Beyond Fear (2 page)

‘And lights, ’cause it’s really dark tonight,’ Hannah called.

Jodie handed the bottle to Lou. ‘It’s got an open fire and two loos and if it doesn’t have lights, I’m pretty sure we could ask for our money back.’ It had been Jodie’s turn to book the accommodation this year and she knew only too well the success of the weekend could turn on the lodgings. Four years ago she booked a houseboat – a leaky houseboat – and it had rained and rained and no amount of red wine and chocolate could make up for an overflowing loo. She was feeling more than a little pressure to come up with something fabulous. ‘No, seriously, it looked great on the website. A hundred-year-old barn.’

‘Tell me we’re not staying in a barn,’ Corrine said.

‘It’s not a barn now. It was renovated last year. The pictures are lovely.’

Corrine took the bottle from Louise and pointed it at Jodie. ‘Okay, but let me just make this clear. I don’t care what state your car is in, you’re driving me straight back home if I see anything that looks even remotely like a farm animal.’

Their laughter echoed into the cold night as Corrine swung the bottle up for another slug. Jodie shook the tension out of her shoulders as the terror of the last few minutes dissipated. Nice to know a brush with death hadn’t ruined the mood of the weekend.

‘Okay,’ Hannah said, coming back across the road. ‘Road service got onto a local service station and they’re sending a tow truck out. I hope you’ve all got your thermal undies on ’cause it’s a half-hour drive out here.’

Matt Wiseman checked out the Mazda as he swung the tow truck in a wide U-turn across the road. Nice job hitting the post, he thought. As he backed up the truck, he saw through the rear-view mirror a driver and three passengers get out. He pulled the handbrake, checked the clipboard, shook his head. Looked like the new kid his dad had employed needed some lessons in asking questions. He’d obviously missed the one about how many people were stranded with the broken-down car. Hope this lot had some other transport or the job wasn’t going to be as easy as he’d banked on.

I’ll get this one, Dad
, Matt had said after the call came in.
I’ve been back two months. I know what to do. Go shoot a bullseye.
The psychologist was wrong. Covering for his dad so the old man could play in the Bald Hill darts final did not symbolise an innate desire to save others. It just proved he was a sentimental idiot.

He stretched his bad leg as he got out of the cab and looked across the truck bed at four women standing in the glow of his floodlight. Well, that was something you didn’t see every day. Not out here on a cold Friday night. He checked the paperwork for a name, looked up again when they laughed. Stranded on a deserted road in the dark for almost an hour and still laughing – that was even more unexpected.

‘Evening, ladies. Everyone okay here?’ Matt watched them as he walked around the truck. They were good-looking women. All four of them. Mid to late thirties, probably. One of them was all done up like she was on her way to dinner. The short one on her right had a mop of dark curly hair. The one on the other side had a pretty face but was fleshy around the middle, like she’d had a couple of kids and never managed to firm everything back up again. The one on the end had funky, short-cropped hair, huge dark eyes and the legs under her short coat looked like sculpted denim.

‘So which one of you is Mrs De Crane?’

The four of them giggled.

‘Jo De Crane?’ he tried. More laughing. Then he saw the champagne bottle the dressed-up one was holding. ‘You ladies been drinking tonight?’ He used a neutral voice – not an accusation, just an inquiry.

‘Absolutely,’ the one with the bottle said, swinging it back and forth by the neck. ‘Purely for medicinal purposes. We didn’t want Jodie passing out from shock.’

The one with the sculpted-denim legs stepped forward. Her brief laugh was a cool, low, confident roll of sound. ‘Hi. It’s my car. I’m Jodie Cramer. You were close. You know, with the name.’

She didn’t look drunk and she didn’t look stupid enough to drink and drive but you never could tell. ‘A breathalyser wouldn’t be able to detect whether you had the drink before or after the accident.’

She lifted her chin, held the smile. ‘I doubt a breathalyser would even register the couple of mouthfuls of champagne I had after the accident. But seeing as the police aren’t here and you are, it’d be great if we could start with the towing before we all freeze.’

Matt watched her a moment. It was said nicely but firmly. She was practised at giving direction, that much was clear. At another time and place, he would have pressed her further, breathalysed her for sure. But no one was hurt, they weren’t doing any more driving in that car and it wasn’t his job anymore. At least that’s the way he felt about it tonight.

He made a show of looking at the damage. ‘What happened?’

Jodie told him about the driver who’d pushed her off the road and pointed out the post that was lodged under the engine block. She was really cheesed off. It was impressive to watch. He looked under the car, couldn’t help checking out her legs as he stood up. They were lean, toned. Maybe she was a runner.

‘Where are you ladies heading?’ he asked.

‘We’re staying the weekend at a house just outside Bald Hill,’ Jodie said.

Well, they weren’t going to be walking then. ‘Anyone there to pick you up?’

The dressed-up one answered. ‘It’s just the four of us. A girls’ weekend away.’

‘Not such a great start, huh? Well, hate to break it to you but I can only take two of you in the truck.’

There was some muttering and someone said, ‘Fuck it all.’ He agreed. It was definitely a fuck-it-all situation.

Jodie ran a hand through her funky short hair. ‘So how far out of Bald Hill are we?’

‘About forty k’s. Half an hour in the truck.’

‘Can we get a taxi this far out of town? On a Friday night?’

Matt raised an eyebrow. ‘Bald Hill isn’t exactly rocking on a Friday night. I’ll radio our one and only cabbie on the two-way. He should be here by the time the car’s up on the hoist.’ He wouldn’t leave them in the dark on their own, anyway. It wasn’t a place to leave anyone.

Matt went back to the truck, radioed Dougie and told him not to take his sweet time about it. Told him there were four nice city women pissed at being run off the road and waiting in the cold so he should get his arse out here quick. That guy needed a bomb under him sometimes.

Matt took as long as he could to get the Mazda ready for towing but there was still no sign of Dougie when he was done. As he radioed again, the women huddled together in the cold, the luggage they’d taken from the car in a heap beside them.

‘The cabbie said he’s about five minutes away. I’ll wait till he gets here. You can get in the truck to keep warm, if you want,’ Matt said.

Jodie stepped forward. ‘We’re a bit worried about the time, actually. We have to pick up a key at a shop in town by eight and it’s almost seven-thirty already. If you left with two of us now, we might get there before they close.’

Matt looked up and down the dark road. ‘Which shop is it?’

She unfolded a piece of paper. ‘Smith’s Food Mart.’

That made sense. It was next door to the real estate agent. He didn’t know the Smiths well – they hadn’t owned the place when he’d lived in Bald Hill as a kid – but everyone knew they liked to close on time. It was a fair drive to their property out of town.

Matt shook his head slowly. ‘It’s not a great place to be waiting at night.’

Jodie checked her watch. ‘Look, you said yourself the cab’s only five minutes away. It’s probably just around the corner. And a couple of minutes might be the difference between getting our key and finding some place else that can put up four people at short notice.’

Matt scanned the road again. He could ring the pub and get someone to drop around to Smith’s. He took his phone out of his pocket. No bars. Reliable reception was a figment of the imagination out here. He looked at Jodie. He didn’t like the idea but he could see her point. He could spend ten minutes trying to hunt down reception or he could hit the road and save them a lot of stuffing around.

*

Jodie watched the tow truck driver think it through. He seemed like a nice guy, despite the breathalyser crack. Not bad looking, either. Tall, muscled without being beefy. Excellent smile. But he wasn’t smiling about leaving them.

She wasn’t too happy about the idea either. It was damn dark out here. There was no question she’d stay behind. It was her car. Her fault, really. It was the risk she always took as the self-appointed designated driver wherever she went. Her life was in her own hands that way, with her own overblown sense of caution. But the flip side was that if anything went wrong, it was her responsibility. Staying behind wasn’t the problem, though. If they didn’t get the key, she’d be guilty of another ‘houseboat’ weekend and in a year’s time they’d be discussing leaking loos versus no roof over their heads.

She smiled encouragingly at the driver, watched him juggle the phone in his palm for a moment. He closed his hand around it, dropped it back in his pocket and looked down at her.

‘Okay, let’s get rolling,’ he said.

Jodie chaired a brief meeting over who was going in the truck.

‘We could all stay,’ Hannah suggested.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Jodie said. ‘A cab won’t fit all of us and the luggage. Look, I’m staying. Lou needs to pee so unless she wants to duck behind a dark, creepy bush to relieve herself, she should go into town.’

Lou made a face, a mixture of apology and relief. Jodie turned to Corrine and Hannah. No one was volunteering now – to stay or go. ‘Hannah is freezing in that thin jacket so Corrine either gives Hannah her coat or stays with me.’

Corrine bordered on skinny while Hannah was carrying a couple of extra kilos. It was unlikely Corrine’s figure-hugging coat would meet around Hannah’s middle.

Hannah looked Corrine up and down, tugged the hem of her sweater over her belly and tucked her short, brown bob behind her ears. ‘Well, I wouldn’t mind but . . .’

Corrine shrugged and sighed, then stood with her hands in her pockets, looking unimpressed, as Jodie passed luggage up to Hannah and Louise in the truck. When Jodie closed the door, more than half the cases were still on the dirt at her feet and everyone, including the driver, looked unhappy about the arrangement.

Brilliant bloody start to the weekend, Jodie.

‘Don’t worry. We’re fine,’ she said. ‘See you in Bald Hill.’ She shooed them off, waving about the torch the driver had given her and smiling like she and Corrine were already having a ball.

She stood in the centre of the road and watched the truck’s headlights flare into the night sky as it crested the hill, then disappear as it dropped over the other side. She thought of the tunnel her own lights had carved in the darkness not so long ago and felt a chill at the black and lonely place she was now standing in.

2

‘Better save the batteries,’ Jodie said and flipped off the torch. Night wrapped itself around them like a black shroud.

‘Christ, it’s freezing.’ Corrine’s voice sounded deeper than usual in the silence of the wide-open space.

Jodie turned away from the road, strained her eyes in the darkness, thought she could see the faint glow of Corrine’s blonde hair. ‘And dark. It’s bloody dark.’

‘The cold’s worse.’

‘No way. Dark like this gives me the creeps.’ She stepped cautiously in the direction of Corrine’s voice, not wanting to stumble into the luggage, willing herself not to flinch at the feeling that the night was breathing down her neck. ‘We should have borrowed the fluoro vest the tow truck driver was wearing.’

‘Are you kidding? That colour would look terrible on me.’ Corrine’s face suddenly appeared, lit in blue by Hannah’s mobile phone – it was the only one that had found reception. ‘Okay, it’s seven-thirty-two. We give the taxi ten minutes before we start yelling down the phone.’

Jodie grinned as Corrine looked up at her. ‘God, you look like something out of a ghost story. A decapitation victim whose head haunts the highway, terrifying drivers, causing unexplained accidents.’

Corrine moved the phone under her chin so the light made her look like a glowing blue skull. ‘Could this face do anything but inspire a lifelong trust in good skin care?’

Jodie laughed, heard Corrine’s husky chuckle and was glad her friend had decided not to stick with the huffy silence over having to wait behind. ‘Thanks for staying with me.’

The light slid downwards and disappeared as Corrine dropped the phone in her pocket. ‘I guess that’s what I get for having a strong bladder and a warm coat.’

She said it laughingly but Jodie got the message – it was the short straw, not a good deed. ‘Sorry about all this.’

‘It’s not your fault that driver tried to run us off the road.’

‘Did you get a look at the car?’

‘Briefly. I was opening the champagne.’

‘I thought it was one of those big, chunky utes. Black or something dark. With lights mounted on top. Floodlights or something.’

‘I think it had a sort of frame over the tray section,’ Corrine said. ‘Fat, silver posts. Or maybe they were white. I only got a glimpse.’