“Shut the fuck up, will you? I’m trying to concentrate. The car’s just a few miles down the road, then we can dump this van. And gimme one of your cigs, arsehole.”
Cait started cramping again, moving her shoulders to alleviate the pain.
“Keep still, slut,” one of the kidnappers said as a size eleven boot gave Cait a forceful nudge.
Cait absorbed the pain of the kick to her hips, not giving the perpetrator the satisfaction of knowing she was hurt. Instead, she found an inner strength and just barely grunted through her gag.
“It’s chicks like you I really hate. Fucking stuck-up bitches who think their shit don’t stink.” Another kick was directed Cait’s way, this time to her ribs.
Cait grunted again. But unlike before, this time it really troubled her.
“Back off, Frog . . .”
“Hey,” Boss-man reprimanded from the front seat. “What did I tell yous pricks. No fucking names, okay? What you got, shit for brains?”
“Sorry, Boss. Yeah, no names.”
The reprimanded one turned to avoid Boss-man’s stare and looked out the back window.
“Oh shit, we got the cops on our tail. Boss, you better take a look.”
Boss-man turned around.
“Fuck! Don’t do nothing wrong, okay,” he said to his driver. “It looks like it’s just a regular patrol car. Now, no screwing around.”
Just as they hit the intersection, the lights started to change and Boss-man’s driver put his foot down, reaching the other side before they went red, leaving the cops safely behind, stopped at the light.
“Turn left here,” said Boss-man. “Let’s get the fuck off the highway. The car’s only parked a few streets away.”
Desperately listening in on the conversation, Cait started yelling, screaming to the police, “Help me, I’ve been kidnapped,” but she was speaking only to herself.
“Shit! They’ve taken off big-time. Boss, they’re coming our way,” said Cait’s assailant as he glanced back down the road.
Boss-man’s driver did what was he was paid to do. He floored it, pulling the van off the highway and entering the side streets of Bentleigh, throwing the van around corners as if he was in a car rally.
“Jesus, that was close. We lost ‘em, Boss.”
Cait had been rolling around in the back of the van, feeling as if she was inside a giant pinball machine, hoping and praying the police would catch her kidnappers before she was killed. She was bruised and bleeding, tied up and in pain, tightly gagged with a bag over her head, scared out of her wits.
But hopefully the police were about to come to her rescue.
In her desperate state, Cait became convinced her thoughts had called her rescuers to her; dragged them along as surely as if they were attached by an unseen chain.
“You’ve inherited The Gift, Cait. Learn to use it, and it’ll guide and protect you,” her mother Jools had sagaciously told her a few weeks ago. Cait had recently experienced The Gift’s power one day when she was sitting in intensive care, holding Rishi’s hand, mentally communicating with him through the stupor of his coma: she spoke to him—communicated with him—when all the doctors had said it was impossible, as Rishi was brain dead.
Cait had never forgotten her mother’s words, and now they—The Gift—were urgently replaying inside her head, screaming at her, warning her . . .
“Brace yourself, Cait. Now! Pull your head down, relax your muscles,” shrieked a haunting voice out of nowhere, the urgent warning echoing around her head.
Cait momentarily became weightless. She was aware of flying through the air just before slamming heavily into the padding at the back of the driver’s seat, cushioning the impact.
A screaming pain shot through her right shoulder, feeling as if she had been hit with a sledgehammer.
Cait felt like a piece of jetsam bouncing around in an ocean swell. The driver had come in too hot for a tight corner, misjudging and skidding sideways on some loose gravel that was still on the road after a recent repair of a pothole. The van rammed into the curb with a resonating metallic thud, narrowly missing a light pole as it bounced up in the air before flipping over on its side and spinning out of control on the wet ground, ending up in a vacant block of land.
Ricocheting off the seat, Cait was thrown around like a cork in a bath as she felt herself bouncing off the inside of the van like a crash test dummy.
She heard a distinct crunching sound as she faceplanted into a hard metal surface before rolling over and landing on her back, jammed in a corner between the sides of the van and the roof.
Cait desperately gasped for whatever air she could suck in through the sides of the gag. Blood started pouring from her nose, severely restricting her air intake and choking her every time she inhaled.
I can’t breathe . . . I can’t breathe . . . I’m going to die . . . help me, please, she screamed. Help! But they were silent words, held back by the gag that had been stuffed into her mouth.
Survival mode took over and Cait started violently moving her head around, but the bag was caught on something.
Then it started to give! The bag was slipping off her head.
Air. I need air. She roughly tugged at the bag and felt it give, felt it tear. She could see light.
“Heh, yous guys all right? Let’s get the fuck outta here . . .”
“What about the slut?”
“Leave her. Let’s go!”
Cait heard the squeak of a jammed door being pried open. A heavy foot trod on her arm and she screamed silently in agony at the pain in her smashed shoulder. She was distantly aware of her attackers scrambling out of what she assumed was the passenger side door.
Then she heard nothing, save a squeaky noise coming from the spinning front wheel of the van.
Cait was terrified, alone, and choking on her own blood. She struggled, kicking the sides of the van, desperate to get their attention.
Anyone’s attention. But her attackers were too concerned with escaping.
Then as if her frantic pleas for help were answered, a pair of hands started ripping at the bag over her head. Pulling. Tearing.
Cait saw wild eyes glaring at her.
“Oh shit, you’re in a bad way.”
“Come on, we’ve gotta get outta here. Leave her! She deserves it,” yelled a panicking voice from outside.
But the helping hands continued to work on freeing Cait from the bag over her head.
“Oh Jesus, I’m not goin’ down for your death.”
With that he pulled out a knife. Cait’s eyes widened with abject fear. She started kicking and squirming, oblivious to her injuries and pain. Roughly grabbing a handful of Cait’s hair, he wrenched her head to the left. The blade disappeared behind her head and she felt the burning sharpness of the steel as it cut deeply into the back of her neck.
Oh, please no. Please! All Cait could think of was a snippet on the internet she had watched recently. Before it was taken down, the clip had been of an ISIS fanatic hacking away with a blade at the exposed neck of his captive as he attempted to sever his prisoner’s head from his shoulders.
She felt the knife cut deeper as it sawed away.
No, she wanted to yell and scream, I can’t die this way.
Instead he cut the duct tape.
Cait felt the tearing of skin as he ripped the tape off her face. She gasped for air, panting and coughing up blood as she swallowed gulp after huge gulp. He then cut through the cable ties of her turkey truss, freeing her arms and legs from behind her back.
The attacker looked at her with a strange desperation in his frightened eyes.
“I’m sorry, lady. Real sorry. But you shouldn’t have spoken to that journo,” he said as he turned and clambered out of the van, bolting for freedom.
Cait’s mind was taking her to the dark side.
Frightening places full of pain and discomfort, demons and ghouls, mental anguish and darkness; a totally distorted view of reality that was all jerky movements, k
nifelike edges and death.
Cait was swept along by a force she couldn’t recognize, a cold, foreboding energy that was bouncing her off the sharp walls of a black tunnel, rushing her deeper and deeper toward a place that resembled pure evil.
She was clinging to the back of a giant cobra, desperately holding on to the snake as it was wildly thrashing about, doing its best to throw her off.
The snake coiled back upon itself and glared at her through coal-black eyes, sinister and dark as a shard of onyx. The vile beast opened its mouth, ready to strike, but all Cait could see was a toothless grin glaring back at her . . .
“No, get away!” she screamed.
Cait woke in a lather of sweat and sat bolt upright. She had been having another nightmare, drifting in and out of that ethereal no-man’s-land that lies in the void halfway between consciousness and deep sleep.
“It’s okay, Caitie. You’re home, you’re in your own bed,” said G, her father, who had woken to the distressful sounds of his daughter thrashing around in her bed, screaming for help. He had rushed to her side and was sitting on the edge of her bed, gently and rhythmically stroking her hand.
“Hey, it’s me.” G didn’t want to startle his daughter as she returned to consciousness, so he gingerly wrapped his hands around his daughter and gently pulled her toward him with a protective embrace.
“Wake up, Caitie . . .”
Cait opened her eyes fully and slowly focused on the familiarity of the room around her.
“Oh Dad, it was terrible . . . I was so scared. I must have been having another nightmare. It was so real.”
Ever mindful of Cait’s injuries, G loosened his grip slightly and instead enveloped her with a gentle, reassuring fatherly hug. His precious daughter was suffering from the trauma of her kidnapping, and she needed special care. She was recovering from a fractured collarbone, a smashed nose that required a major rebuild, two black eyes, nine stitches in the back of her neck where her attacker’s blade had sliced deeply as he hacked off the duct tape, two broken ribs, plus numerous cuts, nicks, and contusions that occurred when she was thrown around the back of the rolling van.
Basically, she was a mess.
But Cait was on the mend, and physically she would be back to near normal in another three or four weeks. The problem now was that two weeks after her abduction, post-traumatic stress was kicking in. And big-time. So G and his wife Jools were doing their best to ensure the shock of it all didn’t scar their daughter for life.
And here was Cait, wrapped in her father’s arms, having just had another nightmare of that snake. The cobra. The one tattooed onto the arm hanging out the window of the white van when she was kidnapped.
Her abductor. Boss-man.
“Oh Dad, thanks for being here.” Cait melted into her father’s protective embrace as if she was a little girl again and had just fallen off her bike. G breathed in the familiar sweet and youthful scent that naturally radiated from his daughter’s body and gave her a loving, caring smile. A lone tear escaped out of the corner of his large blue eyes and rolled down his left cheek.
“I just can’t get that snake out of my head. It follows me everywhere I go. It’s awful, Dad.”
“It’s gone now, Caitie,” G said, stroking her hair as she gently pressed her head into his shoulder. “You’re safe. You’re home with your family.”
Cait instantly relaxed, feeling a wave of security and tranquility envelop her like a warm summer’s breeze.
“Cait, let’s talk about it,” said Jools, who had been standing in the doorway watching father and daughter. She wasn’t jealous. Instead she was proud, because she knew there was a special bond between the two of them. G always had a calming influence on their daughter, so she let them have their moment of togetherness before she said anything.
Jools walked over to the other side of the bed and sat down next to her daughter, lovingly looking past the injuries and into her eyes, her soul, searching for clues. Jools was a healer, a spiritual person, a naturopath, and Cait was more than her daughter. She was also her patient.
“Cait, could you tell me a bit about what you just saw in your vision?” Jools purposefully used the word “vision” rather than “nightmare” because her perception was telling her there was more to this than simply post-traumatic stress.
It was The Gift talking.
Jools was positive of that fact, but she needed Cait to see that for herself. Like a shaman of old, Jools had to help her daughter interpret the maze of conflicting thoughts and mixed emotions so that she was then able to work out for herself which bits were a result of trauma, and which were a legacy of The Gift.
G unwrapped himself from around Cait. He knew instinctively after twenty-nine years of marriage that this could be the beginning of a watershed moment for Cait. The beginning of the healing process. Jools had the power of insight and healing passed on to her by her own mother, just as she had received it from the long line of Celtic women on the maternal side of her family going back for generations, way back to the time of the Druids, and this was a journey that only mother and daughter could take. All G could do was observe from the sidelines.
So he passed the moment over to Jools.
“Mum, it’s so jumbled. It was really frightening.”
“That’s part of The Gift, Cait. Remember? We talked about it before. It’s a part of you, but you have to learn how to use it. It’s your best friend, or your worst enemy. It’s up to you to work out which.”
“Thanks, Mum. But it doesn’t make it any easier. Not this time.”
“Cait, listen to the truth in your head. You’ve got to be strong and talk yourself through this. I can help you, but you’re the only one who can recognize fact from fiction, past from future, reality from imagination.”
“What? The snake? The cobra?” Cait was starting to put the horrors of her nightmare behind her and look at it through more rational eyes.
“It’s not imagination, Mum. It’s real. And it keeps haunting me.”
“Maybe it’s The Gift trying to tell you something?” Jools was pushing, probing, guiding.
“What I can tell you is that the cobra’s in your head. It can’t hurt you anymore. You’re safe now.”
Jools placed a healing hand gently on her daughter’s outstretched leg and Cait immediately felt a soothing, warming glow enter her body, creeping up her leg and flowing out to every limb.
Cait calmed as Jools transferred her restorative powers into her daughter. She was using her almost mystical Reiki healing skills to tap into her daughter’s psyche and release Cait’s trapped and hidden innermost thoughts and emotions.
“Darling, I want you to think about what I’ve just said. Don’t be frightened of your visions. Learn to harness them. Use them.”
“Easier said than done, Mum.”
“Remember, I’m always here for you. Let’s talk about it some more tomorrow. Okay? You’ll need help and guidance to be able to extract and use all the powers that The Gift offers.”
“Sure, Mum. I’d like that . . . tomorrow.”
With that, Jools gently slipped into bed next to her daughter, sliding under the sheets and snuggling down.
“Now, let’s grab a few more hours sleep before we get up.”
G smiled in admiration and amazement as he watched Jools take charge and calm Cait. Taking this as a hint to leave, G cast a final glance at the spooning couple, Jools’s long, fiery auburn hair intertwining with Cait’s strawberry blonde locks, and he quietly snuck out and returned to his own bed. Mother and daughter needed some girl time together.
“I can’t gild the lily. So far, all we’ve got is a crime: your daughter’s abduction. No perps and no motive yet. Has to be a random assault.” Detective Inspector Chris Sorenson, the detective at St Kilda Crime Squad who was investigating Cait’s kidnapping, was telling G the cold hard facts, saying it as he saw it in the short, almost offhanded manner of someone who was too busy to explain what was going on.
E
specially to a concerned parent who had a beef, yes, but nonetheless was keeping him from other work.
“What, you’ve got absolutely nothing?” said G. He was becoming frustrated that after nearly three weeks of investigations, the police hadn’t turned up anything new. His daughter’s case seemed to be going nowhere, so he took it upon himself to find out firsthand what exactly was happening.
“Correct. Unfortunately, nothing at this stage. The van was stolen, and there were no recognizable fingerprints. Looks like Cait’s abductors have gone to ground.”
“Surely there must have been witnesses. What about the identikit sketch of the perps that Cait did with the police artist? Anything come out of that?”
“Nup. Trouble with putting these mock-up sketches in the papers is that you get every loopy in the world replying. We’re still working through some of the leads, but so far nothing new. And if by any chance you happen to speak to that Macillicuddy again, tell him to back off.”
“No one seems to have actually seen the abduction. It was such a terrible day, there weren’t many people on the streets. Certainly not walking down the lane where Cait was grabbed. We’ve questioned the ones who saw Cait’s assailants running away after the accident, but they weren’t able to shed much light onto what we already know.”
“Except we may have a lead on the getaway car,” he added, almost as an afterthought.
“Yeah, that’s good. So what do you know?”
“Sorry, can’t say any more.”
“Come on! I’m her father, for Christ’s sake. You must be able to tell me something.”
“G, as I said, I can’t say anything more at this stage. End of story.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“Look.” The detective sighed, realizing G wasn’t about to go away. “I know how upsetting this must be for not only Cait, but for you and your wife as well, but I can’t say much more about the case without Cait being here. I’m sorry, but that’s how it is these days.”
G was taken aback slightly until he remembered they now lived in a place where privacy was king, where often useless and overly imposing rules governed everything people did, and where everyone was concerned about getting their asses sued. It was easier—and safer in many instances—simply not to make a decision or voice an opinion until the supporting evidence was rock solid.
The Cait Lennox Box Set Page 31
