anything else; it was high time everyone knocked off for the day so he could be alone with his thoughts. A split second before she spoke, Flynn smelt the familiar scent of vanilla and cocoa.

  ‘Flynn.’ Avery didn’t sound surprised to see him. ‘I was going to ask what you were doing here, but I don’t think I have to, just look at that sunset.’ She sat down next to him and took in the view out the window of the stairwell.

  Flynn felt annoyed and relieved at the same time. He didn’t have time for chit chat or Avery’s calm ways. He needed answers to problems she couldn’t possibly fix. But it was nice just having her close by.

  ‘I’m just going through the wiring schematics for the stairwells,’ he all but grunted. ‘I’m missing something and I don’t like it.’

  Avery noticed Flynn didn’t have any plans with him and thought that just typical, they were all in his head bubbling around in there with so many other things. ‘I’ve just ordered take away, I hope you don’t mind that I got it delivered here, I’m not quite finished for the day.’ She omitted to say that she’d ordered enough for a small army and that she wouldn’t take no for an answer when she asked him to join her.

  ‘I just don’t understand what has happened in the last week that would throw off the alarm system,’ Flynn said more to himself than to Avery.

  ‘Well, what works have taken place this week, starting on Monday.’ She didn’t wait for his response, she started counting on her fingers. ‘The window treatments arrived; the last of the carpet’s gone down; the painters have touched up the feature walls.’ Avery stopped as a thought visibly flickered across Flynn’s face and he straightened.

  ‘The curtains...’ he said as he slowly turned to face Avery for the first time since she’d sat down.

  ‘Blinds in the kitchen areas, verticals in the dining rooms and curtains in the bedrooms and lounge areas,’ Avery clarified.

  Flynn grabbed Avery’s hand and stood up, bringing her with him. She could see he’d had an idea, one that could get him out of his funk, but didn’t say anything to interrupt his train of thought. He led her up the stairs to the fourth floor, her hand still tightly in his. He swung open the door and made his way to the communal lounge room. The furniture piled in the middle of the room still had the plastic covering it, waiting to be unwrapped and put into place. They stepped around the furniture and came to a stop, side by side, in front of the curtain that extended the entire length of the back wall, covering more than just the window, giving a cosy feel to the room.

  ‘It’s not the fire alarm going off,’ Flynn announced. ‘It’s the security sensor.’ He pulled back one side of the curtain which draped floor to ceiling, right across a small square sensor. He turned to Avery, all of a sudden very aware that he still held her hand in his.

  Avery smiled warmly at Flynn, happy that he’d found an answer to one of the problems that vexed him. As she looked into his eyes, she noticed the smile on his lips fade slightly but the twinkle in his eye remained bright and intense. She watched his eyes drop down to her lips and linger there for more than a moment. They were both standing very still and Avery realised she was holding her breath.

  Flynn looked back up into Avery’s calm green eyes just as her phone started to ring. He released her hand and the spell was broken.

  ‘That’ll be dinner.’ Avery fumbled to get her phone out of her pocket. She pressed a button and told the delivery person she’d be right down. ‘You go find us a couple of beers and I’ll get the food, I’ll meet you at your place.’

  Before Flynn could process what she had said, she was gone. Had he really been about to kiss Avery? What would she have done if he had? She didn’t move when the spark arced between them. He was just so grateful that her rambling train of thought had joined the dots about the security sensor behind the curtain, that he would have kissed anyone who suggested it. Wouldn’t he? Maybe he should run the air-conditioning unit issue past Avery too, Flynn thought as he pulled the curtain into the middle of the window, far away from the sensor to see if the alarm would trigger that night. He’d contact both the curtain company and the security firm first thing in the morning to come up with a solution.

  When Flynn entered his cramped living space, Avery was pulling food containers out of a large paper bag
and laying them out on the bench. Flynn raised an eyebrow at how much food there was. ‘Hungry?’

  ‘I thought we could use some comfort food after the day we’ve had.’ Avery decided honesty was best now that Flynn was in a better mood.

  ‘Comfort food,’ Flynn repeated as though it was a very girly notion.

  Avery ignored his tone. ‘Food that makes you feel better after a shit day.’

  ‘By the look of how much you ordered, you must have had a very shit day.’ Avery offered him the only dinner plate he owned, while she piled food onto a small side plate.

  ‘I didn’t know if you’d had time for lunch today, so I thought you might be hungry.’

  Flynn paused to process the fact that she ordered him dinner in attempt to cheer him up. ‘What made your day so crap that you needed all this food?’

  Honesty, Avery reminded herself as she fussed with napkins and cutlery. ‘Three years ago today I lost someone very special to me. Don’t worry, I don’t need to talk about it, I had breakfast at our favourite place this morning overlooking the sunrise. Just a little ritual I have.’ Avery finally settled into a chair.

  Before Flynn sat down he went to the fridge and retrieved a bottle of wine. He poured two glasses and sat them on the table. He took the chair opposite Avery and lifted his glass in a silent toast. Avery lifted her glass to met Flynn’s with a small clink.

  After an appropriate amount of contemplative silence, Avery asked, ‘so what’s wrong with the air conditioner?’

  Flynn almost choked on his mouthful. ‘If I knew that, I wouldn’t be in need of this lovely comfort food.’ Never the less, he explained the issue, not so that she could fix it, just so he could talk it through out loud. When he was finished the tale Flynn did feel a bit better. Avery listened intently to his ramblings, even though he couldn’t think of one reason why she would be interested. He didn’t like talking work with his mates over a few beers watching the football. His friends were all tradies or office workers; they didn’t understand the pressures on the foreman of a multimillion dollar job. He couldn’t bag out the incompetence of a plumber or sparky when some of his good mates worked in the same industry and probably knew them.