Beyond Fear (21 page)

Travis, the one who kept watching her, dropped his eyes at last and helped himself to cheese and a cracker. As he chewed, his eyes slid around the room. Up close, Jodie saw they were blue, navy, like solid discs, as dark as the other guy’s were pale, and they moved from the front door to the kitchen to the glass at the back of the barn to the women around the U of sofas. ‘So is it just the four of you up here?’ he asked.

‘Yes, just us,’ Corrine said. ‘Having a bit of girl-time.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Oh yes, we go away like this every year. Leave the kids and husbands behind. Have a ball, don’t we, girls?’

Hannah nodded, Lou smiled in agreement. Jodie swallowed hard.

Travis used his wineglass to point across the room. ‘You ladies have got a lot in your fridge there. Thought you might be waiting for friends.’

‘Oh no, we just like to eat well,’ Corrine laughed, a little embarrassed, a little proud of their catering abilities.

He flicked a look at the blond guy. ‘So you won’t have any problems feeding a couple of extras then.’

There was a beat of silence, as though the room was considering the way he’d phrased it. Jodie concentrated on breathing in and out. It felt wrong but apparently her instincts were nothing to go by.

‘Oh, hey, don’t worry. We won’t eat much, will we, Kane?’

The one from the pub, Kane, grinned like their food consumption was an inside joke. ‘Nah, me and Travis won’t eat much.’

‘We had a good lunch, didn’t we?’

‘Sure did.’

‘Cooked up a couple of nice little steaks. Two each.’ Travis looked at the four of them in turn, one side of his mouth turned up in a sly smile. ‘Cooked up real nice, they did.’

Jodie went cold.
Four
steaks?

‘Yeah, real nice,’ Kane said.

‘Not big enough to feed a small dog. Probably not as good as you girls would cook ’em but you can make up for that, can’t they, Kane?’

Kane laughed. A nasty, mocking sound.

Jodie looked quickly at her friends. Louise was wearing a polite, uncertain smile. Hannah had raised an eyebrow. Corrine tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, swinging her sprained ankle back and forth, smiling coyly, tipsy.

‘So what’s for dinner?’ Travis grinned like he was cute, like his cuteness would get him a free feed. Maybe it would. Corrine was tittering. Hannah’s head was cocked to one side, undecided.

Kane laughed again. ‘Got any more steaks?’

The spike of fear that shot through Jodie was like an electric current. It
was
them. In the house. This afternoon. Words were tumbling out before she could stop them. ‘It was you. You took our steaks. You came in here and took our steaks?’

‘For God’s sake.’

‘Jodie?’

‘Why are you being such a bitch?’

The girls had spoken together, on cue, like a joint rebuke. She felt Louise’s hand on her leg and sensed Hannah and Corrine staring at her across the room but all she saw were Travis’s unwavering eyes on her and the amusement on his ugly mouth.

Beside him, Kane finished his wine, put the glass on the coffee table and looked up at Jodie. ‘You
are
a bitch.’

18

Jodie felt the tension shift. Louise and Hannah redirected their focus to Kane, anger overlaid now with apprehension. Only Corrine let it slide.

‘Oh, dear, that’s not nice,’ she said to him. ‘I can call her a bitch but you can’t.’

Kane kept his eyes on Jodie. ‘You’re the prickteaser from the pub.’

Jodie’s heart pounded. She was angry as well as frightened now. She had no idea what her friends were thinking, couldn’t pull her eyes away from him to gauge it, but it didn’t matter. Breakdown or no breakdown, no one spoke to her like that. ‘You can leave now.’

‘Oh, come on, Jodie. Can’t you take a joke?’ Corrine tittered.

‘No, I can’t and they need to leave.’

Kane smiled slowly. ‘But we haven’t had our dinner yet.’

No one moved.

Fear squeezed her chest. If they chose not to leave, how would she get them out? ‘Fuck dinner.’

Kane stepped casually out of the U of sofas. From the corner of her eye, she saw Travis do the same from the other side of the fire. ‘Oh, dear, that’s not nice,’ Kane said, smiling, copying Corrine’s words as he walked behind Hannah.

Jodie moved back a pace. She looked quickly across the room, saw Travis moving behind Corrine. She took another step and stood behind Louise, the wine bottle and glass still in her hands.

Kane stopped a couple of metres from her, smiled, like they were great mates, like she hadn’t just told him to fuck off. His pale eyes were flat and cold. ‘Come on, Jodie.’

‘A meal isn’t too much to ask, is it?’ Her head swung around as Travis spoke. ‘Then we’ll get our stuff and get out of here.’

Kane let his arms drop to his sides, took a step closer. ‘Unless you’re interested in a bit more fun.’

‘Look.’ Louise stood up. ‘I think . . .’

Jodie didn’t hear what she said. It was just background noise as she reversed even further, her eyes moving between Kane and Travis. They took a couple more steps towards her, still smiling, genial. They were solid, muscular men. It felt threatening. But she wasn’t sure.

Then Kane laughed. Not like he thought it was funny or awkward, not like he might if he was trying to take the heat out of the situation. He laughed
at
her. She saw him flick a look at Travis and two thoughts flashed through her head – she was right and it was too late.

Her fingers tightened on the wine bottle. She had a weapon in her hand. She could defend herself. But she hesitated too long. As she raised the bottle, Travis smacked her hard across the face with the back of his hand.

An explosion went off in her head. Her feet came off the floor and she dropped hard. Pain shot up her arm, the air was knocked out of her lungs. It took a second for her to think past the burning on her face, the roar in her ears, the fact she was sprawled on the timber desperate to draw breath. She opened her eyes, saw two dirt-crusted workboots and jerked her head up. A second later she moved with a speed she hadn’t thought possible the moment before.

Travis had a gun and he was pointing it at her face.

It was a handgun and it looked huge. He must have had it the whole time. Did they both have guns? She wanted to see if Kane was pointing a gun at her too, but all she could do was scrabble backwards, reverse crawling, her boots slipping on the polished timber, something sharp crushing under the palm of her hand. She kept going until the wall was at her back, her knees on her chest and her heels pressed into the right angle between the floor and the skirting board. Her breath came in short, sharp gasps as Travis lowered the weapon and touched the cold metal to the cheekbone he’d just hit.

Her body went still. She closed her eyes. And she was no longer in the barn.

She was seventeen again. Waiting to die.

It wasn’t her life that flashed before her eyes but the night she’d waited for death. As though the vacuum pack that had compressed those memories into a tight, almost unreachable package had been ripped wide open. A strobe of pictures and sounds flashed through her head. Angela’s terrified eyes. Cruel laughter. Feet scuffling on a gravel path. Dirt grazing her face. Brutal, guttural grunting. Angie sobbing.
Run, Jodie, run.
The pounding on her stomach. Blood dripping on her bare feet.

‘Fucking bitch!’ Kane shouted the words in her face, the wet spray of spit on her cheek dragging her from the nightmare of her past to the nightmare she was in. She opened her mouth and air rushed in on a huge gasp. There was movement close by. She squeezed her eyes tighter, hearing for the first time Corrine screaming, and waiting for another blow. Or for the shot that would rip her head apart.

‘Get the others,’ Travis said.

‘Jesus fucking . . .’ Kane started, an edge of excitement in his voice.

‘
Get the others
,’ Travis bawled, pushing the gun harder into her bruised cheek.

No.
No.
‘No!’ She tried to shout the word but it came out as barely more than a whisper. Memories flashed in her head. Louise and Hannah and Corrine mixed up with Angie and the blood and the terror.

She forced her eyes open.

The gun was silver with a black handle and was pushed so hard into her face that the flesh of her cheek half blocked the vision from her left eye. She could smell Travis’s sweat and stale cigarette smoke and alcohol, something a whole lot stronger than their white wine. Whatever it was, he’d drunk enough to make his clothes reek of it. And now he had a gun on her face. Stone-cold fear lodged itself in her chest. She made herself look past it, to find her friends.

She was pressed to the wall somewhere between the front door and the hallway. Over the top of the sofa, she could see Louise and Hannah huddled together near the fireplace in the safety of the U of furniture. She couldn’t see Corrine but as Kane moved across the room, Louise stepped forward and pulled her up off the floor, dragging her limping to where they stood.

Jodie watched helpless as Kane stormed towards them. They clung to each other, shrinking past the mantelpiece, up against the window. Louise held out a hand. ‘No,’ she cried. Kane grabbed a handful of Corrine’s long hair and pulled so hard her head snapped sideways. She shrieked, stumbled forward to the floor, disappeared from Jodie’s view again. Hannah bent to help her but Kane shoved her roughly away.

‘Get over there!’ he yelled. He pushed Louise in the back. ‘Move!’ He reached down and Corrine let out a short, sharp scream. ‘Get up, bitch!’

Louise and Hannah helped Corrine to her feet then the three of them hurried forward, trying to keep clear of Kane. He shoved Louise again and she staggered, taking the other two with her as she fell.

Kane rammed his heel into her shin. ‘Get over by the wall.’

Lou held her leg, shuffled back, the other two pulling her in by the arms, by the collar of her shirt. Then Jodie couldn’t see them. They were right beside her, a metre away, pressed in tight against the wall but out of her view. Her head was pinned to the wall, face forward, the gun on her cheek like a tack holding a page to a corkboard.

She wanted to see them. Wanted to fill her vision with them before she died. The argument didn’t matter now. They were her best friends. She rolled her eyes as far as she could to the right, till the muscles behind them felt like they’d tear. Corrine was crying, mascara running down her cheeks, her face crumpled and trembling. Hannah was ghostly pale and she looked at Jodie with a sickening mix of horror and realisation. Louise was still, frozen, knees hugged to her chest, gripping the shin Kane had kicked, her green eyes wide open and moving in short, sharp jerks from the gun to its owner and back again.

Jodie’s vision blurred with tears. She blinked hard and fast, frightened of the images in her head. Frightened of the ones in front of her. She should have ignored Hannah. She should have done something before it got to this. She’d trained for this, taught others what to do. Shit, shit, shit. Think, Jodie. What are you meant to do? She should know what to do. She breathed hard through her nose. Her cheek hurt. She wanted to cry. Focus, Jodie. But she couldn’t see past the horror replaying in her mind or the fear that paralysed her. Travis didn’t need a gun to hold her against the wall. She couldn’t move if she tried.

‘Four fucking bitches!’ Kane was strutting back and forth in front of them, hyped up, a wild energy coming off him. ‘We’ve got our work cut out for us now, bro.’

Bro?
Were they brothers? Or was it street slang, like the boys at school used? She wanted to think about it, figure it out but she couldn’t get two thoughts in line. It was all happening too fast. Beside her, one of the girls whimpered and Corrine let out a long, wailing sob.

‘Shut up!’ Travis yelled at Corrine, pushing the hard metal further into Jodie’s cheek. One of the others shushed her urgently and she fell silent. He adjusted his stance, moved over Jodie a little more, brought his other hand up to the handle of the gun in a double-fisted hold. ‘Find something to tie them with.’

Kane bounced from one foot to the other. ‘It’s no fun if they don’t fight.’

‘We tie them then we do what we came for.’ He shot Kane a brief, hard look. ‘Move!’

Still leering, Kane turned and headed towards the kitchen.

‘And find something better to drink than this wine shit,’ Travis called.

Kane disappeared from Jodie’s line of sight. He was going to tie them up. Deep in her belly, something shifted, like the epicentre of an earthquake, and her body shook violently.

‘What do you want?’ Louise’s voice was clear and firm and angry.

‘Shut up,’ Travis snapped.

Jodie looked up, past the muzzle of the gun, along the powerful arm that held it, saw Travis’s dark eyes dart tensely to the other side of the room and back.

‘There’s nothing valuable here. We just came for the weekend,’ Louise said. She was still hugging her legs to her chest, her eyes were wide but her lips were pressed tight.