Dead Heat (13 page)

She nodded.

“You’ll find things have changed a bit since then.”

She glanced over at him. The light bounced off his little round, gold-rimmed glasses. She wanted to ask him why he’d chosen
such a remote location, but didn’t have the energy against the pain of her finger.

“I’ve been healing for over fifteen years now. I used to be in the army, if you can imagine it. It’s good for marketing. The
last headline was ‘Killer Turned Healer.’ I quite liked that.”

His voice was calm and steady, and she realized he was trying to build her confidence in him and inject a sense of normality
into her pain and her silence.

“It’s the center’s tenth birthday soon. Some days I can’t believe we’ve been going that long. I healed a very ill, very rich
woman in Melbourne once and she helped get me started. She even named the place, the lotus being her favorite flower. Without
her, I’d never have helped as many people as I have, and being half-Aboriginal—half-psychic, my mum used to say—it’s not entirely
surprising I changed careers so dramatically. The army indeed.” He snorted. “Thanks, Dad.”

He braked, and the automatic transmission clicked as it changed down a gear. The headlights swept over an immaculate parking
lot dotted with baby African oil palms.

“You need a wheelchair or anything?” Yumuru’s tone was light, but Georgia could feel his anxiety.

“No, thanks.”

He stopped the car in front of a broad set of slate-and-wood steps and tripped off the floodlights. Georgia clambered dizzily
outside, barely able to recognize the place. There were no tin-roofed cabins, no vegetable plots, no chickens and bantams
scratching between flowering shrubs. The forest had swallowed all evidence of the commune, and in its stead was a large, thatched
Balinese-style building. Its roof was draped in bougainvillea, its wraparound veranda adorned with elaborate wicker chairs
and glossy ferns. A large sign, “Seminar Building,” pointed left to a low-slung building made with the same materials. The
place was tasteful and elegant, and dripped with exclusivity.

A man in shorts and a jersey came across the parking lot and spoke with Yumuru before Georgia was shepherded into a reception
area. Lots of deeply polished wood, bamboo chairs, and scattered rugs. The smell of hay. In the light Yumuru was older than
she’d thought, probably in his early forties. She noticed his hands, long and delicate, the color of nutmeg. They were surgeon’s
hands, smooth as a girl’s, the nails lightly shaped and buffed to a high sheen.

Glancing at the man in shorts, Yumuru said, “Frank tells me the police are searching for someone matching your description
who was kidnapped earlier today. Can we at least let them know you’re okay? We don’t, er . . . have to tell them where you
are.”

Georgia ignored the longing to fall into a heap and straightened her spine. “That would be great. And you’re right, they ought
to know . . . It might help if you spoke with a Sergeant Carter, if he’s around. Tell him it was a case of mistaken identity.
As soon as they realized they’d got the wrong person, they ditched me.”

“Right.” Yumuru spun around and ordered Frank to call the police, but not to tell them where she was. Frank obediently trotted
off.

“Now.” He turned back to Georgia, puffing a stray strand of hair from his lips. “Let’s get you to the examination room.”

Georgia hadn’t a clue what time it was when she woke with a start, an excruciating pain pulsing furiously from her finger
and up her arm. Groaning under her breath, she reached for the pack of co-dydramol painkillers Yumuru had left on her bedside
table. He’d told her one or two would be enough and not to take any more, even if the pain was bad, as they’d make her queasy.
She downed two and settled back, waiting for them to kick in. After a while the pain settled to a dull throb and her breathing
leveled. She opened her eyes.

Sunshine poured into her room, and she could hear the raucous screech and chatter of parrots through her open window. A blowfly
droned above her head. She could see three more flies on the outside of her mosquito net, and she lay there for a while, listening
to the sound of the bush awakening, trying to ignore the throbbing in her wedding ring finger. The pain was a fraction of
what it had been, and she thanked the heavens for Yumuru and his surgeon friend from the Douglas Mason Hospital in Nulgarra,
who had clambered out of bed to arrive just before midnight.

Because they didn’t have a qualified anesthetist on hand, the surgeon was only able to give her a local anesthetic. He gave
her some midazolam, and she’d floated in and out of consciousness while he injected her around the wrist and trimmed and pulled
and stitched her finger, chatting to Yumuru about mutual friends—who’d gotten married, who was having an affair with whom—which
gave her a peculiar but comforting sense of normality and security.

The surgeon had asked her what the implement had been and she’d told him, saying it had been a gardening accident. Yumuru
looked at her with his sharp brown eyes but didn’t say a word. He reminded her of Tom, with his intelligent face and kind
nature, so much that her throat ached.

Georgia raised her hand and studied it. A fresh bandage protected the wound in the pad of her hand and incorporated more bandage
on her finger. It almost didn’t look as though the top third was missing.

Taking her time, she rose and showered, then went back to bed. She fell asleep again, finally waking when the sun was high
in the sky. Her body was sore and aching from Leather Jacket’s kicking, and she downed another painkiller, not caring if she
got queasy. Anything rather than the constant agony of her body trying to heal. Slowly, she got dressed, her stomach lurching
every time she thought she might knock her finger.

Her clothes were clean and ironed, thanks to Yumuru, and he’d put her handful of change and two business cards carefully on
top of her underwear, where she couldn’t miss them. One was Daniel’s, the other Leather Jacket’s. She tucked the latter into
her front jeans pocket without looking at it.

Finally she was standing at her window. Warm morning air drifted around her, and birds fluttered after insects in thick grass
the height of her thighs.

She thought of her mother, bound and gagged and bleeding from her head, and her legs immediately began to tremble, her lungs
unable to grab any air. She wanted to howl and cry and lash out at something, but it wouldn’t do any good. She had to remain
strong, and not let her grief and rage take control.

“Sorry, Mum,” she said. “I can’t think about what you’re going through. I’m going to have to pretend you’re okay, or I won’t
be able to function and I’ll be no use to you.”

Georgia turned her mind to Leather Jacket and the Suit.

We will keep your mother. But only for a week. You have seven days to find Lee Denham and Mingjun before we chop off all your
mother’s fingers and toes and leave her to bleed to death. Then we will come and kill you. Slowly. One knuckle at a time.

She pictured Leather Jacket’s sneer, the Suit’s nicotine-stained teeth, and felt the rush of black ice return.

She had seven days.

Seven days to save her mother, to save herself.

She had better get started.

I
ntending to find Yumuru, Georgia was about to open her bedroom door when someone knocked sharply on the other side.

Stepping back, she called, “Who is it?”

“Dominic.”

“Who?”

“Are you decent? I hope so, because I’m coming in.” The door opened and a slender man in blue linen trousers and matching
shirt marched inside. “I’ve been told you might not want to see me but, well, here I am, and you’d better know I can be extremely
determined.”

He had a pink holdall in one hand, which he put on the end of her bed, then he looked at her, expression appalled. “I’ve come
to cut your hair. Immediately.”

She found herself smiling at him, and as she moved to close the door she saw that a tray of fresh fruit, coffee, raisin toast,
and butter had been left outside her room. With her good hand she brought it in. The coffee was in a pot, the fruit sliced
mango and papaya, and the butter came in a little pack, marked unsalted. Yumuru had to be a mind reader. Her favorite breakfast.

“Let’s go short, shall we?” Dominic said briskly. “Very gamine, very chic.”

Georgia let him sit her on the edge of the bed, fluff a blue-spotted robe around her neck, and damp her hair down with a handheld
spray. While he cut her hair, she ate her breakfast, and when he’d finished, she looked in the mirror he held for her. She
blinked.

“You don’t like it?” he asked anxiously over her shoulder.

Spikes and a chin the size of the Great Australian Bight gazed back. She ran a hand over the spiky creation, amazed at the
feel of silk against the vision of aggression. She looked like an echidna, spines erect and ready to defend its life, but
it was so
soft.

“No, it’s not that I don’t like it,” she said. “It’s just that it’s not who I used to be.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “So who are you now?”

“I don’t know.” Impulsively she turned and kissed his cheek. “I felt so
ugly.
How much do I owe you?”

“You don’t have to worry, it’s paid up.”

“By who?”

“This was a personal request from the guy who runs this place. A gift.”

“Yumuru?”

“Is that a problem?”

Georgia studied her reflection again.

“No,” she said faintly. “No problem. It’s a lovely gift.”

Dominic was replaced by a huge, barefoot Aboriginal woman who introduced herself as Joanie. “’Muru asked me to show you round,”
she said. “Tells me you used to live here.”

Georgia looked outside at the sun streaming through the grass. In her day the grass would have been shorn, thanks to the goats.
“It was a long time ago,” she said on half a sigh, “when it used to be a commune.”

“Not anymore, but ’Muru’s turned it right round.” Joanie pulled her too-tight yellow-and-red dress down over her hips, looking
proud. “He gets patients from all over. Even had a bloke from Perth last month. Real sick he was, but ’Muru fixed him up.”

“Perth’s a long way to come,” Georgia agreed, but despite her friendly tone, Joanie gave her a narrowed look.

“Don’t know what you’ve heard in town about ’Muru, but whatever they’ve said, take it with a bucket of salt. He’s all right,
’Muru, okay? Goes a bit troppo from time to time, but most of us do anyway up here. Especially in the bloody wet.”

“I remember.”

Joanie grinned, showing purple gums and broad teeth. “That why you leave? Fed up with the wet?”

Not wanting to go into the fight they’d had trying to keep the commune, she shrugged and said, “I guess so.”

The commune had been a swamp in the wet. Just getting from their cabin to the cookhouse was a struggle, and she and Dawn invariably
arrived at breakfast muddy and bedraggled and feeling like creatures from the deep lagoon. Dawn hadn’t taken to living in
the rainforest as well as Georgia. She missed town life and loathed the long-drop loos with their plethora of creepy-crawlies.
It wasn’t the fact that a spider might bite her rear end as much as the smell. No wonder she’d fled to Canada and all that
clean, pure air.

For a brief moment, Georgia considered calling Dawn and immediately rejected the idea. Dawn would drop everything and come
over, the thugs might snatch
her,
and then she’d have two people to worry about, not one.

“You okay to follow me?” said Joanie. “Then you’ll know where everything’s at. ’Muru said you can stay long as you like.”

“Joanie, I’m sorry, but there’s no point in showing me round. I won’t be staying.”

Joanie looked shocked. “’Muru will kill me if I haven’t done the full tour. He’s proud as hell with what he’s done since you
lot were here.”

“I have to be going, honestly—”

“We’ll do the shortened version, then,” Joanie said firmly and ushered her out of her room and down a long corridor for a
door at the far end, which Georgia hoped was the exit. However, it was just a very small room, and as she reluctantly followed
Joanie inside, Georgia put a hand against the wall, suddenly unsteady. The air was filled with the scents of sandalwood, lavender,
and burned juniper. If she closed her eyes she could be at the commune, but the commune had never been this silent. Too many
chickens and parrots, laughter, the odd argument, pots and pans being bashed about, children playing, someone singing.

“You okay?” Joanie was peering at her, big brow creased.

Georgia straightened. “Fine. Thanks.”

“This is where he prays. Well, anyone’s welcome. But it’s mostly ’Muru’s place.”

The room was tiny, and against the opposite wall was an altar. Made out of simple whitewashed boards, it had three small steps
flanked by vases of flowers and little bowls of sand stuck with incense sticks.

There were two photographs on the altar. One was of the Dalai Lama, but the second made her breathing falter.

“You okay?” Joanie asked again.

Wordlessly, she pointed at the photograph.

“She used to work here.” Joanie rubbed her forehead and looked at the floor. “She was on the plane that went down. She didn’t
make it.”

Georgia touched the photograph with a finger.

It was Suzie Wilson.

Joanie took Georgia’s sudden enthusiasm to take the full tour in her stride and showed her a communal living area, where there
was a kitchen as well as a small library and a balcony overlooking a fig tree, which was being slowly strangled by the biggest
vine Georgia had ever seen. Her mind in overdrive about Suzie, she asked Joanie if she knew Suzie’s family.

“She didn’t have none,” Joanie said. “Well, not here, anyway. They’re all in China.”

“Where did she live?”

Joanie frowned and Georgia hurriedly added, “Sorry. I heard about the crash. I was just curious.”

Joanie didn’t reply and, seemingly unperturbed by Georgia’s nosiness, proceeded to lead her along a long corridor of polished
boards covered with tatami mats and into reception. Georgia glanced into the parking lot to see nine cars, two of which were
brand-new, white, top-of-the-range Land Cruisers. Each had a bright purple emblem of a lotus on its front doors.