“Cait, I’m going to give you a home truth. You need to get your drive back. And how, you might ask? Simple. You have to get angry again. The type of anger that can only come from hate, and that hate needs to manifest from the very depths of your soul. Be so angry with Rosi—hate with such a vengeance—that you could tear him limb from limb if he ever crossed your path again.”
Heavy words, inciteful words, but necessary to drag Cait back from her saturnine state.
Then when she’s back on point again, thought Kylie, we can maybe tone it down a tad and get her to focus on the game plan: to see Rosi behind bars.
“Yeah, I’ll . . . ah . . . see you next week. Sure,” muttered Cait.
“I’m just checking my diary. Let’s make it . . . ah, Tuesday, eleven thirty. Then we can nip out and have a bite to eat afterward. My treat. You like Italian? Too bad if you don’t. We’ll go to a place around the corner. He’s one of my clients. I’ll send you a Google invite.”
“Okay, done.” Considering that she had been through the wringer, Cait actually felt positive for a change.
Yes, I can do this! she thought to herself as she hung up.
Cait smelled burning cloves. And cigarette smoke. She instantly snapped awake from her nightmare, groggy and aching all over, but alert enough to realize that she wasn’t in a good space.
There’s that smell again! The same one as in the white van when I was kidnapped. Gudang Garams.
As reality hit hard, she began to struggle and opened her eyes . . .
Oh my God, I’m tied up again. It can’t be . . . where am I?
Then she saw it—felt it—the cobra, glaring at her from a thick muscular arm that was casually scratching an even thicker leg not more than three feet away.
“It’s time to die, bitch,” hissed the snake, the words ending with a short menacing laugh breaking from its lips. But this time the snake in front of her was real. This wasn’t a nightmare. It was attached to a body that she knew.
Boss-man.
He pulled out a knife, its razor-sharp edges catching the light as he slashed it through the damp night air with a hiss, throwing his arms around like a windmill in a stiff breeze, trying to intimidate her. Boss-man enjoyed playing games with his victims, especially women. They were easily frightened.
“C’mon Caitie, Mia wants a walk. Get off your butt and join us,” said G, pleased that his daughter had miraculously had an about-face in the past twenty-four hours and was rejoining the human race again after not having ventured out of the house for the past week.
“You look like you could do with some fresh air.”
Must have been Jools’s mother-daughter chat a few days ago, thought G.
Little did he know about Kylie’s broadside that she had delivered to Cait only yesterday. Kylie had kept that between the two of them. It was a Girl Power thing and none of G’s business.
Whatever, something had flicked a switch in Cait’s head, as her “old” new self appeared to be returning. She was even getting excited about meeting up with Kylie and Irish next Tuesday, and in her usual efficient way had already commenced preparing an agenda for them all to discuss.
“Yeah, sure Dad. Half a mo’ while I get my jacket.”
Mia was her usual intuitive self and had heard the word “walk” mentioned. Her ears pricked up, eyes alert, intently watching her master. Then when G grabbed her lead from the hall table drawer, she was off, letting out a playful bark and running in circles around his legs, grabbing hold of her lead and dragging him toward the front door.
Yeah Dad, come on, let’s go . . . hurry up, she appeared to be saying in dog-speak.
Unknown to G or Cait, Boss-man had become obsessed with Cait and her whole damn family. That slut was the cause of all his troubles. She needed to be stopped.
Permanently.
Get rid of the bitch, get rid of my problems, Boss-man’s drug-addled brain had been telling him of late.
So he acted on impulse. Stealing a Honda Civic, he swapped the plates, then started cruising past Cait’s house on and off for the past forty-eight hours, watching the family’s movements. He was banking on Cait coming outside at some stage.
And there she was, walking down the street with her old man and that stupid dog. Boss-man hated dogs. He admired the Asians for eating them. That’s all those smelly mutts were good for.
“Let’s go through Catani Gardens. I’ll let Mia off the leash so she can round up the possums,” G said as they were walking down the street.
But Boss-man was onto them. He’d noticed G walk Mia through the park for the past two nights, so he rushed ahead.
“I’ll spring them just inside the entrance gates,” he muttered to himself, talking to his shadow as he drove recklessly through the side streets. Slamming on the brakes, Boss-man brought his car to a screeching halt in the No Standing Zone right next to the southern pathway into the gardens. He urgently jumped out the door, leaving the motor running in preparation for a quick getaway.
Boss-man was pumped.
He was off his face on a combination of ice and speed. Rational thought was nonexistent. All that was running around his head was the thought of that bitch destroying his life: trying to get him put back in remand, that latest newspaper article bringing heat on the Warlocks, costing them big bucks in lost sales. And it was all that slut’s fault.
She needed to be eliminated. And right now.
I’m gonna kill that bitch, he repeated to himself as if it was his mantra.
“Go on, off you go. Skitch the possums, Mia.” G and Cait had reached the entrance to Catani Gardens and G released Mia’s lead and was stirring her up. She ran off twenty meters, stopped, turned to look back at G and Cait, tilted her head inquisitively, gave a “come on, they’re in here” bark, and then bolted off joyfully, running from tree to tree.
Boss-man jumped out threateningly in front of the two of them. He’d been hiding unseen behind a clump of bushes right next to the entrance gates. Crazy eyes, on fire with hate, bored into G and Cait, almost burning them with laser-like intensity.
Cait stopped dead in her tracks. Frozen to the spot. Unable to move.
Oh my God, it’s him. He’s here!
All her nightmares—her visions—that she had been experiencing ever since Boss-man had been released from remand appeared before her eyes in a waterfall of cascading images, bunching up and crashing into each other, as if they had all simultaneously hit an immovable solid wall.
“Ah, no!” she tried to scream, but it came out instead as a long high-pitched squeak.
G was taken by total surprise. His mind racing quicker than his reflexes, he had visions of rushing in front of Cait and putting himself between Boss-man and his daughter.
A rapid-fire combination of punches that would have laid Muhammad Ali out knocked G’s head around like a speed bag and he dropped to the ground, unconscious.
Cait looked on in total shock as her father hit the ground hard, blood starting to ooze from a deep cut on his right cheek, his jaw distorted, eyes open and rolled back in his head.
Mia sensed trouble and came running. She circled Boss-man, barking, trying to nip his heels.
She yelped as she was lifted off the ground and hurled backward by a well-aimed kick from a size-twelve boot that landed with full force under her rib cage. Cait was positive she heard the sound of breaking ribs as the boot connected.
“You bastard!” Cait had regained enough composure to scream. She lunged at Boss-man, her adrenaline pumping so hard that the danger of what faced her didn’t even register.
Boss-man let go two full force open-fist smacks to her head. Cait staggered, then dropped, disappearing into a velvet black nothingness. No light, no sound, only pain and helplessness.
She was vaguely cognizant of being manhandled, roughly landing on a hard surface, but it was only on the very edges of her consciousness.
Zippp. Zippp. She couldn’t move her arms and legs.
Then there was nothing. To
tal blackness. No sense. No feeling. No being.
“Ahhh,” Cait groaned, cramping, uncomfortable, and in pain. She had a massive headache that felt like an axe was lodged in her skull, and a ringing in her ears that sounded like a tree full of cicadas in full song.
She had been slipping in and out of consciousness for the past thirty minutes, gradually becoming aware of her surroundings and the memories of what had just happened.
How long have I been unconscious for? she wondered. Oh my God! Dad. I hope he’s okay. And poor Mia.
Cait opened her eyes, focused, and saw Boss-man staring down with the look of a madman.
“You fucking bastard. My father and Mia were innocent! They’ve done nothing to you,” Cait snapped in a forceful tone. She was learning to hate once more. But this time with a vengeance.
She was currently trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey again, lying on a cold, dirty concrete floor. The smell of oil, grease, and petrol permeated the air, hanging like a damp cloud, dominating the space. She was aware of a slight breeze whistling through, the cold night air brushing her exposed cheek, snapping her back to reality. Cait glanced around, taking in her surroundings, and saw marked yellowing walls corroded with the ravages of time, motorbikes in various stages of dismantling, bike bits and wheels strewn everywhere, and those mandatory tire calendars hanging on the wall showing pictures of naked large-breasted women displaying their wares, posing in, on, or draped over a muscle car or some souped-up motorbike.
I’m in some sort of garage. Looks more like a junkyard. There’s crap all over the place.
“You’re going to die, bitch,” snarled Boss-man, looking down from a chair he had conveniently positioned himself on. He’d just smoked a pipe of ice and he was aggressive and full of bravado. And he had Cait where he wanted her: tied up, defenseless, and alone.
“You. Don’t. Scare. Me,” hissed Cait defiantly, lifting her head and looking up at Boss-man, carefully enunciating each word.
“Piss off, bitch. I’m going to slice you up into small pieces and feed you to the dogs. No one can get you here. No one’ll hear you scream.”
Boss-man stood up and paced the space, throwing his knife that he had just removed from the scabbard on his belt from hand to hand as he stepped. Grabbing the weapon by the blade, he laughed menacingly and said, “This one’s gonna hurt.”
He then took aim and threw the knife at his defenseless captive, taunting her with, “Cop this for starters,” as the blade hissed through the air.
Cait focused on the spinning shiny blade as it tumbled end over end toward her. It looked deadly. Lethal. And it was going to inflict a very painful injury. Then out of nowhere, as if in sync with her thoughts, time went into slo-mo. The blade hung in the space between them, suspended, turning ever so slowly. Two and a half more spins and it would imbed itself deeply into her exposed thigh.
With a clarity of thought that accompanied her manipulation of time, Cait locked onto the trajectory of the blade and distorted its path, moving it upward and away from her.
A metallic echo bounced off the knife as it hit the concrete floor next to her, harmlessly skidding across the surface in a spinning motion toward a pile of tires off to her right.
“Ah, shit!” Boss-man said. “Must be more ripped than I thought. Shouldn’t have missed that piss-easy shot.”
Hidden from her assailant, Cait had an unseen army on her side, an army of a thousand women from her past supporting her, cheering her on, giving her an insight the likes of which she had never experienced before, wrapping her up in a force field that made her feel invincible. Jools had rekindled Cait’s faith in the Otherworld, while Kylie had reignited the fire in her belly, and now Cait was a force to be reckoned with.
And her army was there in the garage with her, covering her back, protecting her. And Cait was angry.
Very angry.
But this time round it was different. Cait’s Otherworld powers were impossible to ignore. They were forcefully taking control, dominating the present, distorting reality. Succumbing to the rush of emotion that was coursing through her veins like a monster adrenaline hit, Cait narrowed her focus, suddenly going limp, her previously taut muscles involuntarily relaxing as she entered into a trancelike state, her eyes rolling into the back of her head so only the white sclera was visible.
Boss-man looked on and assumed that Cait was having some type of fit. He laughed nastily with a malevolence that was pure evil. “Scaring you to death, am I? No one’s going to come and rescue you now. You’re fucked, bitch. I’m going to enjoy hearing you scream as I take you apart, piece by bloody piece.”
Boss-man walked over and picked up his blade.
“This time I won’t miss.”
But as quickly as Cait had passed over to the world of spells and magic, she snapped back again. Alert, strong, glaring at her assailant with piercing, cold eyes that were reminiscent of an ice carving. Cait was euphoric, breathing deeply, loudly, forcefully, in control. She looked up and glared a vile, menacing stare at Boss-man, a cold, cold stare that cut through the space between them like a slash from a cut-throat razor.
“What you want,” snarled Boss-man, stopping to spit before continuing. He was still rushing, pumped by the methamphetamine coursing through his veins, and pissed off about the missed throw of his knife. He moved back to his chair opposite Cait, knife in hand, hoping to taunt the bitch once again.
“I’m getting sick of playing games. Your time’s up. Now the fun begins.”
Boss-man bent over and picked up an oily rag off the floor, then kneeling down next to Cait’s trussed-up body, thrust his razor-sharp blade between her teeth with such force that it nicked her bottom lip, a trickle of blood oozing down her chin. Roughly grabbing hold of her jaw, Boss-man pulled down hard at the same time as he twisted the blade sideways to force Cait’s mouth open. A corner of her left incisor chipped off and flew through the air like a cast-off nail clipping.
“Ah, that hurt,” Cait tried to mutter, almost sarcastically. The pain was more of a knee-jerk reaction than a response. She was so focused that it registered as nothing more than a small scratch.
Boss-man then violently started stuffing the filthy rag into her open orifice.
Cait gagged on the oily taste in her mouth, panicked, then centered herself. A primordial scream that resembled the sound of a hundred banshees let loose from the confines of their restrictive hell spat out from deep within her soul; an evil deathly scream that dominated the space between them with such all-consuming energy that Boss-man released his grip on the blade as it flew out of Cait’s mouth, spinning backward through the air, aiming directly at Boss-man’s exposed cheek. The blade sliced deeply to the bone as it hit its mark, bloodying the air between them, before continuing on and landing point first with a resounding thwack into the large wooden post supporting the roof that was immediately behind Boss-man.
“You bitch . . .” Boss-man exclaimed painfully, immediately letting go of Cait and urgently lifting his hands to his burning face, feeling for the deep gash that the knife left as a calling card as it spun past. Cait was slightly stunned at what she had managed to achieve: Boss-man was in front of her, disarmed, blood pouring through his fingers and dripping onto his dirty white T-shirt, making it resemble an art-nouveau, tie-dyed pattern.
Cait struggled against her restraints, but they wouldn’t budge. She wasn’t safe yet. Cait had already overheard Boss-man’s thoughts as he had been mulling over the options: What’ll I do with her body after I kill her? Best if I cut it up and dump it in a few places. Don’t need no one finding the bits and putting her back together. Maybe throw her down a few of those disused mine shafts up the top of Eildon Weir? And drop her hands and head in an acid bath.
But Cait had other plans, and her ending up as a torso down the bottom of a mine shaft wasn’t one of them.
Cait and her army glared up at Boss-man. He was still putting pressure on the open slash on his face, glaring at her through confused eyes.
A threatening icy mist appeared like an apparition from a dark, foreboding place and wrapped him up, invaded him, chilling him to the bone, attacking his very soul. Boss-man attempted to focus on Cait, but it was as if he couldn’t penetrate the air between them. He opened his mouth to speak but words failed to materialize. His thoughts bounced back at him, roughly slapping him in the face with their violent return.
“Ah . . .” was all Boss-man could utter. He tried to move but his body wouldn’t respond. He was paralyzed.
Take control, Cait. Now is the time. He’s all yours. Voices from the Otherworld ran around inside Cait’s head, coaching her from the wings, urging her on.
The cable ties binding Cait’s wrists and ankles felt like a gossamer thread as she slipped out of them. It was if they weren’t even there. They fell to the floor, moving around like gummy worms in a bag of candy, squirming.
Cait detached from her physical presence. She was suddenly all-powerful, a voyeur, looking from a distance through a shimmering curtain of energy and light into the room that her body—but not her mind—was currently in. She was all-knowing, omnipresent, a supreme being who was invincible.
And she was controlling the physical world in front of her.
She had morphed into something dark and wild: a threatening, sinister beast from the Otherworld, and she was about to attack.
Moving quickly, senses heightened, her body in tune with the rhythm of her own heartbeat, Cait sprung to her feet like a tightly coiled spring that had just been released. With a forceful movement of her right arm in Boss-man’s direction, he suddenly found himself suspended, weightless, flying violently backward through the air, upending his chair as he flew past.
Boss-man landed heavily on his back, feet in the air, arms splayed out like a cross.
“What the . . .?” he managed to mutter.
Boss-man dropped his legs and attempted to get up, but he couldn’t move. He was numb, immobilized, stuck to the floor, as if he was glued there by the icy cloud that was enveloping him, pressing down so forcefully he could hardly catch his breath.
The Cait Lennox Box Set Page 49