DeadlySuspicious.epub (6 page)

The other man came up behind her.

For a minute, Denby panicked as she started to choke at the pressure against her throat but then the anger kicked back in. She launched her foot backwards, letting it connect with the groin of the other man. She heard him swear and drop to the ground. The one who held her around the neck lifted his hand to slap her. It never connected. His hand was caught and held.

“Let her go.”

“This is none of your business,” the Committee member barked at him.

Denby lifted her head, as much as she could to see the man who had come to her aid. Tall, dark haired and the last person she wanted to see. Well, second last. Her father held the first position.

“Oh, for fuck sake, go away. I’m fine.” She wasn’t but she wouldn’t be accepting his help either.

“Oh yeah, I can see that,” he murmured, rolling his hazel eyes.

The man whose hand was held looked at his in awe. “You’re Sirius Tate.”

“Not anymore,” Sirius responded, his hand bending back the other man’s. “I can either break your hand or you can be a real man and not hit this woman.”

“But you know we have our orders.”

Denby wasn’t averse to seeing the thug’s hand broken but she also didn’t need saving. “Yeah.

They have orders. I expect you do too. Back to seduce me are you? What’s with the long hair?”

Sirius let go of the man’s hand. “I’ll take it from here.”

“But her father—”

“Can get rooted,” Denby told him as she moved away from all three men.

Sirius moved to her side. “I’ll deal with her.” The men looked hesitant but they left.

Soon, it was just the two of them outside the clinic. Denby looked him up and down. Despite the long, Rastafarian locks that hung to his shoulders and the open denim shirt that displayed a tanned, bare chest and over-washed denim jeans, he was the same man who broke her heart and she wasn’t about to thank him for saving her. “Well, Sirius, long time no see. By the way, your hair looks stupid.” Secretly she thought it looked sexy. She reached out and tugged harder than she had to on one lock. The hair was softer than she expected it to feel. “Is it real?” Denby wondered why he wasn’t a suit.

“Yes, and stop pulling on it.” He caught her hand up in his. “And I left the committee.”

“Sure you did.” She looked him up and down. He wasn’t the clean cut, carefully shaved and smartly dressed men she had once known.

“I did.”

“Those men seemed to think you were still a big deal. “

“Those men don’t think for themselves.”

Yeah, well. That was true
. “What’s the deal? Is this whole laid-back dude look a trick?”

“No.”

The one word sounded simple and sincere and yet she wasn’t about to buy it. “Uh huh.”

“I’m not lying, Denby.”

“You have before.” Crazy thing was, she wanted to believe him.
Stupid heart.
It was a surprise to her that she was still dumb enough to love him even though she would have sworn blind ten minutes ago she hated him.

“As did you,” he murmured, his stance relaxed and his gaze on hers.

“When?” Hers hands went to her hips in a defensive move. Denby had always thought Sirius had the sort of eyes that could see into her soul. It was hard to shut yourself off from him.

“When you said you loved me and would marry me.”

“Yeah, well, life’s a bitch. Call it payback.”

Sirius moved in closer to her. “You owe me a wedding.”

She lifted one finger and poked him in the chest. “I owe you zip, mister.”

* * * * *

Sirius laughed. Still the same Denby. Full of attitude and not afraid to use it. He had heard she was in Brisbane. But then Denby Dumaresq was hardy able to blend in with her long, bright red hair. She stood out because she wanted to. He liked that she wore a red shirt that clashed with her hair and emphasized the fact she wasn’t about to hide and be scared, but rather defy anyone who tried to stop her from being herself. He had been watching her for a couple of days, shadowing her moves and working out why she had come back to town. It was a crazy move to come back to Brisbane but that was Denby and despite their past and the world they were now caught up in, he wouldn’t change her. To many in Brisbane he was now known only as Rabid, the name and persona he took on after Denby had left. He had broken all ties with the Committee, because she’d been right. He had become more and more like them in their single minded efforts to crush women. He had almost forgotten why he had joined them. He had wanted to allow men the right to stop a woman aborting a child. But everything else he had become caught up in? Denby had nailed it. He had become as rabid as the Committee men. That wasn’t him. He believed in equality for all regardless of sex or race.

So Sirius became what she had called him to learn from that and the mayhem he had helped to create because of the Jacobson Committee. It never occurred to him, in his one eyed obsession over what Penny had done, that he had helped plunge women into a state of despair he now wondered how they could break free from. The laws were archaic and slated totally in a man’s favor. Women were denied the freedom to be. It sickened him to hear of women rushing off to get married to any man in order to live a life that would not see them discriminated against for being single.

As Rabid, he sat and watched the world he created. He knew people looked at him and wondered what his story was. Why did he have the long hair? Why did he rarely where a shirt and what did his silence mean? If he had been a woman he would have been hounded to change her behavior in order to conform and fit in. But as a man? He could do what he liked. It was wrong and the guilt for his part in it weighed heavily on him. So, he grew his hair, changed his attire and became the antithesis of what he had once been in order to think about who he was and what he really wanted in life..

He had watched the women who worked at the clinic in the OC. He knew who they were. There were files on all recalcitrant women in the Jacobson Committee offices. Sirius admired their work.

He wasn’t surprised when he heard Denby was in town and wanting to find them. They were peas in the same pod. Strong women who refused to bow down to sexual tyranny.

“Are you okay, Rabid?” A couple of street people rushed over to him.

Sirius smiled at them. He was fine. It was nice to know that people who cared still existed and were ready to help others. It mattered not to him they were the down and outs who lived in the OC.

People were not the places they lived in.

Denby looked surprise. “You’re calling yourself Rabid?”

“You called me rabid.”

“I called the committee rabid.”

He shrugged. “Same thing. I was a part of it.” Sirius turned to the men, though he suspected one was a woman hiding the fact and he didn’t blame her. It was hard to be a woman in the OC. “I’m fine but thank you for asking.”

“She looks like trouble.”

Sirius smiled. How right he was. “She is but I can deal with it.” He handed them all the cash he had in his pocket and they thanked him and left.

Denby raised one brow at him. “You think you can?”

“Yes.” He had no doubt Denby would scare most men. But he knew her soft side and knew the reasons why she fought so hard for freedom to be.

“Anyway, I don’t have time to chit chat with you. I have to find some people.”

“I know them.”

“Who?” She looked confused.

“Tasha Knowles, Lois Cantwell and Frances Beaton.”

Denby made no attempt to hide her surprise. “How do you know them and how did you know I wanted to meet them?”

The answer was simple. Despite only being together for a very short time, Sirius knew Denby very well. “Tasha Knowles scoped me out for a while.” She had been the only person who actively wanted to know his story. It amused him that she persisted as she had. “She thought I was mysterious.”

Denby nodded. “In some ways you are. In others, you’re a wanker.”

Sirius laughed. Never had he known Denby to pull punches. It was her passionate nature that enthralled him. “Why?”

“Because.”

He knew Denby realized she had said more than she wanted to. “Because I broke your heart?”

She wiped away non-existent fluff from her arm. “I don’t have one.”

“Denby—”

She interrupted. “So, you met Tasha. What about the other two?”

“I knew of them because of their files in the Jacobson Committee office.” He saw her grimace.

“Tasha is an ex-cop and a very good thief. Lois carries a knife and is not afraid to use it to save someone. And Frances Beaton? She is an enigma.” There was less in her files than in the others and at the time it had made Sirius wonder.

“Interesting, but as much as I’d I love to stand and chat, I have to get to far north Queensland.”

“The rainforest.” Sirius was well aware of where those women had gone. Everyone in the OC

knew and it was a smart move. The Jacobson Committee had not yet infiltrated that part of the world to the degree it had down south. “I’ll take you.” He didn’t have to. Sirius knew Denby was more than capable of getting there under her own steam but he wanted to. There was the difference.

He needed to be with her once more. Maybe he could make her understand why had had done what he had.
Maybe.
It would be a hard task. He knew he had wounded her badly by his association with her father. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

She snorted. “Said the spider to the fly. You know I’m not some dumb-assed, innocent girl anymore, Sirius.”

“I liked the girl a lot.” He also liked the woman she was now. Tougher. Stronger. Yet he knew under all of that she would be still sweet and caring.

“Yeah well, she had to be kicked to the curb.”

“Because of all the pain?” He saw her flinch. “I won’t hurt you again, Denby.”

“Damn right ‘cause I won’t let you.” She started to walk away.

“I have a car and petrol. Have you?” Sirius saw her stop. “Better the devil you know.” He doubted she had much money and he didn’t want her hitchhiking.

She turned, biting her lip. “Why do you want to help me?”

“I owe you.” It was the plain and honest truth.

Chapter Six

The Daintree, Far North Queensland

Lois Cantwell staggered inside the wooden house and collapsed on the first chair she saw. She was tired right down to her bones and wasn’t about to pretend otherwise. She had leaned heavily against Tuck Morris as they climbed the stairs to the house secreted high up in the trees of the Daintree rainforest. “I swear I wouldn’t have guessed a house was hidden here.”

Tuck smiled. “That’s the beauty of it. Unless you know it’s here, you’d never find it. And, we can see people coming long before they come close to the house.”

“Smart.” If she was less tired she would have acknowledged the beauty of the world heritage listed area with its magnificent mountains, lush, green foliage and crystal clear creeks that wound through the dense undergrowth. But after a long, twenty-odd hour, ass numbing drive from Brisbane to Far North Queensland, she wasn’t into anything remotely awe inspiring from nature, nor was she going to pretend she was anything else but tried. The old Lois would have kept going until she dropped dead, defying anyone to stop her. The six months pregnant Lois wanted to curl into a ball and sleep.

“Okay?” Tuck’s hand came down gently on her shoulders, rubbing the tired muscles.

As much as she wanted to hate him, because he had colluded with the Jacobson Committee, she couldn’t. They wanted her pregnant to shut her up and to be less of a role model to the women out there still fighting for their rights. Tuck had got her pregnant without explaining his part in their plan. And, he could tell her as much as he liked that he did what he did to get money to save her, by taking her away from the clutches of the Committee who had targeted her as a troublemaker, but the thing was, he hadn’t told her the truth. That still hurt. A lot. The child she carried was his. Lois wasn’t about to deny it.
But damn it. He should have told me
. She had lived a long time under her own control, doing what she liked and believed in. To be manipulated by others annoyed the hell out of her.

“I can see the wheels turning. Do you still hate me?”

“Yes—no—crap, ah, I don’t know. At this moment I want to eat my weight in chocolate and then fall down and sleep.” The smile he gave her was one of total, loving indulgence. She didn’t need that. It would make her want to like him and Lois wasn’t sure she was prepared to do that just yet.

“Oh, shut up.”

“Yes dear,” he responded with a smile.

Lois scowled and looked around her. The area they were in appeared to be a living room. There were a couple of large, over stuffed sofas, a sturdy wooden table and the timber of the walls appeared to have been hacked out of the forest itself. She could feel the breeze from multiple ceiling fans and was grateful for it as the climb up the stairs reminded her she was in the tropics and that meant dense, sweaty humidity. “This is—”

“Hey, I never said it was a palace,” Tuck interrupted before she could say anymore. “I was looking for a safe place, easy to defend.”

Lois touched his arm. While what he did still rankled, she knew he had done his best for all of them. “It’s good.”

“Yeah?” He placed his hand on hers.

“Yeah.” Lois watched as Wylie Smith and Tasha Knowles approached them. He carried their son William in his arms. Lois was impressed with the baby. He was quiet and watchful, as if he knew he had to pay attention and learn from the people around him. She was also amazed at the change in Wylie. While their relationship had started out badly, Lois did grudgingly concede the man had an honorable streak she suspected he buried to survive. She couldn’t fault him on that. All of them had done things that were unlike their true nature to endure.

“This is good. Easily defendable and hard to see unless you’re right on top of it.”

“How safe are we?” Tasha asked Tuck as she surveyed the room.

None of them had been safe for a long time. The word itself was foreign to them. However now, with children in their lives, they had to hunker down somewhere and protect them.