Sweet Seduction Shield (25 page)

"Did you do
this all by yourself?" I asked.

"Nah, Adam and
Ben helped. That Nick guy just gave instructions from a
deckchair."

I laughed.
That sounded about right.

"Well, you all
did a great job. Where's it going?"

"In our
backyard," she declared, and I wondered if we'd ever get back to
our two bedroom flat in Grey Lynn. "I'm gonna ask deetetiv Pierce
to hang it up."

So determined
to include Pierce in our lives. I blinked down at her, as she toyed
with the latch on the door to the 'house'. Unsure exactly what to
say to that.

Was it wrong
of me to want Ryan in our lives too? Was I setting Daisy up to be
hurt? I didn't know the answer, and now was not the time to work it
out.

"OK,
sweetheart, we'll see," I said instead.

"Oh, we'll see
all right, Mummy. Yes we will."

I guess I'd
just been told, hadn't I?

The note felt
heavy in my back pocket as I sat between Abi and Kelly in the rear
of an SUV. I should have read it as soon as Ben handed it over.
Reading a 'love letter' in front of my daughter was one thing,
reading it in front of these two women was something else entirely.
I felt like it was burning a hole into my left butt cheek, I kept
squirming in my seat trying to assuage the imaginary ache.

"You got ants
in your pants?" Kelly asked on my left.

"Or do you
need to pee?" Abi offered from my right.

"Could be
excitement over seeing Pierce again," Eva suggested from the front
passenger seat, receiving an arched brow from Nick who was
driving.

Ben muttered a
"Fuck me" in the back of the vehicle, making up the entirety of our
little retrieval group.

"I'm fine," I
muttered, ruining my defence when I squirmed in my seat again.
Argh! I should just get the damn thing out and read it. The desire
to find out what Ryan had written was so great, but the longer I
took before I did so, made me begin to doubt it was a love letter
at all.

What if it was
just a note explaining the retrieval was back on for tonight. He'd
obviously changed his mind about it, and may have done so before he
left Ben and Abi's house. The note was to catch me up on the
plan.

Yeah, that was
probably it. The squirming stopped and the hand wringing began
instead.

"I used to
feel an itch between my shoulder blades," Abi said into the quiet
air of the car.

I saw Nick's
eyes come up to the rear vision mirror, they caught mine, but I
think he'd been intending to see what expression was on Abi's face.
Eva swung around in her seat.

"Do you still
get it?" she asked.

"Not so much,"
Abi advised. Ben's hand snaked between us from the rear and
squeezed her shoulder once, then disappeared. She offered me a
small smile. "Bullseyes and shoulder itches, when my world was
uncertain they kept me sane." An amused sound escaped her lips
then. "Well, as sane as you could be when paranoid."

"I'm not
paranoid," I pointed out, although softly, not wanting to
offend.

"Paranoia.
Fear. At times like this they're one and the same."

I
was
scared. I'd denied myself
that emotion for so long that now I felt it again it threatened to
consume me. I stared down at my white knuckled hands clasped
together, felt the moist sheen of sweat on my palms, noticed the
slight trembling in my extremities. Yes, I was scared, but not of
anything tangible. Not of, say, the tattooed freak jumping out from
behind the bar at the Birdcage and attacking. This fear was more
elusive than that. This fear was something you couldn't fight. When
there's no physical opponent, how do you throw a punch?

I was walking
down a bleak and dark corridor into my past, revisiting aspects I'd
long since buried beneath my shields. Exposing painful memories,
rifling through a shoebox full of photos in my mind. I knew what
I'd find. I knew what it would do to me. But I couldn't stop this
now. Too many people knew about the ledger. Too many people wanted
it.

Hell, Pierce
and Nick were humouring me by letting me be the one to retrieve it.
Ryan because he felt something for me. Nick because Ryan was a
friend. Both of them could have just gone ahead and searched for
the book on their own. Without me. But they were letting me face my
past. Letting me put it right. I wanted to be grateful, and in a
way I was, but the past was looming and the closer I got to it the
more detail I could see.

Blood
splatter. Gun smoke. Screams and tears and heartache. So much fear
I couldn't breathe.

On one side of
me Abi reached out and wrapped a hand around one of mine. On the
other Kelly did the same, until both my hands were being held by
the two women with me. They didn't say anything, they just offered
what support they could in the face of my haunted past.

I sucked in a
deep breath, felt my heart thudding inside my chest. Felt the
strain of the muscle as it tried to keep up with the adrenaline
coursing through the blood. Gone was my confidence. Gone was my
shield. And we hadn't even made it to the Police bar yet. I leaned
forward in my seat and attempted to get a handle on my emotions,
vaguely aware I was squeezing both Kelly and Abi's hands a little
too tightly.

The vehicle
rolled to a stop on the side of the road, Eva still turned in her
seat looking worried, but Nick hadn't yet spun back to watch me
fall apart. He might have been seeing it all play out in the
mirror, but I think he was offering what privacy he could given the
closed quarters we were in.

I finally
managed to catch my breath enough to talk, my voice a shadow of my
usual self.

"How did you
deal with it?" I asked the space in front of my feet, but everyone
must have known the question was for Abi.

"I don't have
an easy answer for you, Marie," she said slowly. "For me I took
medication to help settle the anxiety, but it wasn't until I faced
my fears that I really made any progress at all."

"But how did
you face it?" I demanded.

I heard her
suck in a deep breath, but for the life of me couldn't raise my
eyes from the floor of the car.

"I accepted
that I couldn't do it alone anymore," she said quietly. "That I
didn't need to. You're not alone either. You know that, right? You
and Daisy never have to face this alone ever again."

Oh, no. The
first tear felt too big for my eye, I couldn't blink it back. It
rolled over my lashes and splashed onto my wrist. Hot and wet and
exposed. The second and third followed in quick succession and
then, like floodgates opening, I lost count as they tumbled freely
to the floor.

No one said
anything, just a squeeze of my hand from Kelly and a soft rub of
Abi's palm over my bent back. I heaved in sobbed breath after
sobbed breath, until there were simply no more tears left to fall.
God, I'd never felt so raw, so naked before in all my life. I'd
never felt so unmasked.

I hated Rick
for this. Yes, I stole the ledger, but damn it! I wouldn't have had
to if he hadn't have gotten into bed with the head of a criminal
ring.

Anger was a good shield I discovered. I sat up slowly, feeling
the resentment for my dead husband stiffen my spine. I despised
everything he became. Long before that fateful night. How does one
throw away love like that so easily? I'd loved him once, but by the
time we faced McLaren and his gun toting goons in the back field of
his compound, that love had changed, warped into something else. A
desperate attempt to save
something
of what we'd been.

Even if we'd
escaped that night with our lives, Rick and I would never have been
the same together again.

Daisy will
never know. I can't let her. Even before I was aware that she was
growing inside my belly, I'd lost my love for her father and had
only been clinging on out of sheer stubbornness.

Tonight I was
going to finish what I'd started all those fateful years ago.
Tonight I was going to make sure Roan McLaren couldn't destroy
another love like he did mine and Rick's.

Eva handed me
a tissue between the front seats, I offered a wet smile and tidied
myself up. My face was no doubt blotchy, my eyes would have been
bloodshot, but my back was straight and I had a shield in
place.

Tonight I
would say goodbye to Richard Costello.

"Just say the
word, Marie and we call this off," Nick said from the front
seat.

I met his eyes
in the rear view mirror, chin up, shoulders back.

"Let's do
this," I said, heat coating my words. Surprisingly as effective as
my once usual ice.

Nick nodded,
and doors were opened as everyone climbed out of the SUV. I slipped
out behind Abi, who was already within the arms of Ben. He must
have escaped out of the rear door of the car to beat the rest of
us. Both of their eyes were on Nick. Who had his hand up to his ear
and a frown marring his forehead.

"OK, you're
on," he said with a nod of his head to Ben and Abi. Seconds later
we watched them saunter in the front doors of the Birdcage across
the street. "Now we wait," Nick added, leaning his butt back
against the car.

Eva stretched
out over the hood, staring in the same direction as Nick, while
Kelly adjusted her skimpy top and flattened her hands over her
shapely arse. I was guessing Kelly wasn't a usual on these ASI type
jobs, and the excitement of the 'mission' was competing with her
excitement at being in a pub.

I flicked my
glance over the orange two storey brick building of the Birdcage.
It was a striking structure, clearly over a century old, with white
masonry surrounding the windows and door, and in the detailed
parapet along the roofline. It stood on its own, in the shadow of
the Victoria Motorway Overpass, on the corner of busy Franklin and
Victoria Streets. It shouted out its right to remain in a world
that was constantly changing, upgrading, destroying icons of the
past.

And it was
busy. It didn't matter what day of the week it was, the Birdcage
belonged to the emergency services. Police, Fire and Ambulance
frequented its doors. They never slept, so neither did this
building. Offering a safe harbour for those who often offered such
to others in need.

I'd hoped,
when I'd buried the ledger here, that the likes of Roan McLaren
would never set foot within the Birdcage's walls. It hadn't been
easy, McLaren's book of bad deeds didn't fit inside my jeans
pocket. I'd had to smuggle it inside hidden in a tote bag, then
when the patrons - many of which were off duty cops - celebrated
the New Year with drinks and kisses and confetti spraying revelry,
I'd ducked down onto my knees and pried a corner brick out of the
side of the courtyard wall.

My fingertips
had been scraped bloody, but I'd scouted the location out before
I'd planned my move, so with the use of a file the brick had come
loose, allowing me to slide the bundled ledger into a gap beneath
the wall. I'd never checked on it since, like I had my mementoes
box full of photos at the Salt Water Baths. I'd had to trust the
location was a deterrent more than the actual hole I'd buried the
book in.

And now I was
back, to retrieve it. To finally use it as I had intended it to be
used all those years ago. Risking more than just me to see justice
done. I shook my head on that thought, thinking of Daisy and what
dangers this could bring my daughter was not wise right now. I had
to do this. If I didn't, McLaren would never be stopped.

Nick
straightened up from his recline on the vehicle and glanced at the
rest of us.

"All right,"
he said, reaching out a hand to clasp Eva's. "We're happy to be
here, yeah? It's a fucking bar and we're heading in to get
drunk."

I guess that
was his idea of a pep talk. Kelly made a scoffing sound, but we all
dutifully put smiles on our faces and walked as a unit towards the
front door. Nick and Eva led the way, the cowgirl offering one last
encouraging smile over her shoulder. Kelly looping her arm casually
through mine, as though we really were out for a night on the town,
ready to party.

My heart
thundered in my chest, my pulse flickering so rapidly that I could
actually feel it at the base of my neck. I couldn't find the ice,
but I reminded myself that I had other shields I could use. Fuck
Roan McLaren. And fuck my dead husband too.

"Cheer up,
sweet pea," Kelly murmured from out the side of her mouth. "We can
really get shitfaced once we're back at Abi and Ben's."

I forced a
smile back on my lips, thinking rage as a shield probably wasn't
the best. But what else did I have? My ice had long since thawed
being around these people, hatred was all I had left now.

We made a
brief stop at the well attended main bar, grabbing beers all round,
and then headed straight out to the courtyard. Discovering it was a
popular destination for a lot of pub-crawlers tonight. My eyes
darted over the jovial faces, wondering which ones were cops, which
ones were innocent bystanders. And which ones were here to see me
dead, or the ledger destroyed.

Even anger
couldn't stop the panic from surfacing. I was drowning and I had
lost all sense of land.

Until I saw
him. Standing in the corner, exactly where the ledger was hidden.
But he couldn't have known that fact. I'd never told him where in
the Birdcage I'd buried the book, only that we'd need to either
distract the patrons, or hide me while I retrieved it. But somehow,
Pierce had chosen the exact location I'd placed that blasted book
in.

My eyes met
his, and for a moment the world stopped spinning. The water stopped
lapping at my mouth and nose. And my heart forgot to beat. A small
smirk graced his lips, the brown of his eyes shining like whiskey
through cut glass. He had a beer in his hand and had been talking
to a man I didn't know. Probably an off duty cop; there were plenty
here to chose from.