Chapter 1
Out Of The Shadows
I was being followed. I knew it. I couldn't see them, but I'd felt this particular shadow for some time now. And it wasn't as if I was unfamiliar with that itch between your shoulder blades. That sensation of having a bullseye painted on your back. I'd lived the past five years with those. They were as familiar to me as my own skin.
A small bubble of inappropriate laughter spilled up my throat. I shook my head to clear the panic and heard the beads, I'd threaded that morning, in my hair rattle. The sound of them calmed me. Convinced me I was not the Abi Merchant everyone knew. Right now I was someone else.
I took a quick glance around the sunlit suburban street I was on, checking to see if anything was out of place. A dog barked behind a worn fence to my right. A swing creaked in the gentle breeze to my left. A kid's tricycle lay on its side at the gate I was about to pass. Nothing else stood out. Nothing moved in the shadows.
But I knew they were there.
My throat closed over painfully. My heart thundered behind my breast. Two more blocks to the bus stop. I glanced around nervously again. Still nothing untoward. Still a half-cared for, family-ridden, west Auckland neighbourhood. My contact had disguised his place of business well. Who would think to look for his kind behind the façade of a family home?
But his cleverness was going to be my downfall. Thick in the heart of suburbia, meant infrequent bus stops and no taxis nearby trawling for their next fare. My breath began to come in little pants. I fisted my hands at my sides, continued to scan the environment and picked up my pace. In a few more steps, I'd be running. So much for hiding in plain sight. It's hard to miss a hippy dressed chick running down the footpath as beads rattle in her hair.
I soothed myself with the mantra my father had taught me. Blend in. Be seen, but not perceived. Use the environment for cover. Live well, but not grandly. Hide. Hide. Hide. Shit. I missed him. He may not have been the man he wanted to be, but he was everything a daughter could have wanted. My eyes began to sting. Usually his mantra pacified me, but today I was on edge. Today I had acknowledged my time was up. Today I had set in motion plans for the next stage of my life.
And I didn't want it. When had I ever wanted the next stage? But every time I arrived in a new location, my first thought was for where I would go next. Within days of arriving, I'd set up my next identity, pinpoint my next destination. Map out my escape route. But for the first time in what felt like forever I hadn't looked forward. I'd simply begun to live.
How stupid had I been? To lower my guard, to forget why I was running. Not that I could have seen my contact before today, he was notoriously hard to get appointments with. In his profession, you had to be careful. And he was the best of the best, so I had expected nothing less. But now, five weeks after arriving in Auckland, I needed to leave. Today. If that itch between my shoulder blades and the bullseye getting bigger on my back were anything to go by. I needed to be gone this evening.
But I couldn't. I didn't have a new identity set up. I didn't have a next location in mind. I had no escape route planned. And I liked Abi Merchant. I liked her better than I had liked any of the others. She had a good job, with a great boss. She lived in a cool house, with a funny and upbeat flatmate. She was making friends.
I almost stopped dead in my tracks at that thought. I had never made friends before. But one week after arriving in Auckland I had a job in a super location. And within days I'd made friends with the girls across the street from my work. One week after that I moved, from the hostel I had been staying in, into one of the girls' homes. And began to live.
I quickly glanced around the street again. Still no movement, still nothing to indicate I was being followed. But my gut told me otherwise. Could I have got it wrong? My eyes closed briefly as I continued on toward the bus stop. Of course I wanted to be wrong, because I wanted to stay. But what had my father said? "Trust yourself, baby girl. Trust that feeling deep down in the pit of your stomach. Never question it. Never doubt." But I wanted to doubt.
Shit, if that wasn't a sure sign it was time to up sticks and move on, then what was?
I could wing it. I could get on a bus and just go to the end of the line. I hadn't tried the Far North out yet. But for some reason when I looked at a map of New Zealand, I always felt like the pinnacle of the North Island was a dead-end trap. A ridiculous notion. Even though New Zealand’s not big, it's big enough to hide in. To get lost in. I'd proven that.
Except for today.
How had he found me? I'd been careful. I'd done everything my father had taught me and even some things I'd picked up along the way. I was good at being a chameleon. I looked nothing like I did the day I left the Compound. I was older, wiser and an entirely different person - in looks and demeanour. In everything. Even my father wouldn't recognise me now.
A sound echoed out behind me and I all but jumped a foot off the path. I searched over my shoulder for the origin of the noise, but the only thing moving was a bright red toddler's inflatable ball, lolling across the street, blown to its next destination by the wind. My eyes scanned the street behind me. A couple of hiding spots existing behind a leaning wooden fence and a broken down old car up on bricks. Was someone there?
I stood frozen for several seconds staring at everything and seeing nothing. I didn't usually freeze up like this. But even though I'd been forced to move again and again for fear Roan was getting too close, today was the first time I knew he had. And for some reason, that was enough to make my vigilant self-induced training fly out the window. The sheer fear of Roan McLaren getting his hands on me again.
I tried to tell myself to shift, to move my feet. To turn my head and scan the environment again. It took several long moments. My heart was now aching in my chest from the speed with which it pumped. My head throbbed in time to the beat. Blood pounding through my veins and turning everything to sludge, also making my fingers tingle with an adrenaline overdose.
Fight or flight, they say. I was no fighter, even though I'd made sure to learn how to defend myself, I was always hesitant to throw a punch. And right now, with my feet welded to the concrete, I was in no danger of fleeing either, so flight was out too. They should add another category to that saying. Fight, flight or freeze. Adrenaline can make you move, do things you wouldn't be capable of under normal circumstances. But it can also make you cease to do a thing at all.
I swallowed and tasted bitterness on my tongue. I breathed heavily, feeling every inhalation and every exhalation. The breeze lifted my hair off my shoulders and made the beads rattle at my ears. It didn't calm me. It reminded me of a rattlesnake instead.
I was tired of this. Tired of looking over my shoulder. Tired of having to run. Was that why I had been so slow to push for this appointment today? To organise my next identity and plan for my next move? To break form and routine. To forget why I was running at all.
I swung back towards the direction of the bus stop, my steps faltering slightly, but my determination returning at last. What could I do if Roan's men caught me on this street today? Fight or flight. Or freeze. I was done freezing, even as my body seemed to battle my every command to move faster, move forward. To get away. I knew I'd fail at fighting. Roan's men were not preachers, not boys-next-door nice. I couldn't win a hands-on fight. So that left flight. And the only way to achieve that was to make the bus stop in time for the next bus back into town.
I glanced down at my watch. It was a cheap Casio, which my boss teased me about. But when I moved on from here, it would find the bin. So why waste money on a Swiss brand name, that would be easy to remember for someone who knew what to look for when hunting a person down? I looked back up the street before me, spotting the end of this block and the beginning of the one with the bus stop on it. I had five minutes before it was due. I was cutting it pretty close.
I picked up speed again, practically running, but just staying shy of that. Even when panic was closing in, I still automatically tried to blend in.
It was ingrained in me now. Part of who I had become. Even before I left the Compound I had learned to blend in. At fifteen years old, I stopped being a child. I stopped being me. Roan had thought I had grown up by the time he came for me that night. He didn't realise, it wasn't until my father forced him to leave, that I did.
Nausea welled up inside my stomach, as it always did when memories I've worked so hard to bury, bubbled up to the surface of my mind. If my father hadn't been there, hadn't returned early from the job Roan had sent him on.... I stopped myself from reaching that conclusion. What use was thinking those dark thoughts, when they hadn't happen. When my father prevented them from happening over the course of the next three years.
But even as I moved on from the "what ifs" and my mind segued into the "what dids", the nausea swelled and rolled and begged to be let out. My father returning from a meeting with Roan covered in bruises and a cut lip. My father being sent on jobs only the lowest of Roan's organisation were forced to perform, in exchange for Roan's stay of hand in regards to me. My father sold his soul to protect me, even though I begged him to run with me instead.
My mind, in its chaotic remembering, formed images from that time. One after the other of what Roan did to my father; the payment he exacted for sparing me, waiting until I was legally an adult, before claiming me as his. My father paid dearly for my freedom, even when he denied his own to save me.
"Why can't we leave together, Dad?" I pleaded in my memory. My old self, the old me that died the night reality came knocking on my door, stared up beseechingly at my father. Pale skin, pale blue eyes, and pale blonde hair. What Roan McLaren saw in me I'll never know. But then, it wasn't just my looks he was obsessed with. It was the fact I was a threat. I'd seen things; things that would be very bad for Roan if they got out. Like all threats, he aimed to neutralise me. His method of choice? Control.
So, for the next three years I made sure I was everything the head of a mob syndicate could not possibly desire, whilst acting as though I had every intention of remaining under his roof, in his Compound, in his world.
Punk, spiky, short-short platinum blonde hair, dozens of studs and rings in my ears, lips and nose. Shit, practically anywhere I could stick a pin, I'd pierce. Black, Goth clothing, black lipstick and nail polish, and an attitude to match. My first transformation, one of many to come. But every time Roan saw me at the Compound, he'd just smile. A smug, knowing, patient smile.
"We can't leave together, baby girl," Dad replied, cupping my cheek with his large, calloused hand. "I need to stay here to hinder their search for you. Because they will search, Sarah. Roan has claimed you as his, he will not let you go. If I go with you, who will stop the lion from catching the lamb?"
"I'm not a lamb anymore, Dad," I insisted. "I've grown up." I pulled at the punk/Goth clothing I was wearing to prove my point.
"It's a hide, baby girl. Nothing more, nothing less. But, if you use it wisely, it could hide you from him."
"How?" I asked. I thought I'd hidden myself well in amongst the punk-obvious outfit.
I watched my father sigh heavily, run that large palm over the front of his face. It was a handsome face once upon a time. But life and experiences had laid trenches of worry across his façade. His blue eyes turned down at the edges. His brow constantly tense and marred with wrinkled lines. Even his blond hair was greying.
"It will take money," he said softly, as though talking to himself. "Enough to buy you identities and work histories and new wardrobes each time you hide. And you must hide, baby girl," he said turning his attention back to me. "You must hide in plain sight. Be clever about it. Never lower your guard. But always hide."
"OK," I said, feeling the first stirrings of true fear. Even more fear than that night Roan appeared at the foot of my bed.
"I'll teach you what you need to know, while I gather the money you'll need to hide. It will take time, but if we let Roan think we are beaten now, we might just make this work."
"You'll come with me though?" I persisted, the child I thought I no longer was, rearing her head again.
He sat down on my bed beside me and wrapped me up in his big, tender arms. "I will always be with you in spirit, Sarah. Always inside your heart."
I cried then. The last time I have ever shed a tear. For the loss I knew was coming. For the life I knew lay ahead. For my father's sacrifice.
For three years he saved enough money for me to escape and live a life in the shadows, but in plain sight. He was careful to hide it all from Roan. To never let on to what we had planned. In the three years it took to save and prepare, he taught me everything I needed to know in order to hide. On the day I turned eighteen, the day Roan expected my father to hand me over to him, I left.
I didn't look back at my father as he stood at the bus stop in Wellington waving me off. I couldn't see what emotion would be showing on his face. I clasped my shoulder bag tightly to my chest. A few clothes, a new identity, a plan of where I was heading, that my father made sure I didn't divulge to him. And fifty thousand dollars of well hidden cash my father had saved to protect me. Nothing else. No photos of him, or me, or my dead mother. No mementoes of a life lived on the cusp of criminal society. Nothing to link me to who I was when I lived in Wellington.
Sarah Monaghan died the night Roan McLaren entered my bedroom. The first of many identities started the very next day, but it wasn't until I left Wellington and arrived in Christchurch, that the first real chameleon moment began.
I dyed my hair black, took out the studs and rings and replaced them with visible temporary tattoos. The Goth clothing disappeared and leather jackets and mini skirts took their place. And ID number one was born. Biker-babe receptionist to a Motorcycle mechanic - who happened to be a patched member of the Devil's Henchmen MC. I was proud of my first hide-in-plain-sight moment. There was no way Roan McLaren would tempt the ill temper of a motorcycle gang.
Ten months later the itch started up between my shoulder blades and I could have sworn my temporary tattoos had become a bullseye on my back.
Grunge-wearing barista in the campus cafeteria at Otago University followed. Then girl-next-door deckhand on a Whale Watching boat out of Kaikoura, snow-bunny ticket-booth attendant at Cardrona Ski Field, country-bumpkin farmhand on a large secluded station in the High Country, and finally immigrant apple-picker in the Hawkes Bay.
To my latest incarnation, my seventh chameleon moment, high street retail assistant in an Auckland jewellery store. Abi Merchant wore slim, pencil skirts, and form-fitting blouses and kitten heels. Her hair was always coiffed in a French twist. Her make-up was impeccable and barely noticeable, her eyes a stunning green due to coloured contact lenses. Her hair a vibrant red, sleek and shiny. Her manners perfect, her speech well articulated. Her back straight and head held high.
I liked her. She was everything my life as Sarah Monaghan would not have been. She was everything Roan McLaren would not have wanted. She was upright and correct, she couldn't even jay-walk across the street.
Not that she was present in this suburban neighbourhood right now. My long, flowing flower-power skirt swished around my ankles as I strode with purpose towards the bus stop sign I could now make out up ahead. My ankle laced leather sandals made slapping sounds against the concrete beneath my feet. My beads rattled in my hair, my bangles jangled around my wrists. And the saucer-sized peace symbol hanging around my neck, bounced up and down against my chest.
Everything had a blue tinge to it, as the lenses on my round-framed glasses were a brilliant blue, hiding my natural eye colour. I was sick of contacts, Abi Merchant's only fault. My next incarnation would be au naturel. But even as I approached the bus stop ahead, I knew my new identity was already shot. I hadn't even received the $5,000 papers yet, and already I would have to move on from Chrystal Kerr.
But what choice did I have, but to wait for the papers to be done. Chrystal would get me to Australia, or maybe London, I wasn't sure yet. Then she could disappear and someone else would get born inst
ead. If I left Auckland now, without this latest identity, it would take too long for me to find a forger good enough to fool any border control. Those I had used in the past had been barely good enough for employment reasons, this latest attempt was to be my last here in NZ. My father had warned I needed to wait at least a couple of years before attempting the dangerous task of heading overseas through international borders. He warned me that Roan would watch the airports, I had to give it time.
Life had meant two years turned into five, before I found a forger good enough for the task. Would it take another five years for me to find another? Could I continue to run and hide in New Zealand for that long? I didn't have it in me anymore, even though Roan was so close, breathing down my neck. I had to make a stand. I had to see this through and then I could leave. Then I could forget that night eight years ago, when I woke to Roan McLaren at the foot of my bed.
Bile found its familiar path up my throat and coated my tongue. I gagged, stumbled, heard a sound behind me and felt panic well up my throat instead. Heart thumping, sweat beading across my skin, I spun on my feet, ready to face my pursuer, but not ready to face my imprisonment or death.
Then lost my footing on the kerb, felt my ankle give out beneath me and went sprawling across the roadway in an undignified heap.
A screeching sound rang out in the air, the smell of burnt rubber and the whine of a strained engine as it sped up - aiming straight for my head. I swung my stunned and mortified gaze towards the incoming beast, only to realise it wasn't speeding, but braking, and not doing a very good job of that fact. The rear of the car swung out to the side, as it fishtailed down the street. Smoke wafted up from the rear tyres and little bits of gravel spewed out from the ones in front, only a couple of feet from my face.
It wasn't going to make it. Even if it wasn't Roan's men, I was done for sure.
Sweet Seduction Shadow Page 2