Malicious Intent (40 page)

‘That’s just her begging to go home. Someone really should put that shrew out of her misery.’

Anya punched the recorder out of his hand and grabbed the gun, stumbling against the chair behind her. Her hands trembled as she held it tightly. Hunter made no attempt to stop her.

The gun had to be empty.

‘Go ahead, it’s loaded. If you kill me, you may just have enough time to save your friend.’ He checked his watch. ‘Did I mention the chamber is airtight? She only has a finite amount of oxygen, especially since I switched on the vacuum device.’

This didn’t make sense. Why would he give her the gun, ask her to kill him, no less, unless he wanted to die? What game was he playing?

Anya tightened her grip. ‘I won’t kill you.’

‘I think you might. Why don’t I make it easy for you? You just have to follow the cameras.’ He paused. ‘What’s the problem? You’d be killing a dead man. My tumor’s recurred and is inoperable.

‘It’s all on the tape on the desk, Anya. You’ve got me on record begging you to shoot me, telling you that Kate is dying while you waste time deciding what to do. The safety latch is off, in case you didn’t know.’

‘You don’t deserve a quick death. I won’t kill you, but there are other ways.’

Lowering the gun, she held it tightly and squeezed the trigger.

The recoil threw her off balance and the gun dropped. The sound of a wounded animal came out from behind the desk as Hunter fell to the floor.

She fumbled for the gun, grabbed it firmly and took a step forward. The bullet had torn into his thigh.

He whimpered and managed to pull himself into a semiupright position. ‘So naive. You really are a country girl.’ He 326

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picked up the recorder from the floor, swapped the tape for one from his pocket and clicked the play button.

‘I want Mummy. MUMMY!! I’m scared. I want my mummy!’

Ben’s voice filled the room. Anya almost dropped the gun again, holding it with two hands, shaking.
He’s got Ben
. Suddenly, she felt lightheaded and struggled to hold the weapon.

Ben kept screaming for her.

Vaughan sneered. ‘You can stay here and try to find out where your precious son is, but that would mean killing your friend. Tick, tock, remember?’

Rage filled every vein. If he’d hurt Ben, she would kill him.

That’s what the sick bastard wanted anyway. He sat there waiting for an answer, the smug prick. He was up to something else.

She scrambled to think. This had to be a trick. Jesus. ‘Why are you so damn sure I won’t kill you?’

‘I’m gambling on the fact that you will,’ he panted, bleeding from the thigh.

He really did want to die. Shit. ‘You did all this because you’ve got lymphoma and want me to commit euthanasia. Is that it?’ In a moment of clarity, Anya knew what she had to do.

She took control. ‘That was your biggest mistake.’

She stood up to fire again. ‘Where is my son?’

‘If you shoot me, you’ll never find your son. You could get the keys and save Kate now, or she might already be dead. But if you do, can you be sure I’ll be here, or even alive, when you return? Then you’d never know what happened to Ben. It’s the past all over again. Only this time you could have found out.

Whatever you do, I prove that you’re a cold-blooded murderer.’

‘You’re going to pay. But I’m not going to kill you. I won’t let you win. We have all the evidence we need to see you go down. Now, give me the keys, you bastard. And for the last time, where the fuck is Ben?’

His forehead beaded with perspiration. ‘You
are
going to kill me,’ Vaughan said slowly. ‘He begged for you to come and help him. Screamed your name until he realized you weren’t ever KATHRYN FOX

327

going to show up.’ He turned to face Anya, staring smugly at her with soulless black eyes. ‘Pity that as I wrapped my fingers around his neck, his veins and those innocent eyes bulged the harder I squeezed. Do you know he took his last breath hearing me say that you never really loved him?’

Ben. Dead. Murdered. Images of her lifeless son flashed through Anya’s mind. She struggled to breathe, as if her heart and lungs had ruptured. Without Ben, there was no life. She stepped back and pulled hard on the trigger.

55

Life began to hemorrhage from Vaughan Hunter. His breathing became rapid and color disappeared from his sweaty face.

A cold detachment took over Anya as she grabbed two sets of keys from his pocket and unlocked the study door. With the gun in her hand, she phoned emergency 911 from the hall phone and requested an urgent ambulance and police attendance. The bastard wouldn’t get away with everything he’d done. Without knowing the number of the house, she described the surgery before leaving the phone off the hook and running for the front door. Rain bucketed down.
Think.

Think
. He said he owned several acres. Follow the cameras. A surveillance camera on the house’s corner caught her eye. From the end of the verandah, she saw another over the barn.

Sprinting in the rain past the stables, she slipped in the muddy drive, barely remaining upright. The barn door had a chain and padlock. She fumbled with the keys, desperately trying to find the right one.

A siren wailed in the distance and grew louder. As she located a small set of keys and tried one in the lock she prayed the chamber still had an oxygen supply. Damn. That left only four more keys. Fingers numb with cold, she tried again. The third one worked.

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Inside the barn was a metal staircase leading to another locked door. That led to a control room with an electronic panel and computer screen. A figure on the monitor lay motionless.
Kate.

Looking for an entrance to the chamber, Anya located a door without a frame, flush with the wall. There was no handle. With both hands, Anya pushed hard. Unable to release it, she kicked, punched and yelled, hoping Kate could hear.

Going back to the panel, she scanned the switches. Flicking one on, she saw the figure on the screen flinch and curl up tighter. Pressing a button attached to a microphone, she was almost deafened by the sound of electrical interference. She flicked both switches off. Shit. But at least Kate was alive.

Out of the corner of her eye Anya noticed a small red globe glowing high up on the black wooden wall. It looked like a fuse box with a button attached to the outside. What if that opened the door or controlled the air duct?

She searched the room for something to reach it with. Anything. Pulling the chair over, she climbed up. She was still a couple of inches too short, even at maximum stretch. Ripping the keyboard from its computer attachment, she climbed up again, raised it over her head with both hands and slammed it hard. The keyboard shattered as the button clicked.

Instead of the door moving, air began spewing into the control room.
Jesus! What was that?
What had she done? Shuddering with the cold air over her wet body, Anya flicked all the untried switches on the panel until a hydraulic hiss released the door. The door opened on a steel entranceway; she took a step forward in the dark and fell forward, just managing to grab a chain attached to the wall with both hands. She dangled for a moment before finding the floor again.

‘Kate. You’re okay,’ she panted. ‘The police are coming.’

Light from the open door filtered through and her eyes readjusted. Inside the chamber was a drawbridge set up just like the one she’d seen in the textbook. A metal platform at the door traveled by pulley system to meet the central platform.

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She jumped onto it, and pulled herself across to Kate. Seeing the naked form, Anya removed her oversized jacket and covered her friend.

Kate didn’t respond.

‘It’s all over now, you’re safe,’ she said, cradling the detective.

All she could think about was Ben.

Thankfully, the mobile platform took the weight of them both and Anya was able to pull Kate to safety. A police constable appeared as she dragged her drowsy friend through the chamber door.

He immediately called for assistance and an ambulance drove up to the barn. In the control room, an officer covered Kate in a blanket and administered oxygen, explaining that the paramedics were at the house working on the male. With Kate safe, Anya ran back up to the house as fast as her legs would move. If Hunter was alive, he’d have to tell her where Ben was.

She had to know.

By the time she arrived at the front door, Hunter had been transferred to the ambulance and a police officer stopped her from seeing him.

‘You don’t understand! I have to know what he did with my son.’ Anya wanted only to hold her child and protect his little body.

‘He’s conscious, but he won’t be talking to anyone but the doctors for now.’ The policeman restrained her and she slumped in his arms, crying. The ambulance drove off, siren blaring as it turned onto the main road.

Brian Hogan came out from the house carrying Anya’s bag and bent down to her.

‘Someone’s been ringing you nonstop. It’s about your son.

He’s had some sort of accident.’

Dazed, Anya took the mobile phone and heard Martin’s voice.

‘Where are you? I’ve been trying to get you all night. I don’t know what to say. It happened so quickly, I couldn’t stop it.’

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The phone crackled and she instantly recognized the voice in the background. ‘It’s okay, Mummy, it’s just a broken arm.’

He’s alive!
Anya cried with relief.

‘It’s got a cast on it and the doctor was really nice.’

‘Thank God.’ She almost laughed.

Hogan signaled her to come inside.

‘Darling, Mummy has to go, but I’ll call you later. Promise.’

‘What the hell happened?’ Hogan handed her a clean handkerchief.

She tried to understand what had occurred as she dried her eyes. ‘The tape recorder. I taped everything.’

Anya stood outside the study and watched Brian Hogan, gloved hand, pick up a bloodied recorder from the floor, bring it over and press play.

Ben’s voice cried out, ‘I’m scared. I want to go back. I want Mummy.’ The sound of laughter echoed in the background and someone yelled something about keeping the line moving.
The
day at the Easter Show
. The ride. Something had happened up the stairs and Hunter had taped it.

Anya tried to explain what had happened, but Hogan acted as though he was deaf. ‘I suggest you wait for legal advice before you say anything,’ he muttered so no one else could hear.

‘There’s another recorder. On the desk. A larger one.’

‘Detective.’ A uniformed constable appeared from the room next to the study, ‘I think you’d better see this.’

Anya followed but stayed in the doorway. Inside a room farther along the corridor, some electrical equipment and a television were switched on. The scene in the study played on the screen, culminating in her shooting Hunter in the shoulder and fleeing.

The area around the door was out of camera range. Without a wide-angle lens, no one would have seen him slam her against the wall or lock the door.

‘Where’s the sound?’ Hogan demanded.

There wasn’t any.

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Anya watched in disbelief as Hunter sat in the chair, looking relaxed, even as she held the gun at him.

The visual images bore no resemblance to the scene she’d just lived through.

‘I taped the whole thing,’ she said, clutching the handkerchief. ‘There was a recorder on the desk.’

Hogan wrote something down in his notebook, rubbed his forehead and hung his head. ‘Christ. I hate this job.’

‘Brian, it’s all on the tape!’ she pleaded.

‘Anya Crichton, you are under arrest in relation to the attempted murder of Vaughan Hunter.’

56

Inside Castle Hill police station, Hogan and another detective escorted Anya down to the cells and presented her to the duty sergeant, who barely even noticed her as he read out the charge.

‘Do you understand the charges?’

Anya mumbled, ‘Yes.’

Hogan had been meticulous in reading Anya her rights and kept asking whether or not she understood. She’d said yes, but it all seemed surreal. She had no real comprehension of what had happened at all. From the desk, the custody sergeant opened the perspex cage, or dock, as he called it, and ushered her inside.

‘I’d like to speak to my lawyer,’ Anya said, barely recogniz-ing the sound of her voice.

Hogan said, ‘Brody’s on his way.’

Anya sat on a plastic chair as the custody officer locked the thick plastic door. The place smelled of body odor, and she buried her nose in the sleeve of the black tracksuit, supplied when her clothes had been taken for forensic examination.

She tried to replay the last few hours in her mind, but it all felt like a blur. She watched a man, who looked like a vagrant, hurl abuse at the duty sergeant.

Anya wrapped her arms around herself. Despite perspiring, 334

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she felt colder than she’d ever felt before. At least Ben was alive and well, with his father. The broken arm would heal in time.

When Brody arrived, he’d sort out the horrible mess. The police would quickly realize they’d made a mistake. They should have heard the tape by now with Hunter incriminating himself in Kate’s abduction.

Within half an hour, according to the clock behind the sergeant’s desk, Dan Brody’s voice boomed in the hallway.

‘I wish to interview my client.’

Anya wondered who else he’d come to see. It took a moment to register that she was now the client.

The sergeant accompanied them to an interview room and left. Anya preferred to stand, while Brody, solemn-faced, sat at a table.

‘The charges are serious and at the moment it looks pretty bad. I need to hear what happened. Exactly.’ He placed his briefcase on the table and pulled out a yellow pad and clicked the end of his ballpoint pen. ‘They have a recording. A video of Vaughan sitting in the chair. It clearly shows you firing on him. You appear to say something, then shoot him in the leg.