Hindsight

by AA Bell

  Through a throbbing headache, Mira recognised that he sounded far too pleased with himself.

  ‘You want us to hold her down like GI-Jane?’ asked another voice nearby — rougher, thicker, with an accent maybe, just a hint of New Zealander.

  ‘Nah, she’s blind,’ Greggie replied. ‘How much trouble can she be?’

  Mira glanced around the room, looking for anything to use against him. She heard multiple sets of boots shuffling away, then a door creaked and slammed, leaving behind the softer sounds of the one who smelled the most sinister. ‘Where’s Ben?’ she demanded. ‘I want to see him!’

  ‘Ha! I do love a bitch with a sense of humour. As I understand, you can’t see anything. Or, does it come and go, like he says — as shadows?’

  ‘Like who says?’

  ‘Ben Chiron, you stupid blond. Stay focused … oh yeah … Right.’ He laughed ‘Forget him. He’s no longer aboard. Now it’s your turn to whisper me a little secret?’

  Mira spat at him. ‘I’m not telling you anything!’

  ‘Oh, and feisty too? I love it!’ He edged closer. ‘I took a peek under your shades, while you were out. Now I know why you wear them. You’re freaky ugly!’

  ‘That’s funny,’ Mira sneered. ‘Because my eyes only reflect who’s looking at me.’

  He slapped her, making her cheek sting. ‘Reflect that, bitch … Come on,’ he teased, backing away noisily. ‘You want to make a thing of this? Try and hit me. I’ll make it easy.’

  Mira shook her head, knowing she’d be vulnerable the moment she tried to grapple with him on his terms. ‘Where is Ben?’ she repeated more determinedly.

  ‘Oh, are we there yet, are we there yet?’ he repeated, sounding increasingly childish. ‘My father has him, but we’ve got business first, you and me. You’ve just signed up for my long-term team building program. If you can’t trust your own family, who can you trust?’ He laughed, sounding oddly unbalanced, and patted her cheek with an apology before dancing away again. ‘We’re going for a little cruise on the love boat, until we reach agreement.’

  ‘You said you’d take me to him!’

  He chuckled, and she heard him start to undress. ‘What’s the rush? I ain’t never had me a blind bitch.’

  ‘No, wait! I already said I’d cooperate!’

  ‘Sure, and you will — guaranteed after I’m done with you. Sorry, bitch, but I have to mess you up enough while we’re having fun so rebelling won’t ever occur to you again.’

  ‘I won’t ever cooperate with you. I’d rather scratch out my eyes!’

  ‘Maybe I’ll do that for you.’ He swallowed loudly, as if struggling to maintain a hold on his own mixed emotions. ‘My father wants you so bad it’s hurting him, and I want him to hurt. You want that too, I expect, so after I’m done, you’ll be begging to do something for me. You’re going to make him hurt enough for both of us!’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ She coiled up away from him, feeling the two lace shawls come adrift from her hips and shoulders. ‘What’s your father ever done to you?’

  ‘It’s what he hasn’t done! Don’t you get it? You’re supposed to be the babe with the freaky ESP vision or whatever, so you should know already. He hasn’t paid me my dues! I’m the one who saved the whole counter-fitting scam from Uncle Theo. He was going to keep the whole beautiful deal to himself. And what thanks do I get from my Pops? I get to manage a floor now. He hasn’t cut me a bonus cheque since we started it! Well, that all stops right here. You’re my ticket to moving up in the organisation. You’re going to get me the code to his safe, all his passwords, files and all the names and details of his contacts overseas so I can use them myself. He’ll promote me for sure then, or he’ll sign his own death certificate.’

  Mira screwed up her face. ‘You think you can blackmail a blackmailer and get away with it? You’re crazier than I am.’

  He slapped her face again. ‘You think? Spread your legs and hoist your skirt, honey. Prepare to be boarded.’ He grabbed her knees, but Mira coiled up tighter, tucking her knees to her chin and locking her arms around her legs, fear overtaking her queasiness as the mattress rocked beneath her.

  ‘Oh yeah, tuck it up, baby. I can work with that too.’ He grabbed her by the hair, wrenched off the loose lace and rolled her roughly onto her side. ‘If being blind heightens your other senses like they say, you’ll soon find this orgasmic.’

  ‘No!’ she screamed as he climbed over her. ‘Get off me!’ She heard and felt her blouse collar rip but she stayed coiled tight like a spring so he couldn’t get at her chest. Outside, she heard laughter.

  ‘Prepare to be heightened!’ He slapped her hip, and as she squirmed under his invisible weight, his hand found her thigh and slid slowly up under her skirt until he reached her bikini pants. ‘Nude beige, my favourite.’ His finger glanced across her most private place and in reflex, she kicked out with both legs and twisted her hips, throwing him off her.

  ‘Bitch!’ he swore, picking himself up off the floor. ‘How did you do that?’

  She’d had a decade of practice and knew that he’d be expecting to fight now. ‘Wait, wait!’ she said, raising her hands in defence. ‘Please! I’ve never done this with anyone!’

  ‘A virgin? Baby, that just makes me hotter for you. I ain’t never had me a willing virgin — certainly not one who’s got a grudge as big as mine against my father — so what’s it going to be now? You want to make this hard or easy?’

  ‘Easy on me,’ she pleaded. ‘Please don’t hurt me.’

  ‘That’s up to you. Nothing sexier than a girl with a belly full of baby and I love doing my part to make the whole world sexier. Also helps for keeping my hooks in you aside from the obvious benefits of long-term team building. Of course you can still fight, but you’ll lose. There’s no way out of here, except through me and my men — and I’ve got five of the biggest, hairiest bastards you’ll ever … feel.’

  Mira could tell he was telling the truth; aside from the ghostly window and the curiously squat door that were both framed and painted to match each other like coffee jars, she could hear familiar gruff voices beyond the door, still laughing and making bets as if they were settling down to play cards.

  ‘Get your gear off. Do it yourself or I’ll go rabid.’ He took a step as if he’d already made the decision for her.

  ‘Okay, wait, wait!’ she cried. She’d escaped dozens of healthcare staff over the years, but none of them had been panting at her with a festering lust. She sat up slowly, and began to unbutton her blouse.

  ‘Oh, yeah, baby. That’s it. Nice and slow. Ditch everything but your shades. If I catch a glimpse of your peeps again I might puke on you.’

  Mira gulped and slid the blouse slowly off her shoulders.

  ‘Yeah, that’s it. Now toss it to me.’

  She did, but only weakly and balled up in a skewed direction so it would fall short on the end of the bed, hopefully giving the impression that she wasn’t quite sure where he was. She also needed the phone from the top pocket and couldn’t afford to let him hear any thud from it landing.

  ‘Don’t stop now. I want all flesh.’

  Mira trembled, repositioning herself with one leg stretching out to find the nearest edge of the invisible bed, while reaching up behind her neck to unfasten her bikini top. ‘I can’t get the knot.’ She showed him how much her hands were shaking, and hoped he couldn’t tell that adrenaline was the cause, as much as fear.

  ‘Please don’t punish me. I just need a little help back here …’ She didn’t bother untying the front clasp between her breasts. She reached up to the knot behind her neck, feathering her hair to make sure it wouldn’t get in the way of her plan.

  ‘Sure thing, baby.’ He returned to the left side of the bed, resting with one knee between her legs. ‘Don’t try anything stupid again,’ he said as he leaned against her. ‘I won’t be so forgiving next time.’

  Trembling as the moment for action drew nearer, Mira leaned away from him, ever so
slightly. The knot behind her neck was already untied in her fingers with the ribbons of elastic trailing loose down her back. She leaned a little more, drawing him off balance, and felt his hot breath approaching her throat. One of his hands strayed down to her stomach for balance.

  ‘Mmm, you smell delicious,’ he whispered as he reached behind her neck. His other hand strayed lower to explore between her thighs, and when she offered no resistance, his mouth claimed her neck for a kiss. Then she wrenched back, flipped, turned and within a heartbeat, he was on his side with her body partly under him, using leverage and gravity to help tighten the neck ties of her string bikini around his throat. With her legs clamped tightly around his belly and his air choked off, he couldn’t utter a sound, but as he thrashed about and clawed at her face and throat, he rolled with her off the bed onto the floor, knocking her sunshades askew.

  Mira stayed with him, keeping her eyes clamped shut against the pain of an unfiltered century, but she didn’t need to see anything. Each time he struggled and clawed to make the neck-string stretch enough to reopen his airway, she’d pump his lungs empty using a sudden squeeze of her legs, then tighten again on his throat before he could breathe in.

  ‘You wanted to be close to me?’ she whispered as he began to weaken. ‘I can play rough too, Greggie. Tell me where Ben is, or I’ll take you into darkness forever.’

  His lips moved and he spluttered as if desperate to answer, so she slackened her grip a little to allow him a mouthful of air.

  ‘Home!’ he gasped, still clawing at his neck. ‘He’s at home, bitch! I’m gunna —’

  ‘Whose home? Yours?’

  He shook his head, spluttering for more air.

  ‘Your father’s?’

  He shook his head again, leaving Mira no choice but to allow him another breath.

  ‘Make me happy,’ she warned him.

  He gasped and coughed as if stalling, so she choked off his air again briefly.

  ‘His home!’ he spluttered. ‘Last place … they’d look.’

  ‘Good boy, Greggie. Now one last question. Did General Garland make any attempt to rescue him?’

  He shook his head, but the moment she gave him just enough slack to answer properly, he made a last-ditch effort to break free. She tightened her grip, but drained of strength herself, she couldn’t risk prolonging the struggle any more. She did the only thing she could, counting the seconds until he went limp, and when that happened too swiftly, she kept counting until she was sure that he’d lost consciousness. Having witnessed so many strangulations between bickering convicts and other deaths at the hanging tree, she was well acquainted with the minimum time it usually took. She also had personal experience with Colonel Kitching.

  She rolled Greggie’s body away from her. No time to check if he was dead. Ben was a hostage in his own home, his mother in hospital with a cop boyfriend whose cover she’d blown before Greggie’s ambush — and the only person who could help any of them was trapped in the roof of a burning building.

  Fixing her bikini top, skirt and shades, she scrambled for the ghostly porthole, stumbling the last few steps as the deck heaved. She braced herself against the wall and explored until she found the shape of its invisible cousin.

  Looking down, she saw dark water outside and the hull of a neighbouring fishing trawler. Mira felt the rumble of an engine beneath her and sensed herself begin to move. She glided out through the side wall of the yacht and levitated across the water. Looking back she saw the ghost of a yacht remain behind — the Navis Amoris, still tethered yesterday to the marina.

  Fumbling with the invisible latch in the real version of the yacht, she cranked open the watertight seal until the hatch felt wide enough for her to climb through. Fear caused her to falter. She could swim no better than a butterfly but every second’s delay was taking her into deeper water.

  She gripped onto the top of the circular window-sill, pulled herself up and slid out into the cool night air, legs first — and giving in to her nightmare at last, she allowed herself to fall … into water.

  Flying low over the Victorian countryside, General Garland saw her first destination ahead in the transit corridor where the state highway was being widened for additional traffic between Melbourne and the international airport. Behind her, she heard Link Lasso swear at his console.

  ‘Trouble, airman?’ she asked.

  He nodded, his face ashen. ‘It’s the care package, ma’am. Her signal just died.’

  ‘Both of them?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. The phone and the glasses.’

  Submerged in seawater, Mira felt the sting of Greggie’s scratches on her cheek, neck and chest. She heard the yacht motoring away from her and struggled to get up to the surface, hoping none of the crew would notice her missing any time soon. Aboard, she’d heard the voices of three other men but the ghostly yacht she’d seen at the marina had been large enough to accommodate up to a dozen.

  Swimming up, she lost one of her new sandals as she broke through the smooth violet surface, gasping for air but took in water instead. Panicking, she swum higher until she broke through the invisible surface of the higher tide. Air never tasted so sweet, but she coughed and spluttered, ill from the mouthful of water she’d swallowed in reflex. Invisible waves splashed her face, causing her to swallow more — while the ghostly surface still appeared serene and windless below her, roughly waist-high.

  Treading water — to her it seemed as if she was treading half above the water — she lost her second sandal while trying to adjust her shades to find a tide that appeared similar to the invisible waves that continued to assault her, but the mechanisms failed to respond. She was stuck with muddy violet of some time yesterday.

  A short distance away, the yacht’s engine died and Mira heard the sounds of billowing sails. She tried to float on her back to stay quiet, knowing sounds always travelled better across water — especially at night — but she remembered the shark story Ben had told her about Amity Point and could see from the ghostly horizon that she wasn’t too far away; no more than an hour’s swim for a hungry shark.

  Attempting to float and wave her arms in broad slow movements, she tried not to splash like a fish in distress. Slowly, she began to move nearer the marina. It took forever against the outgoing tide, and she felt her heart pounding loud enough to summon sharks from the far side of the bay, but she finally made it back to the pier.

  Exhausted and shaking, she dragged herself barefoot up the splintered ladder onto the jetty, where she collapsed with her head hanging over the edge to cough up water. Then, gasping to catch her breath, she studied her surroundings through the muddy-violet haze.

  A short boardwalk away, she saw a hotel called The Drift Inn with queues of yachts and other leisure craft tethered to seven fingers of piers. Now she knew where she was: at the hotel with the alley where she’d witnessed Colonel Kitching murder Lockman’s sergeant in an attempt to steal military technology from the two docs, Zhou and Van Danik. Tarin Sei had lost her sister in the same alley.

  No such thing as coincidence, Lockman had said, and yet this was clearly a popular marina for yachtsmen — and a convenient meeting place for any businessmen, regardless of their mode of transport. A signpost at a crossroads in the boardwalk directed visitors not only to the public toilets, showers and phones but also to the helipad, taxi-ranks, bus-stop, train-link and sprawling car park.

  Voices on the wind caught her attention, and as Mira dragged herself to her feet, she stumbled in surprise at the ring of a familiar accent. Closing her eyes and shivering with cold, she turned her ear to the stiffening breeze and strained to hear it again.

  ‘Oui, senator. I’ll be happy to return for you in the morning. With this weather, the fishing should certainly be hotting up by then.’

  ‘Gabby!’ Mira shouted. ‘Gabion Biche!’

  Gabby bid a hasty farewell to her drunken VIP then jogged over to Mira, and collided affectionately with a hug. ‘Mira, darling,’ she said, sounding genuin
ely concerned. ‘You’re soaking wet! And what happened to your face?’ Gripping Mira by the chin, she tilted her as if inspecting her cheek. ‘Oh, oui? You’re all scratched! See?’ She tried to lift Mira’s sunshades, but Mira swatted her hand away — reflex mostly, but also fearing that if Gabby caught sight of her own reflections, she’d be likely to start asking far more dangerous questions.

  ‘Fire!’ Mira blurted as soon as she’d caught her breath. ‘At the shop! You know the one? Where Ben worked!’ She remembered the mobile phone in her shirt pocket, but didn’t have time to work out the menu by trial and error herself. She pushed it at Gabby. ‘Call emergency … Please? You have to!’

  ‘Calm down. You go too fast. Where is Ben?’

  ‘At home.’ Shaking her head, Mira tried to shuffle thoughts of him higher as her first priority but couldn’t. ‘He’s safe enough for now, Gabby, but the others … they’re all trapped in the roof! Of the shop, you know? I have to —’ Mira choked and coughed up another belly of seawater. ‘You have to call the fire brigade! Oh, please? I’ve never begged for anything!’

  ‘Oui? Certainly, honey, but which shop is on fire? Off the top of my head, Ben has worked at three, and the nearest is right behind me.’

  Mira shivered uncontrollably but heard Lockman’s phone slide open. ‘The shop with the robbery, the murder … Please hurry! There are seven people trapped in the roof!’

  ‘Sorry, this phone is useless. You might as well toss it back to the fish …’

  ‘No!’ Mira made a grab for it, just as Gabby handed it back and it fell with a splash over the side into the water.

  ‘I didn’t mean literally! It’s bad for the ecosystem!’

  ‘Gabby, please?’

  ‘It’s okay. I’ll use mine.’ She switched to speaker as soon as the line connected, and after a quick explanation by Gabby about her name, number and situation in relation to the address of the emergency, Mira heard an emotionless and unsympathetic-sounding woman advising that two fire units were already in attendance.