Marriage & the Mermaid (Hapless Heroes) (32 page)

So he strained his hearing over the muted noise of the storm and thought he detected voices. He crept towards them, lifting his feet as quietly as he could and using his hands to guide him along the narrow passageway. Twenty paces along he saw the glow again and he slowed, straining to pick words out of the murmur of sound ahead.

“… send a message to your people.”

“Just let me go.” Venus sounded scared, and that stirred up Rand’s already tight stomach.

“I don’t want your kind coming to Saltwood again.”

“But I’m already going and I don’t know what —”

“That’ll keep you quiet.”

Ominous silence.

Rand wanted to run but he forced himself to go slowly, to feel his way in the tight, dark tunnel. The journey was interminable but at last he reached the end and stepped out into a ten meter cavern lit by a gas lantern. Half the cavern was taken up by a rock pool, and at its side Venus was gagged and her purple hands were handcuffed to a ring jutting out from the wall. At her side, Ted sat on a flat rock beside the pool, his pants legs dripping into his slippers. The gun was nowhere to be seen.

“That was quick,” Ted said when he saw Rand emerge. “Were you followed?”

So the old bastard had been expecting him. “Not at all,” Rand said, and pretended to catch his breath. “I imagined you might need me, so I ran.” He looked at Venus handcuffed and then he turned back to Ted, and with his best perplexed expression said, “How can I help you, Theodore?”

“You can dispense with the cultured accent for a start,” Ted replied, and tilted his head to assess Rand with a gaze that showed none of the dottiness of their afternoon miscommunications. “I know you’re a homeless hacker who came here to steal my estate.”

Rand blinked, but that was his only betrayal of surprise. He took another step forward, still scanning for the gun. “You asked me to come here, Theodore,” he said, “to help you —”

“The Power of Attorney has a backdoor clause,” Ted told him. “You were never going to get Saltwood. I tricked you.”

“Bullshit,” Rand snapped, suddenly glad that the gloves were off.

Ted simply smiled. “Youth and greed are so easily manipulated.”

Rand shrugged out of his jacket, dropped it onto the sand and took another step forward, visually searching the rocks for the gun. Not seeing it. Did the old fart have it tucked into his cardigan?

“Aren’t you curious about my motives?” Ted asked.

Rand shook his head. He didn’t care
why
he’d been fucked over. He just wanted Venus, and out of there.

But Ted was on a roll. “My son wasn’t coming home anymore,” he said. “He’d lost interest in Saltwood and I needed to be sure he wouldn’t sell it when I died. It’s been in our family for generations.”

Rand wanted to puke. He couldn’t believe fuckers who had so much money they were worried about what happened to it after they died.

“So I created a situation where he’d have to fight for his inheritance.” Ted smirked an
I’m–so–clever
smirk that Rand wanted to smack off his face.

“And what do I get?” Rand said, hating to sound even remotely like he was begging, but he still had Poss to worry about. “I waste all this time, steal a fucking car to get here, and for what?”

“Unlawful use of a motor vehicle,” Ted said smiling. “Tsk, tsk. Well you get nothing really…” But Rand had only taken one step forward before Ted pulled the gun from behind himself and aimed it at Rand’s chest. “Now, now, Randolph, you don’t want to be stabbed with your own sword, do you?”

“What?” Stupid fucker, talking in riddles.

“Your gun,” Ted said, wiggling it from side to side before aiming it at Rand’s head again. “Don’t you recognize it?”

Rand dropped his gaze to the pistol then met Ted’s eyes again. “Oh yeah. I see my name on the barrel.”

“So, you borrowed the gun,” Ted guessed, then smiled. “More used to a knife I suspect.”

“Getting back to the topic, what do I get?”

“You get to live if you can hold onto your temper,” Ted said, his smile gone now. “And if you do a small job for me I’ll give you a unit in Cairns and a million in shares.”

That stopped Rand cold.
Fuck
. They’d be away from the Valley, getting jobs in the tourist industry. He could take Venus with him. It was just the start they needed. The tight hot anger in his stomach dissolved into liquid relief. This was going to work out after all. “Sounds fair,” he said, noncommittally, “What’s the job?”

Ted glanced across at Venus. “Kill her.”

Chapter Forty

B
az dripped all over his father’s mahogany desk and didn’t give a shit. “What the hell are you up to, you stupid old man?” he muttered, opening and closing drawers, looking for some clue to what he’d been doing with Rand before Baz had barged in.

“Betty’s making us a quick dinner,” Wynne came in behind him. “What can I do?”

Wake me up from this nightmare,
Baz thought, but what he said was, “Have a warm shower and change into some dry clothes,” sparing her a quick smile before he went back to the desk drawers. “No point both of us catching pneumonia.”

“Should we have kept looking? Outside?” she added.

Baz shook his head. “If dad’s further into the scrub than where we looked, we’ll never find him. We’re better to…”

The drawer he’d just yanked hadn’t budged. He leant down and saw a keyhole. Locked. There was a thick letter opener on the desk and he jammed that into the drawer and shoved. It snapped.

“Screwdriver?” Wynne asked, and Baz nodded. She ran out of the room and came back less than a minute later with a small canvas roll she unraveled on the desk. Baz thought it was a manicure set, but the implements were too big. It took him a second to realize it was full of the cutest pink–handled screwdrivers Baz had ever seen.

He blinked, then looked up at her. “You keep this in your handbag?”

“Boy Scout motto,” she replied, and dimpled. “Plus, I have no brothers. A girl has to fend.”

“Not any more,” he reminded her, and gave her a quick kiss before snatching up a thin bladed screwdriver and jamming it into the drawer. One shove and he had it open.

“A photo album,” Wynne said and frowned.

Baz pulled the red leather–bound album out and opened it, not sure what he’d find. Secret papers? Power of Attorney? And was disappointed that it was only photos, until one caught his attention. It was his mother on the beach, smiling at the camera, standing against the cliff wall below the rose garden wearing a polka dot bikini. Baz remembered it had been new and he’d been counting the dots on it only days before… he’d left for boarding school.

And there was something odd about this photo. The sadness he’d seen in the other photo album was gone and in its place was a look in her eyes that he wouldn’t have recognized as a child, but as an adult Baz could pick it. Sexual invitation. She’d been flirting with whoever had taken the photo.

Baz closed his eyes, searching for memories but instead of grief, he saw another image behind his eyes, that same look on his mother’s face, followed by shock and shouting. He remembered her hands on his shoulders, shaking him, telling him…

“The cave.” Baz opened his eyes and turned to Wynne. “I know where dad is.”

“Then let’s go.” Wynne took the photograph album off him and put it on the desk.

“No,” Baz said. “I want you to stay here with Betty.”

“Betty wants to leave,” Wynne said. “She’s lost her keys and she wants to know if she can borrow the four wheel drive to —”

“We might need that later ourselves,” Baz said, hoping no one was hurt but realizing a quick dash to Bundaberg might be necessary. If his father still had the gun Wynne had seen him with, anything was possible. “Tell her to wait here with you. I won’t be long.”

Wynne gave him a hug and buried her face in his chest. “Be careful,” she whispered, then looked up into his eyes. “I’ve never had a fiancé before. I don’t want to lose the first one I get.”

He smiled at that. “The only one you get, Ms Malone. I intend to make sure of that.” He kissed her hard and let her go.

“You sure we shouldn’t ring the police?” she asked, her expression strained.

“Quite sure,” Baz lied. “I’ll sort this out, don’t worry.”

She nodded, unconvinced.

“And if Carlos comes back, tell him to wait in the house with the two of you.”
Just in case my father is completely crazy.

“I’ll see you soon,” Wynne said and let his hand go.

Baz took off, out of the study doors onto the veranda, down the stairs and along the garden path, dodging rose bushes illuminated by the lightning. Thankfully the rain had stopped.

Gripping the slippery metal railing, he ran down the old stone stairs to the beach where the pounding surf competed with the thunder for noise supremacy. Everything seemed smaller than his childhood memory, but he felt along the cliff face to where he knew the opening must be and, surprisingly easily, he found it, slipping through the natural camouflage in the rock wall to feel his way along the narrow tunnel. Venus would be okay. He’d get her away from his father and find a way to sneak her off the estate. Baz was actually more worried about Wynne’s reaction to his father’s latest stunt. The last thing he wanted was to scare her off when he was so close to having his dream of a family and children, but how realistic was it to expect her to stick around with his old man acting like this? Stupid fuck. First the Randolph Budjenski debacle, and now he was wielding a gun. Where would it end?

He came out of the tunnel blinking, into the shadowy light of the cavern and the first thing he heard was his father’s voice.

“I told you someone was coming,” he said, and Baz saw Budjenski in shirt–sleeves standing beside his father.
What the hell is
he
doing here?

Ted waved Baz away. “This is none of your business.”

Baz glanced around the cavern and saw Venus handcuffed to a metal ring set into the wall. She was trying to make noise over the gag stuffed in her mouth. “What the
fuck?”
He turned on his father. “You’ve gone too far this time. I don’t care —”

A shot rang out in the tiny cavern, the bullet ricocheting off the wall behind Baz who halted in mid–stride and gaped at his father.

“You will return to the house, Balthazar,” Ted said calmly, aiming the gun at Baz now. “Randolph and I have business to transact.”

Baz couldn’t take it in. He shook his head to clear it, to work out what the hell… “Venus,” he croaked, pointing. Baz knew then that he had to get the police. His father was too far gone. But he wasn’t about to walk out and leave her there.

“Forget her. She’s poison,” Ted replied. “The worst form of harlot. You won’t be seeing her again.”

Christ, was he going to kill her? “She’s harmless, dad,” Baz pleaded, wishing he could say the same about his father. Was this Budjenski’s influence?

“She tried to seduce Winifred an hour ago,” Ted snapped. “And where were you? Am I the only man interested in protecting the women of this family?”

For some reason Baz looked at Randolph then, but the young man was simply watching his father, face expressionless. No clues there.

Baz shook his head again. “Protecting… the women?”
Plural?
He turned back to his father. “What are you talking about? Protecting the women from… Venus?”

“From her kind!” Ted spat.

Baz shook his head. “Lesbians?” Was his father homicidally homophobic?

Ted’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “You saw what was happening but you didn’t tell me, did you, boy?” Spit was coming out with the words and Baz knew then that his father was mad. “You were in this cave, when they were. I saw you running out of here that last day.”

That last day …

Baz took two steps backwards and hit the wall but there was no avoiding the memory: his mother shouting in his face, shaking his shoulders. She’d never shouted at him before — telling him he shouldn’t have followed her and that he mustn’t say anything, especially to his father. It would be their little secret, or she wouldn’t love him any more. So he mustn’t tell… ever.

“Oh God,” Baz said softly as the past and the present collided and suddenly made sense. He looked up into his father’s eyes, “My mother and the woman who looks like Venus. They were in here together.” He turned to look at Venus and was swept back in time. The physical similarities were uncanny. “Did they … ? Were they lov—”

“Shut up!”
Ted roared, raising the gun to point it at Baz’s chest again. “It’s over. It’s gone. It never happened. Not then and not now.” He turned the gun on Venus. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen —”

Randolph’s inertia evaporated and he jumped forward to grab Ted’s arm, angling the gun away. “You promised me a job,” he said quickly. “Don’t get angry and muck things up. We have an agreement.”

Baz, who had been about to jump towards them hung back, feeling a growing sense of helplessness.

Ted’s breathing was erratic, but somehow, returning Rand’s steady gaze, he got it under control. “You’re right. Eyes on the prize, eh?” he said and gave a demented smile.

“Sure,” Randolph replied, letting go of Ted’s arm. “So. Is now a good time to do the job?”

Ted’s maniacal grin widened. “Right here and right now,” he agreed.

Rand shook his head. “
Now
is good, but here isn’t,” he said. “The mess would be too hard to clean up.”

Mess?
Baz felt a sudden swirling sickness in his stomach.

“Outside in the surf.” Rand nodded towards the tunnel entrance.

“What job?” Baz asked, fearing the answer.

“Go, Balthazar,” Ted replied, waving him away with the gun. “You’re too squeamish for this.”

They
were
going to kill Venus! Baz tried to think. If he ran to the house to get help she’d be gone before he got back. He couldn’t do that. But what chance did he have of overpowering his gun wielding father
and
a young, strong accomplice? None. So what else could he…

“Money!” he shouted at Budjenski. “Whatever he’s offering, I’ll give you more.”