Leopard Dreaming (7 page)

C
lamping her eyes shut, Mira clutched onto Lockman’s jacket. Dizzy despite her determination not to be.

Darkness soothed her for a long moment, and as she opened her eyes to a greenish-grey fog, the ground solidified beneath her, at least from ocean to marshlands.

‘You okay?’ Lockman set her down and steadied her by the shoulders.

She nodded, but kept hold of his jacket, since the ghost of the slippery metal light pole that she’d been using to steady herself was now nowhere to be seen, and wouldn’t be for at least a century.

Prehistoric sharks had disappeared too, along with the sharpest pain.

‘Remind me not to do that again.’ She rubbed her head. ‘I’d rather a kamikaze bug than switching that far so fast.’ Ahead, she saw an earthen pier with a pair of bullock wagons and several chain gangs of convicts; all clearing mangroves and shovelling soil from their wagons to bolster the young wharf. Except she couldn’t recall switching shades from red to greenish grey.

‘What happened?’ She rubbed circles at her temples to help the pain ease further.

‘You blacked out, and I mean down for the count. I’m taking you back to the truck.’

‘Oh no you’re not.’ She tightened her grip and braced herself. ‘Wait, are you saying I fainted?’ Shaking her head; she didn’t want to believe it. The only times she’d ever passed out she’d been either sedated or sick while her body was still flushing out medications.

‘I bumped your shades when I caught you, sorry. Tried to find some shade of purple, but those controls are definitely touchier than the last set.’

‘You can say that again … on second thought, don’t.’ She’d never complain about it. The glasses were the only good things to come out of her time with the military. Far better than lugging around a bag of various fixed shades that limited her visions to yester-week, -month or -year, roughly. Also more comfortable than the first prototypes, and the new Ray-Ban style allowed her greater peripheral vision, even though scrolling to find colours to suit each date and time remained a matter of trial and error. Coincidentally or not, the standard order of colours in a rainbow from violet to red helped her as a rough guide in looking back from yesterday to yester-millennia.

‘You should tell the docs,’ he suggested.

‘Not while they’re scientists for General Garland.’

‘They’re civilian contractors, and they’re still keen to help you. We’ve slipped shades past the general before, and last I heard, they still had funding to provide one more upgrade.’

Mira shook her head, more determined than ever. ‘Kill me first. I’m done with all that.’

‘Fine, but don’t blame me if you fall into my arms again.’

Frowning, she closed her eyes, this time only long enough to scroll forward until the controls prevented
her from overtaking the present. Then back a twitch to avoid the agony that always accompanied any attempt to refract light from the normal visible spectrum. Yesterday still hurt for her to see too, but far more bearably.

Walls returned on either side of her, and early morning fog suggested she’d fluked finding the same time of day, roughly. Same shade of violet, apparently. To her left, she saw the boy’s body and to her right, the moored yachts in the estuary, and she realised that Lockman had swept her back as far as the last bend in the alley.

She saw a ghostly woman emerge from the fire exit of the Drift Inn wearing little more than a pale bathrobe and gold chains around her neck, wrists and ankles.

The woman spotted the body, glanced around looking fearful of being caught, then ran to the boy and fell to her knees over him. Her long dark hair fell forward as she reached across his back, and Mira thought she was sobbing. Until she saw her swipe up the bloody toy using a plastic bag, which she’d had stashed down inside her bathrobe.

Bad luck,
Mira read from her lips.

Blind, and yet she could read lips. It still seemed crazy, even to Mira, but at least she felt saner whenever she put her peculiar madness to work for good purpose — even when she didn’t quite understand all the details.

The woman glanced about again, then made a dash back to the building, leaving Mira to worry if she needed to follow her; another distraction, or perhaps a crucial piece of the puzzle.

Mira blinked a few times to rest her eyes, rubbing her temples until the last of the sharpest pain subsided.

‘You’re pale,’ Lockman said, keeping a light hold on her elbow. ‘What did you see?’

‘Nothing relevant to Maddy. At least, I don’t think so.’ She blushed, embarrassed and frustrated by her moments of weakness.
And quit being so nice to me,
she shouted with silent hands. ‘I just need to find her, okay?’

She braced herself against the ghostly wall. Warmer than it appeared. Refocusing on the estuary, she also adjusted the controls in tinier movements.

Time fled backwards with the sun and moon chasing each other the wrong way across the sky. Yachts came and left backwards too, while sailors bustled to and from the inn and marina. Violet nights came and went, shifting hues slightly back towards muddier blues until the sun retraced its path to dawn, roughly forty-eight hours beforehand.

She could go no further without taking another break to blink and rub the sharpest pain from her temples.

Lockman leaned nearer as if studying her, then cupped her cheek unexpectedly, making her flinch. ‘You’re running a temperature.’

She nodded and pushed his hand away, but had to clamp her eyes shut tighter against the pain that continued to pierce like burning hot needles through her eyes to the back of her brain.

‘I’ve got morphine in the med kit. It’s in the truck. I’ll just …’

‘No drugs!’ she cried and straightened up a little. ‘Not even aspirin.’

He let go and paced a circle away and back again.

‘Hey, I’m frustrated too,’ she confessed. ‘I’m doing my best.’

‘Trying too hard, more like it.’

She slapped the wall, feeling useless. ‘We’ve already lost a whole day because of me!’ Whatever excuses he’d made about needing time for the media circus to pass through became irrelevant. With or without that
distraction, the truth remained: it was still her inability to see any closer than yesterday which delayed her from starting the hunt for Maddy’s kidnapper.

‘Cops had no better luck so far either, and General Garland may be able to commandeer any satellite in the sky, but her team will have to sift through all the archived footage before they can confirm if Kitching and Maddy even came this way together.’ He turned Mira around and splayed his fingers against hers.
That still makes you the fastest investigator.
‘Just take your time, and quit trying to push yourself.’
If you won’t take even a mild drug, what about endorphins?

Mira shook her head, wondering what he was talking about.
If my brain knew how to release hormones as an opiate, it should be doing it already.

Maybe it is, but if you’ve grown used to pain, you’ll need a trigger for a bigger dose.
He hesitated, as if he didn’t enjoy suggesting it.

Like the fright that just knocked me out?
She grimaced.
Great solution.

Not quite.
He locked fingers with her and drew her nearer, making her fear where he was headed anyway; his chest approaching hers as he shifted and began to slide a strong arm behind her.

Heat flared up through her body again and she shoved away, flustered.

Lockman caught her, grabbed her chin and kissed her, his lips brushing hers like sparking electricity. She flinched and resisted, struggling to get away. It wasn’t the first time he’d ever kissed her, but she feared the feelings he stirred. Ben was her dearest friend. It was Ben she wanted, Ben she owed, but as Lockman’s lips pursued and claimed hers, she sensed a deeper need. Her heart pounded harder against Ben’s hand-scrawled note of goodbye, reminding her of his sacrifices and making her feel weaker and less worthy. And yet Lockman reminded her so much of him, it hurt to
recall how sweet her dreams for a future with Ben had once been. She closed her eyes, better able to remember his face that way as Lockman’s arms engulfed her. Invisible. He felt so strong and warm and safe, like Ben and yet she needed so much more to fill the ache.

Flickers inside her turned to flames, licking deeper, and she ached for more — ached for Ben — and before she knew it she responded, returning Lockman’s kiss; gingerly at first, as she always was with Ben. But with her eyes closed, they become one and the same man. Something stirred even deeper inside her, alert as ever, and chased off the usual fears and timidity she’d always felt with Ben. She didn’t care what Lockman thought of her, didn’t care if her kiss wasn’t perfect for him, and she let herself go, giving in to her desires while keeping Ben’s face uppermost in her mind.

Something inside her sparked to life, swiftly growing, learning and yearning for more. Mira clung to him; exploring him more with her hands. His back, his chest, his neck where she found his chain, but melting, blending together through the mists of time — history repeating itself, the same but different, until she felt a surge of strength and raw passion from within him that made the blaze within her go wild.

He broke away, leaving her gasping.

She shook herself, found his face with her hand, and slapped him. ‘What the hell was that for?’

‘Painkiller.’ He stroked her cheek with his thumb. ‘Endorphins work faster than aspirin. Your colour is returning.’

‘Stop that!’ She slapped his hand away. ‘You’re deliberately baiting me!’ And now she knew he still wore his dog tags; rubberised around the edges to keep them quiet during covert missions.

‘Better angry at me than sick with pain. It worked, didn’t it?’ He stepped back and the air turned cold between them.

Mira spun away fuming, but soon noticed he was right. Damn him. The pain was gone, almost totally. ‘Don’t you dare be so smug. You just startled me.’

‘Whatever works, sweetheart, but you can’t deny it’s a real phenomenon. I noticed it overseas, the first time someone took shots at me. Doesn’t matter how much you hurt, if you get scared enough or angry enough fast enough, the adrenaline and other survival hormones kick in to help get you through it. I’ll pity you later, though, when they wear off.’

‘I’d rather you didn’t.’ She checked her heart to ensure Ben’s note still sat snugly out of sight, inside her cleavage. ‘It isn’t you I see when I close my eyes.’

‘Oh, I’m painfully aware of that. His loss though, if the closest he’ll let you get from now on is your dreams.’

‘That’s not his fault! They tortured him. Now every time he thinks my name he relives it! If it wasn’t for —’ She bit her lip, reining herself to ensure she didn’t say anything more than Freddie would already know or guess.

‘Me,’ Lockman said, sounding genuinely hurt. ‘Go on, say it. I wish I had saved him before they’d begun to break him. Then you’d be with him now, and not here, torturing me with your tears. Frankly, I prefer Kitching’s running water and car battery.’

‘Leave any time you want!’ she snapped, even though she’d been about to blame herself again for making Ben such a target. ‘I don’t need you after all.’

‘No, but I’ve decided I need you. So let’s just find your matron and bag Kitching, so we can both achieve a win, finally.’

‘Fine!’

‘Fine.’

‘So?’ she fumed.

‘So what?’

‘So, get out of my way!’

‘You can see through me. I never stood here yesterday.’ He stepped back anyway, making the gravel crunch, just as a ghostly chef emerged from the inn. No chef’s hat to give him away, just an apron, a broken pot and two large bulging bags of rubbish as he headed silently for the industrial bin. Until he saw the body and dropped everything. Food scraps and cans burst in a wide circle as he spun about, screaming and bolting back into the building.

Mira didn’t need to see what happened next as it began to play out with more staff, locals and police arriving — so fast they must have already been in the area. She needed to find the event itself, or better yet, the moment when Kitching first arrived in the alley. It hadn’t been enough to catch his ghost leaning over the body to plant the toy leopard. It wasn’t even enough to see which way he’d left. She needed to see which direction he’d come from, and whether or not he’d been alone, or with Maddy.

Adjusting her hues a little more with tiny movements, she turned back time until she finally found him. Alone, but smiling, as if at her. As if he could see her!

His grin widened as he walked right through her, heading for the nearest pier along the estuary.

This way,
Mira signed, expecting Lockman would see her hands move, but when he didn’t follow, she knew he must be watching for trouble in a different direction.

She tugged his jacket and led the way.

Kitching strode out to the end of a foggy jetty in the estuary, where he paused and withdrew a small flat package from inside the chest zipper of his wetsuit. A pink mobile phone in a clear plastic bag. Sealed, watertight.

This is where we part company,
he signed as if he knew she’d be standing there at some time in his
future, watching him.
Can’t have you following me too closely yet, my dear Mira.

She shivered at the sight of his cruel fingers shaping her name, but at least she could be grateful he possessed no special talent in predicting her presence, aside from logic.

The face of the matron’s phone lit up when he touched it.
Police,
he said, a moment later.
Anonymous tip. There’s a dead kid in the alley between the Drift Inn and the marina.

Mira’s shiver turned to a shudder as he stashed the phone back down inside his wetsuit. That explained how the cops had shown up so quickly after the chef found the body, but obviously Kitching didn’t know Mira needed at least twelve to twenty-four hours to avoid the blinding white agony of processing faster light frequencies. So that heartless bastard had used the kid to slow her down and distract her, as if he needed to buy time that she’d already afforded him through her own weakness.