Necessary Evil of Nathan Miller

by Demelza Carlton

  Well, if he's as good in bed as he is in the shower, it's no surprise his conquests would want more. I do…

  "Have there been many since Alanna disappeared? Or since he found me?" I asked softly.

  "It’s been a long time since he brought anyone home – more than two months – but I’d have thought he’d know better than to seduce you, or play on what he did for you – after all you’ve been through, you don’t need him to hurt you as well!" She addressed the last part of her comments out the window at Nathan, who hid behind a towel.

  You think Nathan seduced me? Hopefully, he thinks so, too.

  I covered my smile with my coffee cup, drinking deeply.

  "Alanna warned me about him, but she knew he wouldn't be able to resist me."

  Chris set her cup down in shock. "You knew her? How old are you?"

  I lifted my gaze to meet hers. "I’m the same age as you. He told me about you, so I knew..." Her shock made me shorten my sentence. He hasn't told her anything. Is he trying to protect her? "I knew who you were when you visited him in hospital. I'm sorry I wasn't awake enough to introduce myself then. The pain drugs kept me pretty out of it."

  "He drops girls if they start getting too close. Just don’t let him hurt you," she said.

  Don't get too attached, in other words. You might be my age, but you know nothing about bastards who hurt girls.

  I smiled. "Nathan? He wouldn't dare hurt me. He'd do anything to help me get well again." I took a mouthful of coffee that went down the wrong way. Coughing, I tried to find my voice again. "He said he never wanted to see me hurt." I coughed again, harder.

  Through the window, I saw Nathan start toward the house. I heard the sound of a screen door opening and slamming.

  "Are the dreams about her? Is he taking anything for them?" I asked urgently.

  "They used to be, but he got better after a while. Maybe it was the Temaze sleeping pills his doctor gave him," she replied in a hurried whisper. "Now they're about you. And he doesn't have any pills left. He won't go to the doctor for more, either. It's like he's afraid to admit how many he's taken. I don't know what to do to help him. He should stay away from you and anything to do with Alanna, but he won't listen to my advice. He won't even talk to me."

  Nor me.

  My eyes filled with tears of pity for Nathan. He was doing his utmost for me and his sister, but he needed to heal more than I did. And I was in no fit state to help him – I was my own mess. And his sleeping pills...he had none left because he’d given them all to me. To save me from pain. So self-absorbed, I hadn't noticed that he was hurting worse than me.

  Nathan's arms around me were a warm and welcome addition. I hugged him back, wishing I could take away his pain.

  "What did you say to her?" Nathan demanded.

  I looked up, but he wasn't talking to me.

  "I don't know," Chris said. She gave me a meaningful look, like she wished we could continue the conversation.

  I wanted the opposite – time to reflect on what I'd learned about Nathan and his family, before asking her any more. After all, Nathan had told her very little about me for some reason – and I didn't want to burst her bubble that she lived in a perfect world where people didn't get hurt, kidnappings resulted in happy endings and rape was something that happened to other people.

  I wished I had the same kind of bubble, but my soap had turned to scum and there was no changing it back. Time to clean up the mess and make the best of it. Of course Nathan will stand by me, no matter what, until they're all dead and I'm safe. Or will Chris be right, and he'll hurt me before he leaves me?

  I told them both that I wanted to go home.

  "Are you sure?" Nathan and Chris asked at the same time.

  I nodded.

  I'll be right. I have to be.

  Part 71

  Beach – Stars – Sand – Shots – Surf – Chris – Nathan – Numb

  I was floating. No pain – nothing holding me down, anymore. Something cold touched my face and I opened my eyes slowly. I recoiled from the dark shape hovering over me.

  "It's okay. I'm just washing your face," said a voice I barely recognised.

  I shivered in what felt like a cold wind. It couldn't be. I looked around fearfully. I looked up, and saw the contrast of pinprick stars on the darker black of the open sky. "Where are we?"

  "We're at a beach, out of there, away from them." His voice sounded different, that was why I didn't recognise it immediately. More abrupt, more certain. More authoritative. "There's something I have to do here."

  "You got me out. Thank you, Chris!" I felt a surge of joy well up, bringing tears to my eyes, barely able to believe it was possible.

  He was silent, and I looked at him to see the reason for it. I was shocked to see he held my hands in his – I couldn't feel his touch, and they didn't look like my hands – they were twisted and swollen, dark with blood to well past my wrists. As he held my hands, he said, "Can you trust me?"

  "Okay." I was surprised that he'd bothered to ask, after all that had happened.

  He suddenly turned to face the dunes, looking worried. "Wait here. I'll be back." He got up and jogged off into the dunes, leaving me alone. "...first aid kit..." were the only words I could discern as he took off.

  I tried to move, but my body wouldn't respond. There was no feeling left in my legs, and my hands were numb from the wrists down. I tried to call out, to tell him to wait, not to leave me alone like this, but even my voice wasn't strong enough. Just as I started to panic, I heard footsteps approaching me across the sand.

  I struggled to sit up, realising too late as I managed it that I was wrapped in a blanket, which slipped off my shoulders, exposing most of my top half to the freezing wind. I clumsily attempted to pull it back up again with my numb, mangled fingers, but failed miserably.

  Somehow, I collapsed on the sand again, my head spinning. So cold already, I barely felt him rip the blanket away from me and toss it aside.

  I should have fought, but it was like moving through cold water and I was so tired, so tired! "Sadistic prick," I mumbled.

  I couldn't even feel the pain any more. I heard a voice, but I didn't care enough to focus on what it meant. I closed my eyes, drifting into sleep.

  A sharp pain woke me and I cried out, opening my eyes as I struggled to sit up, convinced I'd been stabbed.

  He pushed me back down, his voice an unintelligible sound that I couldn't focus on, but I fought him now, desperate to see if I'd dreamed it.

  Then he was gone.

  A gun in my hands. I couldn't feel it, had to touch it to my face to be sure I had it.

  "End it," I murmured.

  A gasp. No.

  Tugging, snapping, took it from me. The gun was gone.

  Shots.

  "Wake up, angel."

  Nathan, saying, "It's over."

  "Chris…" I mumbled.

  "It's all right, he's dead," Nathan replied.

  Part 72

  Nathan dropped me off at home and I made vague excuses to get rid of him. I had a meeting with his boss and I didn't want him involved in it. I hadn't told him I knew his secret and I didn't want to yet. Not before I knew the whole story.

  His colleague Navid drove me. He didn't say a word to me for the whole trip. I wondered if that was protocol or personal.

  He escorted me to the reception desk, where he handed me a visitor badge. "You need to sign in here and then I'll take you to see Mr Mott." I lifted the pen to sign the visitor book. "Don't trust him."

  I looked up. "What did you say?"

  He pressed his lips together. "Sign in?" he prompted.

  I finished signing in and clipped on my badge as I followed him into the small office area. ASIO didn't have a very big presence in Perth – presumably the rest of their operations were in Canberra.

  The office belonged to Paul Mott – it said so on the door. Navid knocked cautiously on the glass and was told to come in.

  He cracked the door open and us
hered me inside, closing it behind me.

  "So you're the girl my team has been babysitting," Mott said with a wide smile, holding out his hand to shake mine.

  I inclined my head and didn't offer him my fingers. He looked like the type who'd crush them in what bastards like him called, "a firm handshake," but was more like an attempt to break the other man's fingers first. As Navid had advised, I didn't trust a man whose smile didn't reach his eyes.

  He recovered quickly. "Have a seat," he said, waving at the one in front of his desk. The client's chair, of course. He ensconced himself in his throne behind the desk. I didn't tell him I had the same sort of desk chair in my music room.

  "Now, what was it you wanted to discuss with me?" He arranged his face in another insincere smile.

  "Why are your team babysitting me?" I asked bluntly.

  "I'd have thought that was obvious," he drawled. "You've been the victim of violence and my team is doing their best to ensure it doesn't happen again."

  "I don't buy it," I responded. "ASIO doesn't care about a bunch of rapists and perverts kidnapping a girl. And most ASIO operatives don't carry weapons. Even the police wouldn't assign me a guard when someone broke into my house. Your team was there and didn't prevent the break-in, either."

  His face gradually developed two pink spots on his cheeks, reddening as I continued.

  "ASIO wouldn't hire Nathan Miller. He has too personal a stake in this. And he's trying to get information out of me, but he's so clumsy at it I find it hard to believe he's ever done this before." I wet my lips. "So. Why are your team babysitting me?"

  He hesitated. "Protecting you until Nathan gets your valuable information, as you put it."

  "Do you think he'll get it?"

  His eyes darted away before returning to me. "Do you?" he countered.

  I laughed. A politician's answer from the prick. "Perhaps," I replied. I leaned forward. "What will you do if you don't get it?"

  "We can't keep babysitting you forever. Sooner or later I'll reassign resources to where the need is greater."

  I decided to try being nice. "It might help if you told me exactly what you need. I mean, I can remember a lot of things. The people who were there the day I was kidnapped. What happened on the beach before and after the police arrived. You, telling Nathan not to let the police know things when I was in hospital." I watched him carefully and was rewarded with a shocked glance before he regained his composure. My suspicion grew – Mott was the bastard who'd sent the message to Nathan's phone.

  "Standard practice in counter-terrorism," he blustered. "I wouldn't expect a young girl like yourself to know anything about national security…"

  "No?" I interrupted. "Then why am I their target?"

  "I have no idea," he replied smoothly, as if he expected the question. From the blankness of his expression, I guessed that this was an outright lie. "You tell me. Tell me everything you remember, from the number plate of their car to the size of each dick they shoved up your arse. Tell me that and maybe we can catch them. Or I'll assign your babysitters to more important duties and leave you to be raped to death by the terrorists you know are hunting you."

  I swallowed, trying to wrap my head around his offensive, hate-filled threat. I had to – or lose my chance to find out what happened.

  "Does that include Nathan Miller? Is he operating completely under your orders?"

  He didn't meet my eyes for a moment, so I knew the words he uttered next weren't entirely true. "Yes. Everything Nathan does is in response to a direct order." He laughed and flashed his insincere smile. "Why, did you think he loved you? He's our best interrogator, because he'll sleep with the ugliest hag to earn her trust. I heard his informant was hardly a hag – a really hot dominatrix. I bet he had fun. You must have been a real disappointment after her," he sneered. "I didn't expect he'd sink low enough to seduce a child, but he rose to the occasion like no one else. Call of duty." He shrugged.

  Oh God – he slept with Laura, too. Who didn't she sleep with? Breathe. Even if this is the man who tried to get you killed, you can't kill Nathan's boss. Not yet, anyway. "What will you do if I give you my memories? Everything written down, in as much detail as even you could want?" I asked evenly.

  His smile set my teeth on edge. "Why, then you'd be doing your country a great service."

  I laughed. "The country thanks me. No, I said what will you do?"

  "I'll help you disappear into witness protection, so you'll never need ASIO babysitters again."

  I stared at him. "You mean…leave my life, my family…everything? What kind of life is that?"

  "One you get to live," he replied smoothly. "You're young enough to transfer to another university in another city without damaging your career. It's not as if you have a lot of family here – relocation won't be hard for you. And, of course, you'll change your name."

  "What about my musical career? My band?" I blurted out, horrified.

  His eyebrows rose. "I'm sure you can find some musicians in another city who'd be happy to play with you." He shrugged.

  I jumped to my feet. "Music isn't a hobby, like photography or writing stories – we're a band. We've written songs together and we perform them. We have gigs lined up here in Perth. I can't just leave that. If you want me to kiss my whole life goodbye, and make me start over in a new city, you're going to do the same for the rest of my band. Hell, I'd want a signed recording contract before I'd agree to that."

  He laughed unpleasantly. "Do you have such a contract now?"

  "No," I admitted. "But I never will if we have to start over. It took years to get enough exposure here for paid gigs. In a new city…who knows how long it'd take? No. I won't go into witness protection. I'll take my chances with my life here. Nathan won't let anything happen to me."

  "Miller will work on whatever case he's ordered to. He's not your personal bodyguard." He stared at me like a snake – not blinking at all. "I have it on good authority that some of your attackers remain free. Are you willing to take your chances with them?"

  I swallowed. I wanted a heavily armed chance with Nathan for back-up. Alone and without him…I might not stand a chance at all. "Nathan swore he wouldn't let them hurt me. I believe him."

  He laughed, taking his time before he sobered and said, "Very sweet. And you believed him? So all your injuries – the ones he failed to prevent – don't hurt at all?"

  You fucking bastard. You ordered him to stand by and do nothing while they raped me.

  Tears burned my eyes, but I didn't dare shed them in front of this prick. I tried to keep my voice steady. "If I go into witness protection, it'll only be with my band and a recording contract. I'm not asking for an advance – royalties only. I'll even pay for the recording studio for the first album."

  He shook his head. "You can't hide in witness protection and be a pop star. It doesn't work like that."

  I pressed my lips together. "Do you honestly think my band is the next One Direction? I'll write you a list of indie recoding labels we'll consider, based on their distribution and touring capability. I just want to make a living while I'm at uni. If you prefer, we can discuss ex gratia payments for people who have been significantly inconvenienced by government. I heard people who have been wrongfully imprisoned can get millions in compensation…" I watched him grow pale. Apparently young girls like myself normally didn't do their fucking homework either. "I'll change my name, move to a new city and study there. But only with my band and a contract with an independent music label."

  "Not enough," he replied. "What about your memories? If you want all that, I want a full account of everything you remember in relation to the terror suspects and your captivity. In writing."

  "Then I want our arrangement in writing, too, with details of the recording contract as part of the agreement," I countered.

  "We can discuss that at a later date, when you provide said information," he said smoothly, rising to his feet.

  "Thursday," I replied, remaining seated. It's
time to seriously look at those media offers – if ever I need a bargaining chip, it's now. I don't trust him.

  He looked surprised for a moment, but his hesitation didn't last long. Maybe I should have asked for more. "Thursday," he repeated.

  I couldn't get out of there fast enough.

  Navid waited beside the reception desk. "Sign out, turn in your visitor badge and I'll take you home," he said.

  We'd been driving for perhaps two minutes when he asked, "Did you get what you came for?"

  "Some of it," I answered. I hesitated. "Is he that rude to everyone?"

  Navid glanced at me and laughed. "He's not polite, that's for sure."

  I wet my lips. I couldn't Mott down by myself and he wouldn't physically attack me so I could kill him in self-defence. Nor would Nathan do it for me. I needed Navid's help to get Mott charged for his crimes. "He…knew things I've never told anyone. Things that happened while they held me captive. The only person who could have told him is dead. I…something's not right."

  Navid frowned as he looked out of the windscreen at the traffic. "I know he's rude, but to say he's consorting with terrorists is quite an accusation for someone as high up in ASIO as he is."

  "I know," I replied in a small voice. "That's why I'm telling you and not making a formal accusation. You told me not to trust him. I don't. He's dodgy and someone needs to find out how he knows these things…"

  "I'll keep an eye out, Miss Lockyer," he said. "But it's not your problem any more. You should focus on recovering and getting on with your own life. Catching terrorists is our job."

  Mutely, I nodded, while crossing my fingers. I'd planted the seed and I only hoped it would take root and flower. If I had my botany right, this was going to be a big, stinking Rafflesia – a corpse flower.

  Part 73

  “Hello?” I answered cautiously, holding the phone receiver to my ear.

  “Miss Lockyer? This is Detective McGuinness. I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner about the break-in at your house – I managed to pick up a cold somewhere...and just as I thought I was fine, my wife caught it, too, and she was in bed for a solid week. She couldn’t do anything – I even had to take the kids to school, cook dinner, do all the cleaning... I don’t know how nurses do it – I’ve been on chicken soup and tissues duty for a week. It’s a relief to be back at work.”