Beyond Fear (22 page)

‘Shut up, bitch.’

‘We would’ve given you all the damn food if you’d asked nicely.’ Louise’s voice sounded dangerously sarcastic. One of the other girls whispered a shhh.

The side of Travis’s mouth turned up in a nasty half-grin. ‘Oh, we’re not just after food, ladies. We’re going to take whatever we goddamn want. And you’re not going to enjoy it. All you need to know is that you chose the wrong fucking weekend to come here.’

Jodie’s spine turned to liquid. The barn was her idea. An isolated cabin on top of a hill, kilometres from anywhere and anyone. She should have known better. This was her fault.

‘Hey, Trav,’ Kane called from the other side of the room. ‘I found their phones.’

Jodie swung her eyes to the right. Kane must be at the island bar. She still couldn’t see him from where she sat but she knew what was there. A big, handcrafted glass bowl they’d used to store miscellaneous bits and pieces – sunglasses, cameras, Lou’s mints, Corrine’s hairclip, their mobiles. Kane came back, the phones in his hands.

‘There’s only three,’ Travis said. ‘Whose is missing?’ He looked over at Louise, Hannah and Corrine then back at Jodie. ‘
Whose is missing?
’

Oh God, it was hers. It was in her handbag. She tried to open her mouth to say something, to own up to it. But there was a gun pressed to her face. Would he just pull the trigger if she said, ‘It’s mine’? Would they be her last words?

19

A phone clattered to the floor. ‘Whose is this?’ Kane said.

‘It’s mine,’ Corrine’s voice was tiny. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t a phone. It was a shiny, silver BlackBerry with internet access, five-megapixel camera and a gazillion other functions.

‘Nice phone,’ he said and smashed it with his heel.

Jodie flinched at the casual destruction. It felt like a demonstration of intent.

‘Whose is this?’ He dropped a flip-top one on the floor.

‘Mine,’ Hannah said.

He slammed his boot down and ground the ball of his foot into the debris. ‘Whose is this shit-box?’ He dropped a battered old Nokia.

No one spoke. Jodie looked at Louise. She was staring at Kane, eyes blazing, mouth set.

Jodie took a deep breath, squeezed her eyes shut and thanked whoever it was that gave her a friend like Lou. ‘It’s Louise’s.’

In the moment Kane broke it apart, Travis changed the angle of his gun and pushed so hard on Jodie’s bruised cheek that she cried out in pain. He bent to her face and shouted, ‘Did you think we wouldn’t figure it out, you stupid bitch? Where’s your phone?’

‘In . . . in my bag. My handbag.’

‘Where?’

She couldn’t think where she’d left it. She swung her eyes towards the front door. It wasn’t there.

‘
Where?
’

‘I . . . I . . . on the bench. On the kitchen bench.’

‘Get it,’ he told Kane. Over at the bench, Kane up-ended the bag and the contents spilled across the floor. Purse, keys, lipstick, camera, loose change, a couple of tampons. No phone.

A small choking sound escaped her lips.

‘
Where’s your phone?
’ Travis shouted.

‘I . . . I don’t know.’

‘Where?’

‘I put it there this . . .’

‘Where?’

‘It was there when . . .’

‘
Where?
’

‘I don’t know.
I don’t know.
If it’s not in my bag, I don’t know where it is. Maybe it fell out. It must have fallen out. It might be in the car. I don’t know.’ Travis loomed over her, dropped one hand from his gun grip, raised the weapon as though he was readying to . . .

‘I DON’T KNOW.
I don’t fucking know.
’

Kane laughed, bouncing from foot to foot. ‘I think she doesn’t know, bro.’

Travis lowered his elbow and the pressure eased a little on her cheek. ‘If that phone turns up later, I’ll put a hole in your head. You got that?’

Tears stung Jodie’s eyes. ‘Yep. Sure. It won’t. I promise.’

‘Kane, did you find something to tie them with?’ Travis said, without taking his eyes off her.

‘No.’

He turned and looked at Kane. Thick veins down the side of his neck were swollen with anger. ‘Then do it,’ he shouted. ‘And find me something to drink.’

Jodie watched Travis follow Kane with his eyes. She pushed her tongue around her mouth, feeling bruising on the inside of her cheek and the metallic taste of blood. Her legs ached from squatting against the wall. Her ribs throbbed. The palm of one hand burned. And she was so scared she couldn’t think straight. On the other side of the room, out of sight, Kane knocked something large and heavy over.

Louise’s voice cut into their terrified silence. ‘Let Hannah look at her hand. She’s a nurse.’

Jodie rolled her eyes to her. What the hell was she doing? The guy was ready to put a bullet into her brain. What did he care about someone’s hand?

‘There’s glass in it. I can see it from here,’ Louise said, releasing her legs from her arms.

‘Move again and I’ll pull the trigger.’

‘Just let her take the glass out.’

‘Shut up!’

‘She’s going to bleed all over you if the glass doesn’t come out.’

Jodie felt a rush of heat to her face. One of the girls was hurt. And Lou was going to get herself shot. Or Jodie shot.

‘I’ve got a wad of tissues in my pocket,’ Louise pushed.

‘Shut up, Louise,’ Corrine hissed.

‘She’ll just get the glass out, give her the tissues and sit back down again. It’ll take five seconds. The blood on your jeans would just look like mud then. You know, when you leave.’

Jodie rolled her eyes to the other side and saw his jeans. There was a dark splotch at the front, below the knee. Suspended above it was her left hand. It was red with blood.

Her body jerked. She saw her hands on another night. In the headlights of a car. Wet and red, blood dripping through her fingers onto her bare feet.

‘God. No.’ She pressed both hands to her stomach, hard, pulling in the sides, pushing against the muscles under the flesh. She couldn’t look down. Her head was still jammed against the wall by the gun. How much blood was there? When had he cut her? She felt pain. A sharp, intense burning. In her stomach. No. In her hand.

‘Five seconds.’ Louise was loud and urgent now.

Then Hannah was beside her, trying to take her hand away from her stomach.

Jodie pulled against her. ‘No. I need to keep the pressure on.’

‘It’s your hand, Jodie. There’s glass in your
hand
.’

‘What?’ She let Hannah take her hand and spread her fingers open. A piece of glass protruded from her palm just below the base of the thumb. It looked like one of Corrine’s acrylic nails, as though she’d pointed at the back of Jodie’s hand and accidentally pushed it all the way through. Where had it come from? Her eyes slid around, saw on the floor the bottle of wine on its side, a wet stain around it and the shattered pieces of her wineglass. She must have fallen on it.

Then her head was jammed harder against the wall, the side of her mouth pushed up by the muzzle of the gun.

‘Five seconds are up.’

‘Oh, God.’ Hannah was pale, her lips scrunched together, tears in her eyes.

‘Do it, Hannah!’ Louise yelled.

Hannah bent her head, tried to grip the glass between her thumb and index finger. She was shaking, trembling so hard she couldn’t get the sliver between her fingertips. Jodie had never seen Hannah shake. Not even when her own daughter Chelsea ran through Lou’s glass door and was cut to pieces. But she was shaking now.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Jodie snapped her hand away as the glass came out with a sharp sting. She held it up to her face, looked at it along the side of the gun, saw a bubble of blood brew quickly from the hole and run down her wrist.

Travis shoved his foot into Hannah’s shoulder, knocking her away. ‘Time’s up.’

‘Bastard!’ Louise yelled as Hannah scrabbled to her knees and pushed a wad of tissues into Jodie’s hand.

‘Get over there,’ Travis shouted. ‘And
you
,’ he glared at Louise, ‘keep your fucking mouth shut.’

‘I know what’d shut her up.’ Kane was back and he’d cupped his hand around his crutch. ‘She won’t talk with this in her mouth.’

Oh, Jesus. It was starting. Their backs were against the wall. There was nowhere to run. They were going to be raped then die. Jodie’s lungs felt as though her chest had been crushed. She squeezed her eyes shut, heard a brutal, guttural grunting from somewhere inside her head.

‘Tie them,’ Travis said.

She opened her eyes and her fear took on a new, terrifying edge.

Kane stood in front of the others with a bottle of bourbon, the one Lou had brought from home. In his other hand was a bundle of curtain tie-backs. He took a long gulp from the bottle, held it out to Travis then stretched the thick, white, twisted-satin cords between both hands and snapped them straight. He leered at Louise and Hannah. ‘You two. Get up.’

Jodie watched with growing panic as Louise’s left hand was bound to Hannah’s right, the satiny rope wrapped around and around then knotted tightly. ‘You,’ he said to Corrine. The skin on Jodie’s wrists burned with the memory of another rope and she shook uncontrollably as Corrine’s hand was tied to Louise’s. When Kane turned to Jodie, panic roared.

‘No. No!’ she screamed. She pulled her hands behind her, tried to shake her head free of the gun pushed into her cheek. Kane stood in front of her, shouted.

‘No!’ she yelled. The tie-back filled her vision. The smooth, white cord hanging loosely through Kane’s meaty fist, a soft, feathery tassel swinging on one end. The sight of it pushed a surge of hot blood through her, making her recoil with every ounce of energy she had. She forced her head sideways, rolling her skull along the wall. Travis shouted, pushed the gun into her ear, mashing the other one against the wall. She squeezed her eyes tight, heard a loud wail come from deep inside her.

Someone grabbed her arm, yanked her to her feet. It was Kane and she pulled against him as he tried to drag her over to the others.

‘Nooo!’ They were shouting. Her. Travis and Kane. Yelling at her. Screaming. Her friends were screaming. But she kept pulling back. Her shoulder was tearing, it was going to pop out of its socket. Something inside was telling her to fight but she didn’t. Couldn’t think how. Could only think about getting away from the rope. It was all over if she was tied up.

She was wrong. It was over when Travis slammed his elbow into her stomach.

She went straight down, bent in the middle, gagging for air. Above her, the girls were screaming. Louise was yelling a stream of abuse that, even curled in a foetal position on the floor, made Jodie wonder where she’d learned to cuss like that. Then she was being dragged along the timber boards. One hand was pulled above her head, slapped against Corrine’s and the smooth cord wrapped around both. Kane sprayed spittle in her face as he called her foul names, told her what he was going to do to her but the words meant nothing to the sight of the cord being wrapped over the fine, pale scars left by that other rope. He tied her to Hannah, secured them in a circle, facing outwards, like a human X, no one able to move without taking three others with them.

Jodie tried to stand, tried not to be the one that made them more vulnerable. But she couldn’t. Her knees collapsed. She banged her head against Hannah’s hip, wrenched her wrist painfully around Corrine’s as she went down. The others struggled around her, staggering and lurching about, trying to stay upright. But she couldn’t help them, couldn’t even hold her head up any longer. Just slumped forward onto her knees and cried.

Travis paced in front of her. ‘Not so tough now, are you,
bitch
?’

He was right. She wasn’t. She didn’t have the energy or the arrogance anymore to look up at him. She stared at his legs, watched the bottle of bourbon swing up out of view as he took a drink – and felt fat tears make tracks down her face.

‘I told you they were just housewives.’ Kane said it as though housewife was the equivalent of useless. He caught a handful of Jodie’s short hair, yanked her head up. Needles of pain shot across her scalp as his pale eyes bored into hers. ‘Where’s your tyre iron now, bitch?’ He laughed in her face as he slapped her head back down.

The skin on the top of her head felt like it had been ripped away. She wanted to press a hand to it, stop the stinging but she didn’t dare move, not while Kane was still in grabbing range. No, she wasn’t tough at all.

The other girls sank to the floor. Beside her, Corrine pulled her legs in tight as Travis began pacing. Up and down the length of the lounge. Taut, aggressive steps, his boots making hard rubber sounds on the timber floor. Over near the island bench, Kane was bouncing about – jumpy, edgy, excited. Travis stopped near Jodie’s shoulder. He had the gun in one hand, the bourbon in the other, used the fist of his drinking hand to swipe across his lips.