Thank goodness I didn’t end up in one of those rooms with Groobelaar
, she thought with a sneer. He continually tried to push her towards having an affair with him, but she would not. It had always just been work for her. Why did some men find that so difficult to understand?
Tiptoeing further down the hall, Meaghan kept her arms extended in front of her so she would not bump into any unseen obstacles. At the very end of the corridor she could see a door partially ajar, and a faint glow of soft light spilling out onto the hall floor.
This, perhaps, was the way out.
She registered voices inside the room. These could be important guests—perhaps even her handsome businessman from upstairs? Meaghan flicked her hair back and adjusted the straps on her dress in anticipation of the strangers beyond the door. Satisfied that everything was in its place, she licked her lips and raised an arm to push the door open, her fixed smile at the ready. But mere seconds before she moved forwards to enter, she found her eyes focused on a vision through the thin gap of the open door, a sight that made her pause.
Oh!
Meaghan found herself looking at a young man who was immediately familiar to her—not from her own acquaintance, but from the newspapers. He was someone important. Very important. Someone with money. She was aware that she should know who he was, but she couldn’t quite place him. She stood and stared through the crack in the door for what could have been ten seconds or ten minutes—she didn’t know—and her hand, which had frozen in position halfway to pushing the door open, moved mechanically to her bag and removed her mobile phone. Like an automaton she stepped back and aimed the phone’s small video-camera lens through the crack in the door.
My girlfriends won’t believe the people I saw tonight.
She realised that the man was arguing with someone. It was odd because his lanky body was unclothed from the waist up, save for a glinting gold watch and some rings, and yet the Asian-looking man he was disagreeing with was fully dressed in a collared shirt and dress pants. Meaghan squinted and cocked her head to one side: something was wrong with what she was seeing. Her heart began pounding in her chest even before her mind fully registered the source of her horror.
The scene through the doorway came into focus slowly, and with awful clarity. Meaghan’s breath caught in her throat, her arm suspended motionlessly as she recorded everything on digital video.
Eyes…staring…
A naked girl lay prone on an unmade bed just inside the doorway. The young face—so close that Meaghan could have reached out and touched it—was turned at an awkward angle in Meaghan’s direction, chin buried in a pillow, the dark eyes wide open, staring lifelessly, her mouth gaping in an awful silent scream. A small manicured hand rested inches from where Meaghan stood in the dark hall, the fingers outstretched as if the girl had been reaching for the doorknob in her final breath, a heavy black leather tie dangling from the wrist. A syringe lay on the floor along with fallen bed cushions and an upturned water bottle, near the opening in
the doorway. From the bedroom the musty scent of sex mixed with a horrible, sickly sweet odour Meaghan had not encountered before.
Death.
Meaghan’s stomach lurched. She brought her hand down, stopping the recording. She could not believe what she was seeing.
Oh my God…
The girl on the bed was Asian in appearance and young.
Too young.
Was she twelve? Fourteen? Dark glossy hair fanned out around her head as she lay stomach down, back and buttocks fully exposed, her diminutive body clothed only in a frilly hot-pink garterbelt that contrasted sharply with the grim setting and the bluey-ashen pallor of her skin. A large intricate tattoo that seemed out of place coloured her lower back in a pattern of lines or script that Meaghan could not make out.
She wanted to tell herself that this girl could simply be unconscious, but those staring eyes were too unresponsive. And besides, death was immediately recognisable: no sleep was so grim and terrible on an otherwise fair face; no living state left a person so empty-looking.
The famous man she had been recording stood at the foot of the bed arguing animatedly with the other man, neither of them bothering to attempt to revive the girl or cover her nakedness. The girl’s body looked so small and vulnerable in death, her limbs splayed out. And
those unseeing eyes. The eyes seemed to look at Meaghan. Above the dead girl, the men were engaged in a hushed but heated argument—Meaghan could tell that they did not wish to be overheard. The implications of what she was witnessing were enormous, and difficult to fathom, particularly in her state.
What is that guy doing there with a girl so young and so…dead?
‘Hey!’
A man’s booming voice yelled at her from the hallway behind. Meaghan jumped with fright at the sound, letting out a shocked yelp. Instinctively she palmed her phone behind her back and whirled around to face the voice. It belonged to a strong, even-featured young man who was barely two metres away and closing fast. Behind her the bedroom door was slammed shut from the inside. She heard a scuffle within as the inhabitants realised they had been spotted. Meaghan wore a bold smile for the stranger in the hallway while her fingers worked the buttons of the mobile keypad behind her back, trying to send a video of the dead girl to the first person listed in her phone book.
Should she tell this stranger what she had seen?
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he asked accusingly, standing over her aggressively.
She continued pressing buttons, with no time to consider to whom the video might be delivered.
‘Hey! I’m talking to you!’
With that he lunged forwards and grabbed Meaghan’s wrists from behind her back. The phone slipped from her hands and dropped to the hardwood floor with a loud thwack, the battery separating from the phone and skittering a few feet away.
No!
‘Ouch! Wait!’ she protested. The man had a painful, vicelike grip; and, to her alarm, he wasn’t easing off. His face was mere centimetres from hers as he held her wrists, and she could see that he was very unhappy with her—a little
too
unhappy. With his sun-kissed hair, white teeth and tan, he looked to Meaghan like a handsome male model or a movie star. He certainly didn’t fit her idea of a security guard. But his eyes were angry, and Meaghan could not yet register why he would be so cross with her. What had she done to him?
‘I
said
, what do you think you’re doing?’ he bellowed angrily.
She flinched and closed her eyes. ‘Oh…I…you don’t understand…’ she began feebly. Slowly he eased his grip on her, nonetheless keeping her cornered and bearing down on her without a trace of friendliness. She smiled coyly in response, in a way she hoped would be disarming. ‘There must be some misunderstanding,’ she continued, deciding it was far too risky to admit what she had seen. ‘I’m looking for the deck. Is it this way? I didn’t take anything if that’s what you’re thinking.
I’m a guest here, with Mr Groobelaar of Trident Realty—’
And then, to her shock, the man deliberately stomped his foot down on her mobile. She heard pieces of the phone crunch and scatter in the hall.
Oh!
Sickening adrenaline rushed through her as the realisation hit.
He is with them. He knows there is a dead girl in the next room.
Meaghan could see by the look in this man’s eyes that there was no room for outrage. He knew perfectly well what he was doing, and what was happening behind that closed bedroom door—and he also knew that
she
knew. Meaghan was now very much afraid. She knew the significance of what she had been recording. Though she still couldn’t recall the name of the shirtless man in the room, she knew that he was important, that he was famous, and that he was in a room with a dead underaged girl. And she’d seen it. Meaghan had watched enough movies to know that people were killed for knowing less.
The blond man grabbed her forcefully by the shoulders with both hands while Meaghan panicked inside.
‘Don’t you know it’s not polite to spy?’
She was hauled down the corridor away from the bedroom door, with her shattered phone lying in pieces on the hallway floor, the only
evidence of what she had seen now destroyed. Shocked by the stranger’s aggression and looking for any chance to escape, Meaghan was being half dragged, half carried away down one corridor to the next, before being pushed through a doorway into a cold, dark space.
It was a garage. The lights flickered and came on with a hum. Meaghan’s eyes widened. The garage housed several luxury automobiles: a Jag, a BMW four-wheel drive and what she thought was a Ferrari or Lamborghini or something. She didn’t know cars well, but she knew an expensive car when she saw it. These people were very,
very
rich.
‘Are you going to calm down now?’ the man said.
She stood rigid, unsure of what would happen next.
I just saw a dead girl. A dead girl…
‘No one is going to hurt you,’ he said, palms extended as if to offer a truce. Under the present circumstances, though, she wasn’t so sure she believed him. ‘Now just get in. Please…’ He opened the passenger-side door of the four-wheel drive and signalled for her to step in.
She stood her ground.
‘Relax, babe. I’m only driving you home,’ he said, and smiled for the first time, his teeth dazzling.
‘But my shoes are at the pool,’ she protested and looked down at her feet. ‘I took them off earlier. It will take me two seconds to get them.’
He didn’t go for it.
‘Get in the car,’ he said.
Groobelaar was asleep upstairs—too far to run to—and she certainly couldn’t cry out and be heard with all that dance music pounding through the house. And this man was blocking the door to the garage. He was much bigger than her, and certainly far stronger. There was no way she would make it past him.
With reluctance, Meaghan did as the stranger said and got in, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in her chest.
I should never have let him get me in the car. This is bad. This is really bad.
She was strapped in and the door closed. A flurry of scenarios buzzed through her mind:
What if I leap out as we leave the drive, and flee into the neighbouring yards? Would he come after me if I did?
The man adjusted the seat back on his side and leaned over to the glove box to get the keys, brushing briefly against her bare legs.
‘Okay, where am I taking you?’
The statement had been so without malice that she wasn’t sure what she should say. ‘Um, near the Cross,’ she managed, as if acting like everything was fine would make it so. She would get him to drop her a few blocks away from her apartment, she decided, and sprint the rest of the way home. She wanted to get as far away from that house and that dead girl as possible, and she would tell Groobelaar all about it tomorrow, and he would see to it that things were taken care of.
He had such a mad crush on her that he would do anything she said, she was sure of it.
The man pressed a remote-control unit that sat in the centre console, and the broad garage door lifted, exposing darkness and a light rain, which must only have just started. It was very early in the morning. Soon the sun would peek over the horizon and this horrible night would be through. She wished it would end soon. She wished she had never accepted Groobelaar’s invitation to come as his guest.
In silence, the man drove them out of the garage and into the wet streets while Meaghan fretted, wondering where he would take her and what would become of the poor dead girl. They had driven for perhaps ten minutes before he spoke.
‘Are you thirsty?’
Meaghan nodded, puzzled by his unexpected thoughtfulness. Her lips were so dry. She’d drunk too much champagne and it always made her feel like this. She desperately craved a glass of water.
‘Have a sip. You look parched,’ he said, and passed her a plain bottle of water from beside him. The seal was already broken. ‘Go ahead,’ he said, urging her to drink. ‘See, I’m not going to hurt you. Drink it. You’ll feel much better.’
She unscrewed the cap, which opened easily, and took a small swig from the bottle. The water was flat. It tasted a bit salty.
‘Go on,’ he urged her.
She took another sip.
‘Good girl. Now, that’s better, isn’t it?’
Meaghan did feel a touch better for a moment. Her parched lips were grateful for the liquid, and at least this stranger was no longer jumping down her throat like he had been in the hallway. She wanted him to stay calm. Maybe he really would let her get home. Maybe.
And then the spike hit.
Oh fuck…oh my God…oh fuck…
A pure, beautiful euphoria overwhelmed
Meaghan’s senses. She took a deep breath and let
her head fall against the seat, chin tilted skywards.
She let out a shocked moan, the pleasure taking
her by surprise.
‘Good girl. Now, where am I taking you?’
She straightened her head and looked at him.
There was something in the water…something in the water.
Whatever it was, it had worked fast. Her head was not just in the car but up and up and going, floating, floating everywhere. She felt extremely tipsy, or like she had taken ecstasy, and yet neither: this was something else. Everything felt wonderful: her bare feet on the carpet of the car; the seat under her hands. She fell into a state of profound relaxation. Any alarm or distress she had experienced was so remote now that it no longer mattered. It was okay. He was a new and trustworthy friend. There was nothing to fear.
‘Come on, babe—where am I taking you? Where do you live?’ her new friend asked, his
voice now sounding so much more friendly in her ears.
‘Oh, Potts Point,’ she explained, giving him her full address. He responded with a warm smile and she giggled slowly, awash with safety and contentedness. ‘I feel so good.’
‘Good girl,’ he said to her. ‘Now, what’s your name?’