Chapter 44
‘Stay with us, Mr Evans. You have sins to atone for. If I had to choose whether to face her here or face her in the next life, I’d pick here, so if I were you I would hold on until the ambulance arrives. It shouldn’t be long. The Angel of Death will want to have words with you whatever you decide, just ask Alex Beckinsale. He knows.’
Sergeant Loxwood kept up a steady stream of calm-sounding drivel as he had been trained to do with victims of trauma. Perhaps not the most reassuring drivel but it was far more professional than what he felt like saying. He bent over to peer more closely at the wound.
‘If you remove the knife it will bleed very quickly and without a method of healing he will not remain awake for long,’ Dallmin stated dryly, peering over his shoulder. The gruesome sight of Jake pinned to the corrugated iron wall with Bane’s jagged knife didn’t seem to faze Dallmin in the least, but it certainly fazed him. Jake’s injury was one of the most hideous he had seen, and he had been present at the aftermath of over twenty years’ worth of country road accidents and farm mishaps.
Sweat poured down the wounded man’s chin but so far he remained conscious.
‘I want to watch! Move. I need to see him do it again.’ Jake’s words were slurred and his eyes so glazed it was unlikely he could see anything at all. Still, both he and Dallmin shifted to block his view of Lainie and Bane, who were sprawled across the floor, side by side.
Tim had been checking them over but now he was staring slack-mouthed at Dallmin, who looked back at him, unashamed. ‘You speak? Since when? What was with all the sign language?’
‘Holy crap, what have I said in front of you that I shouldn’t have? Why didn’t anyone tell me?’
‘You didn’t ask. You just assumed,’ the strange young man replied. ‘It confused me until Lainie explained that some people here have lost the ability to hear sounds. I do not like this place.’ Dallmin ignored Tim’s look of utter confusion and turned to Noah, who was desperately trying to tear off the tape holding Tessa’s hands together. He nudged Noah aside and sliced it open with a pocket knife.
The sergeant watched as they picked her up and moved her over to one of the pens, away from Jake’s view. Noah sat her in his lap, pressed a wad of cotton dressing against the cut on her arm and held it in place while he started feeding her sips of water from a sports bottle. Dallmin wrapped them both in a large woollen blanket and then began to massage and warm Tessa’s swollen feet.
The sergeant cleared his throat at Tim, who nodded and turned his focus back to his examination.
‘Bane’s out cold and yet I can’t see any injuries,’ Tim informed him a moment later. ‘Lainie has fresh blood on her shirt, but no wounds anywhere either. Could it be Tessa’s blood? She’s awake and in shock, I think. She’s not even blinking. Jake’s shot can’t have missed her by much, I think I’d be in shock too,’ he muttered as he peeled the last of the tape from Lainie’s wrists.
Sergeant Loxwood glanced at Noah, who was watching Tim warily. Jake hadn’t missed. Thankfully Tim had obeyed the sharp command to stay back when the gun had fired, and then Dallmin had kept enough presence of mind to direct him to the car for the first-aid kit instead of letting him rush straight into the shed. Tim had missed the miraculous sight of Bane grasping Lainie’s broken wrist with one hand and laying the other on her torn shoulder, immediately stemming the flow of blood from the wound. The Guardian had spoken softly to her then, pressing his hands against her and sealing up her ragged flesh—leaving nothing but a small tear in her bloodied shirt before collapsing.
The sergeant had no way of explaining Bane’s condition to Tim so he took a leaf out of Lainie’s book and said nothing. Immediately, his analytical mind moved to the question of evidence. He had called for backup just as they had turned off the main road, deciding it would be better for his team to arrive too late than not at all. There would have been nothing worse than an inexplicable end to Tessa’s abduction, especially if fatalities were involved—which could well still happen, he thought, looking at the amount of blood flowing down Jake’s arm and dripping onto the floor. Even so, the man was still grinning like a maniac, probably in response to Tim’s assumption that he had missed. The small knife the sergeant was holding to Jake’s throat, along with a low growl, managed to convince him to stay silent though.
There would be a thorough investigation but there was no doubt that Bane had been fully justified in what he had done. If anything he should be commended for incapacitating and disarming the criminal so effectively. It really had been a pretty amazing bit of knife work. Still, there would be other questions, such as why the bullet was lying clutched in Bane’s fist if Jake’s shot had missed. And where was the expected bullet hole in the shed wall behind Lainie? Tim was already peering into the gloom trying to spot it, apparently curious as to how close it had come to hitting her.
Noah caught the policeman’s eye and gave a subtle nod. Fascinated, he watched as Noah closed his eyes and mumbled something. The hairs on the back on his neck stood on end and he shivered. Looking back at Bane, he saw that his fist was open and limp and there was no sign of the bullet. A new hole was barely visible at the far end of the shed, more or less in line with where Lainie had been standing. Smiling grimly, he knew the angles would be perfect, and that the bullet would be on the grass outside in exactly the right condition and the right place to satisfy the most stringent of forensic scientists. It was kind of fun having superpowers to play with. When people weren’t getting abducted or hurt, anyway.
Noah must be learning, he thought, finally feeling the satisfaction of having his long-held questions resolved. Last time Noah had cleaned the knife the old-fashioned way, which was why forensics had found frightening traces of blood on the handle that didn’t match either Harry Doolan or Alex Beckinsale’s blood types, which in turn was why he had spent the last three years trying to find some proof that Lainie was even still alive.
The sergeant’s team from Nalong, as well as the two remaining officers from Melbourne, arrived a few minutes ahead of the two ambulances. It took them considerable time to work out how to unpin Jake from the wall of the shed without disturbing his shoulder more than was necessary. Eventually it was decided that the safest way was to cut the iron sheeting away from the knife with some bolt cutters, which they managed with a lot of swearing from Jake, despite all the pain relief they had dosed him on. By the time the first ambulance had taken him away, the other paramedics had finished running their various checks on Tessa and the baby. Sobs of relief were heard from more than one person when they confirmed the child still had a strong and steady heartbeat, although the ambos did warn that it was only an initial check. More tests would be done at the hospital to confirm whether everything was all right. They bundled her into an ambulance still clutching Noah’s hand in a death grip.
In the meantime, a third unit arrived from Horsham, and they loaded Bane, who was still out cold, into it while Tim pestered them with questions, trying to find out what was wrong with him. Lainie was huddled with her knees drawn into her chest, staring at nothing, so they decided to admit her to the hospital for shock. Luckily it didn’t take much arguing for the sergeant to convince them to take her with Bane rather than wait for the other ambulance to return, because he figured they were better off staying close together rather than risk Bane waking up without her again. He wasn’t sure if the ambulance would survive that.
Tim drove Dallmin to pick up Lily and head to the hospital while Sergeant Loxwood remained behind to coordinate the post-incident investigation with his colleagues. He kept Noah’s number on speed dial just in case there were further discrepancies that needed a heavenly intervention, like maybe some fabricated clue as to how they’d known to check out the old shearing shed on the Evans’ farm. Thinking through the mess he was left with, he decided it was time to lobby his superiors for more staff at the station. His quiet little town was just not equipped for this much drama.