“Almost there,” he said, and she nodded like a porcelain doll come to life.
They pulled up outside Silver Daughters and he saw the studio lights were on. His stomach contracted. He’d expected Sam and Tabby would have gone to bed by now. Nicole unbuckled her belt, a dreamy look on her face. She drifted out of the van and toward the door of the studio like a sleepwalker. Noah watched her go, wanting to reverse and head to his place and knowing that’d only make things worse. He reached for his cigarettes and remembered he’d smoked the last an hour ago.
“Fuck it.” He pushed open the driver side door and followed Nicole into Silver Daughters. The tiger doorbell roared as he stepped inside the familiar building, but he couldn’t see Nicole, only a grim-faced Tabby, looking unusually washed out in an oversized white hoodie.
“Where’s…?”
“Nicole? In bed. Stay here, Sam’s coming.”
It was strange how different she looked when she wasn’t smiling, her heart-shaped face appeared older and—he felt stupid for thinking it—mean. There was something strange in her face, neither Edgar, nor the twins. Her mother, maybe, that mysterious, reckless woman he’d never met.
He heard footsteps overhead and guessed it was Nicole in her high heels, getting ready for bed. He remembered how she’d looked sitting across from him in the restaurant and his insides ached. Still, he was glad she wasn’t going to be here for this. That she’d get some sleep.
The door at the back of the studio creaked open and the six half-spaniel puppies burst in. They rushed around his heels in a black and gold surge. He bent down to pet them, and Lilah latched onto his finger. She was his favourite, cuddly and mischievous and in total awe of Nicole. He stroked her soft head as Sam’s battered Doc Martens entered his line of vision.
“Hey, Noah.”
If Tabby looked mean, Sam looked off balance. She was pale and her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. Noah wouldn’t have thought he could feel more like a shitheel, but he did. “Sammy…”
She shook her head. “I can’t believe everything that’s happened tonight.”
“I’m sorry about Paula. Did she do any damage?”
To his shock, Sam’s eyes filled with tears. “I wish she had. That would have been easier to deal with.”
“What do you mean?”
Tabby glared at him. “Are you serious right now?”
Yes? No? Noah gritted his teeth. “Look, I’m half dead from driving, and after everything that went down, I don’t get what the problem actually is. What’s wrong?”
Sam looked to Tabby—a bad sign. Noah had never known her to defer power like that.
Tabby straightened up. “Okay, so here’s what happened—we’re at work, minding our own business, wondering where Nicole is but not super worried. Then I take a call from Aaron, who’s giving birth to the world’s biggest cow because his neighbour said some tattooed guy had sex with his fiancée on his bedroom floor.”
“Ex-fiancée.”
For the briefest moment it looked like Tabby might smile, but the light in her eyes vanished as soon as it came. “Ex-fiancé. Anyway, I hung up, a bit pissed you and Nix snuck off without telling us, but whatever. Then this woman comes in reeking of Aldi vodka and demanding to see Sam.”
Noah looked at Sam, who nodded. “She was a mess, drunk. And this guy was waiting for her out front; he was fucking scary.”
Shredder. Noah shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Tabby asked in a mock jovial tone. “Siccing your crazy roommate on us, or never mentioning that thing where you’re a bikie who’s done time for assault?”
“I’m not in The Rangers anymore.”
“But you used to be? And you’ve been to jail? And your dad’s Harry Newcomb, the bail-jumping psychopath murderer?”
He felt anger hardening his features and took a deep breath, trying to keep his temper under control. This was his fault; he’d kept the information from them and now he was paying the price. “Yeah.”
Sam shook her head. “Why didn’t you tell me? I’ve known you for years.”
“Your dad knew.”
Sam and Tabby exchanged glances.
“Dad knew everything?” Sam demanded. “Your father and jail and everything?”
He could hear the hurt in her voice, the betrayal. “I didn’t mean to tell him. The way we met, it was just…relevant.”
“You met at the pub,” Sam said. “Dad asked you about your tattoos and you had a few drinks and he offered you a job.”
That was the story. The one Edgar had told her after she got home from the tattooing expo in Vegas to find him taking up tattoo room two.
“Yeah, that’s not exactly how it happened.”
Sam’s face fell. “What do you mean?”
“What I said.”
Tabby’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, fuck this.”
She walked around the register so she was standing in front of him and poked him in the stomach. “You need to be forth-fucking-coming from here on out, or we’ll call the cops.”
As always, the word ‘cops’ made his sac tighten. Didn’t matter that it had been years since he’d done something arrest worthy. “Why the fuck would you call the cops?”
Tabby set her jaw like a Hollywood tough guy. “Paula told us you owed her money. Actually, she said you owed some guy called ‘Shredder’ money.”
Jesus, those amoral assholes. “She’s lying. I don’t owe him or anyone else shit.”
“That’s not what Paula said. She said you were in for about twenty grand. Something about your ‘education?’ What was that? Filing off your fingerprints and giving you an illegal firearm so you could rob petrol stations?”
Noah’s brain throbbed. “They mean training me to tattoo when I was a kid, but—”
“You learned to ink with The Rangers?” Sam interrupted. She looked horrified and he knew why. To her, tattooing was an expression of love, creativity, good. He was sure that to her, learning the trade by drilling patches on the backs and arms of bikies was sacrilege. But what could he say? No, he hadn’t?
“Yeah, I did, but that wasn’t my choice.”
He could see neither sister believed him. Why would they? Yesterday he’d been their mate and today he was an ex-con with a murderous bikie for a dad.
“So, Paula,” Tabby said. “We tried to calm her down while we called you, but you and Nix weren’t picking up.”
Because they’d been on their way to that fancy restaurant. It felt like another life now, Nicole beaming across from him in her pretty dress…
“And when we told her you weren’t answering, she freaked out again and started yelling about how if she didn’t get her money from you, she was gonna get it off us because she’d heard we almost got our place burned down and she knew people who’d do it properly.”
Sam let out a low animal moan and he wanted to sink through the floor. He kept thinking this situation couldn’t get any worse, but it seemed bottomless.
He held up his hands. “I know this sounds cheap, but I don’t think she meant it. She was drunk, and she and Shredder don’t have any pull around here. But if you want to call the cops, you can. Call them right now.”
“I don’t think you want us to call the cops, man.” Tabby’s voice could have cut steel.
“Why?”
“Because after Paula left, I had a brainwave. I went into Dad’s office and looked over Nix’s spreadsheets.”
“And?”
“Nix guessed we’d lost around fifty thousand in the past eighteen months, but she couldn’t see where the money had gone. All our supplies are invoiced, all our client payments checked out. She was starting to think Dad took the money.”
“He didn’t.”
Tabby gave him an icy smile. “Glad we agree.”
“So, what did you find?” he asked. He knew he should sit back, let her talk in her own time, but the sooner she got it out, the sooner he could prove he had nothing to do with whatever she’d decided he was
guilty of.
“I found that you’re the person who’s been stealing from us.”
“How?”
Bad idea, asking a question. He should have just said no, but he was so fucking confused. Sam and Tabby looked at him like he’d crawled out a drain.
Tabby gestured to the cash register. “You’ve been taking cash out of the till, then fiddling with your hours on Backbooks so the daily totals add up.”
Noah’s heart contracted. How could she think that? He barely knew how to use Backbooks—the online client roster, at the best of times. “I haven’t.”
“No? Then why does Backbooks show you’ve been logging in at the end of the day and reducing your hours?”
“Why the fuck would I do that?”
“I already told you,” Tabby snarled. “You’ve been taking cash out of the fucking till. If you didn’t bump off a couple hours, we’d notice there was a few hundred missing.”
“How would that work? Backbooks doesn’t handle the money, I’d just be making myself look like shit!”
“No, because you figured out Backbooks data doesn’t affect the payroll system. You must have been pissed when Nicole updated the software and fucked up your little system. Is that why you fucked her when you said you wouldn’t? To figure out if she was onto you?”
Noah’s head was swimming. “I’ve never stolen a fuckin’ cent from this place! And you wanted me to hook up with Nicole.”
“What?”
Tabby ignored Sam. “That was before I knew you were a fucking bikie. How do you not see how guilty you look? Paula says you owe money; we’ve been missing money. You don’t want to fuck Nicole, she puts in a new pay system that undercuts your scam and suddenly you’re trying to isolate her. Take her interstate without any of us knowing about it.”
“That’s not…that’s a fuckin’ coincidence!”
Tabby laughed, a high, slightly hysterical laugh. “Well, isn’t that a coincidence! I thought it was fucking dodgy that you didn’t have social media, but I thought, ‘Oh, well, Dad trusts him, Sam trusts him, he probably isn’t a dodgy cunt.’ And this whole time you’ve been lying to us. Stealing from us.”
“I haven’t!”
“You haven’t been lying to us?”
“No,” he said and realised that was a lie.
“You don’t even see what a shitbag you are. Get the fuck out of here before I sic the cops on you.”
Noah felt like he was wearing a mask. That neither Sam nor Tabby could see him anymore. He stepped forward, wanting them to see him, and Sam wrapped a protective arm over her sister’s shoulder. Dragged her backward. His stomach dropped. She was scared of him. Sam, his old friend, the closest thing he had to a sister, was wearing the ‘don’t frighten the bikie’ look. “Sammy, you know me. You know I wouldn’t—”
“Please go.”
“But—”
“I mean it, please just go. We can talk about this later or something. Just go.”
Noah looked upstairs. Nicole was up there, could he wake her up and have her explain …what? That he’d gone down on her in his van? Told her he’d never be able to give her what she needed?
He shook his head, confused by how years of stability, steady employment, keeping to himself had gone to shit. He looked at Sam until she met his gaze. “I haven’t been stealing from you and your dad.”
She closed her eyes. “Just go.”
“But when…when can I come back?”
He sounded pathetic, like a little kid dropped off at the supermarket while his mum bought a bag of ice, but Silver Daughters was his home. Surely Sam understood that?
Tabby pulled away from her big sister. “We don’t know what to do. We’re going to look over the finances with Nix tomorrow. We’ll call you when we decide if we should go to the cops.”
He saw the resignation on Sam’s face and it was like a thunderbolt struck him. “You’re gonna fire me?”
Sam nodded, fresh tears filling her eyes. Tabby’s face was stonier than ever. “Are you going to make this hard for Nix?”
He looked upstairs to where Nicole was no doubt sleeping off their insanely long day, tucked up like a fairytale princess, long black hair on pale pink pillows. “Nah.”
“You mean it?”
The roaring in his head was so loud it was like he had seashells clapped over his ears. “We all know I’m not good enough for her.”
Sam opened her mouth and snapped it closed. He knew she’d been about to say some reflexive friend thing about how he was good enough. Suddenly the backs of his eyes were hot and tight as the hood of a car. Fucking hell. He refused to blink, letting his eyeballs burn. He pulled his keys from his pocket and walked to the register. Sam and Tabby walked backward, like he was carrying a force field that repelled people. His chest tight, he slapped the keys on the counter.
“Hold onto these. Nikki’s stuff is still in the back, anyway.”
Sam frowned. “How will you get home?”
Noah was suddenly exhausted, wrung out like an old sponge. This had been the longest twenty-four hours of his life and he wasn’t even done spilling his guts. “I live a couple of streets over.”
The hurt in her eyes was lemon juice in every one of his self-inflicted wounds. “Sorry. About that, and everything else.”
And he left before he could fuck up anything else.
Outside, the air was warm and close. He felt dirty; his mouth thick. He headed for home, aware that Paula and Shredder could be waiting and unable to give a single fuck. As he walked, he thought about the night he’d met Edgar.
He’d been in Melbourne to drink and see old mates, but if he took one step backward, another motive became clearer. He hadn’t tattooed in weeks, hadn’t painted or sketched. He kept picking up his phone, his thumb hovering over his dad’s number, over Shredder’s number, Magger's number. He was talking himself back into it. The life. He’d been in the city for a week when it rained in a way that felt like the sky had opened. He’d gone to the pub and drank until he was pushed out into the slippery darkness. Getting kicked out wasn’t a problem…until he realised he’d lost his wallet and phone. Head full of hard music, he walked in the direction of nothing, seeing spirals. Then his foot connected with a jutting footpath crack and he slipped over, bashing his head. It didn’t hurt, but when he touched his face, black blood mixed in with the rainwater. He sat on the wet asphalt, waiting for something. Anything.
To this day he had no idea what Edgar was doing on the street in the early hours of the morning—collecting mushrooms? Dancing in the rain? He just seemed to appear in his leather hat and jeans, smiling at him in that calm, sad way. “Need a hand?”
He did. So, Noah had let him hoist him to his feet with hands that were surprisingly strong for such a slim guy.
Edgar pointed to his left shoulder. “That a Persian manticore?”
“Mmm,” he said, trying not to sound like a fuckin’ mess.
Then Ed had looked him over, as though he was seeing him for the first time. “You tattoo.”
It wasn’t a question, which didn’t make any sense. Noah stared at him, wondering if he was a hallucination brought on by weeks of running his willpower down to zero. “Used t’tattoo. Not’ne’more. Not frages.”
“But you’re still an artist.”
Another not-question. Noah had frowned, his face so heavy it felt like it had been set in cement. “Who are you?”
“Edgar DaSilva. I own a studio over the way.”
He held out his hand and Noah shook it, his head sick and spinning, half convinced the man was an illusion. “A tattoo studio?”
“Yes.”
“Coincidence.”
Edgar had smiled. “I don’t believe in coincidences. Want a coffee?”
Noah had followed Edgar back to his place, climbing the back stairs with one hand hard on the rail. His head was throbbing, his mouth tasted like bile. The house was a neat little box full of wood firelight and polished copper windchimes. And colours. Periwi
nkle curtains, forest green rugs, fuchsia cushions, and sorbet yellow lampshades. He turned on the spot, staring at the colours like he’d never seen them before, because that’s how it felt.
“My daughters,” Edgar said, holding up a silver framed photo.
Noah had struggled to get his drunk eyes to focus on the picture. Eventually his vision cleared, and he saw three black-haired girls in school uniforms.
“What’re their names?”
“Samantha, Tabitha, and Nicole.”
“Nicole’za good name,” he said, because it was. There was a girl in a book called that, or maybe it was a movie?
Edgar pointed at the girl on the far right. “Samantha’s in Las Vegas at a convention. Tabby’s doing…something in Johannesburg, and Nicole’s in Adelaide. She works in finance.”
Noah stared at pretty Nicole. Her bright blue eyes made him feel woozy. “Can I sit down?”
“Of course. I’ll get you a coffee and we can have a chat.”
“No,” he tried to say, but the tenderness in Edgar’s voice slipped between his ribs like a knife. He didn’t remember the next few hours of conversation, but they must have talked, and he must have said a lot because when he woke on the couch the next morning, Ed knew his name, his heritage and his whole family history.
“Sorry,” Noah said.
“Nothing to be sorry for, mate.”
Over a breakfast of bacon and blistering black coffee, Edgar offered him a job in his studio. “Part time at first, trial basis and everything, but if you’re as good as you look, we’ll put you on full time.”
“You don’t want that,” Noah told him. “I don’t want that. I need to head back to Sydney.”
Edgar put down his ceramic mug. “You don’t need to head anywhere. We both know what you’ll do if you go back to Sydney. Choose something else.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ve got the rest of existence to be dead,” Edgar said calmly. “Wake the fuck up and be alive.”
Something about that got him, like a bullet from a sniper’s gun. He’d cried, sharp and sudden, like a little kid. It was humiliating, but it tore down the last of his resistance. He accepted Edgar’s hankie and took the job.
So Steady: Silver Daughters Ink, Book Two (Silver Daughters Ink Book Two) Page 22