Cruel as it is to put her in custody, this is mine.
I’m giving up the unknown time I would have had with her so she can better evade the discovery of her crime.
Not just that. With each police bulletin, each news broadcast, each reminder to the public that I’m a dangerous man and not to be approached, the higher likelihood of a violent arrest.
In the wop wops, half the people supplement their food sources by hunting; there are as many rifles about as there are people.
Repeat the warning about how dangerous I am enough times, and those owners will be happy to point the barrels in my direction.
I don’t want to place her in that type of danger.
The rough road jolts me until I can feel my fillings trying to vacate my teeth. I rev the engine and concentrate on the awful path, on the weak suspension, on anything but the fantasy scenario it wants me to conjure up out of nothing.
Nadia beside me, both of us free.
The long hours pass, and I steer through fields and forests, carefully latching gates, getting caught for twenty memorable minutes in a wild herd of Himalayan tahr, the large horns indicating a male-only group.
Finally, I leave the tussocky scrubland to join up with the main road just in time to enjoy the curving drive into the outskirts of Motueka. All my errant thoughts get pushed to the side as I slow the vehicle on the approach to Rachel’s father’s house.
It seems the likeliest place for her to hide away, and if I can trust the information my gang fed me, she should be waiting inside.
I hunker down in the seat, making myself appear inches shorter. With the baseball cap crammed over my hair, the bill casting shadows over my eyes, I should be unrecognisable.
Not that there appear to be any visitors. The driveway has an old Holden parked in an open carport. The roof sags under a plentiful helping of glossy green vines, curling and tangling their tendrils around the wood until it looks more like they’re holding it aloft than the opposite.
I drive past, choosing a dirt park off the road and putting my back to the window so it looks like I’m reading or checking my phone to pass the time.
What I’m really doing is checking the rearview mirror. A few pedestrians pass by, up to an hour between them. A man walks his dog, throwing a stick ahead and waiting for the German Shepherd to bring it back before tossing it forward again.
Dusk falls, and the growing darkness results in an equal sparsity of people passing by on the street. Once it’s as dark as it’s going to get, I climb out of the vehicle, shaking my legs out, expecting lights and sirens to blare out of the darkness.
When they don’t, I walk back to the property, angling across the back lawn to peer in through the rear window. It looks into a kitchen and beyond that to a dining room.
Rachel sits there at the dining table. It’s been cleared after their meal, but a salt and pepper shaker set still sit in the centre. She looks tired, barely glancing at the man who sits next to her. Presumably her father judging from his age.
Then I hear a cry. Unmistakeably a baby.
A younger man enters the room, closer to my age, bouncing a tiny newborn, burping him against his shoulder. Her new boyfriend? I already have so many emotions welling, I don’t know how to add his appearance to the picture.
Rachel holds out her hands, but he shakes his head. An older woman enters behind the man, fussing at the baby and putting a flannel on the man’s shoulder just in time for him to bring up a large burp of acidic milk.
She had the baby.
She kept the baby.
My face grows hot and tight as I stare at the scene. A mummy and daddy, with grandparents for support.
I struggle to swallow. Everything is slightly off-kilter, joy bubbling inside me but also trepidation.
They look like a perfect family unit. I don’t understand where I fit into this scene.
My feet become leaden, sticking me exactly where I’m standing as effectively as sealing them in concrete. I’m scared. Scared in a way that facing down Razek or running from the crashed prison van to the unknown vehicle, heart pounding with desperation, hadn’t reached.
If Nadia were here, she’d say something sensible. Seeing a baby wouldn’t throw her. From what she’s told me, she raised hers pretty much single handed. For half his life at least.
A host of thoughts I should have entertained before now flit across my mind. Thoughts like what if they take one look, throw me out, and call the police? Thoughts like what if I’ve come all this way, taken all these risks, and I don’t even get to hold the little fella? What if I hold him and he rejects me? What if…?
I do a five count and step back from the window, needing to break my paralysis if only to maintain a hold on reality.
