by Joan Kilby
“Riley, I wasn’t mad at you. I was mad at John. You couldn’t help it. You’d trained and struggled to get into the SAS. You had to go when the army called you.” Her voice hardened. “John had a choice.”
“But you’re my sister. Blood is thicker than water.”
Then she laughed bitterly. “Or seawater, which is what must be flowing in John’s veins.”
Riley wiped a hand across his face. He’d never particularly thought of himself as emotional but he’d been on one hell of a roller-coaster ride the past few weeks. “Oh, Katie. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d lost you.”
“Well, you didn’t.”
“Anyway, I just needed to apologize.”
“You’ve said sorry before,” Katie reminded him. “I forgave you long ago. Not that there was anything to forgive.”
That left Nabili as the last person he’d wronged. Who, like Katie, had dark hair and green eyes and was a teacher. She looks like your sister.
“Keep me posted on Jamie,” Katie added. “I’ll be worried sick until he’s found. And if there’s anything I can do, let me know.”
“I will. Take care, Katie.”
He hung up. Then sifted through his received calls till he found the one from Gazza. He hit the button for reply. The call went to voice mail, so he sent a text message asking Gazza to give him Pete’s email address or for Pete to get in touch with Riley. There had to be a bottom to this black hole he was in.
* * *
THE NEXT TIME Paula looked out of the blinds, darkness had fallen over Summerside. She glanced at her watch and was surprised to see it was nearly midnight.
Jamie had been missing seven hours and forty-eight minutes.
Closing her eyes, she allowed herself a moment to think about him and hope he was safe. That he wasn’t hungry or cold or frightened. I’m coming, mate. Don’t worry.
She rose and stretched her back, rotating her stiff shoulders. Staring at the computer screen had left her with a headache. She wouldn’t get any more productive work done tonight.
She packed up her files and walked through the station. All was quiet except for a uniformed cop booking in a tipsy fiftysomething woman who’d reversed her car outside the pub and hit a Stop sign.
At home Paula let herself into the dark house. She made herself a cup of chamomile tea, delaying the moment when she’d have to walk past Jamie’s empty room.
Fatigue was dragging her down but the thought of lying in bed alone in the dark, worrying instead of sleeping was enough to give anyone insomnia. She drifted into her sewing room thinking she could choose fabrics for the next row of patches while she drank her tea. Hopefully a few minutes with her quilt would soothe her enough to sleep.
What she wanted right now was a dark blue. She sorted through the small pile of scraps on the table. She didn’t find anything to her liking so she got out the garbage bag full of old clothes and fabric oddments and dumped it in the middle of the floor. It had been a few years since she’d seen the bottom of this bag. Usually she just put her hand in and pulled out something at random. It might be a good idea to sort out the remnants by color and store them in separate bags. When her life turned to crap, when chaos threatened, she craved order.
She threw a couple of pink and red items into a small pile, a green T-shirt of Jamie’s over there—
Hello, what was this?
She held up a man’s dress shirt, midnight blue silk. A faint whiff of expensive—and familiar—cologne wafted toward her as she shook it out.
Nick’s shirt. She’d thought she’d thrown this out.
It was evidence. Oh, nothing that could be used against him in a trial. It was evidence that she’d had feelings for him. That she had slept with him when she didn’t have to. That she’d delayed his arrest, not telling her superior officer about the evidence she did have, so she could spend one more night with him.
She buried her face in the cool silk, crumpling it in her hands. That time discrepancy was what had gotten her busted back to uniform. Not falling asleep on the job. It was the deliberate manipulation of the investigation for her personal ends.
In the interval between the meeting with Al and the actual arrest Nick could have gotten wind of the arrest and left town, or had his goons lay in wait for the armed response unit. She’d put other cops at risk.
She’d betrayed her father’s memory.
She couldn’t even pretend she’d blocked this from her mind. She recalled exactly how much she’d wanted him then. She’d been young and, yes, needy—not of love so much as security. He was an experienced older lover with wealth and a big family. She could have had all that if she closed her eyes to his criminal activities.
She’d read about prisoners who became attached to their captors, or detectives who fell in love with the criminal they were investigating. She wasn’t the first person to become so deeply embedded that she lost her ability to think rationally.
She was long out of his spell, if that was the right word for it. And yet, echoes of their old relationship remained, enhanced by the fact that they shared a son.
Riley had been right. That was what she couldn’t bear to admit, why she’d gotten so angry at the mere suggestion. Oh, God, how must he have felt hearing her flirt with Nick?
She didn’t love Nick. Not now. She couldn’t love a man who could sell crystal meth to kids.
A man who could kidnap his own son.
Moresco as a lover had been a fantasy she’d bought into to disguise the grubbiness of undercover work, to mask what was happening to her. Riley was the real man, a hero in every sense of the word.
* * *
SUNLIGHT STREAMED THROUGH cracks in Riley’s curtains. Yawning, he scrubbed his hands through his hair and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Six o’clock. A couple of crows were making a racket in the tall pine across the street. He had a mind to book them for being a public nuisance.
He checked his phone messages, hoping Paula had left word that either Jamie had returned or she had a lead on his whereabouts. Nothing.
Riley padded out to the kitchen to put on the kettle for coffee. While he waited for the water to boil he studied his decor. He’d never thought he’d be using the word decor in a non-ironic fashion. The eggcups were lined up on the narrow shelf above the stove. Paula’s black rooster fit right in. His mum would have liked the look. She would have loved the new stove.
Coffee in hand, he went to the bedroom to check his email. He scrolled through the new messages, looking them over.
Lieutenant Peter Caldwell.
Riley put down his mug and clicked open the email.
G’day, Riley. I’m in Kabul on a few days’ leave. Got a message from Gazza saying you wanted to know what went down that day you ran afoul of the suicide bomber in Kabul. I was on patrol with you. Here’s what I remember.
An Afghani woman named Nabili ran a school for girls, officially sanctioned by the government but a target for the Taliban. We went on regular patrols past the place to keep her and the girls safe. You gave her money to buy pencils and paper. Said she reminded you of your sister.
The day of the explosion we were walking toward the school—Gazza said you don’t remember stuff. The school wasn’t a big group of buildings with playing fields like Australian ones. It was just a concrete house at the end of a row of houses with a vacant lot next door.
I stopped to have a yarn with the dude who sold tea on the corner. You went on ahead. I don’t know the exact sequence of events because I was talking, right? I heard a scream and looked over. Nabili had opened the door to a woman in a burka. The woman—who was really a man—grabbed her. You were still a hundred meters away. I was probably twice that. Burka man started shouting in Farsi.
The suicide bomber.
Nabili screamed at you in English, “Sho
ot, shoot!”
Far from the hot dusty streets of Kabul, Riley started to sweat.
The guy was holding Nabili in front of him. You couldn’t get a clear shot. You ducked and dodged, but the bomber kept her between you. He was ranting something. Nabili started yelling in Farsi.
Telling the girls to run away from the school as fast as they could. Riley was starting to remember. His heart began to race. But—he noticed dispassionately—he wasn’t losing control. This was “normal” anxiety, not a panic attack. Could the EMDR be working?
The little girls came pouring out of the side door into the vacant lot. Nabili screamed at you, “Shoot me. Shoot me.”
If she were dead the suicide bomber would have no hostage. Riley could then shoot the bomber. He dropped his face in his hands. Killing Nabili to save her young female students would have been the correct thing to do. It was what he’d been trained to do in those circumstances.
He’d choked. But where was his backup? Why hadn’t Pete come to his aid?
I was running like batshit toward the school. Once I got level with you I started firing. But it was too late. The bomber detonated. Then it was raining body parts.
Riley stared at the screen. Tears streamed down his face. It was all coming back to him. He hadn’t been able to fire his gun when he’d needed to. He hadn’t been able to kill an innocent woman who reminded him of Katie.
By not shooting her, he’d let her down. The girls she loved as if they were her own had died. Everything she’d worked for, gone. His final days in Afghanistan had been horrific. No wonder he’d blocked them out.
As corny as it sounded, all he wanted was to keep the streets of Summerside safe for his family and his friends and the ordinary people who depended on the local police.
Mate, if you’re beating yourself up about what happened, don’t. You’re human, not a robot. Nobody should have to make the kind of choice you had to make. You’re a good soldier and an honorable man.
Riley ached for the camaraderie he’d missed—plain speaking, no nonsense and good humor. The men tolerated each other’s foibles, called each other on their bullshit, but underneath all the joshing was the ironclad knowledge that the guys would always be there for each other.
The mateship of soldiers was evident in cops, too. Paula was no exception. While he wouldn’t call her one of the guys, she got it, she really did.
He hit reply on the email.
Pete, mate, I’m a little shell-shocked reading your account of that day. But thanks. I hope it wasn’t painful for you to relive. If you can get to the ANZAC Day march in Canberra, I’ll be first in line to shoot you a beer.
Riley hit Send, then logged off.
He looked at the clock. It was only 7:00 a.m but he bet Paula would be at the station early. He reached for his phone and dialed.
“Good morning,” he said when Paula answered.
“Riley?” She sounded tired and anxious but determined. The woman had a spine of steel.
This wasn’t the time to apologize or hash over whatever was going on—or not going on—between them. “Just letting you know I’ll be at the station in half an hour, reporting for duty.”
“Make it twenty minutes. We have a lot of work to do.”
“Boss.” Riley imbued the word with affection. There was silence on the other end as if for once Paula didn’t know how to respond.
He hung up before she could reject him.
He wasn’t prepared to say categorically he would never have another panic attack. But for the first time in a long time he felt in control of himself. If he were a betting man, he wouldn’t mind betting on himself.
Look out Nick Moresco. Riley Henning was back.
* * *
SIXTEEN HOURS and seven minutes…
It didn’t sound very long but to Paula the past night had been the longest of her life. She never wanted to experience another one like it.
Riley’s phone call, while surprising and a little odd, had lifted her spirits. She absolutely did not want to bring their personal issues into the briefing room but she was dying to know what was going on with him. And if he would still care when she confirmed his suspicions that she’d had feelings for Nick Moresco. The only way they were going to have a lasting relationship would be to be completely honest with each other.
But all that was for some other time.
Paula arrived at the Incident Room just before seven-thirty. Riley and Delinsky were seated at the table. John stood against the wall. Jackson and Crucek had interviewed potential witnesses but they were off today.
It was a mammoth task to find a boy in a city of over four million people with a team that consisted of her and two uniformed cops. One of those uniforms was a solider who’d served on active duty. But still.
Riley glanced up when she entered the room. His gaze was cool, calm and confident. She breathed a quiet sigh of relief. He, too, had left the personal stuff at home.
Before she got down to business she had a word with John. “I want more men on the ground. We need to call on Frankston.”
“Not going to happen.” John shook his head. “A kid in Frankston OD’d on crystal meth last night. Cardiac arrest. He’s in the hospital, fighting for his life. Frankston’s putting all their manpower into locating the dealer who sold him the ice.”
Paula bit back a curse and squared her shoulders. “All right. We’ll make do.”
“Get a solid lead, something you can act on, and I’ll pull another uniform for you,” John conceded.
She had a lead—Tina and Matteo—but it wasn’t solid enough, not without an address.
Paula nodded briefly to everyone and stood at the head of the table. “The birthday party is today. We need to locate the venue and intercept Moresco before he arrives at the party.”
Delinsky put a hand up. “Do we know his current whereabouts?”
“No.” Paula kept her voice level and expression calm so as to not reveal how much that bothered her. “The hosts of the party are Tina and Matteo. No last name and no first name matches among Moresco’s known family, friends or business associates. We’re also searching second names—lots of people go by their middle names. If Moresco is keeping a low profile, it’s all the more likely he’ll conceal the IDs of people in his circle.”
Riley raised his hand. “I could run that for you. I did a stint in electronic intelligence in the army.”
The things she didn’t know about him. She wanted to hug him. Instead she simply nodded. “Excellent. How are you doing with the short short list matching the white station wagon with an address?”
“I recommend we put all our resources on Tina and Matteo,” Riley said. “I suspect Moresco would have ditched the kidnapping car by now.”
“You’re probably right.” Paula planted her knuckles on the table and leaned forward. “The clock is ticking. The party starts at one o’clock and goes till six. We need to find Jamie within that time frame. Afterward, who knows where he’ll end up.”
“Is it possible Moresco will simply bring back your son once he’s seen his great-grandmother?” John asked.
Until now John had been leaning against the wall, taking in proceedings. Paula suspected he was evaluating her performance. If she weren’t so focused on finding her son, she’d probably be offended he could do that when he must know she was in the worst emotional state of her life.
“It’s a possibility, I suppose,” Paula conceded. “But I don’t want to take the chance that he has something more permanent in mind.”
The atmosphere in the room became grim. Paula couldn’t bear it. “What are you waiting for? Get moving.”
The men filed out. Riley was last to leave.
Paula looked up. “When this is all over and we have Jamie back…” She floundered and had to grip a pencil in both hands. She w
anted so badly to reach out to him but didn’t know how. There was so much at stake.
“I was thinking Jamie might like to march in the ANZAC Day parade with me,” Riley said. “If that would be okay with you?”
She nodded, grateful he’d given her a point in the future with Jamie, a solid image of her small son marching alongside the soldier Jamie hero-worshiped. It was something she could hang on to over the next few nerve-racking hours. “That would be good.”
The day passed slowly, tediously, cross-referencing phone books, government records, hospital records, every kind of record they could imagine to find a couple named Tina and Matteo.
Four o’clock came and went. Twenty-four hours and counting…
Paula’s nerves were frayed. She knew in child-abduction cases that most murders occurred in the first twenty-four hours. She found it hard to believe Moresco would kill his own son, but it happened all the time.
To make matters worse, John had informed her that because the chief kidnapping suspect was the father, the Department of Federal Police wasn’t treating Jamie as a missing person. There would be no checks on airports or boat harbors. She’d done pretty well keeping an icy calm until now, but cracks were starting to form. She’d just snapped at Delinksy for taking a five-minute coffee break.
“Paula?” Riley rose from behind a computer and crossed the bull pen.
“What is it?” she barked. Then put a hand to her forehead and closed her eyes briefly. “Sorry. Start again. What is it?” she asked in a more reasonable tone.