Dead Heat, page 31
‘Enough! Georgia, enough!’
Her wrist was smacked high and her fourth shot hit the ceiling. Little pieces of plasterboard floated down, like snow, and Lee had foiled her final shot, but she didn’t care any more, because Jason Chen was falling, not hard and fast like his father had, but falling all the same as he tried to turn and walk for her. His feet were dragging, his arms dangling at his sides, his head swinging. His gun lay on the floor where he had dropped it.
He stood swaying in front of Georgia and said, surprised, ‘You.’
She felt a tingle in her wedding ring finger, her hideous stump, and raised her eyes to his. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Me.’
Then suddenly she was lifted off her feet and bundled out of there, into the rear courtyard and left along the narrow alley. Lee hustled her along at a rate of knots and as her senses began to clear, she could hear him groaning with each breath, and beyond his grunts of pain, she heard sirens. Not as many as in Brisbane, but then they were in Nulgarra. Maybe two cop cars at most.
‘Mum,’ she gasped.
‘Car.’ Another groan and he staggered, fell to his knees. ‘Your mum . . . in the car. Waiting . . . for you.’
Part of her wanted to burst into a run for his Mitsubishi and her mother, but the other part couldn’t bear to leave him. She grabbed his hand, tried to pull him upright. ‘It’s not far! Come on!’
He seemed to gather his strength and for a moment she thought he really would get to his feet, run with her to the car, but he suddenly slumped and his body went limp, sprawled in the alley. His eyes were closed and his head lolled to one side.
Desperately, she grabbed his wrist. Putting all her weight behind her she tried to drag him down the alley. She could have been trying to drag a sack of bricks, he barely moved.
‘Wake up, Lee! For God’s sake, please!’
One siren was still way off, but the other was closing fast.
‘Lee!’
She was tugging and pulling at him, half-sobbing, half-yelling, but he didn’t move, couldn’t hear her pleas. Then she took in the flood of blood pouring from his chest and suddenly realised he wouldn’t be getting up, not for a long time, if at all.
Forty
Siren screaming down the street. Chirp of rubber. Blue beam of light pulsing over Lee’s unconscious form.
The bulky form of a man raced for her, gun drawn, then he stopped.
‘Put down your weapon!’ he yelled.
She’d forgotten she was still holding the Glock.
‘Put it down or I’ll fire!’
Georgia bent forward and was about to place her gun on the ground by Lee, when he yelled, ‘Throw it towards me! Now! Do it!’
She chucked it his way and was standing there with raised hands, palms spread when he yelled, ‘On your knees!’
She did as he said. Her bare thigh brushed Lee’s arm and she could feel the heat of his skin against hers.
‘Hands behind your head!’
Hurriedly, she complied.
The policeman stepped forward, gun extended, his body tense.
‘Move away from him.’
She wanted to obey, but she couldn’t. Obscurely she felt if she moved away, Lee’s life force would move with her, and he’d die.
‘Move away!’
Hands behind her head, she stared at the Glock gleaming dully a metre away. She didn’t want to shoot a policeman. Besides, even if she got her hands on it, she’d be dead before she fired the thing.
‘I’m giving you a final warning! Move away!’
Click.
The policeman stiffened. Georgia stiffened. And if Lee had been conscious, he’d have stiffened too.
Because someone had just primed their gun.
But none of them knew who. Or where. Just that it was close. Really close.
‘Sergeant,’ a man said. ‘Drop the gun.’
‘Hey, wait up a minute—’
‘Drop it.’
The policeman slowly extended his arm and loosened his grip so his gun hung from his fingertips.
‘Now. Not next week.’
The policeman let his gun drop to the ground with a small thud and stood there with his hands hanging slightly from his sides, palms spread like a cowboy readying himself for a duel.
‘Georgia. Leave Lee where he is. Walk to me.’
She wanted to tear herself away from the heat of Lee’s skin, run for her mother and for safety, but she felt unable to move. Like she’d been glued into place.
‘Georgia, do it!’
Her senses had refined the heat between her and Lee. It wasn’t just heat but the way the delicate hairs of her thigh could feel each hair on his arm. Like little electrodes, they were connected, sparking off each other.
‘I think she might be wounded,’ the sergeant offered but the other man didn’t seem to hear. He started walking down the alley, gun in hand, and as he stepped past the sergeant he looked like he was going to clap the man on the shoulder but instead he pressed the barrel beneath the policeman’s chin and pulled the trigger. Head blown away, the sergeant toppled to the ground, and the man didn’t pause a beat, just kept walking purposely for her and Lee, gun raised, and she knew he’d killed the sergeant so he couldn’t be a witness, that he was going to kill her and Lee too.
Spider had shown himself at last.
She didn’t have a hope of protecting Lee, but she moved so her body was crouched over his, like an eagle protecting its prey. Legs bunched, ready to spring the instant Spider got close enough.
Blue flashing lights from a window reflected the glitter in his eyes. She felt a shock of recognition.
Chief Inspector Harris said, ‘Where’s Jon Ming?’
Fear pumping, adrenaline rocketing through her, her voice was unsteady when she said, ‘In Sydney. He went to the AMA. I don’t know where he is now, I swear it.’
‘Lee doesn’t look too well.’ He sounded amused.
‘I think he might be dead.’
‘I’d like to make sure of it.’
‘Please, let me go. I won’t tell anyone I’ve seen you—’
‘You’re right about that.’
Chief Inspector Harris pointed his gun straight at her.
His bullet would go straight through her and into Lee.
She took a breath and although she knew he was too far away, launched herself at him, a scream erupting from her throat.
Crack!
Georgia was a yard from the Chief, still screaming, going for his gun.
Crack!
The Chief toppled sideways and crashed against the wall, slid down it and slumped face down on the ground.
As he fell, she saw the slender silhouette of her mother against the blue, throbbing light, her hair wild, like a mad spun halo of hay, running down the alley for her. And then she was skidding to her knees in front of Georgia, her hands cupping Georgia’s face, pressing a kiss on the side of her mouth.
‘Sweetness,’ she gasped, ‘whatever have you been up to, getting us into this mess?’
‘Mum, you shot . . . the Chief?’
‘Not me, sweet. That nice policeman over there did it, but let’s not worry about that now. Let’s see to your friend, shall we?’
The nice policeman was Daniel. He was standing over the Chief, head hanging, gun unsteady and wavering in the strobing blue light. She watched him fumble his pistol into its holster and go to kneel beside the dead sergeant. He put a hand on his chest. His shoulders were shaking. It looked as though he was weeping.
‘Daniel,’ she called across to him, ‘who is it?’
‘Riggs.’ His voice was choked. ‘My mate, Riggs.’
Despite her dislike for the sergeant, Georgia felt a rush of sadness. His poor handsome wife and bouncing baby boy.
Linette began to pull Lee’s shirt free, and Georgia bent to Lee’s ear. ‘We got Spider, the man who killed your partner.’
*
It didn’t take the ambulance long to get there, maybe ten minutes, and during that time, the entire police force of Nulgarra rocked up, all four of them, along with a small crowd of bare-chested men in jeans, their hair in tufts, and women in dressing gowns, all curious to know what had happened.
While the paramedics worked fast on Lee, Linette and Georgia hovering, trying to see what they were doing without getting in their way, Daniel hung back. He hadn’t come to her, or asked if she was all right. He appeared to be in some sort of shock, which wasn’t too surprising since he’d just killed a senior policeman as well as losing his friend Riggs. He looked shrunken, miserably pale and defeated.
As Lee was lifted on to a stretcher, Georgia raced across to Daniel.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Lee was . . .’ He cleared his throat, expression dazed. ‘Undercover.’
‘He wanted to know who killed his partner.’
Daniel swayed slightly and she put out a hand but he waved her away.
‘I thought he’d done it.’ His voice was very faint.
‘You and everyone else.’ She tried to comfort him. ‘The only person who knew he hadn’t betrayed Sergeant Tatts was Lee himself. And his boss on the PST, from DIMA.’
‘I can’t get my head around it . . .’ He looked sick.
One of the rear ambulance doors started to close and the same pain she’d felt in her heart when she first saw Lee covered in blood returned. Could she leave Daniel like this? But what about Lee?
‘Daniel . . .’ The door had shut and the pain was ballooning, almost out of control, her heart being ripped right down the middle. She didn’t know what to do.
The second door of the ambulance was closing.
‘Daniel, will you be okay? I’m sorry, but I . . .’
He turned a blank face on her, flicked a look at the ambulance, its blue light twirling, then back. He gave her a bitter smile.
‘He did save your life, Georgia.’
No hesitation. No second thoughts. Georgia belted for the ambulance, leaped for the door, not quite shut, and yanked it open.
‘Can I come?’ she panted.
The medic glanced over the crowd at Daniel, who gave a nod.
‘In you hop, then.’
The instant she held Lee’s hand warm in hers, stroking the scars over his knuckles, the pain in her heart went away. But not Daniel’s face, lit by blue lights from cop cars and the ambulance, his skin white and dry as chalk and his brilliant eyes haunted.
*
The next twenty-four hours were a flurried haze. Georgia and her mother were shuffled from office to office, to and from the hospital to check on Lee, and wherever she went, Linette went with her, and wherever her mum went, Georgia followed. They kept touching each other as though making sure they were alive. And smiling, hugging a lot. Linette looked pretty good, considering she’d been a hostage for eleven days. She’d lost weight, but nothing serious. Not unless you raised the thick curly hair on the right side of her head and saw the mass of fresh pink scar tissue and faint traces of old blood clinging behind her ear.
‘I did a lot of meditating,’ she told Georgia when she asked how she’d managed. ‘And praying for you. Sending you little messages. Did you get any?’
Georgia remembered the sense of her mother calming her near-hysteria on the plane from Brisbane and said, ‘Yes. They helped a lot, thanks.’
Her mum looked pleased.
Now they were sitting in the cop shop, having explained everything to Daniel and his boss from the PST, a tall, reed-like man from Canberra called Patrick. Although Daniel seemed to have recovered his composure and was outwardly calm and businesslike, the shadows beneath his eyes indicated he’d had little sleep, if any.
She wished she could have been there for him last night, talked him through the whole story one-on-one and without his boss, but her mother had briskly pointed out Lee was their first concern. Lee had two bullets in him whereas Daniel . . . He may have not taken any bullets but he was hurting, she could see. It would, she thought, take him some time to adjust to the fact that the man he’d obviously loathed, been trying to bring down for years, had been one of the good guys all along.
Satisfied with their reports, Patrick and Daniel were winding up, and Georgia and Linette got to their feet, preparing to leave.
‘Is Jon okay?’ Georgia asked. ‘Will the gang still try to get him?’
Patrick gave a dry chuckle. ‘Not much of a gang now Jason Chen and his father are dead. We had intelligence the rest have split. The whole mob has dispersed. Some are heading south, others back to Fuzhou.’
‘Great,’ she said. ‘That is great news.’ She took a breath. ‘And what about the Piper’s sabotage? Are you sure you can’t do anything?’
Daniel looked intensely weary while Patrick gave an audible sigh. She knew they were getting exasperated. She had asked the same question twice so far.
‘The vitamins were vitamins,’ Patrick said yet again. ‘Also, Yumuru’s got a cast-iron alibi. We’ve checked and double-checked. Bri Hutchison prepped the aircraft just after one and flew out at two. That leaves a fifty-minute window, during which Yumuru was with Tilly at the healing centre. Unless he had wings and flew himself, there’s no way he could have been there.’
‘Tilly owes him her life,’ Georgia remarked. ‘She could be covering for him.’
Patrick all but rolled his eyes at her. ‘But what was Yumuru’s motive?’
Daniel spoke up, voice tinged with exhaustion. ‘Georgia, you didn’t see anything. You admit it yourself. Are you sure it was sabotaged?’
‘Yes. Yes!’
‘Even Becky admitted – albeit under huge pressure – that Bri flew close to the edge fuel-wise a couple of times—’
‘But Lee saw it.’
‘He could have been mistaken, what with everything going on at the time. The plane was up in smoke, wasn’t it?’
Patrick started to fidget. ‘We’ve interviewed the staff at the aerodrome until they’re sick of the sight of us. Jeez, what else can we . . .’ Patrick trailed off as he turned to Daniel. ‘You go and see Lee. Get a statement or something. And make an apology for the department stringing the poor bugger up.’
Daniel looked as if he’d swallowed a handful of razor blades, but managed to say, ‘Yes, boss.’
Patrick then turned to Georgia, hands spread wide. ‘Best we can do.’
Frustrated, Georgia let it drop. They all shook hands, and then she and Linette went outside to Lee’s car and headed for the hospital. When they arrived, Georgia expected her mother to come too, but she waved her aside, making her bangles tinkle. ‘You go on your own this time, darling. You don’t want me cluttering up the place. I’ll wait here for you.’
*
There was a cop outside Lee’s room when she arrived. He was sitting on a hard plastic chair with his arms crossed, long, stick-insect legs splayed across the linoleum in front of him, and he was staring at the wall opposite. His expression was one of interminable boredom.
‘Hi,’ she said.
The cop bolted upright, then leaped to his feet. He was incredibly tall and the width of a bamboo pole. Georgia reckoned if she stuck a finger in his chest and pushed, he’d fall over.
‘I’m here to visit Lee Denham,’ she said.
‘And you are?’
When she told him, he checked his notebook, then stepped back respectfully and let her go inside.
Lee was asleep. The last time she’d seen him, yesterday evening, he had been lying on his side, drawn and grey. Today, however, she found herself looking at a man with full colour in his cheeks sleeping face up between crisp white sheets. She paused, amazed.
What does it take, she wondered, to bring this guy down? He’s been shot and looks as though he’s having a snooze. He would, she thought, probably be up within twenty-four hours and jogging across the Atherton Tableland with a bunch of camping gear and two months of supplies on his back.
‘Georgia?’
She went to his bedside and looked down at him. ‘Hey, how are you?’
His eyes were clear and bright. ‘Better after a sleep.’
She was grinning insanely.
‘You?’ he said.
‘Busy.’
‘I can imagine.’
She said, ‘They tell me you’re going to be okay.’
‘Yup.’
‘Oh, I brought your mobile back.’ She was about to bring it out of her handbag when he held up a hand.
‘I’ve got another. Keep it.’
She was going to ask how she could pay the bill but the look on his face reminded her of Evie and she hurriedly said, ‘Okay. Thanks.’ Small pause, then she said, ‘How come there’s a policeman outside your room?’
‘Precaution.’
‘But haven’t the Chens gone?’
‘My boss wanted a safeguard.’
‘Oh. Right.’ She glanced at a pile of well-thumbed magazines on his bedside table, then back. ‘So what are you going to do when you get out of here?’
‘Retire.’
She blinked. ‘Did you win the lottery or something?’
‘Got paid pretty well for risking my life for so long. Plus, my boss is grateful. Luckily for me, the Aussie government is showing its appreciation in cash terms.’
‘Won’t you miss working for the police?’
He shuffled his torso up the pillow. His chest was encased in heavy white bandages and he had a deep gash on his forehead running into his thick hair. Aside from two bullets, most of his injuries were bruises, which were turning a spectacular black-purple.
‘Nope.’
‘What will you do?’
‘I was thinking of sailing around the world. Starting in the Caribbean. I’ve never been there before and quite fancy a break in the sun.’
‘You sail?’ She was surprised.
‘Only had the motor yacht for the image. Chinese gangsters don’t respect a sail boat.’ He shuffled further upright. ‘Any news on the sabotage?’
She told him of the police’s remorseless scepticism, and that Daniel would be coming to get a statement from him.
‘Tell him not to bother. He won’t feel comfortable seeing me, and I sure won’t either. You still want to get the low-life that tampered with our plane?’
Through the window she could see a single ambulance and a man in white overalls smoking a cigarette. ‘Yes, I want them. Daniel said he’d talk to the AAI, but then the boat blew up. I doubt if he’ll follow it through now. He’s as dubious as the rest of them. Besides, there might be a problem with the insurance. I want to check with Becky—’
