The Tortured Rebel (12 page)

Except to relive a particular part of her life. From someone else’s point of view.

To see just how much damage she had really done.

And she’d done it to the one person she truly loved.

It was unbearable.

T
HE
plan had turned to custard.

He was supposed to have stopped in Auckland for the night. There were colleagues from his early days at Auckland General who would have been glad enough to see him. An impromptu barbecue might well have been organised by one of them and a reunion party would have gained momentum.

And maybe that was why Jet hadn’t stopped to find a motel and make some calls, even though he’d already been on the road for too many hours today and was bone weary.

He would have been welcomed, he knew that. He was a minor celebrity amongst the dozens of people from med school and the wide variety of departments he’d cycled through as a junior doctor.

His identity had never been unique, though, had it? He was known as one of the ‘bad boys’ and it was the group as a whole that people had been drawn to. Even if he’d been the star attraction at a party, everyone would have been remembering the ‘bad boy’ who wasn’t there any more and probably carefully avoiding the subject. They would enquire about Max and Rick instead, eager to know what they were up to these days.

Had he ever had a real identity that was all his own? His early childhood was a fuzzy blur of memories he’d rather not explore. ‘Jet’ Munroe had been born, in a way, when he’d arrived at Greystones Grammar and found that connection with Matt that had led to the others. They were the ones that had come up with the nickname and James Munroe had ceased to exist in any meaningful way.

There was only one person who might really see him as an individual. Might even understand and accept him, warts and all.

Becca.

Jet slowed his bike as he reached unsealed roads and gravel spat in warning when he slewed sideways. He was in a semi-rural area well north of Auckland city. The rich farmland had been sliced into small ‘lifestyle’ blocks and their proximity to New Zealand’s largest city made them some of the priciest real estate in the country.

The old Harding estate wasn’t far from here. The place that had given the underprivileged James Munroe a taste of what it was like to have extreme wealth.

That wasn’t what had subconsciously drawn him back, though. It was the taste of family he’d also been given.

That bond with Matt.

And Becca.

Not that he had any intention of going near the property. He didn’t want to see the outdoor pool complex and remember the time he’d noticed that Becca was becoming such a beautiful young woman.

He didn’t want to scan the hills because he knew he’d be trying to spot the gully they’d camped out in that
night. When Becca had danced around the flames of that bonfire, yearning for the kind of adventures she’d thought only boys were entitled to.

Yes. She would understand him all right.

The memories would be waiting for him even if the property was no longer owned by the Harding family. Or was it? Jet knew that Becca’s parents had died a few years ago. It had hit the news when they’d been amongst the unfortunate tourists that had been killed by that tsunami in Thailand.

Had Becca kept her inheritance? Funny that he’d never thought to ask, or even offer sympathy for the loss of her remaining family. The loss they’d really needed to talk about had taken precedence and even that had been engulfed by the tension of their situation and the form of release they’d indulged in.

He had to stop. He needed a break or he’d be putting himself, and possibly others on the road, in danger. Not just from his physical weariness but from the sabotage of thinking processes that any thoughts of Becca were capable of. Especially any that involved what had happened between them physically.

The old stone church up ahead on this road was an entirely logical place to pull over. Totally deserted on a weekday and heavily somnolent on a late, sunny afternoon. Ancient trees offered enticing shade and the scent of old roses hung heavy on the air. When Jet parked his bike round the back of the church and pulled off his helmet, the only sounds were the buzzing of bees and the clear notes of native bellbirds.

His whole body felt stiff after so many hours hunched over his bike. Hanging his helmet over the handlebars, he set off to walk a little and stretch. It was only when
he turned the corner and saw the heavy wooden door set into the stone arch beneath the steeple that he realised exactly where it was he’d chosen to stop.

Custard was far too soft a word for what had happened to his plans. This was more like some kind of implosion. How could he not have recognised this place? OK, it had been ten years since he’d been here and the visit had been brief and awful, but this had to be the only church within a huge radius of the Harding property.

At some level, he’d known, of course. He’d simply ignored it and allowed himself to be drawn in. He must have wanted this.

Why?

A form of protest, maybe? Claiming the right he’d been denied all those years ago?

None of them had been welcome at the funeral as far as Matt’s immediate family was concerned and everybody else there had been embarrassed by their exclusion. They all knew that these three young doctors should have been amongst the pallbearers. To be allowed to be with one of their own at the very end. To honour and respect a friend who was as close as any brother could have been.

Neither had they been allowed to be with him when they’d turned off the life support and let Matt die. They’d been out on the road together. Three ‘bad boys’ exceeding a speed limit on a back road not a million miles from here. They reckoned Matt had been riding pillion with them that day—the exit his spirit would have wanted.

But the funeral? They’d come late and stood in a silent row beside the door, holding their helmets. Jet had been holding two. His own, and Matt’s. They’d left before the graveside ceremony. Before Becca could publicly shame
them for not having done what they should have done, and saved her brother.

He’d never come back.

There would be a memorial to Matt somewhere in this churchyard and he’d never even seen it.

That
was why he was here.

Maybe he’d known all along when he’d taken off on this lonely journey that this was where he’d end up. His life was in chaos. He would pick up the pieces and move on but a whole chapter of it was closing and he had to accept that first. Total closure couldn’t happen until he completed what he should have done a long, long time ago.

It wasn’t hard to find the headstone in the small country graveyard. A simple memorial that had only the name Matthew Samuel Harding and two dates, the year of his birth and that of his death. Jet didn’t have to do any kind of calculation to know the difference was only twenty six.

The last of the day’s sun pressed down on him as he stood, staring down at the headstone. It made him far too hot in his leathers but he didn’t want to leave just yet.

‘I’m here, mate,’ he muttered aloud, ‘but it’s flippin’ hot, isn’t it? I’m going to go and sit under that tree for a bit.’

The oak tree was well over a hundred years old and the branches so heavy with acorns they drooped almost to ground level. Jet sat down, propping his back against the gnarled trunk. He was here, and it felt right. He would stay and soak in the peace and somehow something would fall into place and he’d be able to move on.

A tension he hadn’t realised had been such a huge knot inside him began to ease.

Jet closed his eyes and simply let it happen.

Going home wasn’t an option.

No way could Becca be in her apartment by herself the way she was feeling by the end of her shift. The tragedy of the young doctor’s wife had been the only topic of conversation as she’d flown her crew back to base.

‘Poor guy,’ Tom had said, not for the first time. ‘He’s going to blame himself for the rest of his life.’

‘As if there was anything he could have done, anyway. Man, they’re scary things, aneurysms. Who’s to know we don’t have a time bomb like that ticking away in our own heads?’

‘Some people survive, don’t they?’ What was she trying to do? Becca asked herself. Find some kind of exoneration for blaming Jet? A plausible reason to have never totally forgiven him?

‘Depends on the size of the bleed,’ Tom told her. ‘If it’s small enough and you’re close enough to a first-class neurosurgical unit, you’ve got a reasonable chance. A big bleed, especially if the brain stem’s affected, the best you could hope for is to get someone on life support for long enough to make organs available for donation.’

‘She would have had to have been in hospital already for that,’ Ben observed. ‘Respiratory and cardiac function got knocked out almost immediately, by the sound of it.’

‘Poor guy.’ It was Becca saying it now. ‘I hope he’ll be OK.’

She’d told him it wasn’t his fault and she’d been a hundred per cent sincere.

She could have been saying it to Jet with just as much sincerity and maybe, in her heart, that was exactly what she
was
doing.

Would she ever be able to tell him that face to face? It wasn’t a question of forgiving him at all because there was nothing to forgive.

No. That wasn’t true.

There was plenty that needed forgiveness but not from her. She was the one who needed to
be
forgiven.

The misery that had been circling for days was drawing closer and threatening to pull her under but Becca knew just how to deal with that. As soon as she got home, she stripped off her red flight suit and donned a very different set of clothes. An old, soft T-shirt. Tight black leather pants. Heavy boots that were very like her workboots apart from the silver studs that decorated them. A leather jacket with well-padded elbows went on last and she zipped it up and then fastened the studs on the flap that covered the zipper.

She collected her helmet from the table near the door and went out to her garage.

Her latest motorbike was only a couple of months old. She’d waited for its delivery with bated breath since she’d seen the advertisement and knew she had to upgrade.

‘Light enough for a woman,’ it had read, ‘with power made for a man.’

She’d been riding bikes for years but this was, indeed, something special. The speed and adrenaline rush of a good blast would be even better than the turbulence
she’d unsuccessfully wished for on the way back from the Coromandel peninsula that afternoon.

Becca didn’t give any particular destination any head room. She simply got out of the city and went for it. Only logical, really, that she found she’d taken a route so embedded in her memory it was automatic. Not that there was any point going near her property. She’d had it land banked and leased out ever since inheriting the acreage. She wasn’t sure she ever wanted to set foot on it again.

There was somewhere else out here she hadn’t been in a while, though.

The only place she could still feel close to her brother and talk to him without feeling like a complete head case. She sure needed someone to talk to today and Matt would have understood. Sorting her thoughts into words and just imagining what he might have said would help.

It had helped on more than one occasion in the past.

It was the throaty roar of a Ducati engine that woke Jet from a deep slumber in the long grass under the oak tree.

Someone was stealing his bike, dammit!

Leaping to his feet, he raced past the gravestones and around the back of the church. He could just see the sleek lines of his beloved black bike heading out of the churchyard. It took off with a burst of speed that sprayed gravel and raised a cloud of dust.

He skidded to a halt then, utterly confused.

His bike was exactly where he’d left it.

But it had definitely been a similar engine he’d heard and the bike had been black.

Who else would be riding a classy sports bike like that out here? Who would have wanted to come into an isolated place like this on a sleepy afternoon?

The answer came as he recaptured the image of the departing bike. He could only just hear it way up the road now but even from this distance he could detect something about the sound that wasn’t quite what he would have expected. Less.grunty. He’d thought it was his bike, but what if it just looked that big because the figure on it was small?

Who else would come here?

He didn’t need three guesses. How many women were gutsy enough to be riding a superbike, come to that?

But where the hell was she going now? She’d taken off in the opposite direction from getting back to town.

Kicking his bike into life, Jet took off.

He had no idea where this gravel road was heading. Fortunately it had straight stretches so he could catch frequent glimpses of the dust cloud ahead but it was proving hard to catch up.

Riding this fast on an unsealed road was crazy. Jet could feel his face settle into lines that got progressively grimmer as each minute passed. Not only was the surface of this road unstable, they were getting into hilly country and there were tight bends. He felt his own back wheel slip and he started muttering oaths that matched his expression.

This kind of behaviour was so reckless it was downright stupid. He could use his bike like it was an extension of his own body but he was struggling to stay in control here. He would have slowed down. Turned
around and gone home, in fact, if it had been anybody else in the world ahead of him. Instead, his fury mounted and his speed increased.

Until he was right behind her. And still she didn’t see him, so intent was she on pushing herself and her bike to the absolute limit. A dramatic spurt of speed on a straight stretch that actually lifted the front wheel of her bike into the air like some trick rider at a bike show. A sideways skid that had him catching his breath in horror but somehow she threw her weight and righted the bike from its dangerous slant. A bend that was so tight he could see her boot making a furrow in the chips of stone. A bend that went on and on.

And right at the end of that bend she lost it. The bike tipped just that fraction farther and then shot sideways with sparks coming from its metal. It seemed to increase speed as it hit the side of the road and became airborne. The rider came off at that point and, as Jet came to a slewing halt on the road, he could see the small, leather-clad body curl itself into a ball as it hit the ground and roll away downhill until it got caught in clumps of dense tussock.