14.

He found his way to the petrol station, stumbling, eyes streaming, through the streets. Frankie ran to him as soon as he rounded the corner, looking past him, her face a white blur. She grabbed his arm, speaking quickly, shaking him.

‘She’s gone,’ he said through thick lips. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

***

He washed his face in the servo’s bathroom. Hearing aids out, tears and muck oozing from his eyes. Frankie came in and out of the room, checking her messages on the shop’s payphone, then reappearing to ask more questions. She finally paused next to him, shifting restlessly while she waited for him to look at her.

He wiped his eyes on his T-shirt and blinked rapidly. ‘What?’

‘Still no message. Why haven’t they called?’

‘It’s too soon.’

The kidnappers would want her to sit with her fears first, live through each and every imagined horror. From what he’d been able to glean, she’d managed to throw the tail at the first set of lights. The guy must have doubled back almost immediately and lain in wait for him and Tilda. Or, even more likely, there’d been more than one person, the car just a decoy. Caleb had been oblivious. Just wandered past, congratulating himself for having managed to keep a child safe and relatively happy for ten minutes.

‘You going to call the cops?’ he asked Frankie.

‘No, they’ll … and …’

He wiped his eyes again. They were beginning to clear, but tears still fogged his vision. ‘Sorry, what?’

‘No cops,’ she signed. ‘People give paper.’

He tried to work it out. ‘When the kidnappers call you’ll give them the documents?’

She nodded. ‘You definitely wouldn’t recognise the guy?’

They’d been through this several times. Neither of them had got close enough for an ID, but Frankie seemed unwilling to accept it.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I just caught the movement. Maybe a hoodie or balaclava.’

She was shifting from foot to foot, her eyes locked on him: desperate to know something, but too afraid to ask.

‘He didn’t hurt her,’ Caleb said. ‘He won’t. He obviously had orders not to kill me – used pepper spray to get me down, didn’t knife me when I held on to her.’ He didn’t say the rest, that the kidnappers probably didn’t want the attention a dead body would bring. That he was pretty sure Tilda had been screaming.

Frankie went to say more, then left the bathroom without speaking.

He retrieved his aids from the top of the hand dryer and wiped them carefully with toilet paper: if the spray had ruined their circuitry, he’d be in trouble. They were new ones, top-dollar bluetooth models that were slightly better at eliminating background noise than his previous pair but even more delicate. He put them in and clapped; heard the distant pop. Tilda would have followed his actions with interest, asked about the relative benefits of bluetooth sensitivity over old-school robustness.

He should have held on to her.

He should have moved faster.

He should have accepted his fate and not involved Frankie.

When he finally left the bathroom, the servo was empty. Small and over-lit, with shelves of brightly coloured junk food. A cashier appeared from behind a closed door and stood watching. Caleb nodded to him, but the man didn't move. Understandable – he must have looked pretty dubious when he’d staggered inside. Was still looking pretty dubious according to the bathroom’s fly-specked mirror.

Frankie was at the back of the room, sitting at the lone plastic table by the self-serve coffee machine, a notepad, pens and coins laid out in neat rows. Trying to wrest some form of control from her panic.

She started speaking as soon as he sat. ‘… calls…to my…’

He squinted. ‘Sorry what?’

Her mouth tightened with annoyance at having to repeat herself. An expression he’d seen almost daily since he was five. Never before on Frankie’s face.

‘Just a bit slower,’ he said. ‘It’s still blurry.’

‘I’ve got Maggie’s calls and emails forwarded to me. What haven’t I thought of?’

‘Nothing. We just have to wait.’

She clenched her hands in her lap to stop them shaking, but her leg was still jiggling. He went to touch her, then stopped; Frankie wasn’t a tactile person, made even less so by stress.

‘Any update on Maggie?’ he asked.

‘Unchanged.’

Was it better or worse that Maggie didn’t know?

‘It’s money laundering,’ Frankie said.

‘What?’

‘This. Maggie’s laundering money. The docs are her financial records. Or part of them – she keeps everything separate, lots of checks and balances.’

Not surprising Frankie had kept that information from him. Or that she’d tried to sell the documents. Information like that would fetch a nice bit of cash from the right buyers: those who wanted it kept secret, and those who wanted to expose it. Blackmail, kickbacks, the possibility of following the trail to steal the money.

‘She keeps hardcopies?’ he asked.

‘Yeah. Went offline a while back because the feds were sniffing around. But then she had a break-in, things moved, like the house had been searched. She freaked out, got everything into a deposit box that day.’ Frankie’s expression fractured. ‘She gave me the key because she didn’t want it around Tilda.’

She stood and returned to the payphone. A quick call, no words spoken, the lack of information obvious in her rigid stance. Her answering service again: no message from the kidnappers. She stayed standing when she’d hung up, looking around the servo as though searching for inspiration. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘I need a good place for the exchange. What d’you reckon – a park? Is there one near here?’

‘It’s OK,’ he said slowly. ‘They’ll ring and we’ll do what they say. We’ll have her back soon.’

Her face was skull-like. ‘OK? I worked these cases, I saw the fucking fallout. Do you know how often kidnap victims are killed during a handover? Before a handover? Most are dead within hours.’

Oh God, what had he done?

He stood. ‘Then we go to the cops. They can do door-to-doors, check traffic cameras.’

‘We can’t. Maggie works with some seriously dodgy people, some of them in law enforcement. We go to the cops, the kidnappers’ll hear about it. Jesus, for all we know your mate Imogen is behind it.’

Imogen. He had to tell Frankie.

He took a slow breath. ‘I told Imogen I knew where you were. That I could get the key. I know it’s in one of your boots.’

She jerked back. ‘What?’

‘Imogen wouldn’t have taken Tilda,’ he said quickly. ‘She knew I was going to help her – we’re meant to be meeting at eleven.’

Her cheeks flushed. ‘And what about her mates? What about the leaking fucking sieve that’s the police force? What about every crim in Melbourne who wants a piece of Maggie’s business? All Imogen had to do was mention it to the wrong person and they would’ve come sprinting to my door. And you.’ Her mouth twisted. ‘You fucking opened it and let them in.’