‘You wanna be chivalrous. I get that. Thing is, mate, there’s shit that’s more important than chivalry. Staying alive, for one. Fairness, for another. That girl wronged us. And I ain’t lying when I say we did absolutely nothing to her.’ There was no amusement in his voice anymore. ‘Now we’ve got your kid’s phone and I don’t have to tell you that the one on the counter there is useless, given that we’ve cut the lines. No-one’s coming to help. You got no choice but to play ball here, mate. I know you got no reason to trust us. But if you’re a smart man, you won’t test me when I say that if you don’t hand the girl over in the next half-hour, we’ll burn this place to the ground. And when you run out screaming, that’s when the real fun will begin.’
The gun in Frank’s hand seemed especially pathetic now.
‘Your move, mate.’
Frank looked over the counter. The silhouette was gone, back behind the safety of the lights. He sat back down on the floor, leaning against the inside of the counter, trying to think.
The internal door cracked open. Pale and sweating, Delilah crawled out and sat next to him. For several seconds neither of them spoke.
‘You shot at them?’ she asked.
‘They had to know I was armed,’ Frank said. ‘Otherwise nothing is stopping them from just bursting in here. The glass is thick; I knew it would hold.’
Delilah stared at him. Her face was bone white. ‘You . . . you know what you just did, right? You accepted their . . . their fucking challenge. We could have . . .’ She swallowed. ‘Fuck this. Fuck this, Frank. Charlie and I have nothing to do with whatever bullshit is going on here. We just stopped for some goddamn fuel and, and now we’re . . .’ Her breathing was fast, wild, nearly hyperventilating. ‘We’re going to die. Oh god, we’re going to fucking die.’
‘No, we’re not,’ Frank said, despite not believing it. ‘It all depends on how we play things. Did you call the cops?’
Delilah’s voice was tinged with hysteria. ‘His phone is in his fucking car.’
‘Of course it is.’ Frank rested his head against the inside of the counter.
‘How are you so calm?’
Frank didn’t reply. He didn’t know how to tell her that he was the furthest thing from calm.
Delilah looked sick. ‘Okay. Listen.’ She took Frank’s hand. Her sweaty grip was strong. ‘It’s not just the girl in danger now. We’re all in this. Pretty soon Charlie’s going to wonder where we are and come looking for me. And Allie will come with him, because I seriously doubt she wants to wait there alone. None of us asked for this. None of us want to be involved. The girl, she did something, right? Those people wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t bad news.’
‘They wouldn’t be here if they weren’t, either.’
‘I think it doesn’t much matter who they are. What matters is what they’re going to do and they were pretty clear on that. And if they get in here and find that we don’t have the girl—’
‘They’ll do whatever they can to persuade us to talk. I know.’
‘Then you know what we have to do.’ Her grip tightened.
Frank pulled his hand away. ‘We have what they want. That gives us leverage. You really want to risk losing that leverage?’
‘I don’t want to risk what they might do if we don’t hand her over,’ Delilah said.
CHAPTER TEN
Then
Maggie couldn’t dwell on what had happened. Simon had been a means to an end and while she wasn’t proud of herself, she had got to where she needed to be. The question now was what she was going to do next.
Ignoring his concerns had felt wrong, like putting on a shirt backwards. It wasn’t that she necessarily thought this place was dangerous, but it wasn’t exactly comforting either. She had pretended to accept their drinks last night, chatted and poured some out every chance she got, while Simon hung around looking broody and paranoid and essentially distracting her from what she was here for. He was still distracting her, even now he was gone.
None of it was his fault. But he was clear now. That brought on at least a mild sense of relief. She would be an angry story he told people in bars for the rest of his trip; if he was lucky, it would get him a few sympathy beers from the kind of free-spirited, careless girls he was probably better off with.
The bitter pang of something like jealousy surprised her. Those girls, giggling and flirting and smiling, girls who would see Simon as smart and sweet, girls worrying about uni and their jobs and nothing else. She hated those girls – not for thinking the way they did, but for the fact that she couldn’t be one of them. Even if she tried. And she had tried, with Simon in the pub. Whatever her objective, she had tried in that moment to let her guard down, just a little. And maybe she had even let herself believe, for a while, that she could. Maybe she had imagined the road trip continuing after they found nothing at this town, Simon none the wiser to her intent, the two of them drinking and having fun and forgetting.
Simon could do all of that now that he was away from her. But it didn’t change the fact that she had broken a promise to herself, to never again ignore someone when they said they were scared.
It had been hard, smiling and playing dumb in the face of his wide eyes and desperate attempts to keep his voice steady. It had been hard because in him she had seen Ted, small and skinny even for eleven, telling Maggie what he couldn’t tell anyone else because knowing where she had come from, she might understand.
‘He doesn’t hurt you, though,’ Maggie had said to Ted, thirteen and self-assured, thirteen and certain she knew better because she had seen worse.
Shoulders hunched, cross-legged on the floor of his room, Ted had shaken his head. ‘Not like that. But it’s . . . it’s the way he talks. The way he tells me I have to toughen up. The way he tells me if I don’t do the things he wants, the stuff he thinks is, is funny, I’ll never be . . .’ He glanced up at Maggie, ashamed to admit it. ‘I’ll never be a man.’
‘Hamish isn’t a man,’ Maggie said. ‘He’s only fifteen.’
Fifteen but looked twenty, all broad shoulders and a cocky smirk, all dialled-up charm whenever he spoke to their foster parents, trustworthiness personified. She had thought he was a harmless irritation at first, a suck-up with fake maturity that made stupid adults swoon. Or if not stupid, then adults like Ben and Debbie, attention spread thin over too many kids.
‘He knows I’m scared,’ Ted said. ‘It’s like, it’s like he uses that because nobody would believe me and . . .’
Maggie had put a hand on his shoulder. Even now, ten years later, the depth of her condescension made her sick. ‘He’s an idiot,’ she had said. ‘But he’s harmless. Ignore him and he’ll get bored.’
She had been frustrated when the scared look on Ted’s face remained. ‘You pathetic little kid,’ she had wanted to scream, ‘you want to know what pain really is? Grow a fucking backbone.’ But she hadn’t said any of that. She had said something pointless and gone back to her room and punched the wall. By the next morning she had put the whole conversation out of her head.
Now, she made herself remember it every day.
On the couch in the living room of Kev’s spare house, she stared into space and tried to concentrate. What she needed to do was sift through everything that had happened last night, examine every detail and work out if there was anything worth following up or if this town was just another dead end. It was harder than it should have been, pushing Simon away, banishing thoughts of the trip she had wanted to be a part of more than she’d expected. But just because it was hard didn’t stop it being necessary. She thought about the faces and whispers, the distinct itch of being watched every step of the way. She had felt it as soon as she stepped out of the car. The only question was whether it had been the curiosity of a town unused to newcomers, or something more.
The intensity and consistency of it led her to believe it was the latter, but that didn’t mean she knew what that meant. They had looked at her with too much interest, with suspicion
– even, she thought with a thrill of fragile hope, with recognition. She had done her best to memorise the faces of all the women she saw, but none had prompted any buried recollection or stab of forgotten connection. That didn’t mean her mother wasn’t here and, given what she had gone through to get this far, she wasn’t about to leave without being thorough, but a hopeless flat feeling made her suspect that she’d be on the road and directionless again before long.
The only way forward was to have a look around and see what she could dig up. So, after taking a moment to get her innocuous, relaxed smile right, she headed out.
She was surprised to find someone waiting for her: Rhonda, the woman who had given them drinks the night before.
‘Thought I’d see if you were up,’ she said as Maggie stepped outside. ‘Ciggie?’
Maggie accepted a smoke from the proffered packet. She tried to look like she was enjoying herself as she inhaled. Rhonda was eying her closely.
‘What you after?’ the older woman said.
‘What do you mean?’
Rhonda shrugged. ‘People don’t head into these parts unless they have a good enough reason. If you’re looking for something, you might as well spit it out.’
Maggie considered her options, then settled on the truth. The only reason they had to not be honest with her was if they were hiding something. ‘I’m looking for a woman,’ Maggie said. ‘She was in this area about twenty years ago. I doubt she’d still be here, but I’m trying to get a sense of where she might have gone.’
‘Someone you know?’ Rhonda took another drag.
Maggie nodded.
‘Family?’
‘My mum.’
Rhonda looked away, eyes narrowed slightly. ‘Twenty years is a long time,’ she said. ‘But I reckon I’d remember. Don’t get too many newcomers. My opinion, your mum wouldn’t have been here. Ladies from Melbourne got no reason to come here.’
‘I did,’ Maggie said.
‘Yeah, but unless your mum was also looking for someone, why would she? Was she looking for someone?’
‘Leaving someone.’
‘Running away.’ Rhonda snorted. ‘Doesn’t sound worth finding, if you ask me.’
‘Maybe not worth finding,’ Maggie dropped her half-smoked cigarette and stepped on it. ‘But worth asking why.’
‘You ask a question like that, you might get an answer you don’t like. Or don’t need to hear. My advice? Forget her. Girl gets to a certain age, she doesn’t need a mother anymore.’
‘I never said I needed her.’
‘Even so,’ Rhonda crushed her own cigarette. ‘Best head home, love. Don’t think there’s much for you here.’ For a moment they looked at each other and when Rhonda spoke again there was a very slight hush to her voice. ‘Best leave soon.’
She turned and walked down the street. Maggie waited until she was well away. Then, wishing she didn’t have that awful cigarette taste in her mouth, she looked towards the field where the bonfire party had taken place.
She had not only been paying attention to the women. There was an edge of defiance to the thought, as if she wanted to yell it at Simon. She had observed and she had been careful. The small groups, peeling off to mutter to each other while glancing around. The way Kayden had tailed her, all night, materialising out of the dark no matter where she was. Never saying anything. Just watching with that horrible half-smile through the constant chewing. She had played nice. There was no point in making enemies when she hadn’t found what she was looking for. But the thought of it made her sick, now.
Kayden, however, had not been the most disconcerting part of the night before. That had come later, when most of the punters had gone to bed, Simon had long since skulked back to the house and Maggie was hoping that the thinning crowd would give her more of a chance to analyse faces and answers. She had been on the far side of the fire, closer to the tree line than the town. She was standing alone, beer can in hand, as she looked over the remaining drinkers and tried to work out what to do now. Her face was set in an automatic pleasant mode and she raised the empty can to her lips without even thinking about it. A charming visitor who could down bevvies with the best of them.
She heard footsteps behind her, light on the dry grass. She took her time turning; relaxed, unfazed.
The man who approached was probably in his mid-thirties. A rifle hung from a strap on his back. He wore a headlamp over close-cut dark hair. His face was thin, his features hard. Even in the relative dark, she could see his cold blue eyes.
He came to a halt about a metre from her. Maggie gave a little wave.
The man said nothing.
‘I’m Maggie,’ she said. ‘I’m staying here tonight.’
The man didn’t reply.
Maggie raised her can. His gaze followed it. She put it to her lips.
‘Why are you pretending to drink?’ His voice was rough but level.
Maggie lowered the can.
The man’s head cocked to the side, just slightly. Expectant.
She had heard a name a couple of times: someone who wasn’t here, Steve’s uncle on his mother’s side, based on what she’d put together.
‘You’re Trent?’
‘It’s the weight,’ he said. ‘Of the can. Hard to fake well, if you’re not concentrating.’
He started to walk again. Close to Maggie, he paused. His voice, when he spoke, was low. ‘It’s a good idea to concentrate.’
She hadn’t underestimated the people here; or at least she didn’t think she had. But Trent was a reminder that as careful as she thought she was being, she had to be vigilant. Her best course of action was to be gone from here as soon as possible. That wasn’t paranoia. It was just common sense. She would search the town, as fast as she could, look for any faces she hadn’t seen the night before, then slip off into the trees.
Her stomach growled. Before anything else, she needed food.
She hadn’t been walking long when she came across a largish demountable building, its open door and cracked windows revealing an interior full of crates and a small card table at the far end. Inside, it smelt of dry dust, which made her want to cough. In the crates were piles of old cans and plastic packets. She decided not to check the use-by dates – the packaging was faded and she didn’t recognise any of the brands.
She was surprised when a man emerged from a door she hadn’t noticed behind the card table. She had seen him last night: a skinny man wearing a suit jacket, oddly, over a singlet. He was eating something out of a paper bag and stopped upon seeing Maggie. His smile was yellow. ‘Well, if it isn’t the talk of the bloody town,’ he said. ‘You after some grub, love?’
‘Something to eat, yeah.’ Maggie was sick of pretending to be friendly. She did her best anyway.
‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘Reggie can do you better than this sorry shit. Got some fresh food from the hunt the other day, in the ice chest out back. Gimme a sec.’
He ducked back through the doorway. Maggie glanced around, trying to think of an excuse to stick with the out-of-date cans. But before she could, he was back, holding out a paper-wrapped parcel.
‘Beef sandwich, love,’ he said. ‘Bread’s a day old, but there’s nothing bad growing on it. Should be tasty enough.’ He handed it to her. Maggie took it without pausing. The man didn’t look away. His grin stayed wide and unsettling.
‘How much do I owe you?’
He chortled. ‘Won’t hear of it, love. Share and share alike here, eh? It’s not like the fucking city. Excuse my French. You’ve got a pretty face and a pretty smile, and that’s payment enough.’ The man held out the paper bag. ‘Jerky?’
She took a handful. It felt stick-hard. She thanked him, then walked back into the sun. She wolfed down the sandwich – the bread was more than a day old – but once she was a fair way down the road, she dropped the jerky in the dirt.
The town wasn’t big and it didn’t take long to do a lap of the whole place. There wasn’t much more to it than what she h
ad already gathered; it seemed frozen in the sixties, or maybe even further back. Even the houses looked derelict and abandoned. It was hard to see how living here was sustainable or what the people did for money.
Slowing, Maggie approached one of the houses, intending to see what she could through the window. She felt eyes on her. She turned.
The man was tall and thin. He was bald, with a long, haggard face, his eyes sunk deep and wrinkles stark. He sat on the front step of the nearest house, polishing a long rifle equipped with a scope. It was the most high-tech thing she’d seen since getting here. Her eyes lingered on it for a moment, but the man was still watching her. It was hard to tell if there was anything in his expression: amusement, anger or worse. He just watched.
‘Going hunting?’ she asked, because she couldn’t think of what else to say.
‘Maybe.’ His expression didn’t change.
She nodded to the gun. ‘Expensive?’
He said nothing. He lifted the weapon so that the barrel was pointed at the sky. He kept staring at Maggie until she turned and walked away. She wanted to look back. She didn’t.
The slow realisation that she wasn’t going to find answers here was giving perspective to Simon’s fears. She had never liked being stared at. In the past year, especially, it usually meant that somebody had noticed something and that always meant that she wasn’t working hard enough to stay safely under the radar, to keep just out of people’s sight. It was one thing to invite eyes when she needed a lift. It was another altogether when she was looking for information that people didn’t want to share.
Simon’s departure presented a whole new problem, though; she had no lift out of here. Late afternoon found her sitting on the front stairs of Kev’s spare house, trying to work out whether it would be worth asking for a lift and whether she even wanted one from any of the weirdos here. Frustration was mounting and, finally, figuring if one night here hadn’t killed her then a second would probably be harmless, she decided to go for another walk.
The Hunted Page 9
