Nightmares of Caitlin Lockyer (Nightmares Trilogy) (13 page)

I watched the ducklings scoot around the pond for a few moments, before turning my attention back to her. She looked so happy, as if there were nothing else on her mind at all. As if none of this had ever happened.

I looked around again, more as a precaution than any feeling that it was necessary. Sunlight glinted off something. It took me a second to realise it was a camera lens.

"Time to go, angel," I told her. "Look, they're taking photos of us."

I lifted her back to the wheelchair and started to push her up the shortest path to the hospital entrance.

"Wait!" I heard the shout behind me. "Please, I just want to ask a few questions!"

"Do you want to answer them, angel?" I asked her, walking as fast as I could with her.

"No." She sounded scared.

I broke into a run as we approached the doors, trying to get her to the lifts before they could follow us. I caught the eye of the security guard as we sped past. I jerked my head in the direction of the reporters following us and he nodded, moving to the entrance to bar their way.

We made it into a lift just before the doors closed and travelled back up to her floor in silence. Too out of breath to say anything, I helped Caitlin back to her room and into her bed before I collapsed into the chair beside her.

I grabbed for the water jug, sloshing water into a glass and gulping most of it down as I struggled to catch my breath.

"Why would any reporter want to interview me?" Caitlin asked, bewildered.

I looked up from my glass to her, wondering if she was joking. "The missing girl back from the dead? When anyone else would have died? You're a real-life Harry Potter – look." I rummaged through the pocket of the laptop bag and pulled out the newspaper I'd kept from that first morning in hospital. An old photo of her, taken before she went missing, smiled from the front page, above the headline
CAITLIN FOUND
. The article itself was short, telling how her body had been discovered on a south-west beach early that morning where she'd been left to die, before she'd been transported to a hospital in Perth where she remained in a critical condition.

Caitlin looked at the article, still puzzled.

"This is all the press has on you," I told her. "The police won't tell them anything else. They want an interview with you, but the hospital won't give out any more information, either."

"But
... I don't want to talk about it. Why would they care about me?"

I laughed.
"Because you're news. They've had almost daily features with lots of pictures of you while you were missing, hoping someone would come out with information that would help the police find you. Now someone's found you and they want to know all about it." I paused. "It probably helps that you look good in photographs."

"What will they do now, when they took photos but didn't get any answers?"

"Print the pictures and make something up." I smiled broadly. "We should read the paper tomorrow." And I'll keep that one, too, I thought but didn't say. "I'll go speak to security and make sure you don't get any visitors or phone calls you don't want."

"Well that's fucking useless. You and her on the front cover of
The West
– what's the point trying to hide her now? And you've learned... what, exactly?"

I winced, wishing I hadn't called in my report. But it was better than receiving an angry phone call when tomorrow's paper had my picture in it. "She's told me what she remembers, but it's all vague and hazy. There were four men who hurt
her, she heard the name Chris, the red Mercedes, being tied up in the dark, repeated abuse, the names cut into her skin..." I swallowed, finding it hard to continue.

"Most of that we already knew before she woke up.
New info, Nathan – what has she told you to help us find them?"

"They held her outside the city, somewhere outside of any town – the water they gave her to drink wasn't chlorinated city water. She didn't hear any sounds from outside, so it was well insulated or isolated," I said quickly, trying to tell every tiny detail. "I think she knows a lot more, but she needs someone to help her remember it. That takes time and
..."

"Well, you're out of fucking time now. Unless she spills her guts to you in the next hour or two, it's time for a change of plan." I heard a slurp, as if he was drinking coffee.

"What change of plan?" I asked uneasily.

"None of them are stupid enough to come after her in hospital. So she's going home. Maybe they'll target her there." He sounded completely unfazed. "Better than a month of close surveillance with nothing to show for it,
which is what we have now."

"You're going to leave Caitlin unprotected and use her as
bait
for those bastards?" I blurted out, horrified.

"Now, no name-calling.
They're fucking potential terror suspects. The girl would be dead anyway if it weren't for your intervention, and by all accounts, including yours, she's pretty damn damaged anyway, so it's a small risk compared to what else and who else could be at stake if we don't get them." I heard his business-like tone but it sounded pretty fucking callous to me.

"She's not damaged. She's recovering. You mean I saved her life only to risk it again to catch the
...
potential terror suspects
who tried to kill her the first time? I can't ask her to do that... she'll never agree to be bait in a trap. Especially not if it means they'll get near her again!" I barked into my phone. Some hospital visitors carrying flowers looked at me in alarm, before hurrying off down the ward.

"Fuck, Nathan, you're not stupid enough to think we're going to tell her, are you? She'll go home and we'll just keep an eye out for anyone suspicious approaching her house. We'll send a team in and we'll have our suspects!" He laughed. I wanted to smash his phone through his teeth. Maybe calling in reports wasn't such a bad thing, after all. I'd hate to find out what ASIO would do to me for punching my superior in the face.

I tried to keep my voice down, but it was bloody hard. "And what if our team is slow and doesn't get there in time? What if they reach Caitlin before we can stop them?"

He'd stopped laughing. "That's a risk we'll have to take. If she won't tell us what we need to know, then she's more valuable as a possible target than as a source of information. Don't make this personal, Nathan. She's not your sister. She's a girl you barely know."

I lost it. "Yes, sir, I know Caitlin's not one of my sisters, because Alanna died in a lot of pain at the hands of your
suspects
and Chris will be next if we don't find them. Caitlin's the miracle girl who managed to survive, despite everything they did to her. We owe her for any info she can give us on the suspects – I owe her, if she can help me keep them from Chris." My voice broke. "Please – let me stay with her for another week or two, in case I notice anything the surveillance guys don't pick up. Maybe... maybe she'll tell me more and we can still go with the original plan, finding out where they are so we can arrest them before they reach her."

"What'll you do if I say no?" He sounded amused, but it wasn't fucking funny.

"I'll..." Obey orders and let Caitlin die? Ignore my orders and protect her anyway? Beg you to change your mind? Shoot her myself because it's more humane than what they'll do to her? "I'll take personal leave and do what I can on my own time."

There was silence, then another slurp. "You have two more weeks, tops. But you tell her nothing about
who you work for or that she's under surveillance. I want her to look scared and worried, like an easy target. You'll have to use every bit of your charm on this one, if you expect her to let you live in her house." He took a deep breath. "Fuck. Good luck keeping her alive, Nathan. It'll be bloody bad press for our department if we manage to accidentally kill the girl on the front cover of tomorrow's
West
."

Oh, shit. My
charm wasn't worth shit with Caitlin. And she'd never survive without me. "I'll do my utmost," I swore, desperately hoping it would be enough to keep Caitlin alive.

"You do that," he said before he hung up.

I let out a long-held breath, wondering what the chances were of me not fucking this up. Slim to none, was my best guess. And I was betting with Caitlin's life. The stakes were far too high for me, and I couldn't even tell her what I'd done. Fuck, I wouldn't want to, either. If I failed, she'd kill me.

She'd had her fingers free for two days, so they discharged Caitlin that afternoon, before any more press turned up. I offered to give her a lift home right away and, rather than have to call anyone else and wait longer, she accepted.

Now that her stitches were out, she could walk a little, but I was the one who walked alongside the unfamiliar nurse
pushing her wheelchair. She was slow, but I kept pace with them until we reached the outside doors. I saw Michael take up his position on a couch in the foyer. He nodded to me once before turning his eyes back to Caitlin.

Secure in the knowledge that she was under surveillance still and she'd be safe 'til I returned, I asked Caitlin to wait while I brought the car to her. She nodded and shifted to a seat by the door, before the nurse whisked the wheelchair back inside. I set off across the car park, my swift strides carrying me quickly across the tarmac. Surveillance or not, I didn't want to leave Caitlin alone for long.

I pulled the car up under the portico at the entrance, but there was an ambulance in my way. I could see Caitlin sitting on the bench beside it, looking little and vulnerable. She stared at the paving below her dangling feet, for the bench was too high for her toes to touch the ground. She wore clothes I'd hurriedly bought from the nearest supermarket and they didn't fit her. Even the cheap pair of thongs hung from her feet, a few centimetres of green foam rubber clearly visible past her heels. An abandoned waif in oversized clothing, looking as lonely as if she'd been left there for good. My heart ached for her as I waited and watched.

Michael caught my eye and nodded again as he stood up. He stuck his magazine under his arm and marched out of the hospital, without another glance at Caitlin or me. His watch was over for the day – now it was my responsibility to get her home, before the next surveillance shift started at her house.

I waited patiently until the ambulance officers headed off. I drove into the space they'd sat in, right in front of Caitlin. From forlorn to frantic, the change was as sudden as cutting the car's engine. I stopped and she panicked, lurching to her feet and nearly tripping as she tried to retreat inside the hospital foyer.

I got out of the car, running around to her. "Caitlin, what's wrong? What are you doing?"

She shook her head. "They're not going to take me back. I'll die first!"

I looked around wildly, scanning the car park for any sign of danger, but I saw none. What had she seen that I'd missed?

I approached her slowly, but she shrank away, backing up against the window beside the automatic doors. "I won't get into their car again. Not you – you can't take me back!" Her eyes were huge with horror.

Their car?
My car. Oh, fuck, I forgot about the car.

I stood in front of her now, shaping my expression into a smile to mask my desire to smack myself in the head for being so stupid. "It's not their car. It's mine."

"No – I trusted you!"

I started to understand the extent of her terror.

Through the glass behind her, I saw the hospital security guard speaking to the receptionist as she pointed urgently at us. He turned to look and started toward the entrance, looking grim. He wasn't the guard who'd been on duty that morning, keeping the reporters from Caitlin. This was a new bloke who didn't know me or her, and this scene looked bad from any perspective. Oh, shit.

Every instinct went against it, but I forced myself to back away from her, my hands up in a gesture of surrender. Behind her, one security guard had become two and the newcomer knew me on sight, not least of all from his help that morning. I could see him speaking urgently to the first bloke, his hands waving wildly as he shook his head.

The helpful one... I struggled to remember his name. I knew I'd spoken to him before and he'd had a distinct accent... Sam? No, Sean. The dark-haired Irish bloke.

Sean the security guard looked enquiringly at me and I gave a slight nod, which he returned, walking away. His colleague looked grumpy, but headed away, too.

Right, that sorted security escorting me off the premises and leaving Caitlin with no one else to watch over her. I still had to get her into the car and home.

Looking at Caitlin again, I pointed at the bench. "I'm going to sit down. If you want, you can join me," I told her evenly, as I took careful steps to the bench and plonked my bum on it.

She was slower to move, but it was only a few seconds before she slumped down heavily on the bench next to me. I regretted letting her stay on her feet so long – she looked pale and clammy already.

"This is my car. It's been my car since I turned twenty-one and my parents bought it for me for my birthday," I said steadily.
Yeah, they'd bought me a blocky, conservative car that said I had money but couldn't take off fast, for that wouldn't mean a smooth ride in the luxury bloody sedan.