Leopard Dreaming (3 page)

‘Are you okay?’ he asked. ‘You’ve gone a bit pale.’

She nodded, but felt an urge to simply clamp her eyes shut and run through to the estuary so she could pick up the kidnapper’s trail from out there on the water.

Mira cleared her throat, hoping she didn’t sound too worried. ‘Was it all clear around the next bend?’

‘Would you be this far in if it wasn’t? Or I can check again, if it makes you feel better?’

‘I didn’t mean today, I meant … you know. Any leftover evidence from other times?’

‘It’s all clear,’ he assured her. ‘Aside from the quick recon today, on stakeout yesterday I saw a media circus pass through, leaving nothing more than empty water bottles, some chip packets and a few old lens caps.’

‘What about bloodstains?’

‘For paparazzi, they didn’t look that cut-throat.’

‘I didn’t mean
their
blood.’

‘I know what you meant.’ His tone stiffened, and she heard something in his voice that suggested he’d been thinking about past events too. His sergeant had been murdered in this alley, and the killer had tried to frame him for it; had beaten Lockman too, right there near the industrial bin.

‘It’s history,’ Lockman assured her. ‘Nothing can hurt you now, so long as we’re careful.’

‘Yeah, right.’ She wished she could believe it, but as she rounded the first bend, she saw the full length of the industrial bin by the rear door to the kitchen, and guilt slugged her in the stomach. If she hadn’t “witnessed” his sergeant’s murder just as the killer returned to the scene of the crime, then more people would still be alive, starting with the female bodyguard who’d sacrificed herself to ensure Mira’s escape. One of Lockman’s team. Her blood had painted the alley too; history repeating itself, the same but different. Same killer, different motives. Same scene, different bodies.

‘I just want to find them before anyone else gets hurt.’ Third time lucky, according to an old Braille quote — one that her mother had embossed into her favourite tree on the last day she’d climbed to the top.

‘That’s the plan.’

Mira paused and turned around, scanning up five storeys and examining all the balconies to see who else had been awake at dawn the previous day.

‘How can you stand coming here so easily?’ she whispered.

‘What makes you think it’s easy?’

‘You sound calm; your voice, your stride.’

‘You can’t see my hands shaking.’

She couldn’t imagine it either. ‘Seriously, is it justice or revenge that’s driving you?’ On the one hand, he had a chance to nail Sergeant Hawthorn’s killer, and on the other, he could gain revenge for the torture session he’d been put through at the hands of his
superior officer who’d tried to pull a confession out of Lockman, since the killer and Colonel Kitching were one and the same.

‘Keep your voice down,’ Lockman whispered.

‘I thought you said it was clear?’

‘It is, but —’

‘How am I supposed to trust you better if I don’t understand why you’re here? You’re not working for General Garland any more, allegedly.’

‘Allegedly?’ He sounded hurt. ‘I’m here for the same reason as you, Mira. To find Matron Sanchez. The colonel’s military crimes are bad enough, but he’s crossed the line, abducting innocent civilians.’

‘Plenty of nasty people in the world,’ she argued. ‘I don’t see you going after any of them.’

‘Few have the means to weaponise you. Kitching can, and will, first chance he gets, and if that happens, it’s game over for every law enforcement agency on the planet.’

‘How? I’m not that valuable. Seeing history doesn’t mean I can change anything the way he wants it.’

‘You can see any password, reveal any secret.’

‘So? I’d never work for him. Bet your life on it. I’d cut out my own eyes first. Or lie. If he wants me to watch any of his enemies or agents plotting against him, I’ll just tell him something else instead. Something that will end up with him dead.’

Lockman sighed heavily. ‘We’ve played this song before, Mira. If you try to mess him around, he’ll take your eyes, and reverse engineer them into hardware that he can sell from a production line — like all the other advanced tech he’s stolen over the years.’

‘That would take forever, if at all. He can’t reverse-engineer
my
hardware without the software that goes with it.’ She tapped her temple to remind him of the synapses that ran like wiring from her eyes to her brain. ‘He can’t even detect the slow light without the
whole kit. He might as well invent a light bulb in a world without electricity.’

‘Don’t underestimate him, Mira. You’re not just an opportunity to him. You’re also a huge threat. He’s already escaped one court martial where you’re the primary witness. He’s also head of a major international black market in weapons, where you can track every dirty deal he’s ever done, or point a finger at every face or name he’s ever dealt with.’

Mira shook her head determinedly. ‘The risk is the same as it’s always been. He’s had plenty of chances to kill me. He could drop a missile on us right now from a mile offshore, if he really wanted to, and yet he’s going to such lengths to learn my strengths and weaknesses. Taking Ben, and now Matron Maddy. Therefore he wants me alive. Therefore I’m safe, relatively speaking.’ She patted his chest and mustered a brave smile. ‘You’re the one who’s expendable to him. Maybe you should hide behind me.’

‘Like that’s going to happen. We can’t be sure what he’s really got planned for you. We don’t even know what he’s been planning for all the advanced weaponry he’s been stockpiling. Last report I saw, he’s not only stealing and trading, he’s also expanding into production and keeping all the best stuff for his own forces.’

Mira threw up her hands in frustration. ‘I’ll make a wish list for you and keep watch for any clues. But I’m only one person, and first I have to find Matron Maddy.’

‘Agreed. Only watch your step.’

‘I’m watching!’ She glanced from balcony to balcony on the higher storeys, and saw her first reflections of the estuary, where the muscled armatures of sailing boats bobbed at anchor, or hugged their berths along the piers.

‘No, really.’ Lockman grabbed her by the elbow and tugged her sharply sideways. ‘There’s broken glass right there. Watch your step.’

‘Oh, sorry.’ Glancing down, she saw the remains of the beer bottle too. ‘Smells stale. Fresh yesterday, though. This time yesterday, the spillage was still soaking away.’

At least it seemed like the same time yesterday. Over the roof of the public shower block, a ghostly purple sun seemed to rise in time with the warmth she could feel from today’s invisible dawn.

Mira turned around, and walked backwards. Easier that way to watch for movement on the upper apartments she’d passed already without straining her neck.

‘What are you doing?’ Lockman asked.

‘This place is giving me the creeps. If I’m walking into a trap, I want to be facing the shortest path to run out.’

‘You’ve got that feeling too, huh?’

‘Squeak, squeak, and Matron Maddy’s the cheese.’

‘If there’s trouble here, it’s still off my radar.’

‘Nothing stirring upstairs?’

‘Nothing that shouldn’t be stirring for work on a weekday anyhow. Same goes aboard all of the nearest sloops. Further out may be a different story. These Night Owls only have a range of three clicks in this mist. Not great for binoculars in day mode.’

Mira chewed on her lip, trying to keep her thoughts clear. ‘No sign of Maddy yesterday yet either. I wonder: instead of doing a full sweep of the alley for each time frame, maybe I should scan each section in here thoroughly before we pass each bend.’

‘Won’t that hurt more, changing shades back and forward so often?’

Mira shrugged and moved to brace herself against the wall again. ‘If it wasn’t for Maddy, I’d still be in a straitjacket at Serenity. Or worse. A lab rat for military research.’

Clever Colonel
, she thought. He knew exactly how to pull her strings to get her to hunt him here.
Except she couldn’t imagine any reason why Kitching would try to lure her to this particular alley using a text message from the matron’s phone. She had to be missing something. A vital clue.

‘More glass,’ Lockman warned her.

Mira turned to check, and found Kitching’s ghost with his back to her, crouched in the middle of the alley, looking lankier and creepier than ever in a dark dripping wetsuit — and
doing something
to a slim, naked body sprawled out in front of him.

Young, blond and … face down.

A teenaged male.

Relief swept over her — but left her guilty for feeling it when someone else was still dead. It wasn’t Maddy lying there, but the adolescent would never take another breath.

Maybelline’s superman.

His boyish shoulders and hips lent him a youthful innocence beneath all the gothic body art — tattoos from neck to toes with snakes and spiders; so thick on most parts of his body they covered him like winter clothes.

A ghostly snake slithered along a nearby wall, away from the body. Strange place for a harmless tree snake, Mira thought, but at that pace it wouldn’t be around for long.

Kitching rose and headed out of the alley; one snake outpacing the other towards the estuary. He didn’t look back but Mira did, and saw what he’d left behind.

A stuffed toy in the halo of blood.

A leopard with diamond-shaped eyes.

Blind like her, yet watching the ghostly killer walk away.

L
ockman scanned the apartment balconies over the inn, keeping watch for any trouble above and behind them. He heard Mira stop and saw the colour run from her face.

Reflex snapped his hand inside his jacket and he swung about with his Glock drawn, silencer on, in search of a target before logic reminded him that whatever had spooked her had happened yesterday.

His hands trembled with unspent adrenaline; too quick on the draw and too ready to kill if the situation presented. Demons that first awakened in the jungles of East Timor. His darkest secret; his fear that they’d set him down the same fatal path that had taken his father. A ticking time bomb. A man who’d burst onto a city street in pursuit of rebel militia, and fired shots that missed his targets and struck a bus full of school children.

Outcast.

Out of control.

Out of his mind and dead now.

In the end, his father had been so lost, he’d been unable to defend himself, let alone his family; a wife, two daughters and son. Lockman’s sisters seemed fine;
one a mother herself now and the other in high school. But Lockman knew all the symptoms of stage one off by heart now: edginess, headaches, insomnia — and it wasn’t the killing that bothered him. So far, he’d never hurt anyone who hadn’t deserved it. Stage one complete. Stage two in progress. The pattern made him worry whether the army had trained the killer into him, or merely awakened it from a deeper darkness that had always lurked within him. Either way, the itch to kill Kitching felt like acid creeping under his skin.

Unlike Mira Chambers. Inspirational beyond her beauty and grace. She’d been treated as insane for a decade and somehow come through it strong and resilient. Training had taught him that her level of resilience should have been impossible; that even the best of the best in special forces could break under a cocktail of drugs and a few years in solitary. He’d been rejected from that elite band of brothers for failing to function as part of a team. Too much of a loner, they’d warned him. Yet she had a certain quiet determination about her that mesmerised him and calmed him in a way that nothing else could. Part wildcat, part angel. The more fiercely she flared, the less he needed to, and it was a kind of magic he needed to learn before she no longer needed him.

Holstering his Glock, he let his eyes linger on her a little too long — until he realised she was staring at the chalky outline of the dead teenager from yesterday’s crime scene. Partially trampled by the media circus that followed. At least that was all
he
could see. Ironically the chalk line was the final graffiti tag that vandal would ever make, and it had not only been drawn by police on his behalf, the overnight dew had already softened and faded the final remnants.

Mira spun against Lockman, looking ill and clutching her stomach.

‘Not pretty,’ he said, wishing he could take her in his arms and comfort her properly. Catching her from
falling didn’t count. He’d seen the gaping ravine across the kid’s forehead during his stakeout, the main wound stretching from left eyebrow to ear, and for her it must have looked just as fresh.

‘You okay?’ He clutched her against his shoulder, trying not to be distracted by the soft spill of her hair over his hand.

She nodded, but not convincingly.

‘Suicide,’ he said, ‘… if you found the dead adolescent.’ He’d listened in on the whole police operation. No point exposing Mira to a hot zone for satellite surveillance until he could be sure she’d be safe, so he’d left her sleeping at their campsite in the nearby rainforest. ‘I should have warned you, sorry, but I didn’t expect you to be so thorough and start the search with yesterday.’

‘Didn’t expect? Or didn’t want?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean? You couldn’t come with me yesterday without getting your face plastered all over the tabloids. And last I knew, you needed at least twenty-four hours between an event and being able to —’

Quiet!
she signalled, and leapt to cover his mouth. Glancing over her shoulder, she behaved as if the body might still be watching her.
Someone’s listening,
she warned him instead. Her elegant hands whispered for the deaf; akin to the abrupt stealth signals he’d used with his team, so he understood her well enough. He only wished he could answer her the same way, without needing to bring her back again the next day so she could see him.

‘Impossible,’ he whispered. ‘I left a signal jammer in the truck with a range of three clicks. Didn’t you hear the static on the chef’s radio? Nobody gets TV this morning either, until after we leave.’

Mira laughed. ‘Are you expecting me to believe that nobody can see us?’

‘Or hear us. Local vandals take out the security cameras whenever they’re fixed, and the jammer takes care of anything they missed.’

Good,
she said with her hands.
So you’re the only one who’ll get to see this …

She splayed her hands across his chest, backed him against the wall, and switched to finger Braille that she typed as if his shirt had become a keyboard. Slower, working in coded chords of words, letter by letter, but as an alternative means for silent communication, she could use the whole vocabulary and reduce the risk of misunderstandings.

Doing it back to her also meant he could reply silently in real time.

Argu as much as u want aloud,
she typed, abbreviating to allow for speed and help minimise her contact with him,
but trust me, please … and believe only this. I saw Kitching …
‘Quit holding out on me,’ she demanded out loud at the same time. ‘Save me the pain of watching the kid die. If you really believe it’s unrelated, just tell me what the police were doing here yesterday.’

Running her light touch down his arms and commanding his attention in every way possible, she found his hands, locked fingers with him, and drew his hands up with hers, splaying all her fingers and thumbs against his as a silent invitation to respond, using her hands as receptors instead of her chest.

Not for the first time, he blessed his lucky stars that his grandmother had taken the time to teach him the rare form of communication when she’d lost her own sight years ago.

What’s the problem?
he asked. ‘I only know what I saw and read in the papers.’

‘Don’t lie to me, Lieutenant.’
Did they find a toy leopard?

A what?

Mira rolled her eyes, and spelled it out again with longer breaks between the letters.

‘I’m not lying!’
No toy. Just the body.
‘Cops arrived same time as a swarm of media, and had their work cut out securing the area.’

‘And since when do the media give two cents about a street kid suicide?’

‘Oh, they weren’t here for the kid, sorry. They were here for the neighbours who witnessed it. Cops barely rolled out the crime scene tape and had to roll it up again when a trio of big names came forward with enough details of the kid’s swan dive off the roof of the shower block.’

‘Big names, like who?’

Don’t ask,
he replied with his hands. ‘Just the penthouse owner and a couple of singers.’
You met one in the car park.
‘They live on a boat, I think. Nothing to do with us.’

‘Okay, which penthouse?’ she asked.

He pointed up, then remembered she couldn’t see him. Easy to forget when she always seemed so capable. ‘There’s only one. It takes up the whole top floor. Owner is a woman who’d seen the kid dealing drugs in the alley a few times, and tagging walls with obscenities. Same story from most of the other boat owners. None of them saw the leap itself, only the fall, and evidence suggested either suicide or he slipped by accident. Bottom line: police wrote him off as a death by misadventure.’
So where does the toy fit in?

I saw Kitching leave it with the body.
‘What else aren’t you telling me, Lieutenant?’ She threw his old rank at him as if it was mud — a performance for whichever ears she believed had found a way to listen in, he realised, but it still frustrated him that she persisted in driving that spike between them.

You first.
‘He was just a street kid. Kevin Stoush. Age nineteen. No fixed address. His blood tests
returned positive on a cocktail of drugs and alcohol.’
Are you sure it was a toy leopard?

Spotted cat. Fake eyes and fur. What else could it be?
‘Come on. You must know more if you know the results of his blood tests? Media wouldn’t be getting that bulletin until later today, surely?’

Maybe a lynx?
‘Not sure what you mean.’ And he really didn’t. Sure, his sergeant had been murdered in the same alley. Same shade of twilight over the bay; the sarge dead by dusk, the kid by dawn. Same splay of the arms and legs too, more or less. But that’s where the similarities ended. No sign of a bullet in the teenager. No spray of his flesh on the wall.

‘I mean, maybe you’ve still got a few lines open to military intelligence. If there’s someone leaking inside information to you about him, makes me worry what you may be leaking back to them about me.’

‘Mira! I’d never —’

Sorry!
She shouted silently with her hands.
He mustn’t know how much I need you!
‘Talk’s cheap,’ she added, then laid her hands and forehead softly over his heart in a rare show of affection. ‘I have less faith in you than I ever did in Ben.’

She smiled up at him and patted his chest.

He couldn’t stand it any longer; he grabbed her by the shoulders, spinning her back to the wall, exchanging places. His killer instinct awoke with a jolt. If anyone wanted her now, they’d have to get through him first.

She found his face with her magical fingers, cupped his cheek, and the rage drained almost instantly.

‘You scare me,’ she whispered. ‘You really do.’

He sighed heavily, wishing it wasn’t true, but whenever that killer instinct awoke, he scared himself. ‘I don’t mean to.’ The idea repulsed him, yet every time he thought of her in enemy hands, he lusted for blood in a way that needed no gun.

‘Back off then, and give me some space.’ Splaying open her hands, she invited him back to her instead. ‘I’m working here.’

‘Then let’s work.’ He met her slim fingers in keen relief.
You had me for a second
. Right up until she’d said that thing about not trusting him or Ben. If he didn’t know her so well, or hadn’t seen the truth shining up from her smile, he might have believed that too.

What’s a lynx?
she asked, all business again.

His hands took a little longer to settle; a slight tremble, the Braille equivalent of a stutter. Made him feel stupid and pathetic in front of her.

Like a small leopard
, he explained.
Think of a bobcat from North America.
‘You wanted to know about the penthouse. Did I mention the owner’s name?’ He glanced up, keeping his hands in light contact with Mira’s …
Can’t be coincidence. No such thing.
‘Headlines called her Lina the Lynx.’

‘Sounds mysterious.’

‘More like a socialite who’s aged into a recluse. Her husband went to jail a few years ago for playing naughty games in their rooftop spa with minors.’

Mira shook her head, thoughtfully.
It can’t be a message for her too. Those eyes … it had to be a warning for me.

What warning?

I can’t tell you here. There’s no time.

She moved to turn away, but he pulled her back to him, matching thumb to thumb and fingers to fingers, re-enabling their two-way conversation.
Make time.

She chewed on her lip, as if the slipping seconds were only the smallest of her concerns.
I wasn’t the only patient at Serenity with Fragile X Syndrome
, she confessed silently.
The frail gene that made me like this is actually more common than webbed toes or fingers, and normally just as harmless. Follow me?

He tapped his thumbs with hers twice to signal agreement.
You’re suggesting there could be someone else like you?
Seemed inevitable eventually, since roughly half the population of the world carried the frail chromosomes, and not just humans. Every species with an X–Y male–female paired gene experienced unique mutations every few generations. Bloodstock 101; essential knowledge for any kid growing up on a cattle station.
I’m probably a carrier myself. So what of it?

Coincidence is the biggest bastard in a gene pool.

No such thing as coincidence, but fate can be cruel … You said time was short?

She nodded.
Colonel Kitching has an older brother.

Freddie Leopard?
Lockman frowned.
Don’t tell me you mean that old screwball at Serenity who thought he could hear the …

Uh-oh, Lockman thought.
The future?

Mira nodded.
He really can. I see the past, he hears the future.

Oh, hell, he thought.
Does the Colonel know?

He shouldn’t. He dumped Freddie at the asylum decades ago so he could run off and join the army and they haven’t seen or spoken to each other since. That’s the last I knew, but we have to be careful. That toy leopard has to mean something.

Maybe Ben said something while he was being tortured for information about you?

Maybe, but at the time he was taken, he’d been designing social programs for Freddie as if he was just plain old vanilla crazy. Outside of Matron Maddy, you’re the first I’ve ever told.

And now the Colonel has her.

Actually, part of me still hopes she’s just a normal missing person.

Lockman spun away, raking his fingers through his hair. He’d grown used to missions blowing up in his face, but this seemed way out of his league.

Mira’s hands found his back, distracting him.

What’s wrong?
she typed lightly across his shoulders.

‘Don’t,’ he said, before he could stop himself. He turned and gathered her hands.
Sorry, it’s just a lot to process.