Andy raced out of bed, and found where she had left the bottle earlier. It had to look empty, but she couldn’t pour it down toilet or basin, that would mean leaving her locked room and letting Martin know she was awake. She glanced around in the dim light of her room and focussed on the accumulating pile of dirty clothes. The time it took the water to slosh out of the bottle felt like the last few seconds before a bomb exploded.
After recapping the bottle and dropping it back on the floor, Andy crawled back into bed. She wondered if she was being paranoid, but her thought of, “Why would Steve drug her drinks?” was instantly trumped by, “Because he knows Martin.”
Thinking back, she realised that Martin had probably drugged her before - many times. She was gut-certain that he was the true perpetrator of the incident that got her expelled from school - when she was officially charged with nearly killing her only school friend. Martin had been fuming when she was given a suspended sentence.
Anger roiled in her mind at the memory, but the sound of her door being unlocked made her body become a reclining statue. Andy kept her breathing even as the creaking floorboards betrayed someone creeping into her room. The whiff of expensive cologne identified Martin.
He stopped by the bed, watching for a moment, before briefly flicking on a torch. There was a faint scuffing sound before the light went off, and the creaking boards told of Martin’s retreat. Only when the door clicked locked again, did Andy dare to move.
She felt for her own torch, and checked her room. What had Martin been doing? He’d come near the bed…
A water bottle lay nearby, but even from the bed, Andy knew it wasn’t the one she’d dropped. That one had a pushed in dent in the plastic; this one was perfectly smooth. Why did Martin remove it? So she would have no evidence that might betray his illegal activities?
Too late for that. It didn’t take a genius to know that you couldn’t afford a nearly new Volvo on a council worker’s pay.
Adrenalin fuelled Andy’s growing anger. Somehow, she wanted Martin to suffer. She wanted him to lose his source of illegal income and to have his personal liberty threatened - and without him being able to suspect her.
Ideas came and went. Martin was too careful to keep anything incriminating in the house and she didn’t know where his illegal activity went on.
Or did she? Why did Steve meet Martin at that Italian restaurant?
A blindingly simple plan came into her mind. She would go to work, and if she had the chance to go out - like sometimes when the chef’s needed extra ingredients - she’d make an anonymous phone call to Crime Stoppers. She’d say that her boyfriend got drugs at the Italian restaurant - after midnight.
Then she’d wait, keep sweet with Steve, and see what happened. Somehow, telling on Steve was not like telling directly on Martin.
That night, from the edge of the curtain, Andy watched Steve leave. On the walk home, two police cars had passed them, slowing down and speeding up again…checking them out. Hopefully that meant an incipient raid.
Sounds of Martin kicking the solid wood of the kitchen table woke Andy early. She waited until he had driven away to go and see if he had left the morning’s paper. He hadn’t. So she dressed quickly, sneaked outside and pinched one from a neighbour.
The raid was on the front page - a brothel raided, a large quantity of drugs seized, the police wanted the owner who’d run off. The name the paper gave wasn’t Martin’s but the artist sketch was how he had appeared the night she’d seen him.
Andy smiled maliciously. As she returned the neighbour’s paper, she wondered if Steve had been arrested.
*****
Cover image credit: Steve Davidson, Westgate Bridge and Port Melbourne, © 2008, Flickr, under attribution licence, https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3231/2986612346_c0a7424c77_b_d.jpg
The Tymorean Trust Series:
Book 1 - Power Rising
Book 2 - Great Ones
Book 3 - The Return to Earth
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Book 4 - Earth Mission
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The Wild One
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Atapi Sorceress
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