25

The room swam into focus. Matt saw sparks of light glittering off shattered glass on the floor. Then the legs of the wrought-iron table he’d thrown through the window. Then Jodie. She was on her knees, leaning protectively over someone lying by the kitchen bench. Two others were partially hidden behind her but he’d have to look away from Jodie to work out which of her friends were where. And he didn’t want to do that. Not when she was looking right back at him like that.

Her face was pale, her eyes were almost black and the relief in them was like an echo of his own. When he’d smashed through the glass, he’d seen Jodie shouldercharge Travis Anderson. Like a movie at half-speed, he’d seen Travis slide sideways, the garden table knock him forward, the gun track around towards Jodie. When the blast went off, he thought Jodie was shot. Thought the next time he’d see her, she’d be dead.

Someone was patting him down, pulling his wallet from his back pocket. He wanted to move but when he tried, his head spun and his eyes rolled woozily away from her. When he looked back, she made a small side-to-side movement with her head, then quickly, discreetly lifted a hand to her face, two fingers up in a V, and pulled them down over her lids, telling him to close his eyes. As he did what she wanted, his insides went cold at what he’d seen on her hand. Blood. Enough of it to run through her fingers and stain the cuff of her shirt.

You’re in the middle of it now, Matt. Four hostages. Two cold-blooded thugs. Killers. And he was lying on the floor like a stunned fish. He was pushed roughly to his other side, his head roiling nauseatingly as he was patted down again.

‘Two phones and car keys. No gun,’ Kane said from above and behind.

Matt cracked an eye, saw the evidence clatter to the floor in front of him. The phones were smashed under the heel of a workboot and meaty fingers picked up the keys.

‘Chuck ’em in the bush,’ Travis said from above and in front.

Matt heard the chink of keys being tossed and caught above him. Heard feet walking away, a door swung open.

‘Get the gear while you’re out there,’ Travis called.

‘What about more cops?’ Kane said.

There was a pause. ‘Nah. They’d already be here if there were more. Wiseman thought he could handle us himself.’

‘He always was a prick,’ Kane said and they both laughed.

From the floor, Matt could see Travis in front of him. Part of him, anyway. Jeans from the knee down, worn boots. Close enough to reach out and grab an ankle. He heard Kane take a step on the verandah. Get the hostages out. The words roared up from deep inside him, riding a wave of fear and rage. He couldn’t tell if it was instinct or training or bitter experience. It didn’t matter. He just knew it was the only chance Jodie and her friends had to survive.

Matt saw in an instant how it would have to go down. He’d have to be fast. Have it over and done with before Kane got back. Wrap an arm around Travis’s legs, drive up and forward with his shoulder to knock him down. He heard Kane start walking, loud footfalls on the timber decking outside. How long would it take him to ‘get the gear’? Even as he braced for action, prepared to drive off the floor with his good leg, he knew that wasn’t the only question he needed an answer to. How much would the crack on his skull slow him down? And where the hell was the gun?

He was barely off the floor before Travis lifted a foot and jammed it into Matt’s ribs. Pain curled him into a ball. The boot came back, swung like a wrecking ball, slamming into his bad knee. Matt cried out as the impact of it flung him away. His leg felt like it had been ripped off. He wanted to howl in agony but he forced himself past it. He might survive the beating if he knew where the next hit was coming from. Matt looked up at Travis and knew then it wasn’t a beating he needed to worry about. It was the gun pointed at his face.

‘Move and I’ll blow your fucking head apart,’ Travis said. He was standing over Matt, knuckles white on the weapon, a sneer on his face. A door banged open. Travis flicked a look across the room. ‘Hey, bro, you’re not a cop killer yet. Look who woke up.’

Matt felt the timber boards under him shudder as something heavy thudded to the floor. He saw two pickaxes – big, solid and well used. On the other side of the room, one of the women wailed loudly. Then Kane was over him, grabbing him by the collar of his jacket, hauling his shoulders off the floor.

‘I owe you this one,’ Kane snarled. He pulled back an arm and smashed a fist into Matt’s face.

Light strobed behind Matt’s eyes. The room lurched and rolled. He heard yelling. The floor was hard and cold against his cheek. He tasted blood. The floorboards were smooth and glossy and pitching under his eyes. Someone was shouting. Hard, angry words he couldn’t make out. He thought it was Jodie. Hoped it was. Thought she’d be good at it. He was jostled and then someone was trying to haul him up. He wanted to move but his limbs wouldn’t cooperate. Then Jodie’s voice was in his ear.

‘Try to walk, Matt.’ Her words were whispered, urgent. Her breath was on his face. ‘I can’t do this on my own. Matt, please.’

Her shoulder wedged itself under his arm. She felt slight and lean. He dragged his good leg under him, pushed up, heard someone groan as his bad leg hit the floor. Maybe it was him. He couldn’t tell in the confusion of sound and movement around him. The women were crying and crying out. Both the Andersons were shouting. Swearing, bawling orders, shoving, crowding. Matt hit a wall, back pressed flat against it for a second before he was thrust forward. Jodie dragged at his shirt, propelled him onwards, arm at his waist, hand like a vice around his wrist, taking his weight across her shoulders. Damn she was strong. Then his shoulder rammed into something and he was falling . . .

Matt didn’t move. It took a few seconds for the spinning in his head to follow suit. It was dark. So dark he had to blink a couple of times to be sure his eyes were actually open.

Someone was crying. A mixture of hiccuping and wailing. Someone else was breathing hard, forcefully. Big breaths in then blowing out again. He felt movement near his feet.

‘Where’s the light switch?’ It was Jodie. She was whispering. ‘Hannah. Where’s the switch?’

Someone said through a break in the hiccuping, ‘There isn’t one. The light comes on when the door opens.’

There was a burst of light, like an extended flash from a camera. Matt saw Jodie kneeling up at his feet, one arm outstretched into a small room, the other towards the door at his side, the pads of her fingers pressed against it. Her shirt was torn down the front, her face was white and her eyes were wild. In the pitch blackness that followed, the image of her crucifix pose was burned on his retinas in negative.

The light came on again. Her torso leaned a little more towards the door this time, her eyes narrowed in effort and determination. Then it was dark again.

‘Wait,’ he said. The pain in his knee flared as he moved. He pulled his good leg out from under the other, pushed his foot against the left side of a double door. Something was holding it closed but the slight shift in its position was enough to activate the light. A bare bulb in the ceiling filled the room with harsh light. Jodie looked at him and they squinted at each other for a moment in the sudden glare.

‘Are you okay?’ she asked quietly.

Concussion was a definite possibility. ‘Yeah.’

He flicked his eyes around. The room they were in was maybe two metres square, no windows, one double door, a long metal clothing rail along the wall opposite, some clothes on hangers, a suitcase in the corner. He was lying in front of the doors, Jodie kneeling at his feet, wiping one bloody hand down her jeans.

Her other hand was still outstretched, tied to Hannah. She was propped against the wall under the rail, her face ashen, her legs out straight almost touching him. The blonde had her back to the wall at his head. Between them, tied to both of them, was Louise. She was the one breathing hard. Her head was on Hannah’s lap, her eyes were closed and one side of her shirt was covered in blood. Matt’s heart thumped at the sight of it.

Jodie shuffled quickly to Louise’s side and pulled her free hand from the sleeve of her torn top. With a jagged, tearing sound, she ripped the shirt open down the other sleeve, pulled her arm out, balled it up and pressed it gently to her friend’s shoulder.

Matt wanted to check the door – sometimes the best means of escape was the most obvious – but his eyes stayed on Jodie. She was lean and athletic. She was wearing a black bra. Lower down, stretching across her flat stomach like a belt, was a thick, uneven line of scars.

She looked up at him. ‘Matt?’

He cleared his throat. ‘Yeah.’

‘Can you move?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you get close enough to untie me?’

He pushed himself into a sitting position, waited a second for his brain to stop rolling about and shifted as far as he could without taking his foot off the door. Jodie angled her hand towards him, pulled Hannah forward as she did so, shifting Louise’s head on her lap. She groaned.

‘Hang in there, Lou. It’ll only take a second,’ Jodie whispered.

Matt tried not to bump her as he worked on the rope. It was tied in a complicated knot, fastened between their wrists. Some kind of smooth, twisted cord with a decorative tassel that seemed bizarrely out of place considering the job it was doing.

‘I’m so sorry, Matt,’ Jodie whispered to his lowered head. ‘I shouldn’t have got you involved.’

He lifted his face and the guilt and fear in her eyes made him look back down again. He should have called Carraro. He should have figured it out faster. He should have done a lot of things. ‘You took a chance.’

‘I should have just told you to leave.’

He should have got them out. ‘If you want to blame someone, blame the arseholes who locked us in here.’

There was a loud thump from the other end of the house followed by a smash and raised voices. The blonde woman, the one doing all the crying, squealed. The others jumped. Matt looked in the direction of the noise, waited for more, a pulse pounding in his ears. When nothing came, he got back to the rope with more urgency.

The scars on Jodie’s stomach were right there in front of him as he worked. Centimetres from his face. He couldn’t not see them. They were raised, stretched, knotted in places, faded to the colour of the skin on her stomach. Clearly not recent. Probably years old. Too uneven to be anything but random and, without a doubt, the result of extreme violence. Matt imagined the type of weapon that could cause that sort of damage without killing a person. A wide, short-bladed knife. It explained her attitude better than his abusive husband scenario. And it said a whole lot more about her. He’d seen plenty of brave people live in a shadow of fear after the kind of violence she must have survived. It took courage to come out of something like that and be ready and willing to body-slug a thug in a pub or throw a rock through a stalker’s car window.

When he finally unravelled the cord, she pulled her hand back, rubbed off the blood on her jeans. He raised his eyes and saw she’d seen the line of his gaze. Something passed over her face. She half turned away, said, ‘Thanks,’ opened her mouth to say more but didn’t. She just twisted away and started in on the tie binding Lou and Hannah together.

If Jodie was embarrassed by her scars, she had no need. He was impressed. The woman had guts to have all that in her head, take on a couple of gun-toting attackers and still be upright and functioning when she was chucked in a dungeon.

He slid back, put the flat of his hands on the doors and tested his weight against them. There was a little movement lower down, none at all higher up. There wasn’t a lock, so something must have been jammed against the handles on the outside. Which meant they’d have to break through both doors to push their way out. Which meant they wouldn’t be getting out that way.

‘Where are we?’ he asked.

Jodie pulled the tie free. ‘In a walk-in robe off the main bedroom.’

There was another thud, more voices – loud but Matt couldn’t tell if they were angry or just strident. He pressed an ear to the gap between the two doors. ‘Where in the house are we?’

Jodie held Lou’s head, said, ‘Slide out, Hannah, so Louise can lie down.’ Hannah seemed stunned into inaction, didn’t move until Jodie tugged at her arm. As she clambered stiffly out from under Louise’s head, Jodie answered his question. ‘At the opposite end to the lounge room.’ She stepped across her friend to squat in front of the blonde.

‘Did you hear where they went?’

She pointed over her shoulder at the wall opposite the doors. ‘In that direction. Back towards the main room. I think they’re still inside.’

The blonde stopped crying. ‘Oh my God. Jodie, your scars are . . . Is that . . . ? Are they . . . ?’ She never finished, just started sobbing again.

‘Shhh,’ Jodie said gently. She put a finger under the blonde’s chin and tilted her face up. ‘Corrine, honey, don’t look at them.’

Jodie sounded unbelievably calm but Matt could see the tightness in her shoulders and the thin line of her mouth as she tossed Corrine’s rope. Her movements were fast, staccato, as though too much energy was being put into simple activities.

Matt tried the doors again – leaned back on his hands, pulled his good leg up and smacked the sole of his foot hard against them.

Corrine let out a brief squeal. Above her, Jodie hauled a coat off the clothing rail, rolled it up and put it under Lou’s head.

‘Is it bad, Hannah?’ Jodie asked. She gripped Hannah’s shoulder, made the woman look at her. ‘Hannah? Is Louise going to be all right?’

Hannah shook her head, eyes wide, filling with tears. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. She needs a doctor. She needs a hospital.’

Dread felt like a cold hand on Matt’s neck. No. Louise wasn’t going to bleed to death. He kicked the door again, shoved it with his hands. He wanted to shake the fucker off its hinges but there were no handles on the inside. ‘Goddamn it!’ He ran a hand through his hair, met Jodie’s wild eyes as she did the same thing.

She stood again and walked stiffly to the clothing rail. There wasn’t a great selection, a couple of shirts, another coat. She yanked it down, draped it over Lou, tucked it in around her hips like a blanket. Got up, pulled a shirt off a hanger, bunched it into a ball. She squatted beside Matt this time, pressed the cloth to the back of his head, took it away and looked at it.

‘Jesus,’ she breathed. There was a patch of fresh blood on it. She held it against his head once more, her other hand on his forehead, her eyes squeezed tight.

Matt watched while she fought to hold herself together. He wanted to reach out and touch her, give her some kind of reassurance. But he guessed she needed something to do more than she needed a tender moment right now. And besides, what kind of reassurance could he give?

When the bump on his head started to ache from her grip, he cupped a hand around hers, eased it away. ‘It’s okay. It doesn’t hurt much.’

She opened her eyes. They were big and dark, shiny with unshed tears. She refolded the bloody shirt, lifted it to his mouth, dabbed at something sticky there, pulled it away with another bloodstain.

Matt smiled with the other side of his mouth. ‘He owed me more than a cut lip.’

Jodie was about to say something but Corrine got in first, speaking through sobs.

‘When are the police coming?’

All four of them looked at him. Their faces were pale with shock and fear but there was a glimmer of hope in their eyes. And he was about to snuff it out.

‘They’re not. No one else knows what’s happening.’

‘No one?’ Corrine said.

‘No.’

‘Have you got a gun?’ she said.

‘No.’

‘A radio?’

‘No.’

‘No?’ Corrine’s voice was shrill. ‘What kind of a policeman are you?’

Matt’s hands curled into fists. It was the question he’d been asking himself for the last six months. ‘I’m not a cop.’

‘What? What?’

‘Shut up, Corrine,’ Jodie said.

‘I thought you were here to save us. And no one knows?’ Corrine wailed.

‘It’s not his fault,’ Jodie hissed at her.

Corrine wrapped her arms around her chest. ‘We’re never going to get out of here. They’re going to rape us. And kill us. They’re going to make me go first then murder us all.’

Jodie got to her haunches, as though she was ready to jump at her. ‘Shut up, Corrine.’

‘We’re all going to . . .’

‘Shut up!’ She took a couple of breaths, looked quickly about the room. ‘We’re not. We’re just not. We’re going to get out of this and we’re going to go home.’

Corrine was crying again, tears rolling down her face, barely able to speak through the sobs. ‘But . . .’

‘But nothing!’ Jodie glared at her, eyes ablaze.

No one argued with her. All three of her friends looked at her like she was Moses about to part the Red Sea – with dread and wonder and hope on their faces.

Then it all fell apart.