Gypsy Hunted: a psychic paranormal book with a touch of romance (The Gypsy Medium Series 1)

by Andrea Drew

  “So why the hell did you make her part of this? Why was it so vital to put her in danger? You could have written it down for someone else! This better be damn good, I swear.” If her color didn’t subside soon, they’d set up a bed for her in the next room right after she popped a major blood vessel.

  I typed like mad on the laptop, slamming each key. There was no way in hell I’d be able to spit out the onslaught of emotions raging through me.

  We lifted our heads as the door creaked open. Nurse Tina stuck her head in. “Everything all right?”

  Her tone wasn’t aggressive, but she’d obviously heard the yelling.

  Leah bit her lip, staring at me before sitting down and glaring at Tina, her expression sullen. “Its fine, we’re just a bit emotional right now. The man that abducted that woman could have killed Gypsy, and he followed her niece home today, my daughter. We’re still in the thick of it all.” Leah frowned at Tina, opposing her.

  “Yes, I understand, I really do, but that sounds like a police matter. It’s a fraught situation and of course, emotions are high. Brain injury patients are monitored carefully, especially the first few days afterwards. Your sister's making good progress and we don’t want to risk any set-backs, so we’re trying to keep stimulation down to a minimum.” Tina’s lips pressed together firmly, and she glared at both of us.

  The door closed firmly.

  “Jesus, this place is a freaking circus!” hissed Leah, who had edged so far out from the seat that I wondered if she would fall off.

  “Mum, can I go get a drink?” Renee ducked her head, her voice quiet. I didn’t blame her for wanting to get the hell out of there. The tension was giving me a headache and I hadn’t had one of those since, well since some random stranger ran me over and left me for dead.

  “You haven’t ever grown up, have you? Is that why you and Renee are friends? Two kids who understand each other?” Leah frowned and pushed out a sharp flow of air, reaching down into her purse. She grabbed a five-dollar bill and shoved it at Renee. Renee didn’t want to come out from behind her wall of hair. Instead, she slunk off to hide in the hospital canteen down in the bowels of the building somewhere.

  What the hell? Don’t be ridiculous, Leah, we both know how old I am…

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about. For once in your life be honest with yourself!” Standing up, she moved closer to the bed, pointing at me. Traces of sweat had appeared on her forehead.

  I looked at the doorway, feeling dizzy, my chest tightening. Finally, this was it. This was the watershed moment I had been searching for so many years ago, a chance to clear the air, get the ugliness out in the open, and maybe restore our previous closeness. Yet, if she wanted it to happen at that very moment, I wasn’t prepared. Surely, she could have waited until I was feeling a bit stronger, when life had resumed its routine, the mouse wheel spinning relentlessly. Not now, not like this.

  Had to get her to police. Met cop. Connor. She sent him here.

  “Where the hell was I? You involved a minor in reporting a crime? Jesus, Gypsy, what is wrong with you? When were you two going to give up this stupid little game of secrets? Oh, that’s right, dumb Leah, dumb as dog shit.”

  Leah’s anger seemed to have peaked. She turned away from me, covering her face with her hands before spinning back.

  “The little messages you think I can’t see, answering each other’s questions when not one of you talked. I’m not smart enough to know about any of it, am I? Please, spare me.” She folded her arms and glared at me.

  “Jealous,” I managed to grunt, “You jealous?”

  “Jealous? She’s my daughter, not yours, always has been, always will be. I’m her mother, not her best friend. I know you two are close. Maybe you should go find a man and have your own kids, Gypsy. Maybe that way you’ll have something to worry about.”

  “Bitch! You. Bitch!” was all that I could manage. The sweat settled across my forehead, my breathing heavy so that I struggled to slow it down.

  My spine straightened, fingernails biting into my palms. My head was thumping harder and I wished she’d leave. The nurse was right. This was not the time or the place for family therapy. I wondered if it really was better to have this out in the open or to let it be. Did it need to be sorted out at this very moment?

  “You think it was easy for me, Gypsy? Staying home while you were out, listening to Dad defend you when I was at home? It was obvious to all of us who he loved best, and when I asked him, he wouldn’t answer. How do you think that felt?”

  “Almost twenty years later…”

  “Yeah, maybe it is twenty years later, but some scars never heal. You took to the bottle and ran yourself into the ground, not caring about anyone else. Did you not think about what that did to us? But he could never see it, not with you, the smart beautiful one that looked just like him.”

  “My fault?” Heat formed in my gut.

  “Whose is it, then?”

  I remembered one of the most hellish phases of my young life, my late teens, early twenties. I went through my angry young woman stage. I hated life, men and everything they represented. Tired of the screaming slinging matches between Mum and Dad, night after night, before finally they separated, I turned to alcohol in a big way. All the while, I told myself it was just a phase, but it was a damn long phase. It lasted nearly eighteen months. Eventually, I realized I was on a slippery slope and one day I’d wind up dead or a vegetable from too many close calls.

  Thankfully, I’d had the sense to check myself into rehab and never went back to the bottle. As much as I wanted to strangle my sister, she had a point. Wrapped up in my own pain, I hadn’t thought about what it did to my family. I used my ability to get in touch with Renee when I could, but never to contact Leah. I hadn’t been interested in her world, even though she was my sister, for God’s sake.

  “Maybe a bit selfish sometimes,” I managed to say, squeezing out the words. Even if they were begrudging, they were out, hanging in the air. My chin hit my chest.

  “What?” she said quietly. She lifted her head.

  I’d never bothered getting to know Leah, her thoughts, her pictures, how things felt from her viewpoint. I’d let resentment pool like a caustic poison seeping through my pores.

  I beckoned her over to the bed. She scowled at me before her glare moved off to the window, then the ceiling, the headboard. She shuffled over and sat on the bed. I held out my hand, and when she snuck hers out from her lap, I grabbed hold of it tightly.

  For the first time I could remember, I made the effort and dug for pictures. They came thick and fast. I saw Leah standing at the kitchen window of our old home, staring out into the backyard. My sixteenth birthday party—that disco was a riot—Leah got a night out at the local thirty-seat bistro. There was twelve-year-old Leah sitting bolt upright in bed in the early hours of the morning, her skin prickling. After shifting her head from side to side birdlike, she padded over to my bed and crouched over, discovering I wasn’t there. I saw her take a sharp intake of breath, putting one hand over her mouth, and then crawl back into bed and pull the covers over her head, sniffing quietly. Leah and I curled up defensively on the couch in the lounge room, Dad yelling and pointing—we’d borrowed the car and I’d trashed it. Leah took the rap for me silently.

  I didn’t realize I was such a brat. It seemed vastly different from her end, looking from within Leah’s world. Shit.

  “Try. Let’s try. I never tried, not really. Shit, you are my sister.”

  The pride I clung to had slid away. My eyes moistened and I fought to suppress the contortions of my mouth.

  Leah’s voice sounded cracked and gnarled.

  “I know you think I was Mum’s favorite, but it wasn’t like that. She was the only thing keeping me safe.”

  “Safe from what?”

  “The pain of those damn fights. Sometimes, I wished they’d kill each other and get it over with.”

  There was no way I’d ever forget the years of our pa
rent’s battles, loud and ferocious, night after night. I knew now it wasn’t me alone that bore the scars of our parent’s constant fury.

  “Me too.”

  Leah raised her head slightly.

  I gazed at her moist red face “I wish you hadn’t been so keen to blab about what I was supposedly up to. Half of it was garbage, you know.”

  “Gypsy, I felt sick thinking what could be happening to you. You were climbing out windows and I imagined the worst. Honestly, I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to protect you, not blame you…when I think about all those wasted years when we were enemies.”

  “Oh.” I blew out a breath. Her shoulders came forward. She leaned in to hug me and our heads bumped together. She laughed a crazy, stupid laugh, and together, we did that weird crying and laughing thing, sputtering and stammering. We’d reached some sort of watershed moment, undefined and unstable, but there nonetheless.

  After what seemed like an hour, but was probably only a minute or two, the door squeaked open. Renee must have come back with her spoils from the canteen.

  “Look, Mum!”

  There stood Renee, grinning from ear to ear, her hand inside that of her father’s. I’d forgotten how tall he was. He was standing just inside the room grinning stupidly, fair hair falling over his forehead, eyes flicking between Leah and me. I swiped the moisture from my eyes, conscious of my sister perched next to me on the narrow bed, her back to him.

  Leah turned her face to within an inch of mine. “What the hell is he doing here?” Her voice was a gravelly whisper, her frown a deep line of trenches. This was obviously not a happy family reunion.

  “I wanted to talk to you, Leah. Renee told me Gypsy was in the hospital, so when you weren’t home, I thought…” His back stiffened as the realization flickered across his face. He clicked that his timing was all wrong and he would cop Leah’s full flood of fury.

  “Let’s talk about this outside.” Her voice was low, threatening. As she got off the bed, her lips were pressed together and her eyes were hard. I knew that look—God help him.

  “Come on, that’s it for one day.” She actually leaned over to plant an unexpected dry kiss on my cheek. “Renee, let’s go.”

  Renee rushed over to give me a kiss, throwing her arms around my neck, bringing reminders of happy days.

  “See you soon, Gypsy, love you.”

  Leah pushed past Paul to get out of the room. In an instant, they were gone. I felt bewildered, drained, and yet strangely enough, contented. Maybe, just maybe, Leah and I would be able to tolerate each other more than we ever had.

  *****

  Aaron strained as he hauled her into the warehouse. If he hadn’t hit her so hard with that crowbar she could have walked herself in. Finally, he managed to drag her onto the old mattress in the storeroom. She was breathing, but hadn’t woken for a while now. He thought he’d wacked her in the torso when he pulled the van over to shut her up, but now he could see clumps of blonde hair sticking to her stained features, so he must somehow have caught her face. His lips parted as he brushed his fingers across her face. It was beautiful even when dirtied and bloodied. It would heal; she just needed a bit of time.

  He covered her with a blanket and tried getting some water into her, but as he poured from the bottle into her mouth, it just dribbled down the side of her face. He’d managed a quick trip to Carlton, scaring the crap out of the ugly cow’s niece. It had been a bit of a giggle, but he had hoped she’d get in the car. Gypsy would have suffered and squirmed over that one. Right now though, he needed to make a list. There were things to do. He’d probably need his old car back and some new license plates from Stewie.

  He stood and looked down at her as she stirred, murmuring quietly. She was his and he was hers. All they needed was his baby boy and they’d be a family.

  She slowly turned toward him, her eyes opening a crack and she shook her head from side to side, as she registered where she was.

  “You! You bastard, where am I?” She blinked rapidly, lifting her head off the pillow to look around.

  “Our new place, you like it?”

  “Oh, my God, you psycho, don’t kill me!”

  She pressed her fists to her head. Chin trembling, her eyes bulged.

  He covered his ears as she started screaming, a barbaric high-pitched wail. It wasn’t meant to go like this. He’d been sure her eyes would mist over when she saw him, understanding the hope and promise of their new future together.

  “Take me home! They’ll be looking for me…” Her face contorted.

  The pitch of her scream pierced him. He couldn’t stand it—she sounded like Tiran, not a fresh start at all. The tangle of thoughts in his head was screeching, overwhelming.

  Tiran nagging him screeching, her face contorted in ugliness as she asked him what was going on with him? What the hell was he thinking? The smell of poisonous smoke as he ran into the front yard dragging Christie behind him. Holed up in his room, face down on the bed, pounding the pillow as the knocks, and pleading voices reverberated through the door.

  “Shut up! Shut the fuck up!” He felt a vein pulsing in his neck as he raged at her. Her head fell back onto the pillow, eyes closed.

  He’d been excited when he’d found the report in her bag. They had so much in common. She knew the cops were up to dodgy shit, too, and she had proof. Now she was crazy, and there was no way of talking to her until she calmed down.

  He had to get away, because her wails were seeping into his bones. He ran out to the car, started the engine, and reversed at speed to get out of there.

  *****

  They’d been on the freeway for a few minutes and the rolling of the car and the slight swaying of their bodies meant a momentary lull in the conversation. Connor tried Aaron again on the phone, but it went straight to voicemail. He clenched his jaw, rubbing his right hand over his left arm, which was locked at the elbow from his hold on the steering wheel. Reining in his emotions, the loss, guilt and anger, was a strain. He wondered how much longer he could keep it up.

  Ian turned to Connor. “Let’s talk. Now you can tell me who Jeremy O’Connell is.”

  “A family friend.”

  “A family friend’s name is on the Bedford van, what a fucking coincidence.” Ian started rubbing at the tomato stained shirt with a serviette, the fat under his chin wobbling.

  “Mum and Dad left the factory to us in the will. We’ve kept it on, had trouble selling it.”

  “So that’s where we’re going? What does that have to do with this Jeremy bloke?” Ian’s fingers moved from the stain to the window, fingers tapping the glass with a barely contained annoyance.

  “Like I said, he’s a family friend. His business was down the road from Dad’s factory. Dad borrowed his cars sometimes. They both liked working on them.”

  His words hung in the air, filling the car, waiting to be inspected and examined.

  “So what the fuck are you not telling me?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve thought about this for a while. He’s a regular bloke. This isn’t something he’s capable of, or I didn’t think he was. He’s like a son to me.” Avoiding eye contact, Connor swallowed hard as he flicked on the indicator.

  “Who is?” Ian’s voice was louder.

  “My nephew, Aaron, I think he was the driver of the van that night.”

  “Fu-uck. Reardon, are you for real?”

  “We’ll find out. I have to at least consider it—a woman’s life is on the line.”

  “Your nephew? The one you took in as a kid? Holy shit.”

  “Yeah…”

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Ian was staring at him slack jawed. Connor couldn’t look back at him, didn’t want to see his partner's shock. He hadn’t wanted to tell him in the first place, but there it was. Glad to be driving, he continued focusing straight ahead.

  “Have you told anyone else? Like the chief?”

  “No.” Connor said in a low tone, his shoulders curled into his chest.

  �
��Someone upstairs needs to know. They’ve been running around like blue-assed flies. Those reports she took are in the open and they’ve got the low down on the anti-corruption hearings in there—names, places, suspects.”

  “What do I tell them? By the way, Chief, I think my nephew killed someone, maybe more than one. I know it might be a bit rough for the department, and I don’t have any proof, but I’ll get it. I’m all over it.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  Connor gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles went white. “Don’t be an idiot, Robbo. For a start, the Chief is spitting blood about the reports she smuggled out. He’s looking for a head on a pike and it’s not going to be mine. Plus, I’m not turning a blood relative in without proof. What’s with you, anyway? You’ve been weird for weeks.”

  Ian Robson flinched, the tic in his eye flicking madly.

  Connor wondered what had gotten into Ian lately. He hadn’t been himself. Something was wrong, very wrong, but now was not the time to ask.

  “You realize you’re in for the fall of a fucking lifetime?”

  “What I need is evidence. If we get that, I’ll know what to do.”

  “I’m glad you will.” Ian rubbed his hand across his mouth, set grimly in a straight line.

  Connor turned into a road marked by a service station on the corner, the wide street lined with factories. Silently, they pulled into the driveway of a deserted warehouse. Beyond a sagging chain wire fence was a wide concrete path, cracked with weeds poking through, a large red and white For Sale sign, partially obscured by a large bush.

  “This it?” said Ian as Connor parked the car at the main entrance, a wooden door with faded blue paint, worn and peeling at the corners.

  Connor’s heart was racing. He lifted the door handle and opened the car door. He walked through dewy weeds to the blue door. He paused at a window, its dark panes misted over. He remembered his father here, surrounded by car parts, wiping the sweat from his forehead with an old rag. As Connor looked down, he saw rubbish strewn across the path. Soggy newspapers were piled up by the front door. No signs of life. Ian’s usual jocular manner had deserted him as he stepped up next to Connor.