Darkest Place (29 page)

At Carly's first official meeting as supervisor, the body corporate had approved her suggestion that, in the wake of Stuart's death, the vents be permanently secured down.
Who would have guessed the apartments were open to anyone who decided to crawl around up there?

Dakota arrived for dinner first, bringing her new man, Bruno, and a huge bunch of flowers. ‘I wasn't sure if these were what you wanted,' she told Carly as she handed them over. ‘But they're beautiful, aren't they?'

A few weeks ago, when Carly told her about the supervisor's job, Dakota had laughed. ‘Well, that wasn't on the list.' Her kohl-lined eyes had widened at Carly's news that she was going back to uni when she'd finished the small business certificate. ‘Wow, that's serious.'

‘It's not a disease.'

‘It's seriously cool, though. So what will you do when you've got a social science degree?'

‘I'm still not sure.'

‘Excellent. The Big Long List lives on.'

They were all there by seven fifteen. While Bernard poured drinks, Christina glanced warily at Dakota's thigh-high boots and the streaks that were now green, then patted her own neat hair as Dakota exclaimed how lovely her natural silver was. Dietrich, who it turned out also spoke Italian, shared a foreign-tongued joke with Bruno. Brooke swapped physio stories with Nate.

He wasn't going back to the oil rig, and not because of his knee. It would be okay in time, according to his surgeon, but Nate didn't want to leave now. He'd told Carly, he wanted to spend time with her. It was the closest they'd got to putting a name to what was between them. And that was fine, Carly thought. She was more interested in watching the changes in him, a slow and gradual shedding of his grimness, as though he was making sure the disaster was over, that he was on solid ground and no one had been left behind.

‘The lilies are gorgeous on the new table,' Christina said, touching a fingertip to a pink bloom. ‘And Elizabeth's vase is the perfect shape for them, isn't it? Lovely her niece insisted you keep it. Lilies are what you bought for Elizabeth before … after … well, the ones she was so pleased about. She'd be tickled to see them here like this tonight, don't you think?'

‘Yes, I think she would be,' Carly said, glad Christina had remembered.

As her guests filled the seats around her table, Carly delivered platters of food and topped up wineglasses, enjoying the sense that they were here for her, knowing what she'd done for them, and that the knowledge was all she needed. Working her way around the table, she wondered again why she'd woken when others hadn't and why Stuart had kept coming back to her loft after she'd reported the break-ins. Questions she'd never have answers for.

Talia, she guessed, had been trying to figure out what had been going on, but Carly wouldn't be asking her – if that memory was something else Talia had lost in the accident, she should be allowed to live without it.

Carly's memories of those long, shadowy tunnels had been transported into her dreams, new images added to her subconscious arsenal. And on nights when she tossed and turned or paced the apartment, she thought about all her years of restless, interrupted, uneasy sleep and whether they had made her respond differently to Stuart.

Or whether fate had just given her a chance to redeem herself.

Had she? Carly couldn't answer that. All she knew was that she'd lain on the edge of another cliff, thrown something poisonous into its depth and waited for remorse and
reproach to come back and engulf her – and they hadn't. She'd waited six weeks and all she felt was firmer, stronger and less afraid.

Carly took her place at the head of the table and raised her voice. ‘I'd like to make a toast to my second beginning here with some wise words from Elizabeth.' She lifted her glass, waited until the others had joined her. ‘Life is a long time.'

Like Elizabeth, Carly had changed her life. She was a friend and a lover now, things she'd denied herself and which now felt like gifts. She was a student again and an employee, although her role as supervisor felt more like a duty of care than a job, one that she was happy to have. Perhaps one she'd always wanted but had failed so badly to fulfil in Burden.

And she was a killer, she'd taken four lives. If she included the three babies that fate had stolen from her, there were seven souls on her account.

Carly understood now that she didn't kill Debs, Jenna and Adam, not in the decisive way she'd ended Stuart's life. The four of them had shared the decisions that took them over that ledge but Carly knew she was responsible for how it finished, as much for the fact that she was alive to bear the burden.

She tried not to lie to herself about Stuart. She killed him and she meant to do it. It helped that he'd intended to murder her, that he'd admitted his part in Elizabeth's death and Talia's accident, that her friends and neighbours were now safe. But she was guilty of taking a life – it didn't cause her a lot of uneasiness, though.

She felt bad for that, mostly for what it said about her: that she could kill and walk away.

Would she do it again? She wanted to say no, that she'd seen enough death, that she would make better, worthier choices – but she wasn't going to lie about that either. The truth was she would if she had to. The difference now was that she knew she could do it and live with herself.

Some books are more difficult to write than others and this one had more than its share of obstacles. I am massively grateful to my publisher Bev Cousins for wading through the mountain of words I sent her, finding the story I was trying to tell and pulling it back on track when I thought it had already fallen off a cliff. Many thanks also to editor Kathryn Knight for a smooth and happy process after the months of agonising, and to Virginia Grant for running her eyes over another one of my manuscripts.

Thank you once again to the rest of the Random House team for another fabulous cover and for the work behind the scenes to get this book onto shelves, around the internet and into readers' hands.

Many thanks to my agent Clare Forster for her work on my behalf, and her much appreciated support and advice – and the nice occasional face-to-face chat when we manage to be in the same city.

Research is always fun, as much for the people whose brains I get to pick. Thanks to Sam Findley who helped out again on this one – I always enjoy talking travel, police and murder over coffee. Thanks also to Darren Shepherd
for talking me through the job of a patrol officer and letting me run a few of the early crazy ideas past him, some of which made it into the book. Also to Robyn and Jenny for the tour around the fabulous renovated warehouse that became the inspiration for
Darkest Place
.

To my writing friends – a huge thankyou to Louise Reynolds for the Friday afternoon emails that started as a plotting experiment and ended up getting me through a rough patch. A big hug to Julia Nalbach for brainstorming ideas in random moments and seeing the best in a messy draft. My writing family – Chris, Isolde, Elizabeth, Melinda, Kandy, Carla, Simone and Carol – as always, it would be harder without you guys. And to the friends I didn't see while I was hunkered down finishing this book – thanks for being patient.

Many thanks to Anne Long for donating her name to
Darkest Place
and, in doing so, raising money for the Hunter Westpac Rescue Helicopter Service.

And finally to all my family, who had to put up with me during the difficult process of writing this story. In particular, to Mark for using his engineering skills to help design the
Darkest Place
warehouse and once again making sure my fictional building won't fall down in a stiff breeze (any mistakes are mine). To Claire for being a sounding board on too many versions of this story and not once rolling her eyes. And to Paul, who has always supported my dream of being a writer and then got stuck with living with an author on deadline. Thanks for reminding me to get out of the office, encouraging me to think of other things, listening and nodding and sometimes just nodding, and for enduring this one without complaint. I couldn't do it without you.

Jaye Ford is the author of five chilling suspense novels:
Beyond Fear
,
Scared Yet?
,
Blood Secret
,
Already Dead
and
Darkest Place
.
Beyond Fear
won Best Debut and Readers' Choice at the 2012 Sisters in Crime Davitt Awards. Under the name Janette Paul, she is also the author of the bestselling romantic comedy
Just Breathe
(available in ebook only). Her books have been published in nine languages.

Jaye is a former news and sport journalist, who worked in radio, print and television and was the first woman to host a live national sports show on Australian television. She ran her own PR business before turning to crime fiction.

She lives on the shores of Lake Macquarie in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales.