Love Lies Dying

by Steve Gerlach

  “Yeah, she sounded fine. I mean, she sounded scared and all, but she said she was safe and well and that we should follow Ricky’s instructions.”

  John nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Do we have any other choice?”

  “No,” Zoe shook her head. “We don’t. I have to go back to him.”

  John hugged her harder. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll follow his instructions.”

  “There’s no other way.”

  “But you won’t be going back to him.”

  “Huh?” she looked up at him with confusion in her eyes.

  “We’ll do what he wants, up to a point, and when I’m satisfied both you and Helen are safe, we’ll start playing the game to our rules.”

  Zoe shifted on the sofa and turned her body around to lie stomach-down on him. She rested her chin on his chest and stared into his eyes.

  He missed staring at the diamond in her belly button, but her face was no less captivating.

  “Are you serious?” she asked. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”

  He smiled at her and ran a hand along her braids. “Bastards like him can’t get away with things like this. Someone has to fight back sometime.”

  “You’d do this for me?”

  John nodded. “And Helen. I have no other choice.”

  “But how? What are we going to do?”

  He sighed, “I have no idea yet. But we have to fight back.”

  She smiled and kissed his chest.

  “You’re the best, Johnny. Even better than I dreamed.”

  “But to do so, I need to know something,” John continued. “What happened to the gun you had last night?”

  “The gun?”

  “Yes, last I saw of it, it was over there on the hallway floor,” he pointed.

  Zoe smiled, “Oh, that’s easy. It’s in my handbag. I put it there when I cleaned up this morning.”

  “In your handbag?”

  “Yes.”

  “The one you took out shopping with you?”

  “Yes,” she giggled. “For protection, just in case…”

  John sighed, “Well, we’ll see what Fox has to say when we pull the ace from our sleeves.”

  “But, Johnny, he’ll have his men around him for sure. You’ll be taking on a whole group of killers.”

  “Don’t worry, Zoe,” John whispered. “If he can take Helen and use her as a hostage to get what he wants, I’m sure we can take him hostage to make our escape.”

  “Are you serious?” she asked him.

  “Deadly.”

  “My hero,” she said and smiled up at him.

  “So,” John continued. “What’s the plan? What does he want us to do?”

  Zoe sighed deeply again and began to fiddle with the buttons on his shirt.

  “He told me that I’d been a very naughty girl and that I would pay for it when he saw me again. He said he’d been knocked out by our fight, but not for long and that when he got back on his feet he found my address book on the floor of the bedroom.”

  “Address book?”

  She nodded. “It was by my suitcase. Well, I thought it was. I put it there when I was packing. With Ricky barging in on me and surprising me and probably because of the fight we had, it must’ve fallen to the floor and I didn’t see it when I ran from the room. He went through it. Most of the names in the book are friends of his and there were only a couple of names that were really just friends of mine. So, he got his men to call around to all of the people he knew were his friends. They wouldn’t allow me to hide with them anyway. They know what Ricky would do to them if he found out I was with them and they had lied to him. So, that left three names in the address book. Two were friends of mine close by in the next neighbourhood and he sent his men to check. The other name…” her voice trailed off.

  “Was Helen’s.” John finished for her.

  She nodded.

  “Well, at least that explains how he found you so quickly.”

  “Yeah. He grabbed a few of his best men and headed out this way. Knowing the way they drive, they were probably here before I was. I mean, I had to stop to sleep for a few hours here and there. They could take turns to drive.”

  “So they were already watching this place before you even arrived?” John asked.

  Zoe’s face cracked as tears began to flow.

  “I’m so sorry, Johnny,” she sobbed. “I’ve dragged you and Helen into this and I’m so so sorry.”

  “Ssshh,” he rubbed her shoulders. “There’s nothing you can do about that now.”

  “I know, I know,” she continued as she wiped the tears away. “But I’m so sorry to have dragged you both into this.”

  “Well, what we have to do now is drag ourselves out of it.”

  Zoe nodded, “You’re right. I just hope we can.”

  John waited for Zoe to compose herself before he continued the conversation. When she was once more calm, he asked the question again.

  “So, they were already here when you arrived last night?”

  “Yes. They saw me pull up in the Jeep and watched me as I went inside.”

  “And when Helen came out to drive off to the hospital they thought she was you?”

  “I guess so. They followed her to the hospital, laid in wait and then grabbed her when they could. They must have realised it wasn’t me when she arrived at the hospital last night. But I guess they grabbed her as a bargaining chip or insurance or something. They knew that if they could threaten the life of one of my friends, I’d come quietly without a fuss. And they’re right. If I’d been driving the Jeep, they would’ve grabbed me and I’d already be back with Ricky and he’d be punishing me.”

  “But they got Helen instead.”

  “Yeah, and I don’t want to think about what they’ll be doing to her.”

  “If Fox is smart, they won’t be doing anything. She’s a great bargaining tool, alright. Especially as I imagine they’ve been following you all today as well.”

  Zoe nodded. “They kept looking for another chance to grab me, but you were with me all day and we were in public places with lots of people, so they couldn’t do it.”

  “But why not try to get you when you were driving back from the hospital? Why follow you and scare you and then let you go?”

  “Because that’s Ricky’s style, Johnny. That’s what you’ve got to understand. He scares and he pushes and he taunts, and when you’re at your weakest, he attacks. That’s his game. He sent those guys to follow me so I knew he knew where I was. And then he makes the phone call. Then, he tells me the whole story. How he found the address book, how they followed me, how his men grabbed Helen. He tells me it all on the phone, like I’m his greatest ally, but he knows that what he’s really doing is scaring me half to death.”

  She fell silent and rested her chin on his chest again. The tears had stopped, but she was pouting and sniffling.

  “So, what do we have to do?”

  “He wants to swap Helen for me.”

  “Yeah, I guessed that,” John said. “At least we know Helen is okay.”

  “Yeah, she sounded scared and tired though.”

  “I bet she is.”

  “Do you know Hepburn Lakes?” Zoe asked.

  “Ah yeah, it’s out of town. About a three hour drive. It’s a little country town.”

  Zoe nodded. “That’s where we have to go.”

  “Hepburn Lakes?”

  Zoe nodded. “Ricky said we have to go there. We have to get there by nine o’clock tomorrow morning and then he’ll let us know the next stage of his instructions.”

  “Why there?”

  Zoe crawled up John’s body so their faces were closer. She continued in a low voice, “Ricky and I took a holiday there once, about a year ago. We stayed at some old church which he had bought and converted for ‘business use’ as he liked to call it. I only spent the weekend there because he had some business that he had to conduct there the following week. And there was no way I was
going to hang around for that.”

  “What sort of business?”

  “I think you know, Johnny. The church is about ten minutes outside of Hepburn Lakes and in the middle of nowhere. There’s no one around for miles and it’s perfect for the kind of business Ricky wants to conduct. No nosy neighbours, no witnesses, no case.”

  “I see,” John said. “Then it’s perfect for us too.”

  “Huh?”

  “We’ll meet him on his own turf.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “We’ll play him at his own game.”

  “It’ll be dangerous.”

  “And we’ll win.”

  “I hope you’re right, Johnny,” Zoe said as she snuggled her head under his chin and hugged him tight.

  “So, we get to this church by nine o’clock tomorrow morning, right?”

  “Yep. That’s what he said. We have to be there by nine.”

  “And that’s where we’ll meet him?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “There’s a phone at the church, one of those really old fashioned black ones with a dial and everything. He said he would call at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. If we don’t answer…” Zoe stopped talking.

  “If we don’t answer?” John prodded.

  “Helen dies,” she muttered.

  There was silence for a long while.

  “And if we do answer?” John asked.

  “Ricky will give us instructions on how to get to the exchange point.”

  “Okay,” John sighed deeply as he tried to take it all in. “Then that’s what we have to do.”

  Zoe lifted her head to look him in the eyes. Their faces were just inches apart. Her forehead creased with ever-changing emotions.

  “You’ll do this for me?” she asked.

  He reached forward and kissed her on the bridge of the nose. He took his thumb and brushed it across the scar in her left eyebrow.

  “Yes,” he whispered back.

  “Why?” she asked in a quiet voice.

  “I have no other choice.”

  “Sure you do,” she replied. “You say goodbye to me and let me drive up there alone and I get one of Ricky’s men to drive Helen back home.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Honest, Ricky said nothing would happen to Helen if we followed the rules. He keeps his word about things like that.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m not letting you go back to him. You can’t.”

  Zoe stared into his eyes. It was as if she was boring down into his very soul.

  They were both so quiet he could hear her deep, rhythmic breathing.

  “Do you mean that?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he replied. “I’m not letting you go.”

  Her face changed again; emotions sweeping across her. She smiled. Then the smile quivered and she looked sad, then worried. Finally, the smile returned. Slowly, she climbed off him and stood next to the sofa.

  “Then we better get packed and get going,” she said as she held out both hands to him.

  John took her hands and let her pull him up from the sofa. He nodded his head. “Yes, we might as well.”

  “I’m sorry, Johnny,” she said again.

  “Stop apologising,” he rubbed her arm. “We’ll get you out of this.”

  “No, this time I mean about the lounge room.”

  “Oh,” John had forgotten about the mess. “It’s okay. I understand now.”

  “Ricky started taunting me, telling me what he was going to do to me once he got me back and how I’m going to pay for what I put him through. I just lost it. I threw the phone on the floor and backed away, I guess I must have knocked over the lamp and the table then. I don’t know how the book and the sofa cushions got messed, I really don’t, but I just panicked and I started to think about his thugs following me and him knowing where I am and…”

  She broke into tears once more.

  John stepped forward and took her in his arms.

  “It’s okay,” he whispered and he rocked her. “It’s okay, it’s not that much mess. I understand now.”

  “I don’t know how I came to be behind the sofa, either. Maybe I blacked out for a while or something. I don’t know. I just needed to hide and that’s where I ended up.”

  “It’s okay,” he said again.

  They stood silent in each other’s arms in the middle of the lounge room.

  It was inevitable, he thought to himself. A showdown with Fox was always going to happen. It’s just happening sooner rather than later.

  I can’t avoid it.

  He needed Zoe at her best if he was going to beat Fox at his own game, but he didn’t know how much longer she could hold up under the pressure. The last thing he needed was for her to break apart once they were confronted with Fox and Helen.

  “Do you know how to get there?” he asked her. “To the church at Hepburn Lakes?”

  She nodded and looked up at him. At some stage during their talk she had fixed the braid that had been unravelling.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I even know where Ricky hid the front door key.”

  “Okay,” he pulled away from her. “Give me a few minutes to get some clothes together and we’ll leave straight away.”

  She nodded.

  “Are there beds at this church?”

  “Huh?” she looked confused by the question.

  “If we leave now we’ll get there before midnight. We can try to get some rest and be ready for the call in the morning.”

  She nodded, “I don’t think I’m going to sleep much.”

  “I know,” he agreed. “Neither do I. But we’ll have to try.”

  “Okay, I’ll get my things together too,” she said as she turned and walked towards the bedroom.

  “You won’t need anything,” he said. “You’ll be coming back here with Helen and me.”

  She turned back to face him and leaned on the doorway to the bedroom.

  “I have to take my stuff, Johnny,” she said as she tried to smile. “I know you mean it when you say we’re going to teach Ricky a lesson. But I have to weigh that against what I know about him and his men. There’s every chance that I won’t be coming back with you and Helen, and I have to face that reality. For me, now, all I can hope is that you and Helen get away free, because it’s my fault you were both dragged into this. I can only hope that I can talk Ricky into letting you two go.”

  “Zoe, you can’t think like that. We will beat Fox at his own game.”

  “I know you believe that, Johnny. I really want to believe you too. But I have to ready myself just in case what you’re planning doesn’t work. I have to.”

  She turned around and walked slowly into the bedroom.

  John watched her go and waited until the bedroom light was switched on.

  “There’s got to be another way,” he shouted to her.

  “I don’t think so, Johnny,” came her reply from the other room. “There’s no turning back now.”

  The hardest thing for John to admit was that he knew she was right.

  Fourteen

  The radio stations began to fade on the dial when they were an hour into the drive to Hepburn Lakes.

  Zoe continued to twist the tuning knob, trying desperately to find a station that would still register. As she did so, she juggled the wheel of the Jeep, making sure they didn’t run off the side of the road.

  John let her continue, even though he could tell the station searching was becoming futile. It was as if she needed some background noise to keep her alert and thinking. Or that she feared the silence would engulf them if the radio was turned off. He thought about talking with her, but realised that if she wanted to talk, she could talk to him. He was more concerned that she kept her eyes on the road as she drove.

  He could tell she needed time to think.

  And so did he.

  The night stretched in front of them, with only
the Jeep’s headlights shining along the long lonely road. They hadn’t seen a car for at least twenty minutes and John didn’t think they would see many more at this time of night. Occasionally, in low-lying areas, they would drive through blankets of fog and every time they did, Zoe would crank up the heater one more notch. Even with the removable top secured on the Jeep, the cold night air seemed to seep into the car to surround them.

  John wished they had used his car, but Zoe had been adamant that they take the Jeep.

  “We’ve got to take the Jeep,” she had said. “Ricky will be looking for it. If we arrive in anything different he might panic and do something stupid.”

  “But which car surely doesn’t matter,” he replied.

  “Ricky wants me back, Johnny,” she had said as she carried her suitcase out from the main bedroom and dumped it on the lounge room floor. “And that means all of me. Not just me personally, but also the car, my clothes and whatever else I took from him.”

  “And his money?”

  Her eyes fell to the ground, “Yeah, well, he won’t be getting that. There’s none left.”

  She turned and headed back into the bedroom.

  “If we don’t show up with everything,” she called back over her shoulder. “He’ll get suspicious and think we’re trying to pull something on him.”

  “That’s what we’ll be doing,” John said.

  “I know that,” she replied as she walked back into the lounge room with her arms full of the parcels she had bought that day. “But we don’t want him to know that. Otherwise he could go crazy on us.”

  She dropped the parcels onto the lounge room floor by her suitcase and placed her hands on her hips.

  John smiled at her and realised she was standing there, waiting for him to say something.

  “What?” he asked.

  Zoe spread her arms in front of her and then spun around on the spot, “What do you think?”

  John realised then that she had changed her clothes and redone her hair. He surprised himself that he hadn’t noticed it earlier, but he’d been thinking too hard about Fox and the plan that was forming in his mind.

  “When did you do that?” he asked.

  “Only a few minutes ago, it doesn’t take long you know,” she smiled at him.