THE DOOR TO the cubicle was open. His jeans were pooled around his boots, his white arse clenching as the tremors pulsed through him. The girl leaned out from her position in front of his crotch, shock in her eyes, standing and putting her hands up with a wail.
It was not him. Just some tradesman getting a blow job on his way home from work. He turned and I cringed. He, too, put his hands in the air.
“I’m sorry!” he gasped. “I’m sorry! Don’t shoot!”
The gunshot had brought more people into the park. In the distance I could see the homeless men pointing in my direction. Another siren. I grabbed my phone from the ground and took off at a sprint across the road toward the hospital. I’d lose them in the underground car park, come up on the other side of the building, disappear into the winding streets and alleyways around Surry Hills. As I ran, I remembered the phone. The line was still open. I put the phone to my ear and listened, my face burning with embarrassment.
“Harry?” Regan was saying. “Are you there?”
“You’ve fucked with me for the last time,” I promised him. Even to me, my voice sounded weak. Rattled.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t resist. I have considered following you around, watching you from afar, reporting your whereabouts back to you. It wouldn’t be hard. You’re not exactly the world’s hardest person to track.”
“Bullshit,” I sneered.
“How do you think I got your number?” he asked. “I followed you to that back-alley shithole in Kings Cross where you got the burner phone.”
I swallowed. “Did you hurt those people?” I thought of the family sitting around the boxes, watching their laptop screen. The toddler.
“I don’t have to hurt people all the time to get what I want,” he said.
“What do you want from me?” I asked. “What the fuck is all this? Why Sam? I need to understand.”
“You’ll understand one step at a time,” he said. “I’m not going to follow you. You’re going to follow me. And I think that, as you do, you’ll learn to understand both me and yourself. Things are about to get very personal, Harry.”
“I don’t want to play stupid games. Just come at me,” I snarled. “I’m ready. If you have any guts at all, you slimy little coward, you’ll tell me where you are and we’ll have at it.”
“I’ll tell you exactly where I am,” he said. “When the time is right.”