Sweet Seduction Shield (36 page)

If he could do
that, so could I.

"I'll reread
it with you," I said, my voice only slightly shaking.

"There's my
Tiger," he whispered, leaning forward and kissing me on the cheek.
"Let's get Daisy inside watching a DVD while we do this."

He stood up
off the swing seat and looked down at me as I hesitated to move.
There was such a depth of tenderness and care in his eyes, as well
pride. He had no reason to be proud of me, my past spoke of all the
wrongdoings I'd done. But with him beside me I was trying to be
better. Trying to do what was right.

I took his
hand and let him lead me off the deck.

We set ourselves up in the dining room.
Enchanted
was screening on the LCD TV in
the attached lounge. I could see Daisy swinging her legs up behind
her as she lay on her belly and fell willingly into her own little
fantasy world. But the ledger, spread out in front of Ryan and
myself on the table, took up most of my attention. Opened to a
date, some eight years ago. Three years before I stole the book
from Roan McLaren.

I stared at
Rick's writing. So familiar, yet the words were - even to my now
jaded eyes - foreign.

Adam.
Casper the Ghost. Angel Dust. Alice. Mister Blue. Muzzle. Moonrock.
Brownies. Yen Pop.
And then beside those,
phrases such as:
Zips, Zoomer, House Piece, Holding,
Gunther, Trap, Tweaker, Graduate, Toss Up, Teardrops.
And then dates and names. Full names, often with
last known addresses, or just a street name and cross reference.
Dollar amounts, with phrases like,
Teener, Spoon, Eight
Ball, Sixty-Two
. There were symbols, but no
legend. There were photos; mugshots, tattoos or scars that could
obviously identify the person depicted in the image.

And finally a
whole section devoted to payments.

Some were
names and figures written in red ink with a cross in the last
column. Paid.

Others were in
black and had gruesome photos attached. Also paid.

I'd thought it back then, but now with distance and time to
shield me, the emotion was more fervent. More real. I couldn't
fathom how Rick had put his pen, red or black, to that ledger paper
and scratched out those letters without feeling
something
. How had he come home to me at
night and not dwelled on those photos? Not felt relief for those
people who ended up in the red line with a cross in their final
column. Not felt shock and horror at those that ended up
black.

I sat there as
Ryan methodically read every single line, no doubt understanding
the language, or code, or slang, or whatever the fuck it was.
Probably not even needing a legend to figure out the symbols. He
didn't say anything. He just kept reading, slowly turning the
pages, and occasionally jotting a few words down on a notepad to
the side.

I became numb. I tried to tell myself it wasn't the Rick I
knew and loved. It was someone else.
I
was someone else. I hadn't lived on the edges of this strange,
vile world. I hadn't known someone intimately who survived in its
trenches for years. I wasn't guilty by association, tainted by the
filth Rick touched.

But I was,
wasn't I?

Ryan made a
sound, a slightly excited sound. Although any sound seemed animated
after the slow, methodical turning of the pages and the dreadful
silence that preceded the next. He flicked back several sheets,
then returned to where he had read to, then checked his notes. From
what I could tell, in my frozen state of denial, he was comparing a
symbol that appeared in each of those spots. A stylised palm tree
with a strange pointed cap at its top.

"What do you
make of that?" he asked, pointing to the symbol.

"A palm
tree."

"With a
Phrygian cap," he added. A what? "This is good."

"Why?"

"It's a symbol
of Haiti."

"What's Haiti
got to do with Roan McLaren?"

"Well, ordinarily, it hasn't got anything to do with him,"
Ryan explained. "But these symbols here," he pointed to a page with
several different symbols against large figures and some of those
words like
Alice
and
Angel
Dust
and
Mister Blue.
"I'm thinking they're for people. Important
people. Such as his largest suppliers."

"Why would you
think that?" Granted some of the dollar amounts - or was that
weights? - seemed large, but it really could have meant
anything.

"The palm
tree," he announced, sitting back in his seat with a satisfied
air.

"The symbol
for Haiti?"

"Yeah. And I'm
guessing a certain Haitian born Auckland drug lord would use a
symbol like that, don't you?"

I frowned at
him.

"This ledger's
a goldmine, Marie." I'd never want to wear gold ever again. "Not
only does it shed some very disturbing light on how McLaren settled
unpaid debts." My stomach roiled. "But it ties Wellington's premier
criminal to at least one of New Zealand's most wanted drug
traffickers of all time. You know what you've done?" he asked,
seeming elated by whatever he'd uncovered between those filthy
pages.

I shook my head, frown still in place. He reached up and
rubbed his thumb over the creases in my forehead and smiled,
intense brown eyes staring straight through me.

"You've handed
the Crown Prosecutor, not one, but two and possibly more, criminals
at once." he lifted a hand between us and started to count fingers
off. "Roan McLaren. Declan King. And I'm betting the boys on the
Organised Crime Squad assigned to CIB Narcotics would be able to
work out the rest of these symbols as well."

He stared at
me for a long while, maybe expecting me to clap my hands? I blinked
back at him. Sure, two drug lords instead of one has to be good,
but I'd always known the ledger held more evil bastards than just
Roan McLaren inside.

"Babe," Ryan said, with a little frustrated sigh at my lack of
enthusiasm. "This is better than I first thought.
This
is your ticket to freedom."

It is?

"I gotta call
Dominic and let him know."

He leaned
forward and gave me a peck on the lips, then stood up already
pulling his cellphone from his jeans pocket. I watched him walk
towards the hallway, probably to have the call in privacy, away
from Daisy's prying ears.

Thinking of my daughter I glanced over and saw
Enchanted
was nearing the end. I sat
stunned for a second, unsure if I should let the emotion, I was
beginning to feel, in. Daisy looked so happy singing the last song
along with her favourite animated friends. I wanted her to always
feel this content and safe and
alive
.

Could it
really be our ticket? Could the blasted thing actually be good for
something in the end? I'd always thought it would mean disaster for
McLaren, would condemn Rick, and could mean Daisy and my deaths.
I'd never dared hope for more.

I wanted to
embrace that burgeoning sensation, that had started in the middle
of my chest and spread out as Ryan had become more and more
excited. I wanted to feel it fill me up, melt the ice that had
surrounded me for so long, and enjoy the burn like a bright
sun.

I wanted to.
Dear God, I wanted to.

Instead I
sucked in a deep breath, brushed my jeans clean, and headed to the
kitchen to start dinner.

Twenty minutes
later Ryan found me.

Dinner hadn't
been started, but there wasn't a speck of dirt in that kitchen to
be seen.

Ryan stood in
the kitchen doorway and watched me for a good two minutes. He
didn't say anything, he just watched. Like he so often does. Not
judgementally, but as though he's trying to see things from my
point of view, see what makes me breathe, pant, beg for more. Or in
this case, what makes me find an old toothbrush and detail clean
the grout between the tiles with bleach.

The kitchen
smelled like a chemical factory, my fingertips were red; I hadn't
been able to find rubber gloves.

Ryan took it
all in silently, then slowly walked over to breakfast bar and sat
down.

"There's
frozen pizza in the fridge, Abi threw a Hawaiian and a Supreme in,
not sure what we'd like, I guess."

My scrubbing
slowed down, my vision began to widen, and my breathing started to
settle.

"You choose.
You know what Daisy would like," he added.

I turned the
tap on above the sink and washed my hands, then without saying a
word walked to the oven and switched it on. I stared at the orange
light next to its dials for several seconds, then took a deep
breath and spun back to face him.

He held my gaze, his eyes drawing me in. They said,
You OK?

I nodded.

"You
sure?"

I shook my
head.

"Want a
hug?"

I bit my
lip.

"At least I
know what to buy you for Christmas," he said, as he slipped out
from behind the counter and walked across the space to reach
me.

"What?" I
asked, looking up at his face as he got closer.

"Gloves." His
lips quirked slightly at the edges. "And cleaner that smells better
than bleach."

I let him wrap
me up in his big arms and pull me against his chest.

"You can get
lemon-pine smelling ones," I offered.

He made an
argh!
sound.

"Lavender?"

"Hmmm."

"There's even
orange."

"I could go
orange," he declared.

"OK.
Orange."

"Marie?"

"Yeah?"

"Dominic was
with a QC, an old school buddy, when I phoned." I held my breath.
Queen's Counsel, a senior lawyer. Someone with a bit of legal
clout. "I told him what we found. Dom's good friend is approaching
the Crown Prosecutor right now on your behalf. They're...
cautiously optimistic. But in legalese that's down right excitable.
Dom thinks the Crown won't have a choice but to agree to their
terms. He expects to be able to give us an answer in about an
hour's time."

His hands ran
up and down my arms, as though chasing goosebumps, but I don't
think he was consciously doing it.

"It's almost
over, Tiger."

I didn't know what to say. I didn't think I
could
say anything. I held on tight and
just breathed. Ryan let me. Giving me, again, exactly what I needed
to survive.

"Shall we have
some dinner, then get Daisy to bed," he suggested. "Even if we get
an answer tonight, there's no point heading in until the morning. I
want Nick on standby for extra security for you and Daisy when we
do."

I nodded, needing to do
something
to keep my mind off what the QC was saying on my behalf to the
Crown Prosecutor right now. Needing to avoid all the what-ifs and
what-could-be. And needing to keep my hands off the
toothbrush.

I slipped the
pizza in the oven and watched as Ryan poured us both ginger beers,
he held a third glass up.

"Daisy?"

"She loves
ginger beer."

"Girl after my
own heart," he declared, and a little more ice melted, a little
more of the room came back into focus. And a little more of my body
- respiration, heartbeat - became mine.

Dinner wasn't
exactly strained, Ryan kept up an easy banter, engaging Daisy,
trying to engage me. I tried to keep up, for my daughter, for him.
He had Daisy in fits of giggles, which made my lips smile even if
the rest of me was hanging in some kind of stasis. But it was hard.
This was only one hurdle of many, but it was, in my mind, the
biggest.

I couldn't
allow myself to dwell on the tattooed freak or the ex-cop Simon
Andrews. If I did that, I'd be an absolute mess, and I had Daisy to
think of. But stopping myself from thinking of the legal side of my
problems wasn't so easy to deny. Despite my history. Despite my
association with the man who laundered McLaren's dirty money.
Despite the fact I stole from a drug king. I am a good person. A
law abiding person. I'd like to think a morally upright person.

At least I was
trying to be.

So the ledger
and my possession of it, and what that could mean legally for me,
was definitely forefront in my mind.

Forty minutes after Ryan had finished his call with Dominic,
he received a text message back.
Delay. We're working on
it. Have faith,
it said. An hour became an
indefinite amount of time and I started to pace.

It was Ryan who put Daisy to bed. Ryan who sang
Daisy Bell
as she drifted off to sleep.
Ryan who tucked her sheets in tightly, and kissed her sweet, sweet
head. I watched, but I was trembling. From head to toe, and I
couldn’t let her see me like that.

I'd thought I
was happy to be rid of my icy confident shield. But I was drowning
here. Ironic, isn't it? It was me drowning in Ryan's mother's
house. Not him.

He was so much
stronger than I'd ever been.

"Hey," he
whispered, as he pulled the door to Daisy's room shut. "Hang in
there, babe. We'll get through this."

My head shook
from side to side. "How?" I whispered.

"Well, first a
hot bath with copious amounts of bubbles." I blinked up at him.
"You smell like bleach." He wrapped me in his arms and nuzzled his
face into my neck, despite the bleach comment. "I wanna smell my
Marie," he murmured.

"You want to
see me naked," I pointed out.

"Yeah, that
too. But if you want to bathe alone, I can manage."