Authors: Ainslie Paton
“Your mum?”
“Yeah. I haven’t seen Mum except on Skype for two years. She hated that look, understandably. I hated that look. What would she think now?”
God, he was genuinely uncertain about his new look. “What did she think about the tattoos?”
He ran a hand down his chest, brushing hair snippets away. She probably should put her hands in her pockets so she couldn’t volunteer to do it for him. “Made sure she didn’t see them. It’s the one part of Fetch I have to live with for a while yet. Fortunately not forever.”
“It’ll be some job to get them removed.”
“They’re not permanent, so it’s not as bad as it could be. Poor old Fetch was always getting threatened with more ink. If they’d have gotten to me, with the forever kind of ink, it would’ve been much harder to get rid of.” He looked down, brushing both hands down his torso. “Right now I could probably scratch them off myself.”
She had one last hot, dirty excuse to touch him. She walked around him, and brushed her palms over his back. Standing this close, his height and weight advantage over her was so much more apparent. She cleared her throat, loose hair and libidinous thoughts choking her.
“With a shirt on, what mother wouldn’t love you?”
“You’ve not met mine, but thank you.”
“I was reminding you of the rules.” She was castigating herself.
He turned to face her. If he’d understood what she was thinking, he’d have known standing so close was criminal negligence.
He quirked his head to the side. “I’m pretty sure there’s no mother rule. What’s the shirt rule? I missed that one.”
It was the one she hadn’t voiced. Hadn’t thought she’d need a ‘stay fully dressed at all times’ rule. And the one he’d broken most spectacularly. She had to get out of here. “What time do you want to leave in the morning?”
He ran a hand over his head, grinning at the feel of it. “No movie?”
She sighed so he’d hear it.
“Okay, okay, okay.” He shook himself all over like a wet dog. “I need another shower. Eight?”
“Fine. See you at the car in the morning.”
She left him standing in a carpet of hair, looking more dangerous to her clean-cut and temporarily tattooed than he did as an outlaw. He was someone she didn’t know, who professed not to know himself, who she desired with an intensity that made her want to run till her legs turned to jelly and her brain short-circuited.
Sean was leaning against the car boot when Cait came out of her room. This morning she was dressed more casually; dark, baggy jeans, another shapeless t-shirt and a ponytail instead of the twist that had been under her cap. But she was still undercover. A ‘don’t notice me, please let me blend into the background’ style. Maybe she didn’t care about clothes, or this was part of hiding from something, someone, the ex? It was irritating. She was a gorgeous looking woman, but she didn’t want anyone to look.
What was that about?
She lifted her head and smiled, and it didn’t matter that she was dressed for invisibility, because her lovely face lit up. He knew what that was about. He should never have let her cut his hair. She did a better job than he would’ve done himself, but he could’ve shaved his head and been done with it. Having her touch him like that. He’d enjoyed it way too much. She wasn’t his hired help, she wasn’t his obligation or his little piece of normal, she was something else. He simply wasn’t sure what that was or whether he was entitled to feel happy because her eyes without sunnies were all over him, checking him out.
“Morning, Cait. Did you have your run?”
“I did. Did you get a shock when you looked in the mirror this morning?”
He laughed. He rubbed a hand over his jaw. Truth is he’d avoided the mirror. It was enough to know he felt different. He didn’t need to be confronted by it before breakfast.
“Did you eat? I thought we might stop in town. I need new jeans since I went pyromaniac on the last pair. Should be able to get you a new phone too.”
“Sure.” She opened the boot and they both dumped their bags in. “Why did you burn all that stuff?”
He pushed his fingers into his scalp. “Had to get rid of everything that was Fetch. Destroy it all. Start being Sean again.”
She closed the boot lid. “Do you feel more like him now?”
He felt jet-lagged. That was the best way to describe the odd feeling in his head. Not quite awake, not quite anchored to the world, half of him still somewhere else in space and time. “Think I’m a work in progress.”
She stepped around him, opened the driver’s door and got in. He opened the back door and slid in. Her head jerked up and she spun around to look at him between the seats.
He shrugged. “I’m a versatile bloke. I can play by the rules.” But they were grinning stupid at each other and this was a game where the rules were a lot of fun to mess with.
She played some English folk band called Mumford and Sons, a track called
Little Lion Man
on the way into town. He slapped the seat in amusement on the line about fucking it up. He got coffee and eggs and bacon, jeans, boots and a couple of shirts in colours Fetch would have been pounded to gristle for wearing, plus a new watch and two new phones. Then they hit the road.
It was five hours to Mildura on the Sturt Highway. Five hours of dry and dusty with a side order of not much to look at. Five hours of nothing to do. He was going to go not so quietly mad. They had burgers and a coke at a BP service station diner for lunch. He read a left-behind newspaper, noting the story on a gang related shootout and the police spin that made it seem like a random and accidental skirmish rather than another battle for territory and supremacy in a long running war. This had Reds and Blacks inked all over it. It felt odd to be on the outside of it, not to know what went down in intimate, blood splattering detail, like he’d missed an episode of a favourite TV show and could no longer follow the story without a recap. It felt good not to be the body in the picture, laid out under the white sheet in the middle of the road, because everyday he’d been undercover that fate was on his potential places to travel list.
Cait was a study in distance, pass the salt politeness and fleeting glances. She didn’t sit long, left to muck about with the car, refuelling, checking water and oil, wiping down windows. She’d made a point of explaining she was taking car costs out of the change from the cash he’d given her for their initial shopping trip. She had it written in a logbook with receipts clipped inside.
This time when they set off he got in the front. All of her except the twitch of a smile at the corner of her mouth pretended he wasn’t there. Let’s see how long she could keep that up.
“So Driver, got any brothers or sisters?”
“Do you, Sean?”
“I’ll show you mine.” He laughed and gestured a hand towards her.
She shook her head.
“Is that no siblings or you’re not going to talk?”
Slight turn of her head, a quick flash of sunnies. “I’m never showing you mine.”
He laughed again. “Never is a long time. Bit like this stretch of road. You gotta talk to me. I don’t do sitting still, doing nothing well.”
“I noticed. What do you do well?”
“Shit, Driver. How’s a bloke supposed to answer that?”
“You wanted something to do—tell me about Sean.”
“Tell you about Sean.” He sighed. It was probably a good idea. Reacquaint himself with the life and times of Sean Kennedy. It was the ones who didn’t talk who tended not to last on undercover work. Talk was cheap and it worked.
“I’m kid number five. My old man had given up hoping for a boy and finally there I was. I’m younger than my youngest sister by five years. I’m the spoilt baby of the family.”
She gave him a look and a soft giggle. It was such a cool sound. It made him laugh too.
“You think it’s funny I’m a tattooed biker but I’m the baby in an entirely female dominated home?”
She said nothing, but her cheekbone was raised like a triumphant flag from the smile she wore.
“You don’t know my mum. She’s tough. You did things the right way, her way, or else. There was no slacking. My oldest sister, Alana is a nurse, trauma specialist. We won’t be telling her about the staples. Then there’s Bridie, she’s a lawyer, family law. Siobhan, she’s in politics, local mayor and Kira, she’s a cop, like Dad.”
“Like you.”
“Uniform. Not undercover.”
He waited for the look of triumph, the look that said, ‘finally’. She didn’t react.
Too cool for school
.
“We once had a dog called Satan.”
“Of course you did.”
“True. You’re wondering why I became a cop.”
“I’m just driving.”
“Because I saw how my dad loved it. He saw it as a way to help people, to keep people safe. Keep the world a good place. That felt like a good thing to me too. Now my mum, last thing she wanted me to do. She wanted me to be a doctor or an architect or a teacher, anything but follow Kira and Dad. She thinks I left the force three years ago. She’s supposed to think I’ve been travelling around Europe and Africa. She bloody knows I’m lying to her. She’d going to belt me when she finds out.”
“Your mother belts you?”
“I deserve it. She hugs me too.”
He thought about it. The loud, fierce household he’d grown up in. All the laughter, the door slamming and tears. Getting pinched and forever having his ears flicked. All the fights: for the bathroom, and the phone, and the TV, and over shared bedrooms and clothes, and washing dishes and dogs. Later over politics, and friends, and money. Being last always for everything, but being the favourite too. All the food, all the chores, the merciless teasing. It was all love, perverted by life and real and what shaped him. The slap that said be careful, the shout that said you’ll get hurt, the slyness that said learn to share, the manipulation that said this is for your own good.
That was the childhood that grounded him, let him go out in the world and live in someone else’s skin for a while and know he’d be able to find his way back to himself in time. His memories were a breadcrumb trail. The thread of his life tied around his little finger, a reminder of all that was good and decent and right. All he had to do was follow the trail and it would all come back.
“I did okay at school. Would’ve done better if I’d been less interested in cars and girls. Pulled my finger out in senior school, did better. Went to uni, studied psychology. When I went to the academy Mum didn’t talk to me for twelve months. She used to tell one of the others to tell me what she wanted to say. She only gave it up because she wore everyone out. It was a long year for us all.
“My first girlfriend was Karen Taylor. She was so frigging hot. Long blonde hair. Legs up to…well, you know. We were both fifteen. I thought we’d be forever. We were three months. She dumped me for my best friend. The usual sob story. My next girlfriend was Larissa Clermont. Another blonde. I seem to have a type. I think it’s because all us Kennedys are so dark. She was a gymnast.” He laughed. Looked down at his hands, remembering the gymnastics they’d got up to.
“She was very flexible. We stayed together till school finished. She moved with her family to London. After that, it didn’t seem like restricting myself to one girl was the right way to approach the banquet on offer.” He shrugged, glanced across at Cait to see if she was pissed off. She gave back neutral paint tones. She might’ve been meditating, not listening to a word he said, but for the slight tilt of her body towards him—and cruise control. He wasn’t even sure if he was talking for himself or for her now.
“I haven’t had a woman in my life for years now. A work hazard. I’ll need to start practising again. How do you think I’ll go?”
“You’re only asking me that to see if I’m listening.”
He grinned. “No, no. I’m interested in your opinion.”
“I don’t have an opinion.”
“Like hell you don’t.”
“You’re fishing for compliments.”
He laughed. “You say that as though there’s something wrong with it.”
“You’re distracting the driver.”
“I wish.” She’d proven impossible to distract. “You’re the coolest customer I’ve dealt with in a long time.”
“What?” Quick head turn.
“You heard me. You’re too cool for school, Caitlyn Mary Ann Murphy.”
“And you’re…”
Long pause, miles of road eaten up. “Yeah. I’m listening.”
“You’re…”
The day was fast dying. “Spit it out, it’ll choke you.”
“Not at all shy are you?”
He almost choked himself. Not the insult, or the veiled request that he shut up he’d expected. “But you are.”
She ducked her chin, eyes forward.
“Or it’s an act.”
Up came her head. “Why would you say that?”
“I gave you a roll of cash. You could’ve bought anything you wanted to wear. Looks like you spent next to nothing and you bought gear as close to your uniform as was possible.”
“I was being responsible with your money.”
“Which you thought was the proceeds of crime, so that doesn’t make much sense. Did you buy anything nice to wear?”
“Why do I need anything nice?”
“Because everyone deserves ordinary nice things. And you, this sexless thing you do, it’s unbecoming.”
“‘Unbecoming’.” Another quick head turn. “What sort of a word is that? What’s it to you what I wear anyway?”
“It’s a puzzle, that’s all. I’ve got a theory that you used to like clothes, liked feeling pretty until things went bad with your man. Now you’re punishing yourself for something he did.”
That was a heck of a long bow and as theories go, impossible to substantiate without her help. Sean wasn’t even sure what made him think it, let alone say it, but the response he got from her was worth the limb he’d crawled out on.
Her hands shifted on the wheel, ten and two and tense, gripping way too hard. She sat up straighter in her seat, her neck stiff, her shoulders up, the muscles in her thighs cramping to attention. Her foot went down on the accelerator, disengaging the cruise control, till they were flying well above the speed limit on the empty stretch of road.
He didn’t check her. He watched the grim expression on her face and wondered what the hell she was running from. Fifteen minutes later she eased back on the accelerator and glanced across at him.