Blood Junction (33 page)

Knox immediately trained his pistol towards the sound.

The same voice yelled: “
Drop your weapons or I’ll shoot!
”

Nobody moved.

A single gunshot split the air. Spat cement chips to India’s left.

Knox fired twice and ran.

The three men dropped India and scattered behind the Mercedes.

She sagged there for a second, bewildered.

A bullet whacked into the Mercedes. Another whizzed past her. A surge of adrenaline reenergized her. She twisted sideways
and ran in the opposite direction, for the door, for freedom. She heard the blast of guns. Men were shouting behind her. A
bullet struck a shipping crate just ahead. India stretched her legs. More bullets struck the crates, splintering wood. She
swung left.

“India!” a man yelled ahead of her. “I’m here!” Mikey’s voice was hoarse.

A bullet nicked her shirt. Another zinged past her ear.

Gunshots roared in the warehouse.

“Mikey!” India screamed.

“Stay down!” he yelled.

India dropped to her hands and knees, scurried for him.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes.” She hastily did up her jeans.

“Let’s go.” He grabbed her wrist. “I’ll come back for Scotto. Hurry!” He pulled her after him. She strained to keep up. Her
ears, deafened by the gunshots, were ringing and, in confusion, it took her a moment to realize they were outside.

Bullets struck the ground. The shots continued from behind them.

Without warning Mikey stumbled. Dropped her wrist. Sprawled facedown. A bullet parted the air by her head. She barely paused.
Kept sprinting across the forecourt.
Have to reach the road. Have to get out of here. Have to run. Run, run, run.

The next thing she realized, she was running along Botany Road, traffic was lumbering along, and then she was slowing, putting
her hand out, walking, gasping.

The truck that stopped was headed for Newcastle but she didn’t care.

Mikey scrambled to his feet. He saw India race through the courtyard gates and disappear. He ran for the Holden taxi, jumped
in and locked the doors. He started the engine. He became aware that the gunshots hadn’t stopped.

Who was shooting who?

Mikey drove onto the street, took the next left and tucked the taxi behind a truck. Heart thumping, he watched the street
through his wing mirror.

Three minutes later a silver Mercedes M-Class shot past, followed by the black Ford.

A minute later, a black BMW cruised by. OED 128. India’s Beemer. He cursed. He still hadn’t found out who owned the sodding
thing. The Panama connection had led nowhere.

He waited another couple of minutes then started the car and sped back to the warehouse. Before he went to Scotto, he quickly
checked the surrounding area. Nobody. Inside the warehouse it was empty, aside from Scotto’s still form.

He was glad Scotto was still unconscious. As carefully as he could, Mikey untied the ropes around Scotto’s feet. There wasn’t
much he could do about the handcuffs. He had to get Scotto to a hospital pronto. His heart was still banging away. He picked
up Scotto. Adrenaline helped. Scotto wasn’t exactly a featherweight. Mikey eased him onto the backseat of the cab and headed
for the Prince of Wales Hospital.

The truck dropped India at North Sydney, where she took a taxi to Manly, the easiest place she could think to hide. She tried
five B&Bs and three hotels without luck. The fourth hotel was on North Steyne and had a double room with ocean view at an
exorbitant price. She didn’t care about the expense, she was lucky to take a last-minute cancellation; every room was fully
booked for the New Year celebrations. India paid cash, glad she’d barely spent any since her last withdrawal. She didn’t want
Knox to track down her credit card.

She was so numbed, so traumatized, that she wouldn’t have believed she could feel any emotion, but when she let herself inside
the room, she began to shake from head to foot.

She closed the door and locked it. She fumbled her way into the bathroom and vomited. She bent over the loo and retched over
and over again as if she could rid herself of her experience in the warehouse. She could hear Scotto’s screams, smell the
cordite, see his blood. Every detail was imprinted on her senses whether her eyes were open or closed.

She dashed water over her face and neck, cupping some and rinsing her mouth to ease the acid burning in her throat. She grabbed
a towel off the floor and wiped her face, let the towel fall in the sink. At that point she glanced in the mirror.

The years drained away.

She was kneeling on the kitchen floor, trying to help Lauren.

She was walking out of
The Courier
’s office without a backward glance. She was stubbornly refusing to go to Sydney to see Lauren. She was watching her own sanctimonious
face as she condemned Whitelaw’s guilt before stalking into the street and turning her back on Cooinda. She was running away
from Mikey sprawled outside the warehouse, and was deep in the heart of her worst memories. She saw herself clearly, stripped
of self-regard, vanity and ego. The very foundations of her being were crumbling and toppling around her. She had thought
she had outrun the person she used to be. She’d believed she had outrun the past, but she was wrong. It had followed her all
the way here.

She was six years old. She was at the rude little house in Dee Why with her mother. Her mother had returned from the hospital
and was crying for Toby, who had died that morning. Her father came home and when he saw her weeping he started pushing her
around the kitchen, slapping her hard, and India knew he was going to hurt her really badly this time, that he was stoking
his rage, and her mother was sobbing and all the time India was shivering, huddled in the corner.

“You bitch!” he kept yelling. “My God, I’ll kill you, you lying bitch!” And his hands clenched and he was punching her and
she was bleeding from her nose and mouth and India just huddled there, so frightened, so tiny against his huge bulk and his
burning rage she couldn’t move, couldn’t help her mother, and suddenly Lauren was there and she was shouting, yelling at him
to stop or she’d get her parents, fetch the police, anyone, if he didn’t stop.

He stopped. He came to Lauren and grabbed her, and she was trying to fight him but she was so skinny and small that he simply
shrugged her off and handcuffed her to the radiator, and India was crawling to Lauren, desperate to reach her, when he suddenly
turned and looked at her.

His face was red and his mouth caked with spittle and he had blood on his fists and on his shirt. Holding her eyes, he reached
for the baseball bat beneath the table and took a step towards her and she screamed.

He came for her.

India ran. She catapulted out of the house, running as fast as she could, blindly, without any plan. She ran on bitumen, on
grass, sand, gravel, her bare feet pounding, and she couldn’t stop, couldn’t stop running. When at last her legs gave way,
she was on a beach and she was crawling on her hands and knees, her feet raw and bleeding, her lungs and heart like razor
blades, but she couldn’t stem the urge to keep running …

It wasn’t until dawn the next day that she returned to the house, quaking and weeping with terror, to find her father gone,
her mother unconscious, and Lauren still handcuffed to the radiator, but with both arms broken.

She had left her friend like that all night.

She was so ashamed.

The phone was ringing and she was in Sydney, had never left Sydney. She began to cry, not as she had before, quietly and in
control, but great racking shouts that tore her throat and convulsed her shoulders and lungs. Helplessly she fumbled for the
towel, tried to muffle her roars. She found herself stumbling backwards and clutching at something, and she grabbed at it
but there was nothing there and she began to fall, and saw Lauren as clear as day.

Hon, you’d better get a grip, or you’ll be in serious trouble.

Scorching pain licked at her. Her closest friend was dead. Dead, dead,
dead
. And by abandoning Scotto and Mikey she felt as though she had abandoned Lauren all over again.

An hour later she still couldn’t get herself under control. Clumsily, unable to see properly, she folded the towel and hung
it neatly as she could on the rail, and because she didn’t know what else to do she went out onto the balcony overlooking
Manly Beach, and leaned her head on her arms and wept. After a while, she sank onto one of the chairs, exhausted, her eyes
puffed almost shut and her mouth was so distorted and swollen it felt like a pig’s snout.

She felt hollow and drained. She sat there and stared unseeingly at the surfers rising and falling on the deep blue of the
Pacific Ocean. Everything looked exactly the same as it had all those years ago. Same pine trees, same angled parking, same
blue ocean rimmed with booming surf. Nothing had changed, not even herself. She was the coward she always had been.

India sat there for two hours, watching the surfers, and only went inside to use the bathroom, or drink some water. She couldn’t
think about Jeremy Whitelaw sitting in jail for something he hadn’t done. She couldn’t think about anything connected with
Cooinda; Polly or Albert or Mikey.