Beyond Fear (40 page)

Hannah gasped. ‘Oh my God. Is she okay?’

‘She made it to the bush. Safest place to be right now. That’s where we’ve got to get you two. Hannah, you’re going to have to help me.’

Louise slid her arm across his shoulder, lifted her hand quickly. ‘Jesus, you’re bleeding.’

‘Yeah. Come on. We’ve got to go.’

He stopped them at the door, checked the bedroom, put a finger to his lips then pointed to the French doors. He was worried about the noise of their shoes on the timber floor. Impossible to drag an injured woman across a room without making a sound. But they made it to the doors, inched through sideways, half carried Louise across the verandah. Pain filled his arm, spilled into his chest, made his lungs spasm. He was gasping for breath as they took the steps but he couldn’t afford to stop. He had to get the women across the clearing as fast as possible. It was dark but not pitch. Kane or Travis could make a mess of them firing the shotgun from the verandah. He couldn’t hear them now. Could only hear his own rasping breath, Louise’s agonised wheezing, their feet pounding on the grass in rhythm with his heart.

The twenty metres to the scrub felt more like twenty kilometres. When they were through the first line of foliage, Matt lowered Louise to the ground, looked back up at the barn and tried to work out where he and Jodie had sat in the dirt. Where Jodie would be waiting for them.

‘We need to get further into the bush,’ he whispered.

‘Where’s Jodie?’ Hannah asked.

‘She’s waiting for us further in. Can you keep going, Louise?’

She didn’t answer for a second. Her breathing was shallow, uneven, as though it hurt to draw in air. ‘Yep,’ she finally managed.

Matt helped her to her feet again, grimaced at the pain in his shoulder, wiped the blood that had run down to his hand on his jeans. He walked them another five metres, found a small clearing, let them stop. There was enough light for them to see each other, barely, not enough to see much further. Jesus, Jodie could be anywhere out here.

‘Jodie?’ he called softly. He held his breath in the silence. ‘
Jodie.
’

‘Where is she?’ Hannah asked.

Matt pressed the digital display on his watch. It glowed like a torch in the darkness. Eight-fifty-four. Twenty-five minutes since she left. He closed his eyes. It took her eight minutes to throw the rock, give her two more to kill the lights. That’s fifteen left to hightail it back here.

‘Matt? Where is she? Where’s Jodie?’ Hannah said.

‘Not here.’ Goddamn it, Jodie. Where the hell are you?

Beside him, Hannah was starting to panic. Flinging her hands around, talking to herself, stumbling in the bush. ‘Jodie!’ she cried, too loud for comfort.

‘Be quiet!’ he hissed.

‘They’ve got her, Matt. We heard them. They’ve got her.’ She was crying now and he could hear the dread in her voice.

Christ, it was all he could do to stop her fear from running rampant inside him. He looked at the dark scrub, at the distant light from Kane’s car. Maybe she couldn’t get back to the bush without being seen and was hiding under the verandah. Maybe she fell, sprained her ankle. Maybe he got the wrong spot and she was waiting for them thirty metres away.

Maybe she was in the barn. With Kane and Travis.

Hannah’s words came back to him and he turned to her. ‘What do you mean you heard them?’

‘She was in the bedroom. Just before you got there. And Travis. We heard them fighting. Then they were gone.’

She was in the bedroom? He told her to come straight here. She was never meant to go inside. He squeezed his eyes shut. She’d been out of it, goddamn it. She’d been out of the barn, away and safe, and he let her go back. Fuck, Matt, what have you done?

He thought of her, before she left. Stretching her quads, warming up, kissing him. She’d been totally in control in those few minutes. Frightened but determined.
Last time I ran for help, my best friend was murdered. This time I’m not leaving.

No one could have stopped her.

If people died because of you, then you need to do it better this time, Matt.

Matt looked up at the barn again. ‘No hostages are dying tonight, Jodie.’

‘What?’ said Hannah. She was crying.

He took off his jacket, winced at the pain. ‘I’m going back.’

‘They’ll kill you, Matt.’

He ripped off his torn sleeve, held it out to Hannah. ‘Bandage my arm.’

‘Oh God, are you shot?’

‘Make it tight to stop the bleeding.’

She held his sleeve in her hand like she didn’t know what to do with it.

‘Now, Hannah. Then you and Louise get moving.’

‘What about Jodie?’

He looked at Hannah’s frightened eyes, at Louise at his feet on the dirt. ‘She won’t be long now.’

36

‘What’s under the barn?’ Jodie figured if she was going to die, she may as well know what for.

‘Keep your mouth shut,
bitch
,’ Travis said. He was at the sink, didn’t look at her when he spoke.

Jodie smiled to herself. He was going to kill her but she was going to piss him off first. It was the least she could do. ‘It must be pretty damn impressive.’

He ignored her, took off his blood-smeared shirt, tossed it on the marble bench. He was wearing a filthy white T-shirt, part of a tattoo showing below the sleeve of his right arm – it looked like half a coiled snake.

‘I mean, you’ve gone to a lot of trouble here,’ she said, her voice growing in force.

He grabbed the bottle of bourbon off the bench, unscrewed the cap.

‘Hacked a bloody great hole in a perfectly good floor. Assaulted a bunch of women minding their own business.’

He looked across at her with narrowed eyes, smears of blood on his face, an open wound on the bridge of his nose. He tipped the bottle for a long drink.

‘Pretty goddamn daring stuff, Travis. You’re a real hero.’

He slammed the bottle onto the marble. ‘I told you to
shut up
!’

She went on talking as though he hadn’t said a word. ‘Oh yeah, you shot a cop, too. At least that fuck-up brother of yours did. Whatever the hell it is down there, it’d want to be pretty damn impressive for that.’

He lifted the bottle and hurled it at her. A wide arc of bourbon curled into the air as the bottle flew across the room. She turned her face away as it hit the other side of the tree trunk and smashed on the floor. At least the pistol hadn’t been the closest thing to hand. It was tucked into the back of his jeans. Out of sight, out of mind, she hoped. She looked back at him, flinched as he swept one outstretched arm across the island bench. Glassware, crockery, cutlery and the unwashed frypan crashed to the floor.

A flash of victory shot up Jodie’s spine. She’d got to him. She watched him smugly as he stalked back and forth across the kitchen. It was a dangerous game but she was enjoying inflicting some misery on him. He deserved worse, a lot worse, but aggravation was the best she could do from where she stood.

‘Is it more impressive than that body down there? The one you made me dig up.
Tina.
’

He slammed his hands down on the marble bench, leaned against it like he wanted to push it through the floor. His back was to her but in the light from the truck, she could see his T-shirt straining as he breathed hard.

He was angry. She was impatient. This night had gone on long enough. Jodie looked down at her feet, saw the remains of the bourbon bottle had fallen clear of her trunk. She pushed off her dirty socks. ‘Is it more impressive than killing that man yesterday?
John Kruger.
It’d want to be if you’re risking getting caught by the battalion of cops out looking for you.’

His body stiffened. Jodie watched, waited, as he took another breath. He shoved himself away from the bench, lashed out at a cupboard with his boot, stalked through the kitchen to the hole in the floor. ‘Kane!’ he bellowed. ‘Get your arse
moving
!’

Jodie heard a muffled shout from under the barn. She looked at Travis leaning tense and taut over the hole and suddenly saw it. How it worked between Travis and Kane. Why Travis hadn’t killed her when he could in the hallway, why he was shouting at Kane right now instead of beating her up, why the gun was still in his waistband when he could turn around and shoot her.

‘It’s Kane, isn’t it? Kane’s the killer. And you keep him on a leash like a rabid dog.’ Travis threw a look at her over his shoulder, one that said he’d unleash him on her if she didn’t shut up. Nothing new there. ‘So what happened yesterday, Travis? Did you let your psycho brother loose on that man? Did Kane beat him to death or cut him in pieces for
you
?’

Travis came at her then. Closed the distance between them in three long strides. He raised a fist and she braced for its impact. But it didn’t come. He pointed his index finger at her face like the pistol he’d held there before. ‘John Kruger had nothing to do with me. Kane did that. And he shot Matt Wiseman. Not me. You remember that, tough bitch.
I
haven’t killed anyone.’

He was near enough for his bourbon breath to wash over her face, for her to see the black streaks in his dark irises, the red veins in the off-white globes of his eyeballs. She wanted to spit in them but was too dry in the mouth to pull it off. ‘Yeah, you’re a real pacifist, Travis. You haven’t done a thing. Just promised me and my friends to your psycho brother. Well, guess what? That makes you as psycho as him.’

He grabbed the back of her head in one meaty palm, crushed her cheek into the trunk. ‘I’m
not
a psycho. I didn’t put those girls down there.’

Her nostrils filled with the stench of his sweat. Her quickening pulse thumped against the old tree. Girls? There was more than one? ‘You put
something
down there.’

He mashed her head harder against the rough trunk. ‘Insurance. That’s what I put down there. For when Kane fucked up so bad I’d have to leave for good. I never
killed
anyone.’

Anger burned in Jodie’s veins. He knew about the girls, knew his brother had killed them. Travis was as guilty as it got. ‘You shot Louise.’

‘That was
your
fault. Yours and Wiseman’s. I wasn’t going to shoot her. I was trying to scare her.’

No. She was not taking the blame for him. She was done with carrying the guilt for other people’s violence. ‘You held a loaded gun to Lou’s head. You pulled the trigger. It’s your fault.
You
shot her.’

Travis grabbed the trunk with one hand, shoved the flat of his other hand into the centre of her back, pushed her hard up against the post. ‘Listen, tough bitch.’ His voice was a growl, his breath hot and sour on her cheek. ‘The cops have got nothing on me and I plan to keep it that way. So me and my brother, we’re going to get my stuff and piss off out of here, go where no one will find us. And if you keep your goddamn mouth shut like I told you, quit your screaming for ten fucking minutes, it might not be the last ten minutes of your life. Got it?’

Jodie didn’t move.
Not
kill them? Is that what he meant?

His hand moved up to the back of her head again, forced her face around to him. ‘So keep your fucking mouth shut.’

Something fragile and cautious stirred deep in Jodie’s belly.

Hope.

And it scared the hell out of her.

Travis was offering to give her life back. Hers and Lou’s and Hannah’s. All she had to do was be quiet. Hold her anger inside. Keep her hate to herself.

She wanted to believe him with every cell in her body. But that would mean trusting him. The man who shot Lou. Who thought it didn’t count because she wasn’t dead. Who sanctioned his brother’s murders. Who used Jodie and her friends as bait.

If he was lying, if she let her hate get watered down by hope and it turned out to be some kind of sadistic joke, it would break her. If she was compliant, made it easier for them and they killed her anyway, it would be the death she’d always feared – powerless and screaming.

She kept her voice low, spat the words in his face. ‘You’re full of shit.’

His eyes narrowed briefly, a quick contraction of the lids. ‘Listen, for fuck’s sake. It’s the screaming that gets him going. I’ve been telling you all fucking night to shut up.’

‘And you’ve been telling your brother he can
do us
all fucking night.’

He changed his grip on her head, closed his fist around a handful of hair, pulled it tight. ‘I’ve kept him off you and your friends this far but once he’s done down there, I won’t be able to hold him back if you don’t keep your mouth
shut
. He loves the fighters. Even better when they scream. He keeps it going for as long as they make a noise.’

He stopped talking, screwed his lips together. The muscles in his jaw tightened, his Adam’s apple jerked up and down. Jodie squeezed her eyes shut, waited for the globule of saliva he was working up. When it didn’t come, she opened her eyes again. What she saw on his face took her breath away.