All the blood in my body suddenly runs cold.
“We’re here, talking with Leslie Garter who lives next door to the abducted woman. Leslie, can you tell our audience about your neighbour?”
I zone out on what the reporter and my chatty neighbour are saying and focus instead on what’s happening in the background.
A detective senior sergeant is standing right by my little garden shed. The one I like to sit in on mornings during the summer, staring at the sundial, counting my blessings, listening to the world wake up while I sip a cup of tea.
No.
No, no, no. This isn’t good.
This can’t be happening.
I change the channel, my heart lodged somewhere in my oesophagus. On another station, I watch the same detective talking to a colleague in the background while a reporter stands on the footpath in front of my house.
Ignoring the reporter, my eyes track the movement of the police. I watch the blue and white tape flutter in the wind. It’s marking out a small patch of my back lawn. The grass neatly clipped around a sundial. The sunk foundation made from concrete.
So much concrete.
Such a deep hole for the foundation.
I want to turn off the television, wipe the images from my brain, erase the noises from my mind. Instead, when the article finishes, I scour the channels looking for another. My heart rate steadily increases. My palms grow slippery with perspiration. The cold dread of being found out forms a lump of ice in my stomach.
Why would they even—? Who told them that—?
There’s a mention of us on the Al Jazeera ticker tape but nothing more substantial on any channels. Another round of news will start on the hour on the radio, but I already know it won’t give me what I need.
Listening to information funnelled through the media won’t tell me anything important. I need boots on the ground, the ability to spy as the police dig around my property.
Josh. What if they tackle Joshua in prison and batter him with questions? What if they offer a sweetener for him to tell them what he knows?
By the time I turn the TV off, trembles rock through every part of my body. Even my mind stutters, barely able to hold a coherent thought.
I need to go. I need to be there.
That’s the only beat in my mind that has any rhythm.
I grab the keys and head for the car, slipping into the driver’s seat before I question the decision.
Malakai said he had to change the car. It would be known to too many people to keep us safe.
From the way he skirted around the subject, I don’t think he was referring solely to police.
I lean over, wondering if there’s proof of ownership in the glove compartment. I don’t know how to trawl the streets for dodgy connections who’d be happy to swap one illegal car for another. What I do know is how to implore rugged men with grease ground into their knuckles to lend me a loaner car when mine is in the shop.
It’s not the world’s most populous town but there must be a late-night garage open somewhere. A loaner car on public roads will get me home by eleven, midnight at the latest.
My hands reach into the compartment, rummaging for paperwork.
But paperwork isn’t what my hand finds first.
What it finds is the gun.
CHAPTERTHIRTEEN
KAI
I might bea master at hiding my desperation but when my face is suddenly one of the most recognisable in the country, it’s hard to drive a bargain. What I could sell for fifty grand inside, what should be worth ten out here where movement isn’t a privilege to be earned, comes to a lacklustre six.
