Charley nodded, then retrieved her board and quietly disappeared into the gathering crowd.
Having washed the blood off herself and her board, Charley sat down on a secluded sand dune to inspect the damage. Not to her own body, which had escaped with only a few scrapes and bruises, but to her precious surfboard. Remarkably, the board had survived the encounter with the great white. Only the nose had suffered a bad ding. That’ll cost quite a few bucks to get repaired, she thought. But money was not the problem, as long as her foster-parents allowed her access to the trust-fund account.
For the time being Charley sealed the damage with some epoxy resin from her board bag. As she squeezed the tube’s contents over the ding, she noticed her hands were trembling and realized her fixation on the board must be the result of deep shock. She had no idea what had possessed her to tackle a great white head on. It had been insane!
Yet, despite the terrifying encounter, she also felt strangely elated. For the first time in her life she’d confronted death … and won.
How Charley wished she’d possessed some of that courage during Kerry’s abduction. There wasn’t a day that she didn’t think of her friend. Despite the state-wide search by police and all the publicity, Kerry had never been found. Nor had her abductor.
For the past four years Charley had played the nightmare scene over and over in her head. How the situation could have been different if only she’d acted on her instinct sooner. If only she’d offered to look at the map. If only she’d reached out and grabbed her friend. If only she’d screamed for help. If only she’d taken the vehicle’s licence plate. If only …
Tears welling in her sky-blue eyes, Charley forced herself to take several deep breaths. She swallowed the sharp pain of her grief that never seemed to dull with time. Gradually the trembling subsided and she regained control.
While she waited for the resin to dry, Charley sat in the dunes, knees hugged to her chest, and stared out at the limitless expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Gulls flew overhead in a cloudless blue sky. Bright sunshine glinted off emerald-green waters. And glassy waves, now abandoned and free of surfers, peeled along the coast in perfect white lines. The sight was breathtaking.
There was no indication that a deadly predator swam just beneath the surface.
Just like it is in life, thought Charley bitterly.
‘Thinking of going back out?’ enquired a deep gravelly voice.
Charley snapped her head round to see a man cresting the dune. She raised a hand to shield her eyes from the sun. The stranger was tall and broad with close-cut silver-grey hair. Despite wearing a faded O’Neill T-shirt and board shorts, he was no surfer. A jagged white scar cut across his neck. But it was the man’s English accent that put her most on guard.
‘Maybe,’ she replied tersely.
The man raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘You have a death wish?’
Charley shrugged. ‘At least I’d get the waves to myself.’
The stranger grunted a laugh, then glanced at the beach where the injured boy was being transferred into an ambulance, its lights flashing. A TV news camera crew was now filming the scene.
‘That was a remarkable act of courage,’ he said. ‘Everyone else fled, but you surfed right into the danger zone. Did you know the boy?’
Charley shook her head.
‘So why risk your life saving a stranger?’ he pressed.
Charley was uncomfortable with this personal line of questioning. ‘I don’t know,’ she replied honestly, then narrowed her eyes. ‘I suppose I don’t like the strong taking advantage of the weak.’
The man seemed to smile at this. ‘And why walk away? You could be basking in the limelight, rather than sheltering alone in this dune.’
‘I don’t like attention,’ Charley replied.
‘That’s good,’ said the stranger, taking a step closer. ‘Nor do I.’
Charley tensed, growing ever more fearful of the man’s intentions.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
‘What’s it to you?’ Charley shot back.
‘I’m not a reporter, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘That’s not what I’m thinking.’
The man studied her intently, his flint-grey eyes finally coming to rest on her damaged board. ‘I can see you want to be left alone.’
With that, he tipped his finger to his brow by way of goodbye, then strolled off. As he disappeared over the dune, Charley relaxed her grip on the dive knife she’d kept concealed beneath the board. Only when she was convinced he had gone did she slide its blade back into its sheath.
‘Don’t lie to us!’ snapped Jenny, Charley’s foster-mother. ‘We know you weren’t at school. We’ve just spoken to your form tutor.’
Charley stared sullenly at the bare wooden floor of her foster-parents’ house. It was bound to come out. The shark attack had been all over the local news when she’d got home the previous evening and speculation was rife about the mystery surfer girl. During a TV news report, Bud had been interviewed and Charley’s heart had stopped in her mouth. The last thing she’d wanted was her foster-parents to know that she’d skipped school to surf. And although Bud had kept her identity to himself – for which Charley was grateful – her foster-parents had still guessed, resulting in yet another argument in their ‘happy’ home.
‘You could have been killed,’ stated Pete, glaring at her from beneath his bushy eyebrows.
‘But I wasn’t,’ Charley mumbled, wondering how two puritanical churchgoers could only focus on her lies and not the fact she’d saved someone’s life.
Jenny folded her arms. ‘You’re not going surfing ever again.’
Charley looked up in horror. ‘You can’t take that from me,’ she begged.
‘Yes, we can. You know how we feel about surfing.’ She said the word like it was a vulgar term. ‘It leads to immoral and sinful behaviour – as your persistent truancy and dishonesty proves.’
‘Your board’s going to the dump,’ Pete agreed with finality.
Charley’s mouth fell open. Surfing was the lifeline that kept her going. Overcome with fury, she screamed, ‘I wish you were dead and not my parents!’
Storming out of the hallway, she slammed the front door on them, then stood, fists clenched and body shuddering, on the porch. From the other side of the door, she heard Jenny cry, ‘The Lord Almighty give me strength! Why do we even bother? She’s a lost cause.’
‘We must remind ourselves Charley’s been through a lot,’ said Pete. ‘We need to make allowances.’
‘We’re always making allowances while she puts us through hell! I’ve lost count of the times she’s lied, skipped school and been in trouble with the police. What I’d give to see the back of her.’
Pete sighed. ‘If that’s how you feel, my love, then perhaps it’s time we spoke with the social worker about rehoming her …’
Charley blinked away the sting of tears. She knew she’d never made it easy for them. The fact was they simply couldn’t understand her. They weren’t her parents, never would be. But to be treated like some dog to be ‘rehomed’ cut deep and her heart hardened against her foster-parents.
Charley strode down the driveway, kicking over one of Jenny’s prized potted plants. As she reached the road, she noticed a white SUV with tinted windows parked a little way from her foster-parents’ house. Charley couldn’t be certain, but she thought she’d seen the same vehicle the night before. White SUVs were commonplace in her neighbourhood, but this particular one had cr
uised up and down as if the driver had been looking for someone. At the time Charley had thought it might be a freelance reporter scouting for the mystery surf girl. But its continued presence this morning raised alarm bells.
As she crossed the street in the direction of school, Charley casually glanced over her shoulder and made a mental note of the SUV’s licence plate – 6GDG468. She wasn’t taking any chances. After Kerry’s abduction, her parents had become understandably overprotective. For the first few months they hadn’t let her out of their sight, but eventually they realized she needed more freedom to have a normal life. So the compromise had been for Charley to take up self-defence classes and a street-awareness course. One of the key lessons had been to stay alert for unusual behaviour or repeated sightings of people and vehicles.
As she reached the next junction, Charley looked up and down the road for traffic. But she was only interested in spotting one vehicle: the white SUV.
There was no sign of it and Charley relaxed. Evidently her gut reaction had been wrong. Heading across the road and down the hill, she wondered how to persuade her foster-parents to let her out that evening for Bud’s beach party. She wanted to thank him for keeping her name out of the news. But there was no way they’d give permission. Not at her age and especially after their last argument. She could say she’d been invited to a friend’s sleepover, but she was probably grounded for life – if she wasn’t already rehomed, that was! She’d just have to sneak out when they went to bed.
Charley waited at a set of traffic lights for the pedestrian signal to turn green. Several vehicles pulled up. The fifth in line was a white SUV. Charley clocked the licence plate – 6GDG468 – and felt her pulse quicken. Could it be a coincidence? The road did lead to the highway, after all. But, to rule out any possibility of being followed, Charley took a left instead of going straight on and cut across a small park to a residential road that ran parallel to the highway.
The route was clear, but then she spotted the SUV turning into her road. Charley quickened her pace, her heart thumping. The advice from her street-awareness course on being followed was to head for a populated area and find a safe location – a friend’s house, a police station, a restaurant or a library. Charley hurried into downtown San Clemente, a wide tree-lined boulevard with mom-and-pop stores on either side. They were just opening so only a handful of early-morning shoppers could be seen.
Charley stopped outside a beauty parlour. She needed a good look at the driver to confirm her suspicions, without him knowing. So she pretended to study the beauty treatments on offer. In the reflection of the shop window, she watched as the white SUV rolled down the street and parked in one of the bays opposite. No one got out.
Charley felt eyes upon her and a shiver ran down her spine. The driver’s face was obscured by a tinted windscreen, but she could make out a bald head. Her throat tightened as an old fear gripped her heart: the man who’d taken Kerry had finally come back for her!
Seized by a panic attack, Charley half-walked, half-ran down the street. Her foster-mother worked in the community centre near the pier. If she could just reach there, she’d feel safer. Charley risked a glance back. The driver was getting out. He was stocky with a short goatee and pale skin, the lack of suntan confirming he was no local. Dark sunglasses concealed his features and Charley’s memory of the kidnapper’s face was hazy after so many years. But one thing was certain – this man was following her.
With her attention distracted, Charley ran headlong into the arms of another man.
‘Whoa, slow down!’ he said, grabbing hold of her wrist as she stumbled back from the impact.
Charley stared into the flinty eyes of the stranger she’d met on the dunes.
‘We just want to talk, Charley,’ he said, jutting his jaw at the bald man approaching from behind. Now Charley was even more spooked. He knows my name!
‘Get off me!’ she cried, spinning her wrist to break his grip and kicking him hard in the shins, just as she’d been taught in self-defence class.
The man grunted in pain and let go. Charley sprinted past him and across the street, only to collide into someone leaving a coffee shop. A fresh cappuccino and sugared doughnut went flying.
‘What the heck!’ cried Deputy Sheriff Jay Valdez as he shook hot coffee from his hands and inspected his stained uniform.
‘Thank God,’ said Charley, grabbing hold of the officer. ‘I’m being followed!’
The deputy looked beyond her and across the street, a dubious frown on his face. ‘By who exactly?’
Charley spun round. There was no sign of the SUV. The stranger and his accomplice had seemingly vanished into thin air.
‘We’ve talked about this before, Charley,’ said Deputy Valdez as he sat opposite her in one of the coffee shop’s red leather booths. ‘You can’t keep skipping school.’
‘But I was being followed,’ Charley insisted, a warm latte cupped between her hands.
‘So that’s your excuse this time?’ The deputy sighed and put down the napkin he’d been using to mop up his uniform. With a kindly smile, he continued, ‘I know you’ve had a troubled past and it can’t be easy for you, but you need to shape up, Charley. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Don’t throw it all away just because you’ve had a rough start.’
‘A rough start!’ Charley gripped her cup so tightly she thought it might crack. ‘My best friend abducted and my parents killed in a plane hijacking. How much rougher can it get? I’m sorry if I’m not exactly looking forward to the rest of my life!’
Valdez propped his elbows on the table and leant forward. ‘Listen to me, Charley. We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.’
Charley stared into the froth of her latte. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘That it’s not life’s challenges or setbacks that define who we are. It’s how we react to them that defines us,’ he explained. ‘You have a choice. You can give up and let life defeat you – or you can rise up and become stronger.’
‘That’s easy enough for you to say,’ she mumbled.
‘Yes, it is. Because I know all about rough starts.’ Valdez tugged back the sleeve of his uniform to reveal a small faded tattoo of a five-pointed crown on his inner wrist. ‘When I was your age, I was in a street gang.’
Charley glanced up in surprise.
‘Drugs, drink, violence, guns. That was my world as a boy. My brother got killed in a fight during a turf war. Then my life spiralled out of control … until a police officer arrested me. But he didn’t take me to the station; instead he took me back home and told me exactly what I’ve just said to you.’ He fixed her with his brown-flecked eyes. ‘His advice changed my life. I can only hope it changes yours too.’
Uncertain how to respond, Charley continued staring at the froth in her cup. The deputy’s words had struck a nerve deep inside her. But she had no idea where to begin, or even if she had the strength to fight back against life’s challenges.
‘You have real potential, Charley, if only you’d apply it,’ Valdez encouraged. ‘I know Pete and Jenny are at their wits’ end with you. Don’t you want to make them proud of you?’
‘What do they care? They’re not my parents.’
‘No, but they’re good people, trying to do right by you. And you’re not making their lives any easier with your truancy and storytelling.’
‘I wasn’t making it up!’
‘OK, I believe you,’ replied the deputy, holding up his hands. He tapped a finger to the notepad in his pocket.
‘I’ll look into the licence plate you’ve given me. Just promise to think about what I’ve said.’
‘Sure,’ agreed Charley, relieved that he was at last taking some action.
Deputy Valdez reclined in his seat and gazed out of the window. ‘You wouldn’t happen to know who rescued that boy from the shark attack yesterday, would you?’
‘No … I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Charley, taken off-guard by the sudden change in topic.
Valdez looked sideways at her, a knowing smile on his lips. ‘See what I mean? Potential. Don’t waste it.’
The door to the coffee shop opened. A customer walked in and seated himself in a booth by the front window. Charley almost spilt her drink. She leant across the table and hissed under her breath to Valdez. ‘That’s one of the men I was telling you about.’
The deputy glanced over at the silver-haired man by the window. Sat ramrod straight, the stranger gave the appearance of someone not to be messed with. He looked in his mid-forties, but had the physique of a much younger man. And, while he was dressed smartly in a suit, his craggy face and visible scar around the neckline told of a more violent past.
‘OK, let me speak to him,’ said Valdez, rising from his seat. ‘You stay here.’
The deputy strode across to the stranger and stood over him, his hand resting lightly upon the gun on his hip. Charley was too far away to hear their conversation, but she saw the stranger hand over his ID. Valdez inspected it, then raised an enquiring eyebrow. The stranger passed Valdez a file. The deputy flicked through it. They talked for several minutes, Charley growing more concerned with each passing second. Then Valdez handed back the documents and, to Charley’s astonishment, saluted the man.
Valdez returned to Charley’s booth, the expression on his face unreadable. ‘I think you should hear what he has to say.’
Bodyguard: Target Page 2
