Scared Yet? (28 page)

37

Liv was on her knees, backed to the edge of the bed before her eyes made sense of the darkness. A blind drawn over the single, narrow window shed dim light from the street. Not enough for detail, just lighter and darker shadow. She looked for the figure looming over the bed, the one who'd come to cut their throats while they slept. All she saw was the broad expanse of Daniel's back.

He was sitting, feet on the floor, head lowered, hands gripping the mattress. His breath was loud and laboured. Was he hurt? She flicked her eyes left, right, behind. No movement. There was no one else. She crawled closer, whispered, ‘Daniel?'

She jumped as his head snapped around.

‘Oh God, Liv.' He sounded apologetic, like he was sorry he'd woken her. He put out a hand. She expected him to stroke her cheek but he placed two fingers on her throat and checked her pulse.

‘Daniel?'

Her voice seemed to jar him. He grasped her by the shoulders, firm enough for his fingertips to dig into her flesh. And he shook her. Not a gentle rattle, not like a rag doll, either. A determined, back-and-forth jolt. ‘No. 
No!
'

‘Daniel, wake up. You're dreaming.' She dragged at his hands and he sat for a second, his wrists in her grip then pulled sharply away.

‘Fuck.' He stalked to the window. ‘Fuck. I'm sorry.'

As she moved, he held up a hand. ‘No, don't. Give me a second.'

It took longer than a second. A minute or more. As she waited, she slipped on the robe he'd given her and watched silently as he picked up clothes from a chair – boxers, sweatpants. Was he leaving or did he feel less exposed with clothes on? She was relieved when he finally sat on the bed beside her.

‘I should've warned you about that. Sorry.'

He'd expected it? She knew how a nightmare could shake you, so she kept her voice low, practical. ‘How often does it happen?'

‘Most nights.'

‘For how long?'

‘A few years.'

It didn't fill her with hope for her own dreams – she thought they might fade in time. ‘Is it the same dream?'

‘Same outcome, different faces.'

Like her nightmare – always in the parking lot, walking to the car, getting grabbed. But there were variations. Benny barking, Sheridan talking, Teagan. She wondered
what the subconscious of an ex-fireman threw up. ‘Are you rescuing someone?'

He looked at her with the haunted eyes she'd seen before. ‘No. I'm too late.'

Did he dream about the woman under the concrete? Had he dreamt about Teagan when he'd slept on Liv's sofa? She put a hand on his back, felt sweat still damp on his cool skin.

‘Did I hurt you?' he asked.

‘No. You took my pulse.'

‘I thought I dreamt that.'

‘You were dreaming about me?'

‘Yeah.'

She hesitated. ‘Was I dead?'

He looked across the room, his hands clasped together. ‘You've been dead every night since I found you in the car park.'

Liv's body went still. She was in his bed, more alive than she'd been in a year and he was dreaming she was dead.

‘I'm sorry,' he said again. ‘I shouldn't have told you.'

‘No, it's all right,' she told him but she wasn't sure. She'd read about post-traumatic stress, stories in newspapers of servicemen and emergency workers and victims of crime. People who'd seen and survived awful events. She'd wondered in the last week if that's what her nightmares were about but it wasn't a big leap to make the connection with Daniel. He'd talked about managing fear to walk into physical danger. He must have seen horrible, unimaginable things. He'd left the fire service because he thought he was past his rescue quota – and his nights
were filled with failure, dreaming of being too late to save people.

She wanted to tell him that . . . what? That he hadn't been too late for her. That she wouldn't have survived the last week if it hadn't been for him. It wouldn't fix it. She was no psychologist – she was probably going to need one of her own when all this was done – but his nightmares hadn't started when he found her a week ago. She guessed that event had only kicked off a new version of his anxiety. She did know that recovery took time, that being told you were okay wasn't the same as knowing it. And that pity made you feel pathetic.

‘Do you always know the person in your dream?' she asked.

‘Yes.'

‘It must be unnerving.'

‘It's not what you think.'

She didn't know what to think. ‘What do you mean?'

He released his clasped hands, ran them down the front of his legs. ‘The people in my dreams are all dead.'

‘In the dream.'

‘No. They're all dead.' He stood quickly, spoke harshly. ‘In real life, they're dead.'

The muted light at the window had lightened as they'd talked, lifting some of the darkness from the shadows in the room. As she eyed his broad back, the hollow groove down the centre where the bulk of muscle curved to his spine, she felt an uneasiness settle in her stomach. She wasn't sure she wanted to know what it would tell her about him but she asked anyway. ‘What do you mean? Who are they?'

‘They're my dead list.'

Liv got to her feet and pulled the robe closer. She had no idea where this conversation was leading but standing felt a better position to ask the next question. ‘What are you talking about, Daniel?'

He ran his hands over his head. Back and forth like he was trying to rub something out. ‘They're the people I didn't get out. The ones who died in my care.'

‘You kept a list of them?'

‘No. Not like that. I didn't write them down like a fucking score sheet.' There was anger in his voice. Agitation and impatience. But he kept talking. ‘In my head. The faces. The names. I always know their names. Maybe it's not their name and I just make it up when I see them. I don't know. I don't know.' He'd crossed to the window again, his back to the blind, silhouetted against the growing dawn. He took a long, deep breath through his nose as though he hadn't breathed for hours.

‘I'm not dead,' Liv said.

‘No, you're not. I don't know why you're there. You shouldn't be. I wish you weren't. I wish you didn't know any of this.'

Maybe she'd made it worse by coming here last night. What had it done to wake and see her?

Suddenly, he grabbed the last piece of clothing from the chair in the corner, threw the T-shirt over his head, stuffed his feet into runners.

‘No, wait. I should be the one to go,' she said. ‘I think I'm making it worse by being here.'

‘It's not you, Liv. I need to run this off.'

‘It's not light out yet.'

‘It will be soon. Go back to bed. I'll make some breakfast when I get back.'

‘I don't care about breakfast.'

‘This is my problem, Livia. I'll deal with it.'

She heard the front door shut and his running footsteps heading down the path in the yard. Oh yeah, like she was going back to bed for a nice snooze after that. She paced the bedroom, a little jealous that he could get out and run when she hadn't been able to, conscious of the fact she was in a strange house, virtually naked and alone. For how long, she had no idea.

How far did you have to go to run off the dead body of the woman you just slept with?

His place was old, maybe 1950s but renovated within the last ten years, she guessed. Walls had been knocked out, the ensuite added. Daniel was a security consultant – he'd probably updated the locks but she wasn't taking anything as given. She moved through the house, checking for deadbolts and locks like she had a clue. All present but the windows at the back looked original, their attractive wide frames thick with layers of paint. Which meant glass that would break with a tap.

She gathered up her clothes, dressed quickly and left Daniel a note.
We can do breakfast another day. See you at the office
.
She hoped it didn't read like a brush-off. It wasn't. But she wasn't ready to play domestics, wasn't sure she'd ever be ready for that again. Or for someone else's baggage – selfish as that was, her own life was already more than she could carry.

She checked up and down the street before pulling the front door closed and drove home with one eye on the rear-view mirror, the other keeping watch for Daniel. She didn't see him or anyone who seemed to be tailing her. It was still early. The rain had stopped but the sky seemed to be gathering fuel for another downpour.

At the townhouse, she did the baseball bat tour of duty before stripping off her clothes and stepping under the shower. Did she wish it hadn't happened? Did she wish she hadn't taken her clothes off and wrapped herself around a man she'd only known for a week? No, she didn't. It hadn't changed anything. Cameron was gone, her life was a mess and there was still a stalker out there. All she knew was that Daniel had been there for her when she'd fallen to pieces and this morning she was back on her feet, feeling stronger and more assertive for the short breather – and sick to death of being shoved from all sides without throwing any punches.

There was nothing she could do about the arsehole threatening her until the coward decided to show himself but she could make sure nobody else took anything from her. She'd see Anthony today, try to prevent Thomas changing their custody agreement. She'd start making her own decisions about the business – when to close the office, how to let their temps know, start clearing out files.

And she could arm herself – with information.

Rachel must have seen her from Lenny's as she pulled to the kerb in Park Street. She met her on the footpath with
coffee in a take-out cup and the gun at her waist again. ‘I got your message. Can we talk in your office?'

Liv had texted her before she left the townhouse and had expected to get a request to come to the station.

‘What happened?' Rachel said when they were sitting either side of Liv's damaged desk.

Liv explained about Cameron and the card, told her she'd taken him to his father's house.

‘Did you stay there too?'

‘Are you kidding?'

‘Where did you go?'

‘The townhouse felt too . . . empty so I drove around.'

‘All night?'

‘No.'

‘Last night's patrol reported no lights in your house and no answer to a knock on the door at eleven pm. Where did you stay last night?'

Liv took a quick breath. ‘Why did they knock on the door?'

‘They were told to keep an eye out for anything unusual. You've had lights on four nights in a row. They were being thorough. Where did you stay, Liv?'

‘With a friend.'

‘Does your friend have a name?'

She paused. Rachel would assume she'd slept with Daniel. Okay, she had but it didn't need to go on a police report. ‘Do you need it?'

Rachel's eyes stayed on Liv's face, direct and unmoving, and for half a second Liv thought it was an attempt to press her into revealing a name. But there was something
less pushy in it. Rachel leaned forward suddenly, interlacing her fingers on the desk. ‘I understand this must feel like an invasion of your privacy. I get that. And I'm not going to insist right now but I'm concerned about your safety. There are two people in hospital. I don't want you to be the next one.'

It sounded like more than the police officer in her talking. Maybe she had the same sense of imminent danger that Liv had or maybe Liv had become more than a name on a file now. Maybe it was that she had a son or a dying father. Maybe it was a lot of things.

Rachel sat back in her chair. ‘I believe the person doing this is someone you know, even someone you might think is a friend. You need to choose very carefully who you call a friend at the moment. Do you understand what I'm saying?'

‘You know something,' Liv said.

‘No. I don't.'

‘What then?'

‘I've got questions that need answers.'

‘From one of my friends?'

Rachel's eyes flicked away, came back again. ‘I can't tell you who I'm talking to.'

‘But it's someone I know.'

‘I can't reveal . . .'

‘You were here yesterday, waiting at the end of the hall. Was it Anthony or Daniel you were waiting for?'

Her voice took on its official tone. ‘My partner and I have spoken to everyone in this building. We've spoken to a lot of people, Liv. This is a police investigation. There
are reasons I can't give you details. All I can tell you, and it's probably more than I should, is that I have questions for several people in your life. You should take care who you trust.'

38

When Rachel left, Liv sat at Teagan's desk and rubbed her hands over her face as she waited for the computer to power up. A friend? What
friend
would throw Tee off a building and force Sheridan into a tree?

She got up, paced across the office. Why hurt the people she cared about? Why hadn't he come for her?

What the hell did he want?

The computer sung its wake-up tune and she opened the internet, typed
stalking
. There had to be others who'd dealt with this and beaten it. What she found wasn't good. More than twenty per cent of Australians were stalked, most victims knew their stalker and moving away and changing your identity was considered a legitimate approach to dealing with the problem.

Walk away from what little she had left? Could she do that? Two friends had been seriously hurt. The note left in Cameron's hands was a warning. Her stalker could get to him, too. Cam was a child – he wouldn't survive being
thrown off a building or smashed in a car. If she left, would it save his life?

Could she live without Cameron? Would she want to? She couldn't take him with her. She wouldn't do that. Thomas was a crap husband but he was Cameron's father.

And there was her own father. She couldn't leave while he was still alive, abandoning him to face death alone.
I never taught my daughter to throw in the towel
. She smiled a little at the thought of what he'd say. The Tony Wallace lecture on standing your ground:
Never give in, never back down, turn your back and you get smacked from behind, girl.

Could she live with the shame of disappointing him? Would she allow someone to force her to leave him?

Her mobile rang.

‘It's me.' Kelly sounded tired, strained, distracted.

Liv's hurt and guilt and loss were still there but empathy overruled them. ‘Oh, Kell. How are you holding up?'

‘With coffee and muffins.'

‘How's Teagan?'

There was a deep intake of breath. ‘Her face is a mess. They had to reconstruct the eye socket. We thought she might lose the eye but the surgeon seems confident it'll be okay. There'll be some loss of vision, though.' Her voice wavered on the last words.

‘Kelly, I'm so sorry. Please say sorry to Teagan and your family. She shouldn't have been caught up in my mess.'

‘It's not your fault, Liv. No one thinks that. The police have been here, that woman detective. She spoke to us about Prescott and Weeks. Does she think it's got something to do with the business?'

‘I don't know. Who's “us”?'

‘Jason and I. He was at the hospital yesterday when the detective was here. She suggested we go through our records, see if there's something we've forgotten. A dispute or something. I can't think of anything – can you?'

The mention of Jason's name made Liv straighten in her chair. Rachel had talked to him about the business? Was he someone she wanted answers from? ‘No, me neither.'

‘Can you come over tonight? We could have a look at some of the old files.'

It was a bad idea – Kelly just didn't know it yet. Putting Liv in the same room with Jason would make it pretty clear, though. ‘You sound exhausted. You don't need a visitor.'

‘You're hardly a visitor and we can do it easy. Order pizza, drink some wine to balance out the coffee. We should see if there's something that might help the police. It would help Teagan, too. She doesn't remember how it happened but she's really frightened that the person who hurt her is still out there. The detective said it could be anything, even something minor. I can't believe it'd be someone we've worked with.'

It could be worse. A lot worse. But there was no way she could tell Kelly that. And not a chance she could share pizza with Jason without throwing it in his face. ‘I'm in the office now. I can look through the files here.'

‘It'd be good to see you, Liv.' Kelly lowered her voice. ‘I feel bad about . . . everything.'

Liv closed her eyes. If it was just the business, they could sort it out. Have a few drinks, say what needed
to be said and move on. Only it wasn't. What Jason had done couldn't be brushed over so easily. Kissing her on a whim would be bad enough but he'd been thinking of cheating on Kelly for months and he'd made Liv the woman responsible. It was a destructive secret that Liv wasn't sure she could – or should – keep from someone she cared about.

Worse still, there was a chance Jason was the stalker. Shit, it felt wrong to even think it, unbearable to suggest it to Kelly. But his words rolled through her mind again –
I knew you'd need me eventually
. He worked five minutes away, the school lunchbreak was around one, about the time Teagan fell.

‘I feel bad too but I can't come over. Not right now. We can talk another time.'

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. ‘Okay,' Kelly said finally. There was disappointment in her voice and a little reproach.

It wasn't what Liv wanted to hear but she couldn't pretend everything was all right. It wasn't. It was bad. Potentially very bad and Liv wasn't ready for the response that explanation would cause.

She hung up, cursed Jason again as she dug out their archive disks. As much as Kelly didn't like the idea, Liv hoped it
was
someone they'd worked with. She didn't want it to be someone she'd trusted. She was into the third disk with nothing useful to show when her phone buzzed with an incoming text.

Sorry it ended like that. It's not what I wanted. Am up the valley 2day. Back late. Can I c u then?

Daniel. Could she trust
him
? He'd done nothing threatening – and he'd had plenty of opportunity. She'd been naked in his house last night and he'd been nothing but . . . She remembered the look in his eyes this morning, the desperation in the way he'd gripped her shoulders. It was obvious he had issues. The kind that would make him hurt people?

She typed
post-traumatic stress disorder
into Google. He had symptoms that fitted – difficulty sleeping, nightmares, hypervigilance. Would running in the dark to burn off a dream be considered overusing exercise? Liv herself had more indicators – abuse of alcohol, anger. And everything she read told her PTSD didn't lead to stalking. Domestic violence, assault charges related to fights, drink-driving, yes. Not premeditated brutality and threatening notes.

And she didn't
want
it to be Daniel. He was the only person she had left to count on.

She eyed the untouched phone on the desk. ‘Back late' was a long way off.

When her mobile rang at four, the number on the screen made her heart leap to her mouth.

‘Livia, it's Wendy from the hospice.'

The nurse Liv liked, the one who called her father a hard-arse. She'd never phoned before. Liv closed her eyes, a hand on her throat. Not now. Please.

‘Sorry to call like this and it's probably nothing but I just wanted to let you know your dad's been asking for you this afternoon.'

Thank God. Liv took a moment to breathe. ‘Did he say why?'

‘No and he's not one to ask for anything, which is what made me call.'

‘How is he?'

‘The pain's been bad today, not that he'd say much. He had extra meds late this morning so he's a little confused but he's mentioned you three or four times. I thought I might see you before I left but I'm just finishing up now.'

‘Okay, thanks.'

Liv shut down the computer, turned on the answering machine and left the office. Maybe it was the drugs, maybe he was dreaming – it had happened before. But he wanted to see her and whoever was out there hurting her friends and threatening Cameron had kept her away from him for too long.

No one followed her to the hospice – at least not that she could tell. The closest parking space was three lanes from the entrance. She checked the lot then jogged the distance, the strap of her bag wrapped around her fist.

‘Hey, Dad.' She kissed his forehead, pulled up a chair and held his hand.

He registered her touch but it took a moment for him to respond. ‘Hi, luv.' He was croaky and his eyelids opened and closed in drug-induced slow motion.

‘Heard you were asking for me. Thought it was a good excuse for an early mark.' She smiled and hoped he didn't see through it. ‘How's the pain now?'

He rolled his head on the pillow to face her. ‘Are you in trouble, luv?'

She watched him a second, trying to work it out. He was fuzzy but definitely awake. Maybe he was still worried about the assault. ‘No, I'm fine now. See, the swelling is almost gone.' She ran two fingers over the most tender part on her cheek.

‘There was a man.' It sounded like the start of a sentence but his eyes closed and he didn't continue.

‘Yes, in the car park at work last week. The police arrested someone.'

‘Here.'

‘No, not here. They picked him up in another car park near Jamestown.'

‘He's trouble.'

‘You're telling me.'

He gripped her hand suddenly. Not like he used to but there was still iron in his fingers and a sharp edge to his tongue. ‘You're not listening.'

‘Sorry, Dad. I don't understand.'

‘There was a man.' He paused. This time, she waited. ‘He had a . . . a . . . what-do-you-call.' Pause. ‘I told him to get out.'

From what she'd heard, he'd ordered various hospital staff to get out in the past. He hated the doctor, claimed the cleaners were useless and thought at least half the nurses were patronising fools. ‘Okay.' She didn't know what else to tell him.

‘Be careful, luv.'

The way he said it, the warning in his tone, made her shoulders tighten. ‘What do you mean?'

‘Do you want to tell me?'

His words were an echo from the past. It was what he used to say to her when she was a kid. He always knew when something was wrong, used to wait until she least expected it – in the middle of washing dishes or doing homework or going for their morning run – and he'd say, ‘Do you want to tell me?'

Maybe he'd just sensed her mood, and like she did when she was a kid, she wanted to talk to him. ‘I can't tell you, Dad.'

‘Are you in trouble?'

‘Not with the police.'

‘There are other kinds of trouble.'

‘I don't know.' She looked across the small room. ‘I think so.'

She listened to the in-out hiss of his breath for a long moment before he said, ‘You know what to do.'

She turned her face. He was clearly exhausted, his chest working hard to draw in air but his eyes were on her. ‘No, I don't. What should I do?'

‘You look after yourself. You hear me? You're the future. You and Cameron. You have to fight for that.' He'd pushed the words out with more force than she'd seen him muster in weeks then his lids dropped and his mouth went slack as though his battery had run out.

Fury waved its fists in her head at the person who'd exhausted and worried him and cut short her time. Then, as a terrible, yawning loss built inside her, she laid her cheek on the blanket and listened to him breathe. She heard the fast pace of a nurse in the hallway, the soft shuffle of a patient, a laugh from further down the ward. She felt safe
here. Sheltered. Loved. She wished she could stay. Wished her father wasn't leaving.

After a while, her eyes wandered to his bedside table, the small space his life had shrunk to. There were cards, a tin of barley sugars, a small radio, his glasses. She sat up.

There was an envelope under his glasses. Plain white, business-sized. There was nothing written on the front.

She turned it over, slipped a finger under the seal, pulled the page from inside.

And her blood ran cold.