by Zoe Sharp
Ann was telling the children a story, something about pirates and a treasure trove. She had a wonderful storyteller’s voice, soft and rhythmic, as if reciting an old poem rather than making it up as she went along. Completely unselfconscious, she put all of herself into the tale, her manner easy and unforced.
The children obviously adored her. She seemed to know immediately how much free rein to allow the more boisterous without them getting out of hand, and how much gentle coaxing was needed for the shy to blossom.
My input was minimal at best. I caught the odd little sideways glance, when they thought I wasn’t looking, wary curiosity in their faces. Maybe my fading black eye had something to do with that, or maybe they’d seen too many bruises for it to make any difference.
Billy sat cross-legged on the ground, front and centre. I kept covert watch, trying to detect Liam’s bone structure behind Maria’s Latin influence, largely without success.
Sipping from my bottle of water, I stared across the dusty compound, where a pair of Fourth Day guards returned from another patrol. One was the Brit ex-Para, Nu. As he and the other man ambled past, Nu raised a hand from the stock of his M16, formed a gun with his forefinger and thumb, and shot me with it, a cheery grin on his face.
There was something far too knowing about the gesture and I realised, in that instant, they’d been waiting for me to venture out last night.
So, it had been another test, after all.
I’d only made it as far as the open doorway before my doubts got the better of me. It had all been too easy, moving through the darkened building. The deserted rooms, the unlocked doors. The conveniently placed pack of cigarettes with that telltale thread so casually displayed, the helpfully folded newspaper, the list of names.
I’d stood for a minute or so, staring up at a clear skyful of stars glittering above me. And then I’d turned around and walked inside, locking the door to my room behind me and slipping the key back between the pages of the Salinger.
But just before I climbed into bed, I’d taken my stolen table fork and used one of the sturdy legs of the bed as a makeshift vice to bend it until the handle fitted snugly over my fist and the tines splayed outwards like claws. Knowing I had it, hidden within easy reach under my pillow, made me feel a little less vulnerable. Makeshift as a prison shank, it would open up someone’s face, if the need arose, but be hard even for an expert to take away from me.
And there seemed to be no shortage of experts in Fourth Day. This morning’s t’ai chi ch’uan class was now being followed by straightforward self-defence, with Yancy in charge.
He was good, I saw. Knew the moves and how best to instil them, even if he did like to hold his ‘victims’ a little too tightly, a little too long. Maybe he just liked showing off his bulging biceps as he demonstrated a rear chokehold on one woman, clasping her body hard against his. I mentally ran through the ways I could have disabled him in the time he took to explain the principle.
Yancy caught my stare and released her. The woman stumbled away from him, flushed, rubbing her neck.
‘Hey, Charlie,’ he called across. ‘Wanna come show us how you Brits do it?’
I gave a non-committal smile, indicating the class. ‘Maybe next time.’
He didn’t answer, but his face called me chicken.
Now, Ann finished her story and sent the children off to find some small object from the compound that had featured in it. ‘Back here in fifteen minutes,’ she said with mock sternness, watching them scatter with an indulgent smile. Good job she didn’t set me the same task, because I hadn’t been paying enough attention to be sure of completing it.
‘You’re very good with them,’ I said. ‘Were you a teacher?’
‘Me? Oh no, I never finished high school.’ She laughed, wry. ‘Too busy having kids of my own by then. So, I guess you could say I’ve had a lot of practice. But I’m a poor substitute for Thomas – he had the gift.’ Her voice apparently held no reproof. ‘They miss him.’
‘Well, he was a teacher by profession,’ I said, neutral.
‘He was the best of us,’ she said, fierce now, covering her sadness. ‘He didn’t deserve any of it.’
I couldn’t quite tell if she meant his life, abduction, or death. ‘Very few people get what they deserve.’
She turned, head on one side. ‘So, what do you deserve, Charlie?’
‘I don’t know.’ I shrugged. ‘It’s one of the things I was hoping to find out here.’
Her focus left me and ranged out across the compound, watching the children as they ran haphazardly about the place in their quest.
‘Randall Bane won’t give you answers,’ she said at last. ‘He’ll just help you ask yourself the right questions. Help you see what’s important to you.’
‘Is that why Thomas stayed?’
Was it my imagination, or did she glance towards Billy? She smiled. ‘When you’ve been here long enough,’ she said, ‘you’ll understand.’
I would have pushed, but Billy came sidling back then, with a chubby little girl of a similar age. He tugged at Ann’s skirt.
‘Hello,’ Ann said gently. ‘And what have you found?’
The children whispered together for a moment, then Billy solemnly presented her with a flat grey pebble, which she took carefully and examined in the sun. ‘Hmm, is this the pirate’s buried treasure?’
The boy stopped trying to cram what appeared to be his entire grubby fist into his mouth and nodded. The girl was flapping her skirt up and down, exposing cotton knickers covered in cartoon seahorses.
To my consternation, Ann turned to me. ‘What do you think, Charlie?’ she asked, handing over the pebble. ‘Is it treasure?’
For a moment, I floundered, smoothing my thumb across the surface. My hands were damp with condensation from the water bottle, leaving a bright smear across the surface of the stone.
I uncapped the bottle and splashed water onto the pebble. At once, the drab grey flourished into a host of colours. I handed the wet stone back to Billy. He and the girl stared at it, apparently dumbfounded by the transformation.
‘Now it looks like treasure.’
Billy looked up at the sound of my voice, squinting into the light, and then his face slowly crumpled with disappointment. He let the pebble drop into the dust at my feet. Then he and his silent companion turned and ran away on stumpy little legs. I’d taken beatings that hurt less.
‘O…K,’ I said, rueful. ‘I guess that was the wrong answer.’
Ann leant across, put her hand on mine. Her skin was thin and dry, like an old lady’s. ‘Don’t be upset,’ she said placidly. ‘Billy can be a strange child. His mother, well, she’s been through difficult times.’
I watched the boy, squatting in the dust, searching for another stone that was as perfectly dull as the first, before I’d gone and ruined it for him.
‘What happened to Billy’s father?’ I asked, as casually as I could manage.
Ann didn’t answer right away, and when she did, her voice was guarded. ‘He’s gone,’ she said, which could have meant anything from no longer with Fourth Day, to six feet under.
‘He walked out on them?’ I pressed.
Ann quietly folded in on herself. ‘Not quite, honey,’ she said. ‘Some things are just not meant to be, that’s all.’
The silence yawned like a cat. I picked up the rapidly drying stone, turned it in my hands. ‘I guess this proves I’m not cut out for parenthood.’
‘You would have managed fine,’ Ann said. When I glanced at her sharply, she added, ‘Motherhood isn’t something they measure you up for. It just arrives, and you make it fit, best you can.’
I opened my mouth to ask how she could tell, then closed it again. She was just one of those women who knew. ‘Well, looks like I won’t be finding that one out.’
‘You’re young,’ she said, with irritating complacency. ‘There’s still time.’
‘Not for me.’
Before she could refute that, if she’d a mind to, Maria
stepped out of the main building. She headed towards us, nervous as a fat rabbit in hawk country, halting a metre or so away.
‘Hello, Maria,’ Ann said easily. ‘Billy’s over there, see? Searching for hidden treasure.’
Maria shook her head. ‘I know he’s safe with you.’ Her gaze met mine, the first deliberate direct eye contact she’d made with me. ‘I came for Charlie,’ she mumbled. ‘He says it’s time.’
Ann flicked a quick look in my direction and nodded, almost to herself.
‘Time for what?’ I queried.
‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ Ann said. ‘Go, child, and don’t look so anxious.’
It was difficult to tell which of us she was speaking to.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Maria led me through the building without speaking. When we reached Bane’s study she knocked, waiting dutifully until invited to enter.
Randall Bane came out from behind his desk to greet us. He was wearing a cream linen shirt hanging loose over pale trousers, and his feet were bare. They were tanned and long, almost slender.
Bane put his hands on Maria’s upper arms, turning her into the light to stare down into her face, his own eyes hooded.
‘Are you ready?’ he asked gently.
Her answering smile was shy, almost tremulous. ‘I think so.’
She had an eagerness to please that tightened all the muscles across my stomach. I let my gaze flit around the room, identified a dozen items I could use to kill him if he made a move on either of us. When I glanced back, Bane was watching me with something close to amusement.
‘Tell me, Charlie, do you ever tire of always expecting the worst of people?’
‘Frequently,’ I bit out, ‘but it has the advantage that I’m rarely disappointed by them.’
He regarded me for a moment. Once again, I had the unnerving impression that he could see straight into the back of my mind. ‘It means you are also often disappointed by yourself.’
He let go of Maria and stepped back, spread an arm. ‘Come.’ An invitation with the hint of an order beneath it.
He moved across to another doorway in the far corner of the room. Without hesitation, Maria followed and, more warily, I did, too. I found myself in another corridor, windowed on one side, doorways on the other. We passed a tiled bathroom, a small kitchen area – Bane’s private quarters.
And I realised that Bane was right. I was thoroughly disappointed for trusting him, for believing he was different, when all the time he was leading up to this. Cursing inwardly, I told myself it was just fear and adrenaline that had pumped up my heart rate and evaporated every drop of saliva on my tongue.
Bane reached the far end of the corridor. He paused, looked back at me with a smile that made the roots of my hair prickle, as if he knew exactly what I was thinking, feeling. Then he opened the door and went through.
On the other side, I found myself back in the ripening heat of the day, standing next to a low open-fronted building that had once been intended for horses. Now it housed vehicles, keeping them out of direct sunlight. One was an ugly four-door Chevrolet with the bonnet open. Two men I vaguely recognised from breakfast were leaning into the dusty engine bay.
They looked up as we approached, nodded to Bane and Maria, stared at me. I glanced at what they were doing, recognised polished engine cam covers and the open impeller housing of a turbocharger. I’m no expert on cars, but that motor did not look factory in such an old, sedate body. So, either this was another example of Fourth Day’s make-do-and-mend ethos, or they were deliberately creating a street sleeper. For a quick getaway, perhaps?
Sensing my interest, one of the men wiped his hands on a rag sticking out of his back pocket and casually reached up to pull the Chevrolet’s bonnet closed. I offered him my best clueless girlie smile. If his answering scowl was anything to go by, he wasn’t convinced.
Next to the Chevy, along with four dust-filmed Kawasaki quad bikes, was an open Jeep. The Jeep’s weathered seats clearly showed that the soft top was never raised – if one was fitted in the first place.
Bane rested a hand on the rollover bar. ‘You’re all set.’
‘Set for what, exactly?’ I asked as Maria climbed into the driver’s seat.
‘For your journey.’
‘Hang on a minute,’ I said, uneasy now. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’
‘And that is part of your problem.’
‘I—’
It was Maria who cut across me, her voice unexpectedly strong. ‘The greatest journey anyone can make,’ she said, fastening her seat belt, ‘is inside their own head.’
Bane smiled at her, the first full-blown smile I’d seen him crack. It transported his features back to a time when he might have been carefree. There was something strong between them, I realised. Just for a second I wondered if he was the father of Maria’s child. I tried not to think about the age gap between them.
The back of the Jeep, I saw, was loaded with containers of water, food, camping equipment. ‘So why does this inner journey need so much outer gear?’
Bane took pity on me. ‘Everyone who comes here is required to spend time in the wilderness,’ he said. ‘Time away from the distractions of the community, to listen to their own thoughts and discover what’s important to them. To think about where they want to focus their life.’ He nodded towards the Jeep. ‘Maria is simply there to keep you out of trouble for the first night, to be your guide.’
‘But I’ve only been here a few days,’ I said blankly. Most of them in splendid isolation. ‘What makes you think I’m ready for this?’ Besides, whatever was happening inside Fourth Day was happening here, not in the middle of nowhere. This felt suspiciously like Bane was shunting me off into the sidelines.
He stared at me for a moment longer. ‘You’ve always been ready.’ When still I hesitated, he added, ‘And what’s a few more days, if it helps you to understand where your life has been, and where it’s going?’
Reluctantly, I swung myself up into the passenger seat. Maria smiled at me for the first time, as if grateful for my acquiescence. She cranked the engine. Bane stepped back with a little dip of his head. The last glimpse I caught of him was reflected motionless in the door mirror, framed by swirling eddies of dust.
* * *
We drove for what seemed like a long time. Far enough that it would have taken half a day to hike back on foot. Further out, the terrain became more ragged. Maria drove with an easy competence I hadn’t been expecting, not clinging to the steering wheel as the vehicle scrambled over the rough ground. She crouched forwards, animated by the challenge. The frightened girl Sean and I had seen running from the compound might have never existed.
‘You’re good at this,’ I said after a while.
‘I grew up on the Baja peninsula,’ she said, not taking her eyes off the way ahead. ‘We did a lot of four-wheeling down there.’
I wedged myself sideways in my seat, one hand braced on the dashboard. I still had a lot of bruises, and the ride quality did little for them. ‘How long have you been with Fourth Day?’
‘A while.’ She flicked me a quick sideways look from behind her fringe. ‘I came and went again,’ she said then, something wistful in her voice. ‘It took me too long to realise I belonged here.’
‘Is that why you joined – to find somewhere you felt you belonged?’
She shook her head. ‘My mother died when I was seventeen,’ she said. ‘Without her it all seemed…pointless.’ The corner of her mouth curved upwards. ‘I found family here – for me and for Billy.’
Ah!
‘What about Billy’s father?’
The smile blinked out. ‘He’s gone,’ she said. It seemed to be the company line on the subject.
‘It must have been hard, raising Billy alone,’ I said carefully. ‘What happened?’
‘It hasn’t been easy,’ Maria said stiffly. ‘Billy can be awkward, moody. After he was born I…did not always love him as I should.’ Her voice trailed off and
she shrugged. It didn’t take a genius to work out she had suffered from post-natal depression. Had that developed into other disorders? ‘But here, with Randall’s people, we are not alone.’
‘Ann told me Thomas was very good with the children,’ I said, trying another approach to break through the distance in her voice, but that only increased her agitation.
‘He left,’ she muttered. ‘He promised me he wouldn’t go, but he never even said goodbye.’
‘He didn’t have a choice, Maria,’ I said quietly, trying to keep the self-recrimination out of my voice.
But she didn’t hear me. ‘They all leave,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘They say they won’t, but they do. As soon as you allow yourself to love someone, they go. They leave you and they don’t come back.’
I winced as the Jeep bounced over another rock, graunching the front chassis cross member as it hit, and almost jerking the wheel right out of Maria’s hands. Maybe this was one conversation I should have saved for later.
But I knew I didn’t have much time and might not get another chance like this. I took a breath.
‘Did Billy’s father abandon you, or didn’t he have a choice, either?’
She took so long to respond that I didn’t think she was going to. We battered on, but her flair, her enjoyment was gone, turning it into a gritted-teeth endurance ride.
‘I never wanted him to go,’ she said at last, her voice brimming with pain and anger.
Even then, I couldn’t leave it. ‘Go where?’ I demanded. ‘With Debacle?’
Maria’s foot lurched off the throttle and the Jeep rolled slowly to a halt. Soundlessly, her shoulders began to shake until great sobs wracked her body.
I put my hand on her arm. It took a moment before she even realised it was there.
She sat up, tried to scrub away the tears with the heel of her hand. ‘We need to keep going. Randall’s relying on me.’
‘Maria,’ I said gently. ‘We’re in the middle of nowhere. Can’t you stop here? Won’t this do?’
She looked around as if seeing the landscape for the first time, dazed. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘This place is as good as any.’
