Authors: Ainslie Paton
He was telegraphing his punch. He was the ultimate bluff.
He said, “By the way, my name is Sean,” and then he started singing.
He took another gulp of air and sang the chorus from The Angels’
We Gotta Get Out of This Place
. The album was called
Howling
. How fucking fitting. Cait was trying bloody hard not to laugh, chewing her own lips to stop from smiling, especially when he sang the line about the girl being so young and pretty.
The run had emptied him out. He’d started it bitter and coiled, and an hour later was loose and open. He’d be so sore tomorrow, especially his knee, it didn’t bear thinking about. He wasn’t resolved by any means, and he was rocked senseless by the realisation he had to permanently exorcise poor dumb Fetch from his body and brain, and dredge up good old Sean from somewhere in his muscle memory, try him on for size, and refit him for service.
The only thing he was sure of was getting Cait to go home. She had no obligation to him; she had no need to stay. He’d interrupted her life more than enough, scared her more than adequately, and the sooner she returned to her real world, the sooner she could forget the unreal one of the last few days.
But her words had tramped across the tempo of his mind as he ran the highway. Someone wanted to hurt her. Someone she was more scared of than him. Someone who made her think she had nothing in her life to go back to. She gave him her perfectly good mobile phone and let him destroy it. She wasn’t someone who scared over nothing. Whatever scared her enough to want to keep driving to Perth was real.
She wasn’t the job, but then again, he didn’t have a job right now, and he wasn’t the kind of man who turned away from someone in trouble. That much he remembered about his old self.
“So you like my singing huh?”
“I wouldn’t say like. It has a churchy quality to it.”
“Too right. Altar boy.”
She shot him a shocked look. “No way.”
“Yes way. For years.” He tapped his skull. “I’m sure I’ve got some kind of incense based brain disorder.” She did the lip compressing thing again. “It’s okay to laugh at me. I’m not going to snap at you again.”
She shook her head. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”
He swivelled in the seat, backed against the door to be able to study her better. “Maybe I want to.”
She didn’t bite.
“What am I thinking?” He did the forehead slap thing. “That’s probably forbidden under the ‘don’t distract the driver rule’, or maybe the ‘no fraternising rule’. I never was much good with rules.”
“You’re pushing your luck.”
“Yeah. That was the plan. What gave it away, the stripping, the getting in the front seat, or the singing? Perhaps you’re not sure because I haven’t eaten anything in here yet.”
“Is your name really Sean?”
“Yep.”
“Sean what?”
“Sean Kennedy. Can’t get much more bog Irish throwback than that.”
She gave him a look, switched her eyes back to the road and then back to him again; a driver’s safety double take. “How about Caitlyn Murphy?”
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” He slapped his thigh. “For real?” There it was, the registered owner of Trusted Transit confirmed.
“Christ and all his Saints in Heaven, yes!”
He laughed and she did too, opening her mouth, showing her teeth, letting the music of her mirth into the cabin of the car, into the fun-starved portion of his head.
“Kennedy and Murphy. It’s almost as funny as Fetch and Carry,” he said.
“That was funny. Your face. For a fraction of a second you bought it.”
“I bloody did not. So who’s Trusted Transit?”
“That’s me, my business name. You did a rego check?”
He shrugged. “It’s what we do.” She didn’t need to know he already knew where she lived either and wondered why.
“Why didn’t you tell me outright you were a cop?”
“I’m not telling you that now.”
“What? You’re kidding me. How stupid do you think I am?”
“I don’t think there’s a stupid cell in your body. But we’re still on need to know and you don’t need to know anything about my professional life.”
“Can I ask you one thing?”
“You can ask.”
“Did you get sacked from being Fetch? Is that why I’m safe?”
He growled. He pulled the band out of his ponytail and shook his hair out. She deserved some answers. “I got sacked from being Fetch. He is no more. Stupid runt made a rookie mistake, just as he was being set up as the world’s dumbest fall guy. You’re safe because anyone who might ever have been interested in trying to get to Fetch through you is now more worried about a hit squad of former brethren to care. You really are safe. You really can go home. Now answer something for me.” He paused to see if she’d kick off with a bunch of objections to that. She rolled her shoulder against the seatbelt but was otherwise quiet, facing resolutely forward. “Why don’t you want to go home? Who scares you more than being with me does?”
“Stop disturbing the driver.”
“You want me to sing again?”
“Can you do something more recent?”
“Caitlyn Mary Ann Murphy.”
Now she looked at him, a sharp, hard head turn; a frown above the tortoiseshell rim of her glasses. There be daggers behind those lenses. “Good guess, huh.” It was a guess, there was no legal reference to a confirmation name. “I almost went with Bernadette. Now do you want me to guess why you won’t go home? Because I have a theory.”
“It’s nothing. Nothing like you’re used to dealing with.”
He leaned forward, opened the glove box and started ferreting about inside it, his peripheral vision fixed on her.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m disturbing the driver.”
“It’s just a relationship gone wrong.”
He sat back around. “A private one, not with a client. You said you had a problem client. He traced your number.”
“I lied.” She gave a little shrug, angled her face away from him.
He closed the glove box. “But you’re telling the truth now?”
She nodded, squared her head to face forward again.
“And.”
“I thought we were on need to know. You don’t need to know anything about my private life.”
And wasn’t that precisely the line he deserved used against him. “I don’t need to, but I’m going to.”
“That sounds a lot like telling me what I want.”
“No. It’s exactly like me considering whether I should stick to our original deal tomorrow or rent my own wheels.”
He closed his eyes. Did he really just say that? He was bargaining with her. What was the point of that? Her private life was her own concern. But shit, he liked the idea of turning this leftover police business into a two-bit driving holiday with a reluctant girlfriend. Not his reluctant girlfriend, but the sentiment was the same. She could be his. He wanted her. He had an effect on her. He knew that much. So that meant this was probably wrong. Wasn’t it? He was a cop, she was a scared witness, except she wasn’t anymore. And he was on leave, though that was a technicality. What was his moral obligation, his ethical one? She was a grown woman who could make her own decisions. He had no idea who he was, or when he’d feel like he’d landed that question.
Shit
. It was easier being Fetch than trying to think this through.
“Four years ago I met a man.”
He stilled. Cait took a huge deep pull of air in and expelled it in a rush. “We fell in love. We built a business together. A very successful one. An online auction system. We had venture capitalists falling all over us giving us seed capital and investment money. Six months ago I found him in our bed with some blonde called Carolyn. I walked. I left everything and walked. He wants me back. That’s the story.”
“That’s the outline. That doesn’t explain why you don’t want to go back. He fucked up big. You were in love. Does it mean it’s over?”
Her hands tightened on the wheel. “We were engaged. It’s over.”
“But he wants you back.”
“He wants me back because I ran the business operations. He’d have tried to do it by himself at first, until he worked out it’s a full time job.”
Sean frowned. “He wants you back as an employee, not a lover?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m very sure I don’t want anything to do with him again. It’s not the only thing I caught him out on, and I did some pretty vindictive things on my way out. I’m not proud of what I did, but I was angry and—”
“Hey, you’re right. It’s none of my businesses. Except for one thing. You’re scared of him. Did he hurt you? Are you worried he will?”
“I’m not scared of him. He’s nothing to be scared of. You’re wrong about that. I wanted to get away from my life for a while. I bought the car and the license with my, um, my share of the business, but driving professionally isn’t quite what I thought it would be. When I realised you weren’t a complete lunatic, I figured it was like a paid holiday.”
He considered that. Considered how much of it was bullshit. Considered how dumb it would be to stick to the original deal. “When did you realise I wasn’t a complete lunatic? When I goaded you into stapling me? When I shouted at you in Tumut or when I stripped at the side of the road?”
“When you retrofitted my car.”
He laughed. “What did that tell you? I thought it pretty much shouted liar, thief, kidnapper.”
She flicked him a look. “That you really did want me to be safe. That I could trust you on that.”
More to consider. There was truth in what she was saying, but there was more in what she wasn’t.
“You trust me on other things?”
She took a hand from the wheel, leaned across the space between them and patted his now very stiff knee. “Not a chance.”
The Leeton Heritage Motor Lodge had four stars. It was the kind of place where you parked your car directly outside your room and got Kellogg’s Corn Flakes in a single serve packet for breakfast on a tray pushed though a slot. It had a pool, cable TV and vacancies. For $210 Sean got them two rooms side by side.
Caitlyn still wasn’t used to thinking of him as Sean, assuming that really was his name. Despite the bonfire, he still looked like Fetch, and she had no idea if the different versions of Fetch she’d seen: the subservient one, or the super controlled but improbably chatty one, were anything like his real self.
Whoever he was, he’d pushed all of her boundaries in the car. She figured he would, just not quite so soon. The minute he appeared at the passenger’s side front door she knew what he was up to, but all she could do was watch him. He was so in your face and so unthreatening at the same time. Amusing, and other things she didn’t want to think about, like unbearably sexy.
Stop it
. Which was no excuse for letting him walk all over her rules and smash her borders to bits. She was still the chauffeur, he was still the client and that’s the way it needed to stay. Especially if he turned out to be a squeaky clean cop, cake in the cake tin and all. And they had a driving plan to discuss before they parted.
He handed her a room key and went to the boot. She opened the door to her room: blue carpet, double bed with a notable dip in the centre, floral bedspread; last decorated circa 1980, but clean and functional, and smelling of pine disinfectant instead of mothballs. She turned back to get her bag and he was standing in the open doorway.
“The historic Roxy is showing
Rocky Horror
tonight, wanna go?”
“No.”
“Come on, it’ll be fun.”
“We’re not friends. This is a transactional arrangement.”
He leaned on the doorjamb, hooked his aviators down and looked over them. “Ah Cait, you’re making me feel dirty.” He gave a throaty laugh, all sex and danger.
She gasped and he filled the gap with, “But don’t worry I like it.” Then he laughed again and stepped away.
She followed him out to the walkway. “No movie. We just need a plan for tomorrow.”
He had his back to her, the key in the door to his room. “Sure, after the movie, I’ll talk, you’ll listen.”
“Fetch! Sean! Whatever your name is!” She stopped, her voice was too loud.
He shouldered the door open and turned. “What, Cait?” He had a pinched expression on his face. He entered the room and she stood in his doorway. He dumped his bag and put his hand up to his wounded arm. “That was dumb.”
She forgot what she was about to yell and said instead, “I should change the dressing for you.”
“Would you? Ah, that would be great.” He didn’t wait for an answer. He yanked the t-shirt over his head. “Let me shower first.”
God
. Was it only last night he’d said exactly that? Was she destined to spend her time waiting for this man to shower and staring at him wet and half dressed? He worked the plaster off and started unwrapping the gauze. The wound looked angry and swollen, a highway to hell for his spirit bike tattoo.
“Oh, that doesn’t look good.”
“I just shoulder charged the door with it.” He tapped it with a finger as if testing it. “It’s fine. You don’t have scissors do you?”
“Nail scissors in the first-aid kit.” But whoa, what kind of mutilation was he thinking she’d perform on him now?
Her face must’ve shown horror; he laughed. “I’m not asking you to stab me. I want to lose the hair. Can’t stand it a minute longer.”
She went, “Ah,” in relief. “It’ll be hard work with nail scissors. I’ll see if I can borrow a bigger pair from reception.”
“Yeah, good. It’ll be easier for you to do me some damage with a longer blade.”
“What?”
“I’m joking.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “I’ll be in the bathroom.”
He left her standing in the doorway. He was using humour to manipulate her. “Hey. You’re not bleeding. I don’t have to be here.”
He poked his head around the bathroom doorway and she got a look at half his chest cascading to lean, naked hipbone and a flaring thigh muscle. She was ready for an argument.
He said, “No Driver, you don’t. I can manage,” and his voice was all moderate and neutral and placating.
Bastard
.
Now he was making her feel like a louse. She turned her back on him, stifling an expression of annoyance, but it didn’t stop him laughing again. It echoed off the tiles in the bathroom and followed her to the car. She grabbed her own bag and took it into her room. She sat on the bed for a few minutes to collect herself. It’d been another long day, so unlike her usual routine, which didn’t require her to argue with her clients, or to have feelings for them. She went back to the car and took out the first-aid kit, locked up and walked up the corridor to the reception. She’d see if they had scissors. She’d take them back to him and he could sort himself out. She was going to change into her running gear and pound her own frustrations out on the pavement.