Brittle Shadows (33 page)

“Gail, stop.
Whatever it is, just give it to me straight.” She swigged her whisky, the raw
liquor burning her throat.

“Jemma, love,
this isn’t easy.”

Another swig.
“You told me you exiled Tanya to Melbourne because she was running amok and you
couldn’t control her. Are you telling me now that’s a lie, too?”

“Your sister
wasn’t exiled.”

“It must have
felt like that to her. How old was she? Sixteen? Seventeen?”

“I did what I
thought was best. Maybe you’ll understand more when I tell you it wasn’t just
the drinking and partying.”

Chris appeared
at the door, still dressed in his work clothes from that morning. She waved him
in. “I’m listening,” she said to Gail.

“She was
pregnant, not to mention in a most unhealthy relationship with the young man.”

Jemma couldn’t
breathe. “Pregnant?” she gasped.

“I know, I
know, I should’ve told you about it before now, but it really wasn’t my place
to tell. I thought Tanya would confide in you when she was ready.”

“And the baby?
What happened to the baby?”

“Oh dear,
didn’t I say? There was no baby. She had an abortion…”

Jemma cupped
her hand around the phone and lowered her voice. “The father, Gail, did he
know?”

She heard a
soft whirring and looked up to see the balcony windows’ semi-opaque blinds
dropping.

A fist came out
of nowhere, smashing her hand. Her phone flew from her grip and landed at his
feet. He stomped on it and then slammed her against the wall. Pain ricocheted
through her body. She fought back.

He whacked her
across the face. “It didn’t have to come to this. What’s wrong with you that
you can’t take a hint? Too subtle?”

“You!” Blood
spat from her mouth. “You sent the flowers, the letters, everything. And the
phone calls. You lied about tracing them back to the Bartletts, didn’t you?”

He bared his
teeth, his top lip twisted in a sneer. “Give the girl a prize.”

She squirmed
and bucked. “You’ll never get away with this.”

“Get away with
what?” That ugly smile again. “So much tragedy in one family. How sad.” He
traced her lips, smearing blood.

She swallowed.
Hard. “Why?”

“Poor guileless
little Jemma. I did warn you that you were too trusting. It didn’t need to come
to this.”

“You loved
Tanya once. How could you hurt her?”

His face
softened for a split-second. “We were soul mates. She shouldn’t have done it.
She shouldn’t have run away. She shouldn’t have killed our baby.”

“God, she was
only sixteen. Our mother had just died. We were both so screwed up.”

“For years I
searched for her. I wanted to tell her I forgave her, wanted to make it right.
I never gave up. I knew one day we would be together again…”

“The school
reunion.”

“Clever girl.
How ironic that we were living in the same city. It was meant to be. Except I
hadn’t realized until then that she had been living under her married name.”

“But she was
engaged to Sean.”

“A minor
impediment, especially when I found him shagging her boss. He didn’t deserve
her, I did. I would never have cheated on her like that prick.”

Jemma tasted
bile.

“The fool never
saw it coming,” he continued. “For all his pumping iron, he didn’t put up much
of a fight.”

She lashed out,
her fingers clawing at his eyes. “You fucking bastard,” she screamed. “She
wasn’t yours to take.”

“That’s where
you’re wrong. She was mine and only mine.”

His forearm
crushed her windpipe. She struggled.

“I was there
for her. There to hold her. There to mop her tears.”

The pressure on
Jemma’s throat eased.

He stared straight
through her as if she wasn’t there. “How could she not see that?”

She tried to
wrench her hands from his grip.

His hold on her
bundled wrists strengthened. “Then I discovered she was pregnant. We had
another chance. But she told me she wasn’t keeping it, that she didn’t want our
baby, didn’t want me. That it had all been a huge mistake. I pleaded with her,
even got down on my bended knee and asked her to marry me. Do you know what she
did?”

Jemma sucked
air in through her mouth. He was going to tell her whether she liked it or not.

His nostrils
flared, black nose-hairs vibrating. “The bitch laughed at me, told me she had
never loved me.”

She tasted his
sour breath, tasted the hate in it. “Oh my God, she rasped, “you killed her
because she laughed at you.”

“I loved her.
Why couldn’t she love me back? We could have been a family. All of us.”

“But…but… how
did you get Tanya to swallow all those pills without leaving a mark?”

“Oh, darling
Jemma, so innocent.” He stroked her cheek. “A goodbye drink, a few drops of GHB
in her wine. After that it was easy. I just kept feeding her pills and she kept
swallowing them. No more pain. It was what she wanted.”

He started
kissing her face. Little intimate pecks. He pressed his body against hers. She
felt the hardness of his erection against her abdomen. She screamed. He
laughed. Unless someone was standing in the corridor outside, no one would hear
her. With the windows and doors closed, the apartment was effectively
soundproofed.

The door burst
open. The security guard’s stocky build filled the frame. In a flash, he had
Chris in a headlock, wrestling him to the floor. Fists flew.

Jemma scrambled
from under the ruck on all fours and leapt to her feet. Her phone lay in
fragments on the tiles. She grabbed the nearest weapon to hand: a bottle of
wine. Wielding it like a club, she swung it at Chris’s head. She heard a crack,
her mouth opening in horror as the wrong man crumpled to the floor.

In less than a
second, her attacker was up, coming at her like an enraged pit bull. Adrenaline
surged through her body. She smashed the bottle against the wall, spraying red
wine everywhere. Brandishing the broken bottle, she backed toward the study to
where Tanya’s mobile was.

“You’re going
to pay for this you murdering bastard,” she screeched at the top of her voice.

She lunged.

He ducked,
feinting with his left before seizing her with his right. Panic exploded in her
chest. She kicked and punched and clawed. He held fast.

In the next
instant, unseen forces yanked him backward. His head connected with the corner
of the doorframe. He stopped moving.

It was then she
realized that the man she had inadvertently knocked out with the wine bottle
had recovered. “Quick, grab his ankles,” Gerry said, as he pulled plastic ties
from his back pocket and cuffed the recumbent man’s wrists together.

She did as
instructed. “Am I pleased to see you.”

“Wish I could
say the same.” He rubbed the back of his head. “Talk about pack a wallop.”

She pulled a
face. “Sorry.”

“That should
hold him until the police arrive. Let’s hope they’re not all like him.”

She studied her
unlikely guardian angel for a moment, a man whom she had been at odds with from
the start. “I don’t mean to sound ungracious, but what are you doing here? How
did you know I was in trouble?”

He yanked at
the ties around Chris’s ankles, avoiding her gaze. “Marcus Bartlett employed
me.”

“To do what?”

“Keep an eye on
you. For some reason he thought you needed protecting. Your sister died here –
I guess he didn’t want the same fate to befall you.”

She glanced
around the room, checking for somewhere a camera could be concealed.

“Not watching,
listening.” He indicated a power point on the wall under the breakfast bar.

Before she realized
what was happening, a squad of burly police officers had descended on the
apartment and manhandled her out into the corridor.

“About bloody
time,” she heard Gerry say.

Flight QF775 from Melbourne landed
right on schedule. After what seemed like an eternity, passengers began to flow
into the arrivals hall.

Jemma scanned
the sea of heads, the fluttering sensation in the pit of her stomach
intensifying. Six months had passed since she had last seen either of them. Six
months since that eventful night.

Then she
spotted the pair: the muscular, blond Ash hand in hand with the petite,
dark-haired Fen. Jemma smiled. The party girl finally had her man and she
couldn’t have looked happier.

Jemma waved.
The distance between her and the visitors soon closed.

Ash swept up
Jemma in a bear hug, crushing the air from her lungs. “It’s good to see you,
Sis.”

She laughed.
“You too,
Bro
.”

“Where’s
loverboy?” Fen asked after Jemma embraced her. “After what happened, I didn’t
think he was ever going to let you out of his sight again.”

“He’s at work.
We reached a compromise. I promised to stay away from strange men with
murderous tendencies if he promised not to take on a gang of thugs again.
Amazing what a brush with death can do.”

“Pleased to
hear that,” Ash said. “Any news on when the trial is?”

Jemma shook her
head. “No, but so long as they don’t let him out in the meantime, I don’t
care.” Detained in protective custody, the ex-detective Chris Sykes had yet to
face trial on two counts of murder and one of attempted murder. Though he had
pleaded not guilty, the police prosecutor had assured her it would be a minimum
of thirty years before Chris was a free man again.

The group of
friends stood side by side, all eyes on the empty baggage carousel going round
and round. While going to Melbourne had almost cost her own life, it had been
worth it to bring her sister’s killer to justice. Full circle.

***

Thank you for
reading
Brittle Shadows
. I love to hear from my readers:
[email protected]

Based in rural Victoria, Australia,
she writes fast-paced mystery and suspense novels in contemporary Australian
settings.
More information about Vicki and her books can be
found at:
www.vickityley.com

Craig Edmonds, a
successful stockbroker, reports the disappearance of his wife, Kirsty. What
starts as a typical missing person's case soon evolves into a full-blown
homicide investigation when forensics uncover blood traces and dark-blonde
hairs in the boot of the missing woman's car. Added to this, is Craig's
adulterous affair with the victim's younger sister, Narelle Croswell,
compounded further by a recently acquired $1,000,000 insurance policy on his
wife's life. He is charged with murder but, with no body and only
circumstantial evidence, he walks free when two trials resulting in hung juries
fail to convict him.

Ten years later,
Jacinta Deller, a newspaper journalist is retrenched. Working on a freelance
story about missing persons, she comes across the all but forgotten Edmonds
case. When she discovers her boyfriend, Brett Rhodes, works with Narelle
Croswell, who is not only the victim's sister but is now married to the prime
suspect, her sister's husband, she thinks she has found the perfect angle for
her article. Instead, her life is turned upside down, as befriending the woman,
she becomes embroiled in a warped game of delusion and murder.

PROLOGUE

Craig Edmonds
stared at hands sticky with darkening blood.

His hands.

He held them away from his body and looked down at his chest in
horror. Large, dirty-red blotches marred the once pristine white shirt.
Forgetting the blood on his hands, he tore at the buttons, ripping the shirt
open.

Breathing in short, sharp gasps, he frantically examined his torso,
looking for the wound. No cuts. No injuries. No holes where there shouldn’t be
any. His chest heaved in relief. He wasn’t dying, after all.

But then, mid-sigh, it struck him: if it wasn’t his blood, whose was
it? His head whipped around, his eyes scanning the room like radar on
overdrive.

Even in the half-light, he quickly saw all was not as it should be.
The glass shade from one of the bedside lamps lay in shattered fragments on the
floor. The curtain rail over the bedroom’s bay window hung at a precarious
angle. Usually a black-and-white photo of a nude, tattooed woman hung above the
bed; now the frame lay in pieces in the doorway.

He focused on the queen-sized bed. His stomach clenched as he took
in the twisted and dishevelled bedclothes. Instinctively, he knew the dark
patches on the sheets weren’t shadows that would disappear once the curtains
were opened.