Beneath the Skin

by Melissa James

  ‘Yeah, right—like the cops in Mullalabuk who promised protection? It seemed protection meant sending a car once a night. Even after I’d installed a panic button, and used it, they arrived ten minutes after he’d killed my dog and cat, and did this to me.’ She jerked down the front of her creamy sundress to reveal a scar bisecting her left breast in a jagged D.

  He took a step back, his gaze fixed on her tortured flesh. ‘Bloody hell.’

  She covered the scar, shrugging in a pitiful attempt at nonchalance. ‘Ugly, isn’t it?’

  ‘Ugly doesn’t come into it. It’s sick! What sort of warped mind brands a human being?’

  ‘The sort whose grandfather buys and sells everything. Jeremiah Spencer told Danny “a woman like me” ought to be thrilled he wants me. Danny refuses to believe I don’t feel the same, makes excuses for my every rejection or disappearance. But last time he made sure I’d never forget him—that every time I undress, my first thought will be of him. He wanted to make sure every potential lover I had would know who I belong to.’

  Adam murmured, ‘A man who loves you won’t care about that.’

  Her only answer was a withering glance.

  A touch soft as cobwebs over her hair. ‘Even if he’d branded your face, you’d still be one of the most beautiful women I’ve seen in a long time, Elly.’

  She almost snorted. After Sharon’s fragile, silver-gold loveliness, there was no way he could find her curved, earthy looks beautiful. Unexpected proximity and the memories of childhood love were confusing him into an attraction that wouldn’t last beyond a week—because before a week passed, she’d be gone, and he’d forget her again.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You don’t believe me,’ he said, voice flat now.

  Unable to say it, she just shook her head. ‘I know what I am.’

  ‘I doubt it.’ But he changed the subject. ‘Why wasn’t the attack on you in the Mullalabuk incident sheet?’

  ‘I stitched it myself, and left town once I gave a statement. I knew he’d only get thirty days, with or without this, thanks to Jeremiah Spencer’s money and the high-powered barristers on the case.’

  Though he didn’t touch her, he kept watching her. ‘You wanted a shot at a normal life before he found your trail again. And now he’s back, all you can think to do is run.’

  The insight was unnerving—and the reason for that left her more unsettled. If she’d come to Adam because Aunty Hat had asked her to help him, she’d also come also to prove she’d been wasting her life believing they’d had something special … or to prove that, if it had once been special, it was long over. That it wasn’t over—that he could still read her with effortless ease, as he had at the station, and give her space and affection when she needed it—left her floundering amid a sea of uncertainty.

  He paced the room, the leopard on the leash returned. She couldn’t believe she wanted to smile now, but just watching him threw her back fifteen years, when some Jepson would lecture Adam on his responsibilities in life while he shifted feet, his body jerking with impatience to escape the tethers they tried to put on him.

  While Sharon had done a real number on him, she hadn’t destroyed him, hadn’t managed to turn him into his father. Within half an hour of her arrival today, the real Adam, her Adam, had returned, if only in glimpses. It must be killing him, all that unwanted domestication hemming him in, trying to become an acceptable Jepson and failing, as he was now.

  All his chained savagery spilled out in pacing feet and four harsh words: ‘How did it start?’

  Though the memory was anything but funny, she started laughing. ‘And isn’t it ironic, to quote the song? I saved his life! On my way to the Moongallee Creek clinic, I found a car wreck. I worked for hours to save him, and looked after him at Moongallee Creek clinic until he was transferred to Dubbo Base Hospital. He came back after his release, hanging around every day, telling me he loved me. When I told him I didn’t feel the same, he said I was too innocent to know what love was. He kept saying I’d come to love him in time, that he knew I needed him to care for me, to protect me.

  ‘Then he began threatening any man who talked to me—even fellow doctors, patients or relatives of patients. He broke into my office, my house, followed me everywhere—and the police never turned up until he’d gone. When I filed a complaint, he was only taken in overnight. I left Moongallee Creek, contacted my grandmother’s cousin, and joined the Aboriginal and Islander Medical Commission. But every place I went, he found me within weeks. The last time, he slit Mickey and Minnie’s throats. He couldn’t bear that anything had my affection but him. Then he branded me, calling it my eternal wedding ring—he thought it was romantic— and kissed me. I whacked the phone over his head, waited for the police, and ran again.

  ‘I’ve been running from him, from place to place, for almost two years. So many times, I’ve wished I’d let him die on the road that first day.’ She closed her eyes for a moment. ‘There goes my Hippocratic Oath. If he was bleeding to death, I wouldn’t lift a finger to save him.’

  After a long pause, he asked quietly, ‘What else did he do to you?’

  Her brows lifted. ‘What, besides ruining my life, branding my body, destroying my career and dreams for the future, killing my cat and dog, and using his money to continue his warped perversions against me? Oh, and now killing innocent people? Yes, I suppose he could do worse to me … like he did to the trucker. Yeah, I could be dead. I guess I’m lucky.’

  He asked it with a fierce note. ‘Did he rape you?’

  She paced the room, feeling caged. After a few moments, she flung at him, ‘Not yet. With his Madonna complex he’s afraid to, in case I’m not the pure virgin he needs me to be to take his mother’s place. My fear of him keeps reinforcing the virginal stereotype. He wants to worship a mother-goddess—the woman he hates yet desperately needs love from. He’s turned me into a deity, and he becomes crazy when I act in any way that reinforces my humanity and shatters his dream. So he approaches me on his knees half the time, then in blind fury when I talk to another man, or remind him of his mother. That’s when he touches me.’ She wheeled to the window. ‘My body knows the feel of his hands very well, just as my neck knows the feel of his knife. His grandfather told him their women are Spencer property, like their steers. He believes that’s what women want—to be owned by a strong man.’

  ‘Ah, Elly.’ He came to her, his eyes heavy with sorrow. ‘May I hold you?’

  She looked up at him. As if a curtain had lifted in her mind, she hurtled back eighteen years in time, seeing the boy who’d known without words that her world had been shattered by her mother’s death, its focus gone, replaced by well-meaning invaders believing they could make her grief go away by giving her a new world, having new things, forcing her to meet new people, making her talk again. Only Adam had known she’d hated to be touched and stroked by outsiders, as though their clumsy words and endless intrusion would ease her loss. But it had always been different with Adam. His touch held a sense of place, of belonging, that no one else’s ever had. Only Adam then, and no one since, not even her relatives.

  Maybe he still understood.

  Almost afraid, she nodded.

  He took her in his arms, holding her without compelling her to stay. After a while she sighed, and her head fell to his shoulder. Only then did his hand wander over her hair, so very gentle.

  When he spoke, his voice was tight and grim, at odds with the reverential way he held her. ‘Whatever it takes to end this loony tune’s domination in your life, I’ll do it.’ A feather-soft kiss on her forehead. ‘You’re safe with me, Elly—now and always.’

  After coming clear across the country to hear those words, she discovered that’s what frightened her the most—that he would do whatever it took.

  She couldn’t allow it. She had to go.

  This moment might be all she’d get for a long time. She held onto him, sinking into the twined ropes of complicated affection and desire winding arou
nd them. ‘I can’t risk you. He killed a puppy and kitten without a second thought. He killed the trucker. He wouldn’t hesitate to hurt you and Zoe.’

  A shudder ran through him, but he only repeated what he’d said before. ‘You can’t blame yourself for the trucker’s death, or even your pets’.’

  ‘Who else is there?’

  ‘That’s the trap he wants you to fall into, Elly. Trust me, I’ve seen men like Spencer in my job more than once. This will only end when you show him you’re stronger than he is. All abusers are cowards. They like women to cower, to run from them, because it makes them feel powerful. They think inspiring terror is a show of strength, and hope that scaring others hides their own crazy fears from the world. Deep down, they know their women cower and run from them because their behaviour makes them unlovable, so domination becomes a warped second-best for the love they crave. They punish the woman for not loving them, which makes her cower and hate him in private still more. Then when he demands her love she has to lie, and he knows it, which makes him even angrier. As the cycle escalates, the abuser damages her more and more, lost in fury but unable to admit the original fault was his, and too afraid to admit he needs help, because he doesn’t want to end up in an institution.’

  She tilted her head, thinking it through. After a while, she slowly nodded. He knew her story very well, without her having to say a word. ‘I can’t risk you and Zoe.’

  He shook his head. ‘You won’t be risking us, Elly. Not now. Every cop in every state and territory in Australia is on the hunt for Spencer now. No matter how wily he is, or what his grandfather pays or who he brings to court, he’s going down.’

  ‘He killed Mickey and Minnie because I loved them. Don’t you get it?’ she snapped, with all the passion of pure fear. ‘If he’s seen me with you and Zoe, if he slashed my tyres, what he’ll do next—’ She shuddered.

  But again, he shook his head. ‘I’m the cop, Elly. This is my territory. I’m telling you, this isn’t his MO. He believes his clever tricks make him superior. In his mind, any idiot can slash tyres—and making your car immobile here, at my house, stops you from being alone, which is what he wants most. There’s no way it could be him, based on his own behaviour.’ When she opened her mouth to argue, he put a finger to her lips. ‘Your stuff is at the Rose and Thistle?’

  She nodded against his finger.

  ‘I’ll get someone from the station to bring it here. You’re not going anywhere. There’s no arguing on this,’ he added, keeping his finger on her open mouth. ‘I’m here, Elly. Aren’t you lucky? Permanent, personal police protection on tap, free of charge.’

  The tenderness in his smile softened the sternness of his face, but it tore at something in her heart, ripping down every barrier she’d tried to erect against him. ‘He could burn the house down. He wouldn’t think about Zoe not being my child. He’d only think that I’d found a family, and killing you both would leave me alone again, and needing him.’

  He pressed his lips to her forehead. ‘Let’s not go there. Right now, all we’ve got is slashed tyres. It’s not Spencer’s style. Like you said, it could be kids jealous of your car. I’ll order new tyres for you. Sam the mechanic will get them in if they’re not in stock. As for Zoe, I’ll send her to my mother in Bowral if the situation escalates.’

  ‘No. I won’t do that to her. She’s had too many disruptions in her life, and she needs you.’ She shook her head, almost unable to cope with the memories lashing at her: living on the move with her mother, home being a tent, or a nearby cheap motel; then, after her mother’s death, she’d been shuffled from the Jepsons to her grandmother, and when Nana got sick, to her cousin Kara’s family. Every time her life changed, she couldn’t help wondering whether she’d been too naughty, too wild, too white or black to become one of them, no matter how she tried. ‘Zoe won’t suffer for my sake. Like you said, any cop will take my story seriously. I can get help anywhere now.’

  He brushed her hand with his. ‘But it isn’t just any cop you need, is it? You came to Macks Lake. You came to me. You need me.’

  Her eyes met his. She had no defences that wouldn’t crumble under his gaze, his whispered words and one delicate touch. ‘Yes. I came to you.’ I do need you. I’d almost forgotten how much—and it terrifies me.

  ‘Whatever you want, whatever you need, I’m here.’ He brushed her skin once more, and she lost her breath. ‘I’ll call Rick, ask him to bring your bags from the pub. Your room’s second on the left down the hall.’

  Her lips parted, dragging in air. She turned away by sheer willpower, fighting for control, but Rick’s face came to her mind—the look of fury when she’d seen him through the glass of the conference room, the questions at the pub; the fury leashed, white hot, ready to burst. ‘Not Rick,’ she whispered. ‘He—he—’ Frantically searching for words, she could only speak truth. ‘He frightens me.’

  Adam gave her a long look, then he frowned. ‘He knows your case, and is the Aboriginal liaison officer for the area. Will you trust me on this? I know he’s intense, but he’d never hurt you. He’ll fight for you as nobody else at the station will—well, except me.’

  Despite her best will, her head drooped. ‘All right.’

  She walked down the hall.

  ‘What did he do to scare you?’ he asked just as she reached the door of her latest room.

  She couldn’t look at him, couldn’t turn. ‘He said—no, it was the way he said it. As if—as if he knew me. As if he had a right to me.’

  She heard the sigh. ‘He reminds you of Spencer.’

  Her head drooped further, chin almost against her chest. She managed to nod.

  Slow, rueful words came. ‘He is intense, Elly, and there’s a darkness in him—I’m his best friend, and I don’t know what it is—but I’ve never seen him hurt anyone, especially a woman.’

  When she didn’t answer, he asked the words she’d dreaded. ‘Will you trust me on this?’

  She nodded again, hating herself for the surrender, but she’d been fighting her loneliness for so many years, and all she felt was tired.

  ‘Thank you.’ His voice sounded from right behind her, and she jumped. ‘I’m sorry. That was stupid of me.’ He picked up her hand and caressed it, so gentle, then he released her. ‘I’ll secure your car, and call Rick to get your things. You shouldn’t be alone tonight.’

  ‘I’m always alone,’ she blurted before she could help it—then she closed her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I know you want to help … that …’

  ‘It’s all right, Elly. I get it. Stay in your room if you don’t want to see Rick. I’ll bring your things in when he’s gone, tell him you’re asleep.’ Eyes dark as a night forest, he walked away—and too late, she realised he was using to Rick to put space between them. Considering all she’d put him through today, she couldn’t blame him, but as she watched him walk away from her, the haunting repetition of the act hurt her soul. Since he’d left her, it felt as if she’d just watched through windows while others lived, loved, found their belonging place.

  Waiting behind closed windows and pulled curtains for Danny Spencer to smash her life again.

  Her gaze swung around the old house as the boards creaked. Searching out shadows, seeing in every corner a silhouette of a hand fingering a shearer’s knife, lifting to slash—not her tyres this time, but her throat. He’d bombed the prison sixteen days ago. He could be here now.

  How many people had he killed, now it had begun?

  Danny couldn’t have found me this fast. He can’t know anything about Adam. I changed cars twice, flew, hitched a ride, changed my hair, my clothes …

  Flying to Western Australia on a private charter plane hadn’t stopped him last time. Wherever he went, Jeremiah Spencer’s bottomless funds loosened people’s tongues, except those of the people she’d helped. She could depend on the silence of her people, no matter which clan or tribe they hailed from. She didn’t care if it wasn’t only from loyalty, but because they hated the repressive au
thority figures so much: government representatives, cops—or men after their women. Her years with her family and on the run had taught her not to be romantic. And she knew not all Indigenous people were ‘her’ people. Some of them would give her up for money, or because they resented her ‘privileged’ background with the Jepsons, and her scholarship.

  She sighed, gazing into the night. She would have her tyres replaced, and leave Macks Lake in its dry, dishevelled loveliness, keep Adam and Zoe safe from attack. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself if either of them were hurt.

  The branding of her body had been a warning. Adam was right about cowardice and his needing power—she recognised all of it in Danny—but the truckie’s murder meant his illness was worsening, and he was tiring of her constant flights from him. The unbalanced part of him wanted her caged: to own her, body and soul, or make sure no other man would ever own her. Kiss or kill …

  Unbidden, the memory of gentle hands and a tender kiss—the respect it implied—filled her with light and strength. For all his hidden spirit and damaged heart, Adam wouldn’t force her to stay in Macks Lake against her will. If she refused his offer, he’d back off, even believing it could kill her. Despite what he’d been through, Adam was man enough to not feel threatened by a woman’s strength, or by feeling less than in control.

  She had to fight sometime. Somewhere, somehow, this madness had to end. She’d stay with Adam—at least for now—and keep praying for a miracle.

  Rick sat in his car outside Adam’s house, watching the spare-room window. The room where he’d slept himself more than once, when he’d had a beer too many, or when Zoe had asked him for a sleepover. Now she was lying in there.

  The friendship was already straining. He knew Adam had lied when he’d said Elly was sleeping—no way would she be able to after the attack on her car.