Beyond Fear (29 page)

‘Are you okay?’ she asked quietly.

Concussion was a definite possibility. ‘Yeah.’

He flicked his eyes around. The room they were in was maybe two metres square, no windows, one double door, a long metal clothing rail along the wall opposite, some clothes on hangers, a suitcase in the corner. He was lying in front of the doors, Jodie kneeling at his feet, wiping one bloody hand down her jeans.

Her other hand was still outstretched, tied to Hannah. She was propped against the wall under the rail, her face ashen, her legs out straight almost touching him. The blonde had her back to the wall at his head. Between them, tied to both of them, was Louise. She was the one breathing hard. Her head was on Hannah’s lap, her eyes were closed and one side of her shirt was covered in blood. Matt’s heart thumped at the sight of it.

Jodie shuffled quickly to Louise’s side and pulled her free hand from the sleeve of her torn top. With a jagged, tearing sound, she ripped the shirt open down the other sleeve, pulled her arm out, balled it up and pressed it gently to her friend’s shoulder.

Matt wanted to check the door – sometimes the best means of escape was the most obvious – but his eyes stayed on Jodie. She was lean and athletic. She was wearing a black bra. Lower down, stretching across her flat stomach like a belt, was a thick, uneven line of scars.

She looked up at him. ‘Matt?’

He cleared his throat. ‘Yeah.’

‘Can you move?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you get close enough to untie me?’

He pushed himself into a sitting position, waited a second for his brain to stop rolling about and shifted as far as he could without taking his foot off the door. Jodie angled her hand towards him, pulled Hannah forward as she did so, shifting Louise’s head on her lap. She groaned.

‘Hang in there, Lou. It’ll only take a second,’ Jodie whispered.

Matt tried not to bump her as he worked on the rope. It was tied in a complicated knot, fastened between their wrists. Some kind of smooth, twisted cord with a decorative tassel that seemed bizarrely out of place considering the job it was doing.

‘I’m so sorry, Matt,’ Jodie whispered to his lowered head. ‘I shouldn’t have got you involved.’

He lifted his face and the guilt and fear in her eyes made him look back down again. He should have called Carraro. He should have figured it out faster. He should have done a lot of things. ‘You took a chance.’

‘I should have just told you to leave.’

He should have got them out. ‘If you want to blame someone, blame the arseholes who locked us in here.’

There was a loud thump from the other end of the house followed by a smash and raised voices. The blonde woman, the one doing all the crying, squealed. The others jumped. Matt looked in the direction of the noise, waited for more, a pulse pounding in his ears. When nothing came, he got back to the rope with more urgency.

The scars on Jodie’s stomach were right there in front of him as he worked. Centimetres from his face. He couldn’t not see them. They were raised, stretched, knotted in places, faded to the colour of the skin on her stomach. Clearly not recent. Probably years old. Too uneven to be anything but random and, without a doubt, the result of extreme violence. Matt imagined the type of weapon that could cause that sort of damage without killing a person. A wide, short-bladed knife. It explained her attitude better than his abusive husband scenario. And it said a whole lot more about her. He’d seen plenty of brave people live in a shadow of fear after the kind of violence she must have survived. It took courage to come out of something like that and be ready and willing to body-slug a thug in a pub or throw a rock through a stalker’s car window.

When he finally unravelled the cord, she pulled her hand back, rubbed off the blood on her jeans. He raised his eyes and saw she’d seen the line of his gaze. Something passed over her face. She half turned away, said, ‘Thanks,’ opened her mouth to say more but didn’t. She just twisted away and started in on the tie binding Lou and Hannah together.

If Jodie was embarrassed by her scars, she had no need. He was impressed. The woman had guts to have all that in her head, take on a couple of gun-toting attackers and still be upright and functioning when she was chucked in a dungeon.

He slid back, put the flat of his hands on the doors and tested his weight against them. There was a little movement lower down, none at all higher up. There wasn’t a lock, so something must have been jammed against the handles on the outside. Which meant they’d have to break through
both
doors to push their way out. Which meant they wouldn’t be getting out that way.

‘Where are we?’ he asked.

Jodie pulled the tie free. ‘In a walk-in robe off the main bedroom.’

There was another thud, more voices – loud but Matt couldn’t tell if they were angry or just strident. He pressed an ear to the gap between the two doors. ‘Where in the house are we?’

Jodie held Lou’s head, said, ‘Slide out, Hannah, so Louise can lie down.’ Hannah seemed stunned into inaction, didn’t move until Jodie tugged at her arm. As she clambered stiffly out from under Louise’s head, Jodie answered his question. ‘At the opposite end to the lounge room.’ She stepped across her friend to squat in front of the blonde.

‘Did you hear where they went?’

She pointed over her shoulder at the wall opposite the doors. ‘In that direction. Back towards the main room. I think they’re still inside.’

The blonde stopped crying. ‘Oh my God. Jodie, your scars are . . . Is that . . . ? Are they . . . ?’ She never finished, just started sobbing again.

‘Shhh,’ Jodie said gently. She put a finger under the blonde’s chin and tilted her face up. ‘Corrine, honey, don’t look at them.’

Jodie sounded unbelievably calm but Matt could see the tightness in her shoulders and the thin line of her mouth as she tossed Corrine’s rope. Her movements were fast, staccato, as though too much energy was being put into simple activities.

Matt tried the doors again – leaned back on his hands, pulled his good leg up and smacked the sole of his foot hard against them.

Corrine let out a brief squeal. Above her, Jodie hauled a coat off the clothing rail, rolled it up and put it under Lou’s head.

‘Is it bad, Hannah?’ Jodie asked. She gripped Hannah’s shoulder, made the woman look at her. ‘Hannah? Is Louise going to be all right?’

Hannah shook her head, eyes wide, filling with tears. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. She needs a doctor. She needs a
hospital
.’

Dread felt like a cold hand on Matt’s neck. No. Louise wasn’t going to bleed to death. He kicked the door again, shoved it with his hands. He wanted to shake the fucker off its hinges but there were no handles on the inside. ‘Goddamn it!’ He ran a hand through his hair, met Jodie’s wild eyes as she did the same thing.

She stood again and walked stiffly to the clothing rail. There wasn’t a great selection, a couple of shirts, another coat. She yanked it down, draped it over Lou, tucked it in around her hips like a blanket. Got up, pulled a shirt off a hanger, bunched it into a ball. She squatted beside Matt this time, pressed the cloth to the back of his head, took it away and looked at it.

‘Jesus,’ she breathed. There was a patch of fresh blood on it. She held it against his head once more, her other hand on his forehead, her eyes squeezed tight.

Matt watched while she fought to hold herself together. He wanted to reach out and touch her, give her some kind of reassurance. But he guessed she needed something to do more than she needed a tender moment right now. And besides, what kind of reassurance could he give?

When the bump on his head started to ache from her grip, he cupped a hand around hers, eased it away. ‘It’s okay. It doesn’t hurt much.’

She opened her eyes. They were big and dark, shiny with unshed tears. She refolded the bloody shirt, lifted it to his mouth, dabbed at something sticky there, pulled it away with another bloodstain.

Matt smiled with the other side of his mouth. ‘He owed me more than a cut lip.’

Jodie was about to say something but Corrine got in first, speaking through sobs.

‘When are the police coming?’

All four of them looked at him. Their faces were pale with shock and fear but there was a glimmer of hope in their eyes. And he was about to snuff it out.

‘They’re not. No one else knows what’s happening.’

‘No one?’ Corrine said.

‘No.’

‘Have you got a gun?’ she said.

‘No.’

‘A radio?’

‘No.’

‘
No?
’ Corrine’s voice was shrill. ‘What kind of a policeman are you?’

Matt’s hands curled into fists. It was the question he’d been asking himself for the last six months. ‘I’m
not
a cop.’

‘What?
What?
’

‘Shut up, Corrine,’ Jodie said.

‘I thought you were here to save us. And no one
knows
?’ Corrine wailed.

‘It’s not his fault,’ Jodie hissed at her.

Corrine wrapped her arms around her chest. ‘We’re never going to get out of here. They’re going to rape us. And kill us. They’re going to make me go first then murder us all.’

Jodie got to her haunches, as though she was ready to jump at her. ‘Shut up, Corrine.’

‘We’re all going to . . .’

‘Shut up!’ She took a couple of breaths, looked quickly about the room. ‘We’re not. We’re just
not
. We’re going to get out of this and we’re going to go home.’

Corrine was crying again, tears rolling down her face, barely able to speak through the sobs. ‘But . . .’

‘
But nothing!
’ Jodie glared at her, eyes ablaze.

No one argued with her. All three of her friends looked at her like she was Moses about to part the Red Sea – with dread and wonder and hope on their faces.

Then it all fell apart.

26

Without warning, Jodie’s control disintegrated. She screwed up her face, mashed her lips together and in an explosive movement, fell forward, a raw howl flung from her lips.

The sound made the hairs on Matt’s neck stand up. Her knees were on the floor and her head was on her knees. She clutched at her stomach, her fingers pulling at the flesh on her hips as though she was trying to hold it together. What the hell kind of memories was she trying to push back into place?

Matt glanced helplessly at her friends. They were like cardboard cut-outs. They didn’t move, didn’t make a sound, just stared in horror. Every group had a leader, someone who took control when the going got tough, who made decisions and gave orders. They’d just lost theirs and it looked like they suddenly felt a whole lot more alone.

When he turned back to Jodie, something had changed. She was still curled in a tight ball but her muscles were tenser, her spine straighter, her shoulders flexed.

‘We’re all going to die,’ Corrine wailed.

Beside Matt, Jodie’s fingers formed a fist. Then, in the same explosive motion she’d gone down with, she sat up and swung her hands free of her torso.

‘No, we’re not!’ She said it resolutely, the wildness gone from her eyes. Replaced with something steely and hard. She faced her friends. ‘You hear me, Corrine? Hannah? Whatever else you think of me, however crazy and in need of help you think I am, know this –
I am a survivor
. I survived before and I’m going to survive this time. And I’m not leaving anyone behind. You got that? We are
all
going home.’ Jodie looked at each of them in turn, daring them to contradict her. She turned her eyes on Matt. ‘That means you, too. I got you into this so I’m making sure you get out of it. We stay together and no one gets left behind. You got that?’

Her conviction was impressive.
She
was goddamn impressive. Her voice was solid, commanding, like a teacher reading the riot act. Not a sign that five seconds ago she was falling apart. Matt wanted to jump right on board her motivation train. Shit, he wanted to say they were going to walk right out of there. But he knew it wasn’t going to happen like that. Knew it was going to get a lot uglier before anyone had a chance to go anywhere.

She was right about one thing, though. The hostages were going to get out this time. Jodie and her friends would go home or he would die trying. His priority – his only priority – was to get all four of these women out alive.

Whatever Jodie saw in his face made her narrow her eyes. ‘You got that, Matt?’

‘Yeah, I got that.’

‘But . . .’ Corrine sobbed.

Jodie pointed at her. ‘No buts, Corrine. Your kids can’t lose another parent.’ She aimed her finger at Lou. ‘And Ray can’t handle both sets of twins.’ She locked in on Hannah. ‘And Pete would forget where he’d left his head if you weren’t around.’ She dug a nail into her own chest then, closed her eyes a moment. ‘And I am
not
going to let my kids live with the legacy of a murdered mother.’ She swung her finger around to Matt. ‘Have you got kids?’