by Chris Taylor
“You were expecting something more…clinical?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. Or something bleak and dreary.”
“I wish I could take credit for the styling,” she replied, “but I’m afraid my friend Phoebe is singularly responsible for this wonderful space. My office in the city is far less appealing.”
“But it probably suits you,” he said.
She blinked in surprise. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, you’re a city girl, aren’t you? You’re dabbling in the country air to help out a friend, but I think we both know you’re not cut out for the bush.”
His observation stung. He hardly knew her. Okay, so he’d touched the most intimate parts of her, but he didn’t know her. She could get used to living in the country, couldn’t she?
“We never know what we’re capable of until we’re put to the test,” she replied, challenging him with her eyes.
He sighed heavily as if tired of the game. “Yeah, you have that right.”
Once again, the quiet desperation in his tone and his tormented expression stopped her. She wondered if the accident he’d attended was responsible for his mood. Seating herself across from him she drew a fresh legal pad toward her and picked up her pen.
“I’m not sure what I’m doing here,” he muttered. “I’m not in the mood to talk about myself.”
“Okay,” she replied. “Then we’ll talk about something else. How’s your collarbone?”
He grimaced. “It’s all right.”
“Tell me about your family,” she asked, hoping to get him to open up. “I met them all briefly at the wedding, but I’d really like to know more. How’s your mom coping without your dad?”
Lachlan’s lips compressed, but he nodded slowly. “She’s getting there. They were married for nearly forty years. That’s a lot of time together. It’s going to take her awhile to get used to being on her own.”
“What about the rest of your family? How are they coping? I lost my dad when I was barely three years old, so I have only the vaguest of memories of him, but I know when my mom passes on, I’ll be devastated. For years, before the kidney transplant, we faced that possibility every day. I didn’t realize how tense I’d been until the stress of it was taken away.”
He nodded somberly. “She was one of the lucky ones. Many people on transplant lists die before a compatible donor’s found.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “We all feel very lucky. We won the lottery the night Mom’s donor came along.”
“I’m sorry about your brother. It must be tough, knowing he’s—”
“In jail? Yes.” She appraised him with frank curiosity. “Your understanding surprises me. Given your occupation, I’d have thought you’d feel the way Rohan did about the need for Alistair to be punished for his deeds.”
He stared back at her. “You don’t believe your brother did the wrong thing?”
“Of course he did the wrong thing, but he had the best of intentions.”
“Oh, that’s right. He stole those organs and tissues out of the goodness of his heart.”
Lachlan’s sarcasm angered her. Okay, her brother was far from saintly and she conceded that he’d benefited mightily from his arrangement to sell human tissue to an overseas corporation. In fact, the police estimated he’d received close to a million dollars for his services before they discovered his illegal activities.
But despite all that, she couldn’t help but point out to most people who would listen that many more donor organs had been made available to desperately ill people that would never have been available otherwise and the number of lives saved as a consequence couldn’t be measured.
She glanced at the man who sat across from her, tension evident in the harsh lines that were etched into his face. With an effort, she controlled the instinctive urge to return fire. This wasn’t about her. It was obvious his mood was heavy and he was there, in her office, seeking help.
She cleared her throat and forced herself to relax. “I haven’t heard anyone mention an accident. Was it nearby?”
He grimaced. “About six miles away, at the Boolaroo Bridge. It’s out on the highway heading toward Goondiwindi.”
“A car accident?”
“Yes.”
“Was anyone hurt?”
He squeezed his eyes tightly shut and then opened them on a heavy sigh. “Yes.”
Her heart gave a little start. No wonder he looked down. And then another thought occurred to her. Even in the short time she’d been there, she’d worked out that Moree was a small, close-knit community. It wasn’t farfetched to imagine the victim might have been someone he’d known. She voiced the question quietly.
His eyes turned to flint. “Yes. I knew all four of them.”
As his words sank in, she was filled with surprise. “Four? There were four people injured?”
“Not injured, Doc. Killed.”
Shock and horror flooded through her. “Four fatalities? I take it there were at least two vehicles involved.”
“No.”
Another wave of shock shuddered through her. “No?”
“No. A single motor vehicle driven by a seventeen-year-old boy. Three of his teenaged mates were passengers. It’s my guess the driver was traveling at an excessive speed. He lost control of the car and simply ran out of talent. He collided head-on with a massive gum tree. None of them were wearing seatbelts. I’m led to believe all four died instantly.”
His words hammered away in Ava’s brain, piling shock upon shock on her stunned senses. She wondered how he could sit there and recite the awful facts so calmly, so unemotionally.
And then she understood.
He was a police officer. People relied on him to remain strong and steadfast during times of unspeakable horror. He wasn’t allowed the liberty of losing control, of displaying more human emotion. That would be seen as a sign of weakness and weakness was not to be tolerated by the police service or by the community.
Her heart cried out against the injustice of it, even as she accepted it was true. Society demanded more from the men and women who kept them safe night and day. It wasn’t right or fair, but it was the way it was.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly.
His lip curled up derisively. “For what, Doc?”
She struggled to vocalize her feelings, instinctively knowing he wouldn’t accept her sympathy. “I’m sorry that you had to see that. It must have been awful.”
“Not as awful as it was for Martin. The driver was his brother.”
Ava gasped and her hand flew to cover her mouth. She stared at Lachlan, horrified, barely able to comprehend. “The-the driver…was…Martin’s brother?”
Lachlan held her gaze, his expression grim. “That’s what I said.”
Ava looked away and fidgeted with the files on her desk. She couldn’t stop thinking about what Lachlan had said. While he remained cool and collected, she was anything, but. While she didn’t know much about Martin’s family, she’d been friends with Pam since high school. She couldn’t imagine what they must be feeling. And then something else Lachlan said hit her hard, like a sudden blow to the head. She looked up at him. Her voice trembled.
“Did Martin attend the scene of the accident? Was he with you when you found them?”
“Yes, Doc. He was there. He realized before I did, it was Travis. He’s…understandably upset.”
“Upset?” she shouted. “Upset?” A flash of anger blazed through her. “He must be devastated, unable to have a coherent thought! To come across a fatal accident is bad enough, but to discover one of the victims is your brother…” Her voice caught on a horrified sob and she couldn’t complete the thought. Pushing away from her desk, she turned her back on the man who continued to stare at her with a stoic expression on his face.
“It’s not right!” she shouted. “It’s not normal to bury your anger and pain so deep and it sure as hell isn’t healthy!”
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Lachlan’s voice, rough and low with pent up emotion, halted her distraught pacing. Slowly, she looked up at him, fearful of what he might say. She wasn’t an automaton. She couldn’t turn her heart to ice.
And neither could he. The thought struck her deep inside and suddenly, she knew it was true. He wasn’t a machine. He felt horror and pain and anguish like anyone else, but over the years he’d learned how to suppress it because he didn’t have a choice.
She made her way back to her desk and lowered herself back in her seat. He stared at her, his eyes dark and stormy with emotion. His hands clenched into fists.
“Talk to me,” she whispered, her voice ragged.
“Last week, we raided an illegal meth lab,” he stated quietly. “There was an explosion. We got out, along with the men who’d been responsible for it. During the explosion, I thought I heard screaming. I tried to get back into the building, but the fire had already taken hold. We didn’t realize until the next morning the criminals had two troubled teens working for them. The charred bodies of those children were barely recognizable as people. We found them in the cookhouse.”
Ava pressed a hand tightly to her mouth, holding back her horror. Lachlan continued in the same low voice, devoid of emotion.
“The month before that, we attended a domestic abuse call out. A woman had dialed the police, screaming for help. Her ice-addict boyfriend was beating the crap out of her. By the time we got there, she was unconscious. Then there was the—”
Ava held up a hand to halt him, hiding her desperation. “Please, I… I’ve heard enough.” She drew in a shaky breath, hating her cowardice, but helpless to do anything about it. While she’d been trained to control her emotions, she couldn’t divorce herself from the pain his stories evoked. She wasn’t sure if she could listen to more of the horrors he endured on a regular basis in the course of his job.
His hard gaze was filled with cynicism. “Am I offending your tender sensibilities, Doc?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ava stared at Lachlan. With surreptitious breaths, she regained control over her turbulent emotions. In a voice that was almost calm, she responded.
“I’m not shocked, Detective, if that was your intention. Your words only sadden me because I know you speak the truth. There is much for us to be ashamed of in our society. I admire you greatly for your bravery and courage and willingness to do what most of the rest of us would be too terrified to do, all in the name of protecting your community and keeping them safe.”
She peered over her black-framed glasses to gage his reaction. His expression was blank, but his eyes held a keen light that told her he was listening.
“You’ve been told, no doubt from the first day you stepped inside the police academy, that you’re tougher, stronger, braver than the average man and that you’re no longer entitled to feel emotion the way the rest of us do. It’s hammered into you day after day that those emotions are damaging and will only get in your way.”
“You certainly have a way with words, Doc,” he drawled and tossed her a sarcastic smile. “Did they teach you all that nonsense in college? I bet you came top of the class.”
Her anger flared low in her belly and spread quickly up her neck, but she forced it down. He was needling her on purpose, trying to get a rise—a defensive tactic to deflect her attention from himself. Unperturbed, she continued.
“They feed you that rubbish in the academy because they have to. They want you to believe you’re a robot who can be programed to do a job; to switch on and off whenever it’s required. What they don’t tell you is that, despite all the bullshit and rhetoric, despite their best efforts to convince you otherwise, underneath you’re still a man.”
She leaned forward in her seat. “You have a brain and a heart that feels love and hate, pain and anger and frustration, even when you don’t want them to,” she said, hoping desperately to break through his wall of cynicism.
“Every time you force those feelings further back inside you instead of setting them free, you fill another empty place with damaging emotion. Damaging, not because those emotions are bad, but because they’re not dealt with properly. Instead, they’re left to fester and rot in some deep dark place inside you and when you can’t take the pressure anymore, they’ll spew forth in a terrible disaster of incomprehension and pain.”
Lachlan still slouched in his seat, but his eyes were focused on her, so she continued.
“You’ll be shocked when it happens, but everyone around you will know it was only a matter of time. Coming here is the first step toward mental health. The fact that you kept your appointment, despite the day you’ve had, tells me you know what I say is true. You’ve been struggling for a long time. You know you need help; that you can’t do it on your own.”
Reflexively, she reached across the narrow desk and covered one of his clenched fists. He tried to move his hand, but she only tightened her grip. In a soft voice, she continued. “Feel proud of yourself for finding the courage to take this first, important step. You’ve done what many others cannot. You’ve sought out help and I promise you, I’ll give it. You won’t ever have to feel so helpless and alone again.”
She stared at him. His eyes filled with emotion. With an impatient sound, he rubbed a hand across his face.
“Thank you, Doc,” he muttered, his voice rough. “I’m sorry for my earlier attitude. I was being a prick. You didn’t deserve it.”
She offered him a gentle smile. “You have to try harder than that to frighten me away. I’m made of sterner stuff.”
His gaze held hers for the longest time. Ava’s breaths got short. His green eyes had deepened to a beautiful emerald and her pulse kicked up a gear. Her gaze dropped to his lips and all of a sudden, she was bombarded with images of kissing him and him kissing her—the pair of them clinging to each other in a frenzy of want and need.
He leaned closer across the desk, so close his breath whispered across her skin. A moment later, his lips grazed hers and she was once again transported back in time. Hot breath, frantic heartbeat, the ecstasy of skin against skin. It all came back in a rush and she pulled away on a panicked gasp.
“Lachlan! Stop! We can’t do this! It isn’t right!”
He stared at her with eyes still dark with desire. “Don’t you want me anymore?”
She shook her head at the nonsensical notion. “Of course I want you, but this has nothing to do with that! I’m your therapist! There are rules against this kind of thing! I could lose my license; never be allowed to practice again. Besides, have you forgotten you still have a wife?”
She stood and moved further away from him and then turned back to face him with her hands planted firmly on her hips.
“I’m your therapist, Lachlan. Nothing more. At least, not while you’re still seeing me professionally. It’s nothing personal. And there’s still the thing about your wife. Separated or not, I’m unwilling to get involved with a married man.” She gave a little helpless shrug. “I hope you understand.”
His shoulders slumped on a heavy sigh. His expression reflected his apologetic tone. “I’m sorry, Doc. Of course, I do. I might not like it, but I understand and as much as I’d like to bury myself inside you again, I need your professional help even more. I’m not going to jeopardize my emotional wellbeing for the sake of a few moments of mindless pleasure.”
Ava should have taken umbrage at the fact he implied anything between them would be nothing more than a short and frantic interlude, but she was too focused on the fact that he actively wanted to get himself well.
Clearing her throat, she went back to her desk and sat down. Dragging the keyboard toward her, she opened up the electronic diary and scanned the calendar. “Okay, now that we have that out of the way, when can you see me next? My schedule is fairly full, but I’m probably a little more flexible than you.”
“I have a couple of rostered days off coming up the day after tomorrow. I could come in on either of those days, whenever it suits you.”
Ava nodded and checked her appointments. “How’s twelve o’clock on Wednesday sound?”
“It sounds good.”
“Great. I’ll put you in.”
“Great.” He looked down at the thick, pale green carpet and then back up at her again. “I… I want to thank you for seeing me, Ava. I appreciate your help. The truth is, I need it. My wife’s refused to let me see my kids until I’m in a better headspace.”
“She can’t—”
Lachlan held up his hand and halted her protest. “Legally, no. But she’s right. I’m not in a good place. My kids don’t need to see me like this. It’s not fair to them. To anyone.”
Ava slowly nodded. “Like I said, you’ve taken a very important step toward improving your mental state. I’m confident, with time, you’ll be back to feeling like your old self. What’s more, you’ll have the right skills to deal with the emotions you’ve suppressed for so long. It’s a win-win situation. For everyone.”
“Yes, although right now, that feels like a lifetime away.”
“You’re right. It won’t happen overnight,” she cautioned, “but if you really want to get well and you put in the required effort, it’s only a matter of time. I promise.”
He smiled softly and the tension and residual pain in his face eased. “I like it when you promise me things. You make me feel like I can believe in you, that you understand me and know what I need better than I do. It’s…reassuring.”
His words were filled with quiet certainty and she sent a silent prayer heavenwards that she wouldn’t let him down. He’d taken the hardest step toward finding inner peace. From now on, she was responsible for seeing that he moved in the right direction.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Okay, people. Gather close.” Once again, Detective Superintendent Nigel Becker commanded the attention of his staff.
Lachlan saved the work on his computer screen and pushed away from his desk. Martin had taken a week of compassionate leave to deal with the death of his brother, but had now returned to work. From the look of him, Lachlan wasn’t sure his partner should have come back so soon.
