Necessary Evil of Nathan Miller (23 page)

I covered my smile with my coffee cup,
drinking deeply.

"Alanna warned me about him, but she
knew he wouldn't be able to resist me."

Chris set her cup down in shock. "You
knew her? How old are you?"

I lifted my gaze to meet hers. "I’m the
same age as you. He told me about you, so I knew..." Her shock made
me shorten my sentence.
He hasn't told her anything. Is he
trying to protect her?
"I knew who you were when you visited
him in hospital. I'm sorry I wasn't awake enough to introduce
myself then. The pain drugs kept me pretty out of it."

"He drops girls if they start getting
too close. Just don’t let him hurt you," she said.

Don't get too attached, in other words.
You might be my age, but you know nothing about bastards who hurt
girls.

I smiled. "Nathan? He wouldn't dare
hurt me. He'd do anything to help me get well again." I took a
mouthful of coffee that went down the wrong way. Coughing, I tried
to find my voice again. "He said he never wanted to see me hurt." I
coughed again, harder.

Through the window, I saw Nathan start
toward the house. I heard the sound of a screen door opening and
slamming.

"Are the dreams about her? Is he taking
anything for them?" I asked urgently.

"They used to be, but he got better
after a while. Maybe it was the Temaze sleeping pills his doctor
gave him," she replied in a hurried whisper. "Now they're about
you. And he doesn't have any pills left. He won't go to the doctor
for more, either. It's like he's afraid to admit how many he's
taken. I don't know what to do to help him. He should stay away
from you and anything to do with Alanna, but he won't listen to my
advice. He won't even talk to me."

Nor me.

My eyes filled with tears of pity for
Nathan. He was doing his utmost for me and his sister, but he
needed to heal more than I did. And I was in no fit state to help
him – I was my own mess. And his sleeping pills...he had none left
because he’d given them all to me. To save me from pain. So
self-absorbed, I hadn't noticed that he was hurting worse than
me.

Nathan's arms around me were a warm and
welcome addition. I hugged him back, wishing I could take away his
pain.

"What did you say to her?" Nathan
demanded.

I looked up, but he wasn't talking to
me.

"I don't know," Chris said. She gave me
a meaningful look, like she wished we could continue the
conversation.

I wanted the opposite – time to reflect
on what I'd learned about Nathan and his family, before asking her
any more. After all, Nathan had told her very little about me for
some reason – and I didn't want to burst her bubble that she lived
in a perfect world where people didn't get hurt, kidnappings
resulted in happy endings and rape was something that happened to
other people.

I wished I had the same kind of bubble,
but my soap had turned to scum and there was no changing it back.
Time to clean up the mess and make the best of it.
Of course
Nathan will stand by me, no matter what, until they're all dead and
I'm safe. Or will Chris be right, and he'll hurt me before he
leaves me?

I told them both that I wanted to go
home.

"Are you sure?" Nathan and Chris asked
at the same time.

I nodded.

I'll be right. I have to be.

Part 71

Beach – Stars – Sand – Shots – Surf –
Chris – Nathan – Numb

I was floating. No pain – nothing
holding me down, anymore. Something cold touched my face and I
opened my eyes slowly. I recoiled from the dark shape hovering over
me.

"It's okay. I'm just washing your
face," said a voice I barely recognised.

I shivered in what felt like a cold
wind. It couldn't be. I looked around fearfully. I looked up, and
saw the contrast of pinprick stars on the darker black of the open
sky. "Where are we?"

"We're at a beach, out of there, away
from them." His voice sounded different, that was why I didn't
recognise it immediately. More abrupt, more certain. More
authoritative. "There's something I have to do here."

"You got me out. Thank you, Chris!" I
felt a surge of joy well up, bringing tears to my eyes, barely able
to believe it was possible.

He was silent, and I looked at him to
see the reason for it. I was shocked to see he held my hands in his
– I couldn't feel his touch, and they didn't look like my hands –
they were twisted and swollen, dark with blood to well past my
wrists. As he held my hands, he said, "Can you trust me?"

"Okay." I was surprised that he'd
bothered to ask, after all that had happened.

He suddenly turned to face the dunes,
looking worried. "Wait here. I'll be back." He got up and jogged
off into the dunes, leaving me alone. "...first aid kit..." were
the only words I could discern as he took off.

I tried to move, but my body wouldn't
respond. There was no feeling left in my legs, and my hands were
numb from the wrists down. I tried to call out, to tell him to
wait, not to leave me alone like this, but even my voice wasn't
strong enough. Just as I started to panic, I heard footsteps
approaching me across the sand.

I struggled to sit up, realising too
late as I managed it that I was wrapped in a blanket, which slipped
off my shoulders, exposing most of my top half to the freezing
wind. I clumsily attempted to pull it back up again with my numb,
mangled fingers, but failed miserably.

Somehow, I collapsed on the sand again,
my head spinning. So cold already, I barely felt him rip the
blanket away from me and toss it aside.

I should have fought, but it was like
moving through cold water and I was so tired, so tired! "Sadistic
prick," I mumbled.

I couldn't even feel the pain any more.
I heard a voice, but I didn't care enough to focus on what it
meant. I closed my eyes, drifting into sleep.

A sharp pain woke me and I cried out,
opening my eyes as I struggled to sit up, convinced I'd been
stabbed.

He pushed me back down, his voice an
unintelligible sound that I couldn't focus on, but I fought him
now, desperate to see if I'd dreamed it.

Then he was gone.

A gun in my hands. I couldn't feel it,
had to touch it to my face to be sure I had it.

"End it," I murmured.

A gasp. No.

Tugging, snapping, took it from me. The
gun was gone.

Shots.

"Wake up, angel."

Nathan, saying, "It's over."

"Chris…" I mumbled.

"It's all right, he's dead," Nathan
replied.

Part 72

Nathan dropped me off at home and I
made vague excuses to get rid of him. I had a meeting with his boss
and I didn't want him involved in it. I hadn't told him I knew his
secret and I didn't want to yet. Not before I knew the whole
story.

His colleague Navid drove me. He didn't
say a word to me for the whole trip. I wondered if that was
protocol or personal.

He escorted me to the reception desk,
where he handed me a visitor badge. "You need to sign in here and
then I'll take you to see Mr Mott." I lifted the pen to sign the
visitor book. "Don't trust him."

I looked up. "What did you say?"

He pressed his lips together. "Sign
in?" he prompted.

I finished signing in and clipped on my
badge as I followed him into the small office area. ASIO didn't
have a very big presence in Perth – presumably the rest of their
operations were in Canberra.

The office belonged to Paul Mott – it
said so on the door. Navid knocked cautiously on the glass and was
told to come in.

He cracked the door open and ushered me
inside, closing it behind me.

"So you're the girl my team has been
babysitting," Mott said with a wide smile, holding out his hand to
shake mine.

I inclined my head and didn't offer him
my fingers. He looked like the type who'd crush them in what
bastards like him called, "a firm handshake," but was more like an
attempt to break the other man's fingers first. As Navid had
advised, I didn't trust a man whose smile didn't reach his
eyes.

He recovered quickly. "Have a seat," he
said, waving at the one in front of his desk. The client's chair,
of course. He ensconced himself in his throne behind the desk. I
didn't tell him I had the same sort of desk chair in my music
room.

"Now, what was it you wanted to discuss
with me?" He arranged his face in another insincere smile.

"Why are your team babysitting me?" I
asked bluntly.

"I'd have thought that was obvious," he
drawled. "You've been the victim of violence and my team is doing
their best to ensure it doesn't happen again."

"I don't buy it," I responded. "ASIO
doesn't care about a bunch of rapists and perverts kidnapping a
girl. And most ASIO operatives don't carry weapons. Even the police
wouldn't assign me a guard when someone broke into my house. Your
team was there and didn't prevent the break-in, either."

His face gradually developed two pink
spots on his cheeks, reddening as I continued.

"ASIO wouldn't hire Nathan Miller. He
has too personal a stake in this. And he's trying to get
information out of me, but he's so clumsy at it I find it hard to
believe he's ever done this before." I wet my lips. "So. Why are
your team babysitting me?"

He hesitated. "Protecting you until
Nathan gets your valuable information, as you put it."

"Do you think he'll get it?"

His eyes darted away before returning
to me. "Do you?" he countered.

I laughed. A politician's answer from
the prick. "Perhaps," I replied. I leaned forward. "What will you
do if you don't get it?"

"We can't keep babysitting you forever.
Sooner or later I'll reassign resources to where the need is
greater."

I decided to try being nice. "It might
help if you told me exactly what you need. I mean, I can remember a
lot of things. The people who were there the day I was kidnapped.
What happened on the beach before and after the police arrived.
You, telling Nathan not to let the police know things when I was in
hospital." I watched him carefully and was rewarded with a shocked
glance before he regained his composure. My suspicion grew – Mott
was the bastard who'd sent the message to Nathan's phone.

"Standard practice in
counter-terrorism," he blustered. "I wouldn't expect a young girl
like yourself to know anything about national security…"

"No?" I interrupted. "Then why am I
their target?"

"I have no idea," he replied smoothly,
as if he expected the question. From the blankness of his
expression, I guessed that this was an outright lie. "You tell me.
Tell me everything you remember, from the number plate of their car
to the size of each dick they shoved up your arse. Tell me that and
maybe we can catch them. Or I'll assign your babysitters to more
important duties and leave you to be raped to death by the
terrorists you know are hunting you."

I swallowed, trying to wrap my head
around his offensive, hate-filled threat. I had to – or lose my
chance to find out what happened.

"Does that include Nathan Miller? Is he
operating completely under your orders?"

He didn't meet my eyes for a moment, so
I knew the words he uttered next weren't entirely true. "Yes.
Everything Nathan does is in response to a direct order." He
laughed and flashed his insincere smile. "Why, did you think he
loved you? He's our best interrogator, because he'll sleep with the
ugliest hag to earn her trust. I heard his informant was hardly a
hag – a really hot dominatrix. I bet he had fun. You must have been
a real disappointment after her," he sneered. "I didn't expect he'd
sink low enough to seduce a child, but he rose to the occasion like
no one else. Call of duty." He shrugged.

Oh God – he slept with Laura, too.
Who didn't she sleep with? Breathe. Even if this is the man who
tried to get you killed, you can't kill Nathan's boss. Not yet,
anyway.
"What will you do if I give you my memories? Everything
written down, in as much detail as even you could want?" I asked
evenly.

His smile set my teeth on edge. "Why,
then you'd be doing your country a great service."

I laughed. "The country thanks me. No,
I said what will you do?"

"I'll help you disappear into witness
protection, so you'll never need ASIO babysitters again."

I stared at him. "You mean…leave my
life, my family…everything? What kind of life is that?"

"One you get to live," he replied
smoothly. "You're young enough to transfer to another university in
another city without damaging your career. It's not as if you have
a lot of family here – relocation won't be hard for you. And, of
course, you'll change your name."

"What about my musical career? My
band?" I blurted out, horrified.

His eyebrows rose. "I'm sure you can
find some musicians in another city who'd be happy to play with
you." He shrugged.

I jumped to my feet. "Music isn't a
hobby, like photography or writing stories – we're a band. We've
written songs together and we perform them. We have gigs lined up
here in Perth. I can't just leave that. If you want me to kiss my
whole life goodbye, and make me start over in a new city, you're
going to do the same for the rest of my band. Hell, I'd want a
signed recording contract before I'd agree to that."

He laughed unpleasantly. "Do you have
such a contract now?"

"No," I admitted. "But I never will if
we have to start over. It took years to get enough exposure here
for paid gigs. In a new city…who knows how long it'd take? No. I
won't go into witness protection. I'll take my chances with my life
here. Nathan won't let anything happen to me."

"Miller will work on whatever case he's
ordered to. He's not your personal bodyguard." He stared at me like
a snake – not blinking at all. "I have it on good authority that
some of your attackers remain free. Are you willing to take your
chances with them?"