Intruder

by Christine Bongers

  About the Book

  Kat Jones is woken by an intruder looming over her bed. She’s saved by Edwina – the neighbour Kat believes betrayed her dying mother.

  Her dad issues an ultimatum. Either spend nights next door, or accept another intruder in her life – Hercules, the world’s ugliest guard dog. It’s a no-brainer, even for dog-phobic Kat.

  When she meets adorkable Al at the dog park, finally Kat has someone to talk to, someone who cares. But the prowler isn’t finished with Kat. To stop him, she needs Edwina’s help . . . and what Kat learns next could mend fences – or break her fragile family apart forever.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright notice

  Loved the book?

  For my Clancy,and my Huggy, the Derek Zoolander of beagles

  ‘Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.’

  William Shakespeare

  Prologue

  I drew the line that ended my childhood on the morning of my mother’s funeral, one month before I turned twelve. It cut like a scar from the left boundary of our property, across the sloping footpath in front of our old Queenslander, and down onto the patched bitumen of our street.

  I lasered it into earth, concrete and tar with hot dry eyes, forming an invisible barrier as permanent and impenetrable as my mother’s death.

  No matter how hard my dad, Jimmy, had begged and tugged at my hand, I refused to cross that line. Instead, I pulled free of his shaking fingers and marched off in the opposite direction. Leaving him no choice but to follow, helpless and bewildered, as I circumnavigated the whole block to reach the church at the end of our street.

  For the next three years, I made a point of turning right every time I walked out the front gate. Even when Jimmy was with me – especially when Jimmy was with me. I was that kind of stubborn.

  He never said anything. Like it was normal to take the long way round, every time I had to leave the house.

  It was the guilt that kept him quiet. He couldn’t say anything without bringing up the reason that I wouldn’t turn left. So he did the ‘Dad thing’: hoped it was like oversized adenoids – something I’d grow out of – and that one day I’d walk outside, turn left and it would be over.

  But he was wrong. Some things were never over.

  I hadn’t walked past the house on our left in more than three years.

  I hadn’t spoken to the woman who lived in it, not once, in all that time.

  Everyone else called her Edie, but to me she was the evil witch, Edwina. She pretended to be my mother’s best friend. Right up till the day Mum died. Right up till the day Edwina betrayed her.

  I hated the evil witch.

  I wished she was dead. Even deader than my mum.

  Which made it hard . . . because on Christmas night, she was the one who came running when I screamed.

  One

  Maybe it was the creak of a worn floorboard that woke me. Or the subtle shift in air pressure as another body invaded my space. I struggled up out of a dream, confused and disoriented, squinting into the darkness.

  ‘Dad?’ The shadows coalesced into a human form, close enough to touch. ‘Is that you?’

  ‘Is he here?’ The strange voice – a man’s voice – struck my heart like a hammer. But the flood of panicked reverberations inside me couldn’t drown out the faint note of surprise. ‘I thought he worked nights?’

  I fumbled for the switch on my bedside lamp, alert now, my voice fierce with fright. ‘He’s here,’ I lied desperately, ‘so you’d better start running.’

  A breathy hint of a laugh, then a sweaty hand brushing mine as it tugged at the sheet, peeling it away from my body.

  For a heart-stopping moment I lay there, paralysed and exposed.

  ‘Merry Christmas,’ he whispered. Then a hot heavy hand pressed into the soft flesh of my thigh.

  And that’s when I screamed.

  The bloodcurdler I let out almost ruptured my own eardrums.

  I was dimly aware of someone, somewhere, shouting my name. Of a light snapping on outside, of more shouting, and the grip on my leg falling away as something hard smashed into my bedroom wall and clattered onto the paving stones outside.

  I screamed again. Or maybe it was still the first scream, the same scream, the never-ending scream that kept on coming as I flailed at the switch on my bedside lamp.

  By the time I got my light working, the only evidence of the prowler was a single image, burned like a lightning strike into my brain.

  A tanned hand, black hairs dusting the knuckles, a silver ring circling the forefinger, pulling my bedroom door closed behind him.

  A fist battered at my window.

  It was the evil witch from next door, outside on the paving stones, shouting my name. I threw myself at the window latch, grateful for the first time in years for the lack of a fence between our two yards. It took three attempts before the catch gave way, and I was babbling hysterically by the time she yanked it open and hefted herself into my room.

  ‘Kat, are you all right? What happened?’ She tossed a softball bat onto my bed and reached for me, but I twisted away, stabbing a finger at the door.

  ‘He went that way.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘I don’t know . . .’ My voice thinned to a whisper at the thought of him lurking in the hallway. ‘He might still be out there.’

  She grabbed the bat and ran lightly across the room, her long dark braid swinging behind her. She flicked on the overhead light and turned, hand on the doorknob. ‘Stay there,’ she ordered. ‘Do not move.’

  I hesitated, caught between fight and flight, one foot on the floor.

  She didn’t wait for an answer and flung open the door, bat poised to strike, before disappearing into the hallway. She wasn’t that big, but she’d played a lot of softball in her time and, according to Jimmy, still captained some mouldy oldies team on Saturdays.

  The slam of the laundry door propelled me off the bed, but by the time I made it to the downstairs hall, she was already halfway up our internal stairs.

  I clung to the rail, heart hammering, unsure whether to follow her. Lights flicked on upstairs, letting me track her movements as she worked her way from room to room.

  Just as the need to know forced my bare feet onto the steps, she reappeared, rattled the front door and, finally satisfied, headed back down towards me. I retreated
to my bed, hugging a pillow to my chest.

  ‘He’s gone.’ She parked herself on the bed beside me. ‘I think you scared ten years’ growth out of him with that god-awful scream.’ She studied me in the silence that followed. ‘The laundry door was open.’

  ‘What?’ Maybe it was delayed shock – or the awkwardness of having her in my bedroom after years of shutting her out – but I couldn’t seem to process what she was getting at.

  ‘Kat,’ she said, slowly and deliberately, ‘the outside door from the laundry – do you remember if it was shut when you went to bed?’

  Thoughts skittered around like marbles inside my head. ‘Uh, I think so.’ Jimmy always locked up before he went to work. ‘No, wait . . .’ I’d hung out a load of washing – maybe I’d left it open? ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure.’ My voice cracked.

  ‘Kat.’ She reached out like she was going to touch me. Like the last three years had never happened.

  I reared back and she flinched, a scattering of silver strands glinting in her heavy dark fringe. That was new.

  It had been a long time since I’d allowed myself to look at her. I averted my eyes every time our paths crossed, and stayed inside when she was out in the yard. I suspected that she and Jimmy still talked but he never admitted to it, and I never asked. He’d once told me that loving the same person gives you a lot in common, a lot to talk about. Hating the same person does too, but he doesn’t hate her, so we have nothing to say on that score.

  Way back when, she had been the same age as my mum – thirty-seven. Now she’d have to be forty. Getting old. While Mum wasn’t.

  I turned away, catching our reflection in the mirrored door of my wardrobe. My mother’s betrayer and me, together in our shortie pyjamas. This was wrong; she had no right to be here.

  ‘We need to call the police.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Kat, someone broke into your house.’

  ‘He probably didn’t.’ I dug my fingers into the matted lengths of my hair and squeezed in frustration. ‘I might’ve left the stupid laundry door open.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’ She shook her head, impatient with the argument. ‘It’s still a break and enter. The police will –’

  ‘No. Please.’ I hated having to beg, but getting the police involved was the last thing Jimmy and I needed. ‘It’ll be like the last time. You know how that ended up. I don’t want them here.’

  She pursed her lips; she knew exactly how ugly it had gotten.

  But before I could stop her, she reached over and grabbed the mobile phone from my bedside table, and punched in a number.

  The next fifteen minutes dragged like a dead leg.

  I lay on my bed, facing the wall.

  She filled the silence with a rambling, longwinded story about some dog whose owner had dumped him for a job overseas. Something so butt-ugly that no-one else wanted him, something that drooled ropes of slime when he was hungry, and did backflips when he was fed.

  I would’ve told her to shut it, except the sound of her voice muffled what had gone on before, holding the memory of the boogieman at bay.

  To tell the truth, I’d forgotten what a silky-smooth voice she had. How she used it like a witch would use an apple, or a gingerbread house, to lure people in. It was a trap for young players. I was older now and knew all her tricks, but got lost in the sound of her witchy voice anyway. It lapped like waves around me, lulling me into a semi-stupor that I only snapped out of when the point of her story began to sink in.

  ‘You’d like him, Kat. He’s a great dog. He needs a new home and you could do with a –’

  ‘You’re kidding me, right?’ I spun on her. ‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’ I swept my hair aside, exposing the ugly scar along my jawline. ‘I hate dogs.’

  She hesitated, then took a deep breath. ‘You didn’t hate Marco.’

  Marco. That was a low blow. The only dog I’d ever loved. Officially he had belonged to her, but in my heart he had been mine. After so many years, his name still brought a lump to my throat. ‘Marco is dead. You killed him, remember?’

  The front door banged and boots thundered down the stairs. I barely had time to get off the bed before Jimmy was there, crushing me into his fancy piano-bar shirt, asking if I was okay and firing random questions at the only other adult in the room.

  ‘I’m calling the police,’ he said, before she could finish answering.

  ‘No.’ I grabbed at his watch, twisting it round on his wrist. It was late – well after midnight. ‘You know what happened last time. They’ll say you should’ve been home.’

  ‘And they’d be right.’ The evil witch’s soft voice went through me like radiation. Straight to my core. But her eyes were on Jimmy. ‘She’s too young to spend every night on her own, let alone Christmas. She was lucky I was still up.’

  ‘You didn’t do anything,’ I blurted out. ‘You said so yourself: I scared him off.’

  ‘Sure you did, Kat.’ She flicked the braid over one shoulder, her voice cool. ‘After I yelled, turned on the outside spotlight and threw a softball bat against your wall.’

  My temper flared. ‘You’d love it if they took me away, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Okay, that’s enough.’ Jimmy moved between us. ‘Edie’s right, we have to call the police.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Katty,’ he said, raising his voice over the top of my protests, ‘we can’t let some creep waltz in here and –’

  ‘He was aware she was on her own, Jimmy,’ she cut in. ‘He told Kat that he knew you worked nights.’

  The blood drained from his face and my stomach clenched. I shouldn’t have told her anything. I wasn’t thinking, babbling in shock when I let her in, and now she was using it against me.

  I grabbed Jimmy’s hands, my gut twisting at the tremor in his palms, and forced my voice to a steadiness I didn’t feel. ‘You can’t tell them you were at work. You know what they’ll say, what they’ll do.’

  He hesitated and I pushed harder, desperation fuelling an inspired rush of words. ‘You can say that you woke up when I screamed. That he was gone by the time you got downstairs. You can put on some old clothes and they’ll think you were here the whole time –’

  ‘Lying to the police won’t help them catch him,’ she interrupted.

  I stared up at Jimmy, willing him to take my side.

  A tic twitched the skin beneath his left eye. He sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly, avoiding her accusing look. ‘Edie, Kat’s right. We can’t risk having Children’s Services involved.’

  Again. The unspoken word reverberated in the silence between us.

  She drew a sharp breath. ‘For heaven’s sakes, Jimmy, she’s fourteen now, fifteen in a couple of weeks. It won’t be like last time –’

  ‘You don’t know that, Edie.’ Jimmy’s voice sharpened. ‘We’ve learned that the hard way. We keep ourselves to ourselves. Right, Katty?’

  I nodded. We did. We’d had to.

  She stiffened, grooves of disapproval cutting into the pinched skin around her mouth. She’d lost, and she knew it.

  Jimmy’s hand gripped her shoulder. ‘Edie, please. Just back me up on this.’

  She bent over and scooped up her fallen softball bat. ‘I won’t lie for you, Jimmy.’ Then she glanced at my fingers locked into Jimmy’s, and something shifted behind her eyes. She weighed the bat in her hands, and shook her head in disgust. ‘If the police ask, I’ll tell them I didn’t see anything.’ She paused. ‘Which is true.’ Her voice was flat and expressionless. ‘I heard Kat scream, came over and sat with the pair of you until you called the police. Also true.’ She gave Jimmy a sour look as she turned to go. ‘I’ll let you fill in the blanks.’

  He reached out to her. ‘Edie –’

  ‘Don’t.’ She put up both hands, warding him off. ‘Just don’t, okay?’
Her face was stiff with the effort of keeping her voice even. ‘I’m not doing this for you.’

  No, she’d be doing it for her holier-than-thou self. Making sure that Jimmy knew that he owed her. Making him think that we needed her back in our lives.

  She hesitated at the doorway. ‘This is a wake-up call, Jimmy. There are worse things out there than Children’s Services –’ She broke off at the look on my face. ‘I’m going to bed.’ A barely discernible pause. ‘Shout if you need me.’

  I pressed my forehead into Jimmy’s shirt front, waiting for the back door to click shut before finally releasing a shaky sigh of relief.

  But the sense of reprieve didn’t last.

  Jimmy’s chest heaved and a violent shudder passed through him, shafting a spike of ice through my veins. My head snapped up.

  His chest heaved again. Like a great chunk had sheared off inside him and he was powerless to stop it slipping away.

  ‘Jimmy?’

  A strangled sob escaped his lips, and the old fear bubbled up. Fear that I’d carried, trapped inside me since the last time, broke through to the surface. The unexpected shock of it rattling me more than what had gone on before.

  ‘Don’t, please.’ I tugged at him. ‘It’s okay, really . . .’

  He sucked in a ragged breath, and another choking sob exploded like a depth charge, threatening us both.

  One of his shirt cuffs had splayed open, revealing shiny burn marks that scarred his forearms and his long piano-playing fingers.

  I reached for him, my voice breaking. ‘Dad, please don’t do this.’

  He crushed me into his chest, his lips pressed hard against my forehead, rocking me back and forth like I was a baby. Sucking in great lungfuls of air and expelling them in choked whispers into my hair. Begging, like a dying man, for forgiveness.

  ‘Katty, he didn’t touch you, did he? Please, God, tell me he didn’t touch you . . .’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I whispered, eyes squeezed tight against the lie. Repeating it over and over in the hope that it would sink in and soothe us both.

  ‘Don’t worry. He didn’t touch me . . .’