by Jaye Ford
Aiden stopped across the driveway and pulled the handbrake. It was almost fully dark outside now and his face was in shadow but when he turned towards her, she could see intention in the line of his mouth. He had something to say and she hoped listening wouldn’t require too much concentration.
‘I like you, Jax. I liked you fifteen years ago at uni.’
Oh, Christ, she didn’t want to hear any more. Not now, when fatigue might put the wrong response into her head. When she wasn’t sure what the right response was, the one she’d want on a normal day, without the dusky intimacy of the car between them; when she had a chance to think beyond his impressive arrival tonight. She began to raise a hand, but he continued before she had a chance to stop him.
‘I know you’ve had a difficult time in the last year,’ he said, ‘and I know it’s not the first difficult time you’ve had to deal with. You’ve got some tough-arsed survivor thing going on and I respect that. I’ve seen some of the alternatives and believe me, yours is a lot better. You need closure, I understand that. And I want to help you get it.’
‘Aiden –’
‘This is a police investigation, Jax. There are serious consequences that I won’t be able to protect you from if details are omitted. You need to start talking to me. And it needs to happen soon.’
25
Jax opened her mouth and closed it again, her brain bouncing around his words, trying to catch their meaning, wondering if she was too exhausted to connect the dots. Serious consequences? For her? And she’d been stupid enough to think he was making a pass.
Aiden watched her as though her silence was subtext. ‘I know you’ve had issues with Homicide,’ he went on, ‘but I don’t answer to Anita Lyneham. I run my own investigation and it doesn’t have to be like that here. You can trust me on that.’
Jax didn’t understand what he wanted or was offering, she just remembered his attitude outside Kate Walsh’s house. ‘After what you said to me at Kate’s, why should I believe that?’
His eyes slid back and forth between hers. Whatever he read, it made his voice almost tender. ‘I was there, Jax. I saw what happened. I wrote up your statement. You had Brendan Walsh in your head for almost two hours. I get that.’
She glanced away, an unexpected wetness on her lashes, the gentleness of his tone making her want to talk – about Brendan, the questions, the constant buzz of anxiety. Was that what he wanted? For her to get it out of her system? To provide the kind of emotional support that Anita Lyneham didn’t consider part of her job? Jax licked her lips, thought about letting it all spill out, telling him Brendan was standing behind her, whispering in her ear, breathing on her neck.
What would Aiden see then? Twenty minutes ago, he was impressed at her four-hundred. Twenty minutes ago, he called her relatively cool. It had felt good, possibly in a way she wasn’t ready to think about, but right now she wanted him to stay with ‘relatively cool’. More to the point, she wanted answers, wanted to be kept in the loop, wanted to know what the hell was going on – and explaining just exactly how she was losing her mind wouldn’t get her that. She looked back at him. ‘I’ll think about it.’
Aiden’s gaze was unwavering but there was a shift behind his eyes. ‘Okay,’ he said, voice firmer, ‘but I need to inform you that the focus of the investigation will change now. You were chased tonight and it’s my job to work out why. You need to know, Jax, that I’m good at my job. I will work it out and it’ll be better for you if you talk to me before then.’
She leaned against the door, trying to compute the change in attitude. It was advice, official advice, not emotional support. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘You have my mobile number. It’s on 24/7.’
‘That’s not an answer.’
A glow lit up the night behind her. He nodded towards the house. ‘Your aunt,’ he said, and reached for the door.
Jax snapped a hand out, curling fingers around his arm. ‘Aiden?’
‘Mummy!’ Zoe’s muffled voice on the other side of the passenger window was accompanied by a tug on the handle. ‘Mummy, I can’t get in!’
Aiden pushed open his door, turned back before he stepped out. ‘Don’t take too long, Jax.’
Both Tilda and Zoe were on the driveway. Curiosity must have drawn them out – Jax had been gone a long time and she was returning in someone else’s car – but it wasn’t what was on their faces when they saw her. Tilda let out a small gasp and Zoe’s mouth hung open. ‘What did you do, Mummy?’
Good question, Jax thought, glancing at Aiden as he came around the car. ‘Silly me, I fell down a hole and the police had to come get me.’ She took a step, failing to hide a wince as the swollen putty of her feet hit the hard driveway.
‘A hole?’ Zoe exclaimed, her eyes travelling a circuit from her mother’s clothes down to her bare feet and up to the man in the driveway. She hadn’t met Aiden after the carjacking, he’d left Jax to hug her daughter in private, but Zoe was connecting dots. ‘Are you the police?’ she asked.
Aiden nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘You don’t have a uniform.’
‘That’s because I’m a detective. Detective Hawke, like the bird. I’ve got big wings and sharp claws.’
Zoe giggled but Jax wondered if it was another veiled message for her.
Tilda drew her niece closer, as though the detective had brought whatever happened home in his talons. She glanced warily from Aiden to Jax. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘Sore feet, is all. And I need a shower.’
‘Yes. Yes, of course you do. Come inside. Both of you.’
Jax took a few painful steps, felt Aiden’s hand at her elbow and let him help her down the steep drive, not caring now how it made her look. He’d already come to a conclusion without her knowing how he got there.
‘We’re having ice-cream,’ Zoe said as she skipped into the foyer. ‘Ice-cream will make your feet better. It always makes me better.’
As she started a complicated hop-jump combination up the stairs, Tilda moved ahead to turn on the lights over the downward staircase. ‘Can I make you a drink, Detective?’
‘No thanks. I can’t stay.’ He stopped Jax at the threshold, lowered his head to hers, his words barely more than a whisper. ‘Whatever it is, it’s not safe to keep it to yourself now.’
She wasn’t sure if the closeness was to keep his voice from Zoe and Tilda or to make sure his words hit home, but when he moved away she was left with the warmth of his breath on her cheek and a tight, anxious twist in her gut. He was out in the driveway when she turned, looking back at her as he strode up the incline, thumb and pinkie to his head like a phone. ‘Anytime, Jax.’
She resisted the urge to watch him all the way to the car. What for? To see if he took one last glance before he left. She wasn’t sure she wanted him to or that she’d have any idea what it meant. She’d clearly missed or misunderstood his other cues and somehow her ‘relatively cool’ had become deceptive and possibly unlawful. Thirty-five, dirty, beaten down and just plain stupid.
As she closed the door, she saw Tilda watching from across the foyer, a crease of concern on her face. ‘What happened, Jax?’
‘Mummy, are you coming?’ Zoe called from above.
‘I’ll sit with her. You need to get cleaned up,’ Tilda said quietly, taking Jax by the arm and guiding her to the staircase. ‘A shower downstairs or the bath upstairs?’
Jax flicked her eyes to the darkness at the bottom of the steps and knew she wasn’t ready to be alone yet. ‘Upstairs.’ She raised her voice. ‘Coming, baby.’
Redirecting her to the first step, Tilda said, ‘I’ll get the bath running.’
So Jax could soak in there all on her own. ‘No, it’s okay. I think I’ll sit with you guys for a while.’
‘But you’re covered in …’ Her aunt frowned at her face, her clothes.
‘Dirt. Probably some cement dust.’
Reaching up to Jax’s hair, Tilda pulled off something sticky.
�
��Spider web. Yuck. I’m sorry, I’ll try not to spread it around. I just need to …’ Be still, be safe, be home. ‘Sit for a while.’
One step from the top, Tilda asked again: ‘Jax, what happened?’
Jax could see Zoe from there, at the table and poking at her ice-cream – and felt the heat of tears behind her eyelids. ‘I can’t, Tilda. Not yet. I’ll tell you later, okay?’ Swallowing hard, placing her sore feet carefully, she forced a smile for Zoe. ‘Ice-cream and chocolate soup, yum. Maybe I will have some.’
Tilda fussed over her in silence, bringing her a wet cloth to clean her face and hands, then a bowl of vanilla ice-cream with chocolate topping, then a large Scotch on ice. Actually, Tilda brought two of those to the table and started on the second one herself as Jax spun a brief tale about falling into a hole at the beach to satisfy Zoe’s questions – at least someone was getting answers tonight. Then Jax hobbled down the stairs to put her daughter to bed, breathing in the bubble-bath smell of Zoe’s hair as she kissed her goodnight, glad now she hadn’t established boundaries and that Tilda had stepped in to help.
Her aunt was running water into a plastic basin when Jax flicked off the light in the hallway. Tilda tipped in a dollop of disinfectant, carried the tub to the floor in front of the sofa and said, ‘Put your feet in this.’
Either she’d given up on coaxing Jax into a shower or wanted to hear the real story before she got there. As Jax pulled faces at the sting of skin meeting antiseptic, Tilda sat beside her and handed over the rest of her Scotch, waiting until she’d taken a sip before asking again, ‘How did you get like this?’
Jax thought about the running and the dirt and the dark and couldn’t bring herself to leap right into it. So she started with everything that had come before. Meeting Kate Walsh, arguing with Aiden, throwing up in the gutter, making the list. The longer she talked without getting to the point, the more the uneasiness in her aunt’s face deepened. But Tilda didn’t interrupt. Maybe she understood Jax needed to talk it out, that in the old days it’d taken time and words for her to find her way to the heart of it.
When Jax got to the part about the two men at her car, Tilda picked up her niece’s hand and held it, tightening her grip as Jax described the sprint to the building site and the scrabble under the floorboards.
At the end, Tilda didn’t attempt to sum up or tell her she was safe or offer sympathy. Just touched her hair and whispered, ‘Jax, honey.’
And Jax burst into tears, sobbing like she hadn’t for months. She felt lighter by the time it eased up, although it didn’t seem to help Tilda. She rubbed Jax’s back, inspected her feet, insisted on applying a lotion to the abrasions.
‘I don’t know what to make of Aiden,’ Jax said, as Tilda dabbed at her toes.
‘It can be like that with handsome men.’
A ha of amusement jumped from Jax’s throat. ‘I wasn’t talking about his looks.’
‘Nevertheless, sex appeal can be very confusing.’
It seemed a ridiculous subject to be discussing right then, but maybe that was why Tilda had changed directions. Besides, her aunt had spent three years studying art in Paris after her first husband died, and another five managing an artists’ retreat near Barcelona. She probably knew a lot about handsome men and sex appeal.
‘I’m not confused about sex appeal,’ Jax said. ‘I still feel married.’
‘From my experience, that’s the confusing part.’
Jax remembered the heat and hardness of Aiden’s body against hers, and her face grew hot. ‘Aiden thinks I’m hiding something.’
‘About what?’
She thought about his words as they’d sat in the car and before that, the way he’d questioned her about the chase. ‘About tonight, I think. Maybe about Brendan, too. Or Kate Walsh. I’m not sure.’
‘Are you hiding something?’
‘I’ve no reason to.’
Tilda screwed the lid back on the lotion, took up both of Jax’s hands. ‘I think you should let the police do their job. You’ve been through enough. You and Zoe. That man, Brendan … you didn’t even know him. And he’s gone, there’s nothing you can do to help him now.’
‘It’s possible the people who chased me tonight were the same ones after him.’
‘Then it’s a matter for the police.’
Jax ran a hand through the grit in her hair. ‘He wanted me to tell his wife something.’
‘Maybe she doesn’t want to know.’
And Jax didn’t know what his message was. ‘It’s just … there are so many questions.’
‘There will always be questions, Jax. As long as you live, you’ll have questions. But you have to think of yourself. You’re so tense and there’s the crying and not sleeping. I know it’s only been a couple of days but you’re still dealing with Nick and you’ve been there before. You don’t want to go down that road again, honey. You’ve got Zoe to think about this time.’
It isn’t like that, Jax wanted to tell her. It was worse – and better. She’d been scared shitless twice in two days but she felt … alive. Blood was pumping in her veins, which was better than it lying stagnant inside her as it had for the past year. As it had after her parents’ deaths. But she didn’t tell Tilda that. She wasn’t sure if euphoria was a symptom of some other problem. The kind that went hand-in-hand with imagining dead people at her shoulder. So she just nodded.
Tilda patted her hand like she was a good girl. ‘It’s not giving up, honey. It’s moving on.’
Which was why she was here, in the bottom storey of Tilda’s house, Jax reminded herself. She’d come to end an obsession, not start another one. ‘Yeah, you’re right. Moving on. For Zoe.’
Letting go, stepping back, taking a back seat, not asking questions. All the stuff she was good at.
26
The clock read three fifty-six when Jax woke. A sprint, a massive injection of fear and a large Scotch had put her to sleep, but now her heart was pounding, her mouth was dry and scary images were playing behind her eyelids. Shit. She visited the bathroom, drank a glass of water, hobbled around the apartment on sore feet – checking windows and locks, peering into the courtyard, skittish and uneasy.
There was a remedy for this, one she’d discovered in a year of restless, agitated early hours. Her pacifier, her obsession. The one that had stolen time from Zoe, worried Deanne and Russell, put concern in Tilda’s face.
Limping back to her bedroom, Jax lifted the document box onto the mattress, pulled a folder from the front, flicked through it. Shoved it back, tried another. Statements from residents who lived near the road Nick was found on and along the kerb where his car was parked. The list of items from his car and the ones police had removed from his office. The clothes he was wearing, the contents of his stomach, the length of the skid marks his body left in the gravel. And more, much more. She pulled pages from the front, the middle, the rear: random, haphazard selections in a search for a file or a record that would hold her attention. There was always one – but not this morning. And she wondered if the new house, the new bedroom, had finally informed her brain there was nothing more to learn, nothing she’d missed, no two-and-two’s she hadn’t put together. Or whether there were too many new questions chasing her down. Ones she might have a better chance of answering.
Except she’d told Tilda she wouldn’t ask.
She understood her aunt’s concern – Tilda had mopped up the pieces after Jax’s breakdown fifteen years ago. Right now, though, with Brendan Walsh at her shoulder and a bunch of scary memories churning in her gut, moving on, letting go – whatever the hell it was – felt like falling.
To Jax, surviving shocking, life-altering loss was like running on a treadmill ten metres off the ground. You were fine so long as you kept up with the mat moving under your feet, so long as you kept lifting your knees, pumping your arms and pulling in air. But if you slowed, if you lost momentum, you fell and hit the ground. Hard.
Fifteen years ago, she had.
For t
he last twelve months, she’d been trying to hold that off.
This week, even before Brendan got in her car – packing up the house, saying the final goodbye to a life she’d loved – the fall had felt close.
Tilda was right. Jax had Zoe to think about now – and her daughter was every reason to keep running.
Jax got up, found her handbag – now free of dirt – took the notebook out, sat on the bed again and flipped to the Real/Not Real ledger.
The man who’d chased her had used her name but anyone who’d watched the TV or read a newspaper in the past two days would. He’d chased her, though, with intent – and if she was right about the whistle and the noise on the rubble, he’d searched for her, too. Quietly, covertly. She wanted to write ‘people after Brendan’ in the Real column but knew Nick would have said, Not yet, Jax.
Turning to a new page, she recalled what Brendan had told her about the pursuers he feared, and wrote:
More than one
Working together
Prepared
She made more lists after that, reorganising what she had, including who might have answers to what. Then she added new details, about the things Brendan had done that left question marks in her mind: his anger at the radio, the confusion over the phone, the sobbing, the mood swings. She ran on the treadmill for an hour before firing up the big laptop on her desk.
There was another email from Russell: If Walsh ever met Nick, it wasn’t in Afghanistan. Tours dates below.
Jax ran her eyes over the two time periods Brendan had spent in Afghanistan – a total of eighteen months in the desert. Both he and Nick were there in 2009, but Brendan left for the final time five months before Nick’s brief visit.
