Detained

by Ainslie Paton

  Will was on his feet. “You dug him up!”

  “Excuse me, detectives, just a moment if you would, while I confer with my client, and tell my brother to shut up.”

  “This is why you were always broke.” Pete might as well have slogged him in the face. Will was stunned. “You told me you needed money for extra fees and living expenses. One time you told me you had a big heating bill. You were coming to Tara and playing lawyer and you dug fucking Norman up.”

  “Are you finished?”

  “No. I’m not finished.”

  “Sit down, Will. Unless you want to be arrested for real.” Pete didn’t even look at him. He sat down, more from the sheer shock of what Pete had done than from any desire to be co-operative.

  Pete was focused on the cops again. “You’ll see the evidence is in order. Not that it should be necessary in any case, but we do like to be thorough, us Parker brothers. You know, with great power comes great responsibility.”

  He exploded out of his chair again. “You did not say that.”

  “Oh, keep your hair on.”

  “Where did you put him?”

  “Sit down, Will. I put him back where he came from.”

  Will sat. “Fuck me.”

  Max gave a pack-a-day smoker’s cough. “There is also the case of concealing a crime, fraud, and theft.”

  “Yes. Though whether you could make that stick against two underage kids is a moot point.” Peter slapped another folder on the table. “Evidence of financial restitution to federal government and state authorities. And the deed showing the gift of parkland at lot thirty-three Henry Court to Tara Council. In other words, gentlemen, a sixteen and a fourteen year old boy borrowed money to live on in an unorthodox fashion, and paid it back with interest.

  “Of course, there is also the issue of the pre-emptive claim of the inheritance from Donald Vessy, my grandfather. And you might want to do something with tampering with the dead and burial on unauthorised land.” Pete put both arms out across the table, wrists together. “What can I say? It’s me you want, not Will.”

  49. Detained

  “Faced with what is right, to leave it undone shows a lack of courage.” — Confucius

  “Officer, I believe you’re holding Will Parker?”

  Darcy didn’t believe it, she knew it. And judging from the amount of media hanging around outside, so did every news gatherer in the city. The only reason they’d let her waltz through the front doors was because she claimed to have evidence on the Vessy drowning to present to police. Now she faced the duty sergeant who was a whole lot more savvy than the baby cop on guard door patrol had been.

  The sergeant looked at her over steel rim glasses. “That would be the media wanting to know. How did you get in here?”

  “I know you’re holding him.”

  “’Course you do, love. You helped put him here.” He dropped his eyes back to the computer screen in front of him.

  “What you don’t know is I’m also a member of his legal team.” An utterly hopeless bluff, but it was all she had.

  “Do you think we’re here for your entertainment? Hmm?” The sergeant looked up. “Do you think we have time for this rot? There are bad guys to catch. You can leave under your own steam, Ms Campbell, or if you’d like to make a headline out of it, I can have you politely escorted out.”

  “He’s not one of the bad guys.”

  The sergeant leant forward conspiratorially. “Let you in on a secret. We don’t think so either. We’re holding him for questioning for a few hours to check some details out and then he’s all yours, fresh for the next news broadcast.”

  “So I can see him.”

  “No, you cannot see him. And there is no point batting your eyelashes at me.”

  Darcy laughed. “I was practicing. I want to bat them at him.” But only after she’d whopped him one, and he understood if he ever did anything like that again, he’d have to worry about being around her, and any single body of still water for the rest of his life. And it wasn’t too soon to tell him that.

  “I bet all the girls do.”

  “You’re not going to let me in are you?”

  “Perceptive.”

  A voice behind her said, “And neither am I. You and Will are my best chance for an early grave, possibly under a tree somewhere, near a creek.”

  She spun around. “Peter!” She’d called Shanghai and left a message, and his mobile and got voicemail, never thinking he’d be in Sydney. “He’s a deceiving, rotten, duplicitous bastard. He tricked me into doing this.”

  “That would be my brother you’re talking about.”

  “That would be the man I love. How much trouble is he in now?”

  Peter reached over her with a hand out to the duty sergeant, his business card. “Sergeant, I’m legal counsel for Will Parker. I’ve been with detectives Zarova and Deeves. I’d like to go back in to see Will now.”

  “You can go in.” The sergeant pointed at Darcy. “You can’t.”

  “Ah, she’s my special assistant counsel,” Peter paused; Darcy looked up at him in amusement, “on public affairs.”

  “She so is not,” said the sergeant, in a close approximation of the thirteen year old he probably had at home

  “Do you want to debate this with me?” said Peter.

  The officer sighed. “I’m new on shift, I’ve got a cold coming on, and already it’s a madhouse. So I’m going to close my eyes and make you,” he looked at the business card, “Mr Parker, swear she,” he pointed at Darcy, “won’t cause any strife other than what she’s already done on the tellie. And you,” he pointed at Peter, “will take full responsibility for her.”

  “God help me, sergeant, I’ll try,” said Peter. He tucked his arm through Darcy’s, and said, “Come along, special counsel Campbell,” and she struggled not to laugh. If Peter was joking around, things couldn’t be that bad for Will on the legal front.

  He led her quickly down a nondescript corridor, past various rooms with wide windows, interview rooms, with one-way glass she guessed.

  “What’s going to happen to him?”

  “They’re going to hold him just to be annoying while they go over some forensic accounting to make sure they can’t get him, or me for that matter, on tax fraud, and then they’re going to release him with a statement to thank him for helping with an investigation on the disappearance of wanted criminal, Norman Vessy. The statement will say Will had no part in the accidental drowning of Vessy and the matter is closed.”

  She stopped walking, dragging Peter to a halt too. “Why did he do it?”

  “Watch Norman drown?”

  “No. Why did he expose himself to this madness, this reputation risk? It was a well kept secret. It need not ever have come out.”

  “You need to ask Will to tell you his reasons. I think you know it’s always haunted him. And the more successful we became, the more worried he was about the kind of start we had, and about what sudden uncontrolled exposure might do. It’s why he always dodged the press.”

  Her stomach lurched. “He was trying to control the news agenda today. To be the news, not wait for someone to turn him into it.” Someone just like her.

  “I think that’s a fair summary of how he saw it. But you need to have that conversation with him. Come on, he’s waiting and he’s not expecting you.”

  “Hold on, what about you? Norman was your father.”

  Peter’s face took on a severe look. “Norman wasn’t my father. He was a professional monster. The only thing he taught me was how to hate. Will taught me everything else I needed, including how to love.”

  Darcy gulped, tightened her grip on Peter’s arm. “This exposes you too, how are you feeling about it?”

  He sighed. “It was certainly easier when we avoided the press, and I never believed exposure like this was a serious risk. But I knew it chewed at Will, and when the whole kidnap, Feng Kee nightmare was over, all he could think about was that it was only sheer luck no one discovered
this. He thought you might.”

  Her breath constricted. “Oh, God. He thought I might use it against him.”

  Peter shook his head. “No, Darcy. He thought you might compromise yourself not to.”

  Darcy put her hand to her chest, her heart was hammering in her throat. Was Peter saying Will did this for her?

  When they’d planned the interview Will had pushed her to ask the tough questions, but she’d insisted there was enough of a story without the need to expose the truth about Norman. The whole idea of the interview was to restore Will’s reputation, stop the speculation about their personal lives, and do some good by giving hope to dyslexia sufferers. At the studio, after he’d manipulated the interview, he said he’d given her another headline. Almost the words she’d once said she lived for. He wanted her to be true to herself, and he’d made sure she could be.

  He was going to break her heart right out of her chest.

  “Where is he, Peter?”

  Peter lifted his chin, indicating the end of the corridor. She dropped his arm and ran the distance, stopping outside the last window. There was Will, his seat kicked back on its two hind legs, shiny shoes up on the table, arms folded, head down, eyes closed. He looked like he was having a power nap, not detained by police on a manslaughter investigation.

  She’d seen him look like this at Tara, but in threadbare jeans, barefoot, shirtless and with his old friend Akubra shading his face. She wasn’t sure whether he got to her more in classic pinstripes or his ragbag look.

  Peter opened the door. “Time to wake, sleeping beauty.”

  “I’m awake. I’m just resting my eyes.” That voice, laconic and lazy. Will didn’t move. Pete cleared his throat. Will’s lids slid open, then bounced quick when he saw her. He pulled his feet down and sat straight.

  “Get out, Pete.”

  “What?”

  He stood. “Out.”

  Peter old man sighed and rolled his eyes. He put his hand on the door. “Darcy, you have my full permission and legal protection to belt him.” He exited, closing the door behind him with a tight tug, and a sharp snip.

  The table and a bunch of chairs were between them. “You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?” he said.

  “Slugging you?” She was thinking there was too much furniture separating them.

  “I hope not.”

  “What then? Seriously Will, we have to...”

  He came around the table. “Stop meeting like this.”

  She was going to say ‘talk’ but the look on his face was so distracting. A supremely confident, take-no-prisoners, get what I want look. He stood close enough for her to smell his aftershave, dive into his ocean blue eyes.

  “Gorgeous, I love meeting you like this. A confined space, private but insecure, the forces of evil outside holding us to ransom, it’s our thing.”

  His eyes were all over her, sweeping her body with heat rays. “Don’t even joke about it.” She needed him to explain. She needed to remember he’d manipulated her, and was doing it again by just looking at her. “We’re not going to do anything but talk, and I might still hit you.”

  “Do you want to strike first, ask questions later?”

  “I want to...” She couldn’t go on. She wanted to forget there was one-way glass behind them and show him how much he’d scared her, hurt her, amazed her.

  “Darcy?” He took a step forward.

  She put a hand up to hold him off. If he touched her, she’d be liquid love, incapable of expressing herself. “You did all this for me: risked your reputation again, risked public humiliation, damage to your business, hurting Peter. And I don’t care how sure you were there’d be no legal ramification, there was always a risk there too.”

  Will’s breath stuttered out of him. He seemed to shrink to a more mortal size, leaving his larger than life shadow to stand in front of her not as the elusive entrepreneur, the ruthless pirate or the troubled brawling kid, but as the man she loved.

  “You didn’t need to do that for me.” Her voice waivered.

  His was a low rasp, full of emotion. “I needed to do it for me, if I was ever going to have a chance to be with you on your terms. I can’t live happily forever with someone who holds the truth as sacred if I don’t live by that too.”

  “Oh, Will.” Darcy felt heat suffuse her face. “You didn’t need to do that. I quit.”

  He registered shock, then confusion. “You quit, but...”

  “I hate that job.” She looked away from him to collect her thoughts. “I hate who it needs me to be.”

  “But there are other journalism jobs.”

  “I don’t think they’re for me. I called my old dog Gonzo because he looked like a Gonzo, not because of Hunter S Thompson. I never loved being a journalist like Brian and Andy. They inhale it. I loved it at first because they did, and it’s what I knew. Then I loved it because it defined me, but I don’t like how it’s changing, and I hate what it’s done to me.” She gulped a breath, looked back at him. “It very nearly, so nearly, lost me you.”

  “You didn’t come anywhere near losing me, Lois. And not ever again.”

  Will’s voice was heat haze and drugging summer humidity. It made the anxiety in her body begin to unknot. “You’ll need a new nickname for me.”

  “You read my mind,” he took a step forward, “but I’d like to touch you just to make sure you’re real first.”

  She glanced over her shoulder. The mirrored glass deceptively benign from this side. “I love you but I don’t trust you.” She hadn’t lost him. She was still mad at him, and she didn’t trust she wouldn’t forget herself entirely if he touched her.

  He laughed suddenly, brightly. ”I’m not going to do anything.” He scrubbed his hair. “Oh fuck, don’t look at me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’re disappointed I’m not going to strip you, bend you over this fine laminate table and make you scream.”

  “Oh.”

  He reached for her hand and she let him thread their fingers together. “It was a hell of a lot easier not to think about doing exactly that when I thought you were going to punch me.”

  “Oh.” She was so turned on, it was hard to breathe.

  His other hand came up to her hip. “Do you know what that little word and the way it comes out of your mouth does to me?” He pulled her so she rested against his body. The hand on her hip smoothed around to the small of her back, settling her hip to hip with him, pressing, fixing.

  “Oh.”

  He growled like a summer storm building. “Does looking at me like that mean you’ve forgiven me?”

  “I... I could be persuaded.” She was so thirsty for him, a whole drought inside her only he could water.

  He brought his lips to her ear, spoke soft, hot into the shell of it. “How would I do that?”

  She put her hand to his hair and turned her head to catch his mouth, “Forget about the glass.”

  He laughed from deep in his chest. “Come with me to Shanghai.” He nuzzled her neck. “Tonight.”

  Everything she needed was in this man with his arms around her. “Yes. I’m suddenly available. I have nothing to stay for.”

  “Your family?”

  “I’m a perennial disappointment.”

  She felt his teeth graze her collarbone. “Fucking idiots.” Now he was kissing her throat. “I want you to stay with me. Bo will pack up your apartment.”

  He twisted his fingers in her hair and she arched into him, dropping her head back to give him full access to her neck, pressing her hips harder to his. “I want to share my life with you, Darcy. All of it, the money, the homes, my work, the business.”

  She groaned, it was hard to think clearly, but it couldn’t be that way. “I love you, but I can’t be your mistress.”

  He broke away abruptly, leaving her reeling. “If I let you go, you’ll ruin me.” He wiped his hand over his face, turning away.

  Did he mean he could only love her one way, tied to his co
nditions and commands? How had she misinterpreted him so badly? The room was too small, closing in on her, closing her in with this budding nightmare of wrong expectations.

  Will turned back to face her. “I used to be at my fighting weight when I was alone.” He had one hand shoved in his coat pocket, the other fisted at his side, keeping them still while he stirred the air with his words. “That’s how I did best, when I was accountable to no one but myself and Pete. It was a very good life. But you screwed with that.” He stepped towards her, and it took all her energy to hold her ground.

  “You got in my head, and you made me dream about different things, not ore and steel and making money, but acceptance and laughter and love. And you. Always you, when I didn’t even understand what I was dreaming.”

  She sighed as understanding blossomed. “And if that’s not ruin enough, you’ve wrecked my desire to play maverick. I’m going to do this right and the setting is, well for us, it’s perfect.” He went down on one knee.

  “Will!”

  “You were correct about needing a new name.” He pulled a satin pouch out of his pocket and palmed it and she felt a moment of pure, clean panic.

  “Darcy, will you let me keep you always in my head, and in my heart, and in my hands?”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you think you could let me love you forever, Darcy Campbell?”

  “Oh, God.”

  “I’m not normally one for asking. Taking is more my thing, but will you please marry me? And fuck it, I don’t care if you take my comic book name or call yourself Catwoman. I’ll do pretty much anything to keep you in my life.”

  Shallow breaths, fear or excitement, it was hard to tell. Will was on his knee looking at her with the same mix of emotions. She knew he loved her, even as expert as he was at pushing her away to protect her from him, but this was more of a commitment than she’d ever thought possible. “You’re going to work too much.”