Pip glanced down at her dashboard as the music stopped and saw a phone call coming in from Chris.
‘Hey. Are you on your way down?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, almost there.’
‘I just heard back from my mate in the feds. He’s been over to your place and there’s no sign of anything being disturbed.’
‘Well, that’s something at least.’
‘He’s going to put someone outside your building for a couple of days, just to keep an eye on things.’
‘Chris, I really don’t think—’
‘Until we work out what’s going on, we need to assume this is a lot more serious than a simple break and enter.’
‘I just don’t get why,’ she said, his words disturbing her more than she’d expected. ‘It’s over and done with.’
‘Except for the book.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Maybe Lenny Knight isn’t too keen about you writing a book on him.’
‘I don’t know why he’d go to all the trouble of trying to stop me—he’s already convicted.’
‘I just think there’s more to this break-in than meets the eye. I feel better knowing you’re not alone at your place. We’ll talk more tonight when I get home, okay?’
‘Okay.’ Had she not been distracted by the conversation she probably would have laughed at the absurdly domesticated farewell. It sounded like they were an old married couple. Her smile slipped.
Suddenly, the whole thing felt out of control.
Pip called up her phone contacts. ‘Call Lexi,’ she instructed and listened to the dial tone before it was answered. ‘It’s me,’ she said abruptly.
‘Did they check your apartment?’ Lexi asked.
‘Yeah, it’s all fine, apparently,’ Pip said impatiently, waving off her friend’s concern.
‘What’s going on?’ Lexi asked.
‘Everything’s just moving too fast,’ Pip blurted out in a rush.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t feel like I have control over anything at the moment, Lex.’
‘The break-in was bound to shake you up a bit,’ her friend said sympathetically.
‘It’s not just that,’ Pip replied, searching for the right words that were jumbling about inside her head. ‘I’m so tired of having everything taken away from me. My independence, my job—my old life is gone, and just when I think I’ve finally begun to find some kind of happiness and a little bit of my old self, that all gets taken away from me too.’
‘Oh, babe,’ Lexi said on a sigh. ‘It doesn’t seem fair. Are you okay?’
‘I don’t think I am,’ Pip admitted, feeling hollow. ‘I’m just so tired of being scared all the time.’
‘I’m coming down there,’ Lexi said decisively.
‘No,’ Pip groaned. As much as she would love to have her best friend with her right now, there was no way she was willing to put her in the middle of whatever was going on. ‘There’s nothing you can do. I’m sick of having to depend on everyone.’
‘That’s what we’re all here for—to help when you need it.’
‘And I’m grateful for everything, but I just want to live my own life without fear controlling everything thing I do.’
‘I’m worried about you.’
Pip gave a long sigh and clenched the steering wheel tighter. The last thing she wanted to do was give Lexi more to worry about. ‘I’ll be okay. I just needed to vent a little. Honest. I’m fine. I’ve … met someone,’ she finally admitted, more because she knew she needed a distraction to stop Lexi jumping on the first flight out of Sydney, and also, if she gave Lexi something juicy to chew on, Pip would feel a little less guilty over making her friend worry about her so much.
‘I knew it! Tell me,’ she said eagerly.
‘It’s not official or anything … I’m not really sure what it is,’ she said.
‘Who is he? What does he do? Details, woman! I need details.’
‘He’s a police detective. He’s been working on the cold case here with the bones. So you see, you don’t have anything to worry about—I couldn’t be any safer right now. And please don’t tell Mum and Dad about any of this. I don’t want them stressing.’
‘Of course I won’t … as long as you stay in touch and keep me informed, okay?’
‘I will.’
‘Pip, just go with this thing, with the detective,’ Lexi said, more serious than she’d heard her sound in a long time. ‘Don’t overthink it, okay?’
Pip chewed on her bottom lip as her friend’s words sunk in. ‘I’ll try not to,’ she promised, hoping it sounded more convincing than it felt. Nothing really made any sense right now when everything was so muddled. At the moment, she was overthinking everything.
She parked outside the house she’d left only a few hours earlier and tipped her head back on the headrest wearily. After a few moments she would summon enough strength to open her door.
Inside, she listened to the silence. The hum of the fridge was the only sound, and Pip rubbed her hands along her arms, warding off an unexpected chill. She’d got used to the quiet at Rosevale, but here, it felt different. A memory of the night she was attacked flashed through her mind—there’d been that same claustrophobic silence then too. A sudden creak of a floorboard launched her heart into her throat and she was instantly alert. The adrenalin kicked in, and there was no rationalising her fears away. She ran back to the front door and out to her car, driving off before she’d even clicked the seatbelt into its lock. Her heart was still racing when she pulled up a short distance from the police station and parked the car.
She took a minute to get herself under control but then realised how not okay she really was, jumping at the slightest sound and ready to flee the first chance she got. She couldn’t go in there and tell Chris she was too scared to stay in his house alone. She could barely admit it to herself. She was a grown woman, for goodness sake, and she was shaking like a damn leaf.
She glanced up when she caught movement outside and a moment of relief managed to surface from her inner turmoil as she spotted Chris leaving the building. She was about to open her door to catch him before he left but paused when he approached a car parked further along the street.
Impatient that she had to now wait for him to finish whatever official business he had, she frowned a little as she noticed Chris’s demeanour change. His expression was tight, there was nothing remotely approachable about him and his body language seemed stiff, unyielding, as he strode around the front of the car and reefed open the passenger-side door to get in.
Curious and a little unsettled, Pip watched the interaction from a distance. It was difficult to see exactly what was transpiring inside the vehicle, but through the rear window of the other car she could see Chris sitting ramrod straight. Pip reached into her glovebox and took out the binoculars she kept there. As she adjusted the focus, the blurred vision cleared and she saw a clear side profile of Chris before moving the binoculars across to his companion. The driver had a fuller face, and she could make out the white collar of his shirt under the suit jacket he wore but she couldn’t see anything else.
Reaching into the back of her car, she dragged the camera bag across to the front and dumped it on the passenger seat, quickly unzipping the bag and bringing out the camera inside. She replaced the binoculars with the camera and zoomed in the lens, snapping off a few pictures to look at later as Chris handed the man something; she couldn’t quite make out what it was. There was something not quite right about this meeting. Maybe he had a case that wasn’t going well and this was someone unpleasant he had to deal with, but it just seemed … off.
She watched Chris get out of the car and head back inside the station shortly afterward and pondered the strange encounter yet again as she watched the man in the dark blue car drive away.
She picked up the camera and scrolled through to take a closer look at the photos. There was nothing familiar about the driver’s face, nothing terribly distinguishing. Yet … She couldn’t shake the feeling there was something not right about that whole meeting.
She reached the photos where Chris had handed the man something and zoomed in on that part of the image. She’d only caught a brief, off-centre shot of it, but it looked like a rectangular blue object. For a moment her brow puckered as she tried to place the it. Then she went still. The colour was the same shade as her … Pip put the camera down and dug through her handbag, panic rising as alarm set in, until her fingers located the rectangular-shaped blue object she’d momentarily thought wouldn’t be there. Her hard drive. She picked up the camera once more and compared the image. It was the same colour and looked to be the right dimensions.
Red flags were now popping up before her eyes and dread fell like a rock into the pit of her stomach. Why would Chris be giving someone a hard drive? Surely if it was anything dodgy he wouldn’t have done it within cooee of the police station? Then again, who had been around to see? It wasn’t as though Coopers Creek was a massive metropolitan with hordes of people out and about. But Chris’s manner definitely wasn’t that of someone doing something for a mate. He’d looked angry—cold, even.
Erik’s strange warning earlier that morning suddenly popped into her head. She’d dismissed it before, but now … She gave a small, frustrated groan. She’d always relied on her gut instinct in a situation to tell her what was going on, but now … she had no idea what to believe. Had she lost her ability to read people the moment she let herself become distracted by lust?
It would explain this sudden, out of character … whatever it was with Chris. If she’d been thinking rationally she’d have probably never given in to this crazy urge to throw caution to the wind and allow herself to be swept up by him.
Pip tried not to put a name to the feeling that was currently hovering around her—it was a foreboding mix of uncertainty and suspicion. Something was not right. Seeing that hard drive—if that’s what she saw Chris passing to the man in the car—brought her back to the house break-in and her assumption that nothing important had been stolen. It didn’t make sense. Someone had been looking for something, and the only thing she could put it down to was that bloody encrypted file. What the hell was on it?
Pip reached for her phone and ran through her contacts list, hitting the number she stored there under the title of Aunty Wanda and waited impatiently for the voicemail to kick in.
‘This is Pip. I need to get an urgent message to Aunty Wanda.’ She rolled her eyes as she said it—usually she found it entertaining to go through the whole ridiculous ritual of trying to contact the Warlock, but today it was just irritating. ‘I need the job done ASAP. The situation has changed. It’s now urgent.’ She hesitated briefly before adding, ‘If you don’t think you can open it, let me know.’
She waited. There was never any guarantee of an immediate reply, and she knew she had pushed her luck with the last bit, but ten minutes later, her phone beeped with a message.
Of course I can open it. I’ll be in touch.
Putting the phone away, she knew that all she could do was wait and hope to God the guy really was as good as he kept telling her he was. Not that she had any other choice but to believe him—her technical skills certainly didn’t stretch as far as encrypted files.
The break-in had to be about the files. Nothing else made sense. If she could just see what was on the damn thing, she’d know what she was up against.
She drove to the next town over from Coopers Crossing. Edensville was larger than Midgiburra but not quite the size of Coopers Creek. She booked into a motel.
She knew she could stay with Chris. Sure, she’d be okay tonight, but once he left for work she’d be alone again, and she just couldn’t stop that chilling, irrational fear that crept over her at the thought of being alone. A motel, though, felt different. It had always been her safety net. She’d never told anyone—not even Lexi—that sometimes, when she felt herself beginning to spiral, she would leave her apartment and book into a motel for the night. Maybe because it was smaller and only had one door: one way in and out, so she didn’t have to worry about someone sneaking in without her knowing. It was completely illogical, but the terror she felt was real. Her life was spinning out of control once more and she couldn’t seem to stop it.
She needed to take control over something, and that something was this. She would stay where she felt safest, and right now, that happened to be a rundown little motel room.
When her phone rang later, she braced herself to answer. She’d been dreading this all afternoon.
‘Pip? I just got home. Where are you?’
‘Hi. I had a change of plans. I don’t want to put you out by crashing at your place and getting you all mixed up in this stuff.’
‘It’s not putting me out. I need to know you’re okay.’
‘I’m fine,’ she said brightly. ‘I just need to do this on my own. I’m sick of depending on other people.’
‘Pip, where are you?’ His voice held a note of urgency.
‘Chris, I just need to work on my book and get it done. I think I’ve let this thing between us distract me and I need to focus.’
‘Pip, for Christ’s sake—I told you, until we figure out what’s going on, you need to be with someone. This is serious.’
‘Then figure it out, Chris,’ she said bluntly. ‘Find out what’s going on so I can get back to living my life without needing a gaoler.’
‘I’m not trying to be a gaoler,’ he snapped.
‘I’m not actually sure what you’re trying to be.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he asked after a moment of silence.
‘Things were moving too fast with us and right now we both need a clear head to deal with whatever’s going on here.’ The truth was, she wasn’t sure what she had seen today, and she needed to get herself under control and in a place where she could think logically about everything—especially Chris.
Again the line went quiet. ‘If that’s what you want. I just wish I knew why the sudden turnaround,’ he said quietly. He sounded hurt. ‘This morning everything seemed okay with us. Has something happened that I don’t know about?’
‘No. I just need some space. I’ll call you tomorrow.’
She ended the call before she gave in and went running back to him. All she wanted was to be held tight and reassured that everything was going to be all right. But until she could figure out what it was that he wasn’t telling her, she wouldn’t be able to trust him completely—and at the moment, the difference between trusting someone or not could be the difference between life and death.
The beep of her phone woke her from a light sleep, her laptop still open where she’d left it beside her on the bed.
She picked up the phone and tried to focus her eyes on the bright screen.
Check your email. And if you ever doubt my skill again you can find yourself another tech guru.
She was wide awake now. Dragging her computer onto her lap, she opened her email account. As she clicked on the message and waited for the file to open, she suddenly had a moment of indecision. What if she was about to unlock something she couldn’t unsee? Better to know for sure, a little voice said stubbornly.
She opened the file and watched as a series of photos began to download.