Against the Tide (16 page)

“Oh for goodness sake, Megan. Are you being stubborn on purpose? Are you trying to prove a point?” He gets up with a huff and brings a mug of tea over to me, standing there impatiently until I take it from him. I take it and hold it cupped between both hands, expecting him to walk away, but he doesn’t. “I won’t bite, you know,” he chuckles before bending over at the waist and leaning in close to my ear, “Well, not unless you want me to.” He cocks his head to the side with amusement plastered all over that rugged handsome face of his.

“You think you’re God’s gift,” I state, shaking my head at him.

“If I believed in God, I would think so. I know I gave you a gift up there on the downs though. I gave you a gift that had you screaming my name across the hills.”

“Right, that’s it, I’m leaving.” I place the mug on the floor and get up to leave. He shoves my shoulder lightly but I’m not balanced and fall back on to the couch.

“Sit down. You agreed on an hour.” His voice has a hard edge to it and his jaw is set tightly. For the first time in his presence, I actually feel nervous. He hasn’t forced me to stay but he’s made it very clear that he won’t let me go just yet. Could I throw my hot tea over him and distract him while I run? Could I pretend to seduce him and knee him in the balls?

“Drink your tea,” he orders, before fiddling around with a load of wires and hooking a computer up to the huge TV before slipping in a memory card.

“You’re very insistent that I drink this tea, have you laced it? Rohypnol? Cyanide?” I laugh bitterly thinking that in this strange real life dream anything could be true.

“I think we’ve already established that I don’t need to drug you to be able to fuck you. You’re willing enough sober.”

That cuts me. I’ve never been a slut. Never slept around. Hell, Finn was my first ever one night stand. Well, if you can call it a one night stand when you do it twice. And with that comment, he’s made me feel totally worthless. Like a cheap whore, a sex junkie desperate for my next orgasm. So desperate, I’d let a man that hates me take control of my body. I loved every sordid second of it and the part I hate myself for most is that I would be powerless to him again in a heartbeat.

“Watch this,” Finn orders sitting back on his heels as a grainy picture appears on the big screen. It’s a dark recording, and it takes me a few minutes to make out what the picture is showing. It’s The Cabin. A recording from behind the bar that keeps a check on the patrons, and makes sure they don’t give the bar staff any trouble.

“What is this?” I ask, confused.

“July fourteenth,” he replies without looking at me and I start to feel uneasy at his flat tone and change in body language. He’s totally focused on the screen, eagle eyed and eerily quiet.

“I don’t understand,” I whisper.

“Look, right there,” Finn pauses the recording. “Is this your …”

“Boyfriend. Yes, well, my ex-boyfriend.”

“Damien Brooks?”

“Yes. Is this …” I’m watching Damien, in The Cabin, on
that
night,
the
night.

“Was he dealing that night?”

“I-I don’t know. Why? Why so many questions?”

“I need to find who was dealing for him that night. I know about the pay off, now I need to find the source.”

There’s an edge of desperation to his voice and it sends a small wave of panic through me. He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to get so worked up about something small or petty.

“What pay off? I don’t understand, Finn. Tell me why,” I insist harder but he ignores me, starting the footage again. We watch in a tense, uneasy silence as people come and go from the bar. There’s a part that’s clear where I go up to the bar and order two drinks. Jack and cokes. I remember that was just before Damien sent me off with a bag of cocaine tucked in my bra, right before I saw Finn in the alley. He certainly had drugs on him that night, but was he selling? He usually leaves it to the guys he has working for him to do so that if he got arrested he would only have enough drugs on him to be charged with personal use. I know he was definitely in possession, but of what, I don’t know. I never know. I never ask, and it always seemed like the best way to be.

Ignorant or selfish? Whatever it is, I’m totally clueless and I don’t know what Finn expects to get from me.

“Oh shit,” he whispers, pushing his palm over his mouth and rubbing. He takes a deep breath and swallows hard. Nearly five minutes of footage has gone by and he’s watching like a hawk, but in the last second, something has changed.

“That guy. That’s Damien Brooks?” he mumbles and I’m unsure if it’s a question or not, but when I don’t answer fast enough, he yells, “Is that Damien Brooks?”

“Yes, yes, it is. Why? Who’s that he’s talking to, do you know her?”

He doesn’t answer, doesn’t take his eyes from the screen. We both silently watch the truth unfold. What really happened that night. Finn’s breathing becomes ragged, almost pained and his lips tighten as we see Damien buy drinks for a blonde girl and her friends. They giggle between each other and as the blonde turns to speak with her friends, Damien appears to slip something in to her drink before handing it to her.

I glance at Finn, his hands are shaking and the veins in his neck bulge from the tension.

“Finn, who’s that girl?” I ask nervously, hoping that I’ve put two and two together and come up with five.

He looks down, closes his eyes and whispers, “That’s my sister.”

It hurts. Pain touches every part of my body, but it hurts mostly in my heart. Lizzie’s last minutes on this earth, the last words she would ever speak, the last smile she ever gave, was to him. Damien Brooks.

I pause the recording and sit back with my head hung down. I don’t know where to go from here. I hadn’t planned that part. I also hadn’t planned for the feelings I would have seeing her gorgeous face again. Seeing her as full of life as she always was. It makes it all seem like a huge, fucking horrendous nightmare that I’ll wake up from at any second. I almost want to pinch myself to see if it’s real but I don’t need to. I’ve lived the pain. I’m still living the pain. It’s hard to remember her like that, so full of love and life, when the image of her intubated and lying on that hospital bed, her skin the colour of a rainy day, is imprinted on my brain.

“Your sister.” She repeats my answer with a wobble in her voice. It takes a second for everything to sink in. The tone of her voice says she knows, she knows exactly what went on that night. Of course she does. She’s Damien Brooks’ girlfriend. She …

I snap my head up to meet her wide, tear filled eyes. “You knew, didn’t you?” I bark. “Were you in on it?”

“What? No! In on what?” Her hand flies up to her chest and she stands quickly. I can’t tell if she’s genuinely shocked or trying to hide something. Her body language says she’s ready to bolt, but I’m not letting her to go just yet. I want answers.

“What do you know about that night?” I stand up slowly and step toward her. She takes a step back for every step I take forward and backs herself toward the open doorway of the lounge. I lunge forward and grab her wrist quickly. “What do you know?” I yell.

“Nothing,” she answers desperately, tugging at my grasp. “I don’t know anything. I saw you, we …”

“Why?” I bark, knowing I’m losing my grip on my sanity.

“Why, what?” Her voice quivers as she continues to twist her wrist, trying to get free.

“Why choose that night? Why not the weeks before? You hadn’t even so much as smiled at me until that night, so to let me fuck you in the alley like that …”

“I don’t know. It just happened, it wasn’t planned. Let. Me. Go,” she orders through gritted teeth. I feel her pulse racing under my fingertips, and her hands are trembling, but still, she stands firm. I admire her tenacity, but it’s not going to get her out of this one. I can’t make everything fit together. I can’t figure out why she came outside to me, when that cunt was drugging my sister.

“Was it sexual?” I ask, and she frowns. “My sister, did you go out with a plan to drug someone and take them back to your house for something sordid and sexual? A sick rape film? Did you choose my sister specifically?” I know the questions I’m firing at her sound ludicrous, but I’m running my mouth with everything that’s shooting through my head and although I can feel myself spiralling out of control, I’m powerless to stop it. “Blonde, pretty, young, innocent, that do it for you and your sick fucker of a boyfriend? DOES IT?” I yell loud enough to make her jump back. I let go of her wrist in a quick movement and it makes her flinch and snap her head away, shielding herself with her arms.

“What the fuck is going on here?” Harley steps in to my line of vision and with one look at me he draws his shoulders back. He steps in between Megan and I, and puts a hand out to my chest, keeping me at arm’s length. “I said, what’s going on here, Finn?”

His calm, assertive voice brings me down to earth with a very large thud, and in the time it’s taken me to realise this, Megan has turned on her heel as fast as she can, and ran. The door slams behind her and I feel sick with guilt. “I fucked up, Harley. That’s what’s going on.” I grab my mug of tea from the arm of the chair and hurl it against the wall as hard as I can with a frustrated cry. It smashes into tiny pieces, pieces so small they fly off in all directions around the room. Impossible to repair, and too damaged to make good, which is exactly how I feel right now. I dig the heel of my hands in to my eye sockets and rub hard as if it will take me away from the here and now.

“That was
her
, wasn’t it?” I just nod. “Not cool, Finn. Not cool. ” I know that already. “What’s all this?” He gestures to the computer TV set up.

Harley and I sit across the table from each other in the kitchen. He pushes a beer toward me and pops the cap on one of his own. “You wanna talk me through your day from the beginning? Looks to me like you’ve been pretty busy doing illegal shit and dropping it on my doorstep, which is not the best idea seeing as I work on the legal side of the law.”

“Look−”

“Cut the shit, Finn. Tell me what’s going on? You’re bringin’ shit to my doorstep, which I understand is your doorstep too, but
you
have to understand, I’m a policeman, you do illegal shit and it puts me in a really awkward position. Get me?”

“Yeah, I get you.”

“So …”

“So?”

“Tell me everything from the minute you opened your eyes this morning.”

I shuffle my feet under the table and feel like I’m under interrogation. “Even if it’s illegal?”

“While we are sitting here, like this, I’m off duty. I’m your friend, Finn. You know I’ll cover you as much as I can, but I can’t work miracles.”

“I went to The Cabin. Spoke with Julian Price.”

“And …” Harley grits his teeth and bangs his hand down hard on the table. “Fuck, Finn. Stop dancing around like a twelve year old.”

“Alright,” I snap. “I wanted the CCTV footage. So I paid him a visit, slimy little fucker. I wanted that information and I was willing to do whatever it took to get it.”

“So …”

“So, I roughed him up a bit, is all. Might have broken his nose.” I shrug, still feeling no remorse.

“You’re walking a fine line, Finn.” Harley shakes his head slowly, and I feel like I’ve let him down.

“I know. I’m quite aware of that, but you see, I have nothing to lose.” I lean forward on to my elbows and look him directly in the eye. “I’ve lost my sister. My mum is dying, I have no wife, no girlfriend, and no children to depend on me. I live in your house, and I have no job. Nothing, Harley. Revenge, justice, and the feeling that I’ve put things right is all I have left.”

Harley picks at the label on his beer bottle and looks at the table for a short time. I know he’s trying to think of something to say to convince me not to do anything stupid. I know he’ll want me to do things the ‘right’ way.

“Be careful,” he says quietly. I frown at his unexpected comment and he shrugs. “The cop in me, the one who tries to keep other people on the right side of the law, wants to tell you to live your life without doing anything illegal. But I know that won’t work for you. Do what you gotta do and I’ll help you out where I morally can, but I ask one thing …”