Blood Secret (22 page)

32

The waiting room between MineLease's two small offices was a tiny space taken up with filing cabinets, a couple of chairs and magazines with glossy photos of extremely large machinery.

It was months since Rennie had been in Max's office and when she opened his door, the sight of his silent, cluttered space made her heart stop. He was everywhere – hard hat and earmuffs hanging on a rack, high-vis work trousers and shirt draped over a chair, steel-capped boots dropped carelessly under it. There was a pushbike and helmet, an orange kayak propped against a wall, a wetsuit draped over it like a blackened torso. A bookcase was stacked with folders and fat manuals and his desk looked like nothing had been filed since last Christmas. And there was his uniquely Max scent: fresh and salty, slightly woody, a little coffee and hot food mingled in. It filled her nostrils, making her chest tighten and her tear ducts tingle. Made her want to wail his name.

Do something that will help, she
told herself.

She went to his desk, found Post-It notes everywhere: stuck to the sides of the computer screen, in lines down the tabletop, on the edges of the shelves. There were photos, too, taped and pinned and propped. Not duplicates of the ones at home but the same themes: family, friends, Hayden and Rennie. His monitor and keyboard were angled to one side, a blotter with large, tear-off sheets positioned in front of his chair. A thick diary lay closed next
to it.

Rennie opened it where a pen was stuck between the pages: Friday, three days ago. The hours were marked down the margin, Max's shorthand on corresponding lines. At ten am:
Teralba at Teralba
. Midday said
Simmo
. Pete's name was written across the bottom of the page with another name and mobile number underneath – the replacement crew for Sunday sailing, she guessed. At three pm, there was a single, underlined word:
James
. A meeting that'd turned into
an argument?

She flipped back through the week and found more of the same two- and three-word cryptic notes. She shut the book and moved onto the Post-Its. Three clinging to the monitor were curled at the edges and looked like they'd been there as long as Max had: his sister's number in Perth, his parents' address in Yamba, Hayden's school details. On the desk, there was a reminder to pick up photos, to buy milk, to call Hayden for his birthday. There were dates that had passed and for weeks ahead. Four of them reminded him to ‘call Rennie'. It told her he knew he was forgetful, that he cared, that he tried to keep in touch, that he never cleaned his damn desk. And if he was having an affair or planning to leave, there was no trace of it here.

‘Did you find anything?'

It was Hayden, licking the fingers of one hand, a frothy mug in the other. She almost suggested he wait with Amanda then remembered he'd spent a lot of time here over the years hanging out in the office during school holidays. And he wanted to search. ‘Why don't you take a look?'

While Hayden read the Post-Its, she hovered over the blotter, trying to make sense of the scrawls and doodles. A line had been drawn from top to bottom dividing the page in two. On one side were squares and loops and odd shapes, on the other, notes were jotted in columns. It looked like company names and there were dates and other groups
of numbers.

‘You see anything?' she
asked Hayden.

‘A lot of sticky notes.'

‘Gee, I missed that.' She caught his brief grin
in profile.

‘Did you look on his computer?'
he asked.

‘Not yet. You want to fire it up?'

‘Sure.'

Mention of the computer seemed to inject some enthus­iasm into him. He ducked around her, flicked the monitor on, rolled the chair into place. She let him at it as she pulled open the desk drawers: in the top one there were pens, rulers, paperclips, electrical leads and a thousand multicoloured, sticky Post-It pads. His stockpile. Spare notebooks were stacked in the next one, with a cardboard file sitting on the top. There was a single sheet of paper inside, lists of numbers running down one side. Some of them were calendar dates for this year. Others were long groups of numbers like she'd seen on the blotter. She pulled the page and checked them against the ones on the desk. All six were
the same.

‘It wants a password,'
Hayden said.

Rennie glanced at the screen and back to the numbers on the page. Passwords? ‘Try this.'

Hayden typed as she read out a series of numbers.

‘No.'

‘Try it with these spaces.' She read
it again.

‘No.'

They went through them all, in case Max was changing his password and writing it down so he wouldn't forget. Nothing. She pushed a hand through her hair and let out a gust of air. Maybe the numbers weren't anything to do with the computer. Maybe they were code numbers and service dates for machinery. Maybe he'd bought lottery tickets. Maybe she was grasping at straws.

‘Okay, we're getting nowhere here.' She went to drop the page into the folder again, changed her mind, folded it and pushed it into her back pocket. She had no idea what it was but she was sick of leaving empty-handed.

On the way out, she eyed James's closed door. She knew his office was identical to Max's, minus the clutter, but he'd pulled together the financial records in there. Maybe there was a copy, maybe his computer wasn't password protected. She tried the knob. Locked. There was no deadlock, just a handle and strike plate. She could open it without damaging it. It'd barely leave a scratch.

‘Take your mug out to the kitchen,' she told Hayden quietly.

As he turned, Amanda appeared in the hallway. ‘How're you guys doing down here? Found anything?'

Rennie stepped away from James's door. ‘It's hard to tell.'

‘Anything I can help you with?'

‘Yes. Do you know if Max and James always use passwords on their computers?'

‘I don't know about James. I've never used his computer. He either emails me with work or drops off hard copies at the desk. Max doesn't. Anything he forgets to drop off, I go into his office and look it up on his computer.'

‘Right. Thanks.'

Amanda waited as though there might be more. There wasn't, just Rennie's burning desire to help herself to the contents of James'
s office.

Hayden followed her to the car in silence, which she was more than grateful for. She wanted to ask Max what the hell it all meant. The argument, the numbers, the passwords, the blood. The only thing she knew was that the answers weren't going to be good news.

She pulled on her belt, started the engine, then
just sat.

‘What?'
Hayden asked.

‘I'm running out of ideas.'

‘
Now
can we check his fishing spots?'

Yeah, there were still places to look. ‘Okay, let's do that.'

Taking the highway back to Haven Bay, Hayden directed her to a small, rocky cove further south than the curve of Winsweep Bay she'd run this morning. She stood at the edge of the road and knew they wouldn't find anything. It made no sense for Max to be here – dumped, stumbled or otherwise. Too close to houses, too far from Skiffs, in the opposite direction to home. She let Hayden wander around the rocks anyway, understanding the need to keep looking, tilting her face and squinting in the bright sunlight, the promise of a hot summer filling her with apprehension. Was Max seeing this, too? Was he somewhere exposed, sunburnt and dehydrated? Injured and disoriented? Or were his eyes closed and his
body cold?

Or was he lying in a soft bed with another woman, ordering room service with
stolen money?

They stopped at two more fishing spots and Rennie watched Hayden clamber about, feeling the jitters and short temper of too much coffee and not enough food.

‘Let's go to Skiffs. I need to eat,' she finally
told him.

It was after two when they got there and the lunchtime crowd had been and gone. Pav had probably started to close down the kitchen but maybe he'd fix her a sandwich. Maybe she'd beat him around the head if he didn't.

‘He's not here,' Eliza told her, a couple of cappuccinos in hand as she passed them on the way to
a table.

Trish appeared from the kitchen, embracing Hayden first then whispering in Rennie's ear as she hugged her. ‘You look shattered.'

Rennie wondered how much Trish knew – whether Naomi had revealed her secrets over the phone or the counter, whether Detective Duncan had asked incriminating questions. She was tired of keeping up the mystery now, of pretending to be someone else. ‘You're probably going to hear some things about me. They're not pleasant but . . .'

Trish held up a hand. ‘Don't. It's okay. Naomi called.'

She nodded. ‘Have you spoken to the police yet?'

‘Detective Duncan was in this morning.'

‘You're probably wishing you'd asked for a resume five years ago.'

‘I'm wishing I'd been a better friend. You might've had someone you could talk to.'

There were good reasons Rennie loved her. ‘You're the first friend I ever had. I didn't want to scare you off.'

‘I don't scare easily.' She said it firmly, a message – and more than a hint of the resilience that must have kept her safe around the world. ‘Now, fill me in on Max.'

‘I've got to eat first. Is the kitchen closed already?'

Trish waved Rennie and Hayden to stools at the counter. ‘No, Shannon's here. She should have enough to throw a sandwich together. What about you, Hayden?'

‘He's already eaten. A lot,'
Rennie said.

‘Have you got any ravioli?' he asked, leaning over the counter as he hoisted himself into the tall seat
beside her.

‘No, but you can have a toasted cheese and tomato sandwich.'

‘Great.'

‘Thanks,' Rennie corrected him. He rolled his eyes. Trish ruffled his hair before calling the order into the kitchen. Shannon worked alternate weekends for Pav and three nights a week at a restaurant in Newcastle. Rennie couldn't remember the last time she'd been in during the week. ‘Why is Shannon here?' she
asked Trish.

‘Pav had to go out.'

Rennie raised her eyebrows. Was he searching for Max, too? ‘In the middle of the day? Did he swap bodies with someone who takes a break?'

Trish laughed a little. ‘He's been having problems with a supplier. He's trying to sort something out.'

‘The Serbian guy?'

Trish cocked her head, pulled a face that said she wasn't impressed.

The lean, heavily accented sales rep had started dropping by to see Pav a couple of months ago. Pav would come out of the kitchen, sit at a table with him, drink coffee and talk in one of the eight or so languages that could roll off his tongue. He'd told Rennie the guy sold good condiments but whenever he'd been in, Pav would launch into one of his stressed cooking frenzies. He was in on Saturday morning when he was prepping food for the party and his cook-off got the job done faster. ‘What's the problem with him?'

‘Pav knows him. It's a long story. Let me see how your lunch is going.'

Eliza slipped into Trish's place behind the counter. ‘You're probably too preoccupied for inquiries about paintings but a man rang a couple of times asking about you.'

Caution stiffened her spine. ‘What man? Did he leave a name?'

Eliza flicked a startled glance at the hand Rennie had clasped around her wrist. ‘He didn't want to leave a name. He said something about admiring your work and wanted to talk to you.'

Anthony had shown photos of his daughters at shops and real estate agents and caravan parks, played the concerned, desperate father looking for his kids. Sounding convincing about her paintings wasn't a stretch. ‘What did you tell him?'

 

33

‘That you don't give your details out over the phone,' Eliza told her. ‘And you wouldn't be in for a few days.'

Good girl. ‘Was that all?'

‘The second time he rang, he asked if you had a studio or showroom somewhere.'

‘And?'

‘I told him you worked from home. And no, I didn't give him your address.'

‘Did he ask for it?'

‘Yes.'

Rennie interlocked her fingers, squeezed tight, fighting the urge to get up and walk straight to the car.

‘Here you go.' As Trish slid plates across the counter, Eliza ducked away to serve a customer at the register and Hayden groaned like he hadn't eaten for days. Rennie just eyed her food, heart pounding beneath her ribs, and waited for Eliza to
finish serving.

‘The man on the phone, Eliza, what did he sound like?'

She shrugged. ‘I don't know. He seemed really nice.'

‘Who?'
Trish asked.

‘I meant age,' Rennie pressed. ‘Could you pick what sort of age he was?'

‘He was on the phone. It's hard to tell. What difference does it make if he wants to buy a painting?'

‘Have you sold a painting?' Trish asked.

Rennie gripped the edge of the counter, frustration and fear and low blood sugar making her want to shout at them. ‘It might have something to do with Max.' Beside her, Hayden turned his head. ‘Did he sound young or old?'
she asked.

The mention of Max made Eliza focus. ‘Well, his voice was kind of gravelly. Yeah, I'd say he was an older guy.'

Rennie wasn't sure what a twenty-year-old considered as an ‘older guy' but the man with the camera in the street yesterday was well past forty. ‘When did you take the calls?'

‘The first one was yesterday afternoon just before we closed up and then he rang again today.' She checked her watch. ‘Maybe an hour and a half ago. I remember because we were really busy and I was trying to get him off the phone.'

Rennie did the sums. Max disappeared on Saturday night and the first call was around three pm Sunday, almost eighteen hours later. Her father could have left and come back. Hurt Max in the car park, taken him far away and returned
for her.

‘What's going on, Rennie?'
Trish asked.

‘I'm not sure.' She didn't
know
it was her father – there was no way of confirming it from a couple of phone calls – but she wasn't prepared to take any chances. She glanced at Hayden still chewing on his sandwich and wondered about leaving him here. He would slow her down, however this panned out. But if her father had seen him with her, if he'd already hurt Max for the same reason, Hayden was safer where she could keep an eye on him. ‘Come on, we've got to go.'

‘I haven't finished,' Hayden complained.

‘And you haven't eaten anything,'
Trish said.

Rennie took a large bite from the corner of her sand­wich then pushed the plate across the counter. ‘I'll take it with me. Can you wrap it up?'

‘Rennie, what is it?' Trish
tried again.

‘It's what I didn't tell you about. I'll call you later.' She waited impatiently as the sandwich was pushed into a bag. Hayden didn't bother with wrapping, eating as he followed her to
the car.

‘I thought you were hungry,' he said as he clipped himself into
his belt.

‘I can eat on the way.'

‘Where are we going?'

‘Home.' She needed the backpack. And
the gun.

*

The landscape was the same. Still dense black and silent, still dry and sandy under his hands. The only difference was the pain. It was worse. Deeper, dragging, clawing its way into every part of his body. Max knew it wasn't just his wounds now but blood loss, dehydration, shock, maybe infection, too. He wanted to curl up in a ball and sleep forever; he wanted to grab the agony by the throat and call it a fucking arsehole. What he did was grit his teeth and crawl slowly, exhaustingly forward, hoping it was taking him somewhere and that he'd get there before he died.

The memories kept his mind focused on something other than the pain and the darkness. He tried to open his mind to them like a door, whistle for their attention, beckon them in with the scoop of a hand and the promise of an endless glass of water. There was no rush in response, though. They trickled in one by one, as though somewhere out of sight they'd got into chronological order and were coming back in an organised, unhurried fashion. When Rennie's gun sauntered in, it made his heart thump all over again.

He'd found it the weekend after she almost left him. That event in itself had scared the hell out of him. The argument was short and firey, out of character for Rennie but nothing like the yelling matches he'd had with Leanne, then five minutes after he'd stormed out to the deck, he'd heard the old garage door wrench up and her car start. Even though he was well past his running days, he found enough pace to reach the bottom of the driveway as she did, almost getting dragged under a wheel as he jumped in beside her. She'd seemed more resigned than angry when they talked, as though she'd been waiting for the moment it would turn
to shit.

He'd wanted to stagger about with relief when she agreed to stay. Instead he carried her backpack inside so she couldn't change her mind and make a dash with it. There was barely anything in it but it was as heavy as if she'd grabbed Gran's antique silver candlesticks on the way out. She took it from him when they reached the bedroom and shut it in the wardrobe before she let him
kiss her.

He'd wondered for days afterwards what was in there, enough to make him go and look when she was working the next weekend. The pack was back on the top shelf and weighed down by a single object that distended the
soft base.

He couldn't remember now if he'd felt guilty about doing it, just recalled the curiosity that made him unzip the bag like a kid uncovering a treasure. He'd spent a lot of time wondering about her life, concocting episodes that might explain her various layers. What he found made him scratch
the lot.

A gun. What
the fuck?

Shock made him fumble and drop it, cringing, expecting it to go off. It was black and mean looking, with moving parts and an empty hole in the grip where the canister for the bullets went.

He tried to fight the image of it in her hands but the bold, tough, wary parts of her slid together in his mind and yeah, a gun could make sense – if she'd needed to protect herself or someone else or . . . 

Looking for answers, he went through the contents of the backpack. There was an empty clip and loose ammunition in a pocket, fat rolls of cash in a plastic bag, a mobile phone and charger, a zip lock bag with someone else's birth certificate pressed against one side of the clear plastic. He'd got up and paced around, wringing his hands, not wanting to connect the dots that were on his bedroom floor. Then he opened the zip lock and the first thing he saw was the photo. One of the kids in it was definitely Rennie around the age of nine or ten. The woman was similar enough to suggest it was her mother and he guessed the other girl was her sister, Simone. He'd seen her once at the cafe when Rennie first started there and met her, very briefly, at the house after Rennie
moved in.

He'd come home early from work. Both of them seemed startled when he walked in, as though they'd been caught out at something. He tried a bit of friendly ‘So what brings you here?' chitchat but Simone looked him up and down with such tough-arsed scrutiny that he almost felt like apologising. She went out to her car after that and he watched discreetly from the bay window as Rennie talked with her in the driveway. Simone was a taller, darker, pissed-off version of Rennie. There was no endearing sisterly familiarity between them; they were tense and edgy together and he thought maybe there'd been an argument. They hugged before Simone got in the car, though. A sudden, taut clinch that said more for the intensity of their relationship than love
and tenderness.

Max almost returned the photo without flipping it over. The writing on the back was old-style cursive:
Katrina, Mum, Joanne, Feb. 1989
. He turned it back and forth a couple of times, thinking he must've been wrong. But he wasn't. It was Rennie and she'd once been called Katrina or Joanne. He checked the birth certificate again – it was for a Katrina Nicole Hendelsen; mother Donna, father Anthony, born in 1978. Same year, same month as Rennie.

There was more in the plastic bag, leftovers from a childhood: a blue ribbon from a cross country race, a medallion for swimming, but an old driver's licence and the School Certificate confirmed the other name.

Max's heart pounded and his hands trembled. There could be a lot of explanations for Rennie changing her name, plenty of reasons why she hadn't told him. But she had a gun in the wardrobe – and none of the dots told him whether it was Katrina Hendelsen or Renée Carter who needed it.

He shoved the backpack on the shelf again, went to the yard and dug up a storm. He was mad: that she had it, that he'd found it, that he'd been so far off base about her. That the story she hadn't told him was ugly and dangerous and she'd brought the remains of it to his house. He considered undercover cop, witness protection, on the run. He thought about things she'd said: she didn't know how to stay, this chapter was better than the two before it, the book of her life was a horror story. And his anger became fearful and apprehensive. For her. For himself – because he didn't know how to
protect her.

And as he hacked at the soil, he knew that was what he wanted to do – keep her safe so she didn't need a gun. Whatever the hell had happened in her past had made her tough and wary. It also made her twitch and gasp in her sleep, quietly anxious at times, slow to make friends. It'd carved deep scars that were hidden under the layers of the person she was now – and she looked at him as though she understood his damage, the way only someone who'd lived it could.

Max took a breather in the dark, tried to move his thoughts on from the gun. He didn't get a whole lot further.

The contents of her backpack and his deception in rummaging through it had weighed on his mind but it didn't stop him going back the next weekend, hauling it out, plugging in the mobile phone and going through the contacts list. There were only four numbers. The name ‘Jo' seemed to confirm his theory that the Joanne in the picture was the Simone he'd been introduced to. His name was there, which was comforting. There were two others: Evan Delaney and Nathan Bruce-Allen. He returned everything and
went online.

Bruce-Allen was easy to find. He was a defence lawyer at a Sydney firm called Bruce-Allen & Beckeritch. According to the website, they handled anything from drink-driving charges and hearings with sporting tribunals to extra­dition proceedings and murder trials. He didn't call, realised they weren't going to tell him anything about a client, if that's why their number was on Rennie'
s phone.

Evan Delaney was a little harder to locate but Max eventually found him mentioned in newspaper articles. He was a police detective, quoted in stories about grisly murders. With a bit more digging, he discovered that before rising to detective ranks, he'd been a country cop around New
South Wales.

He googled Rennie's name, too: Hendelsen and variations with Katrina, Joanne, Donna and Anthony. Mostly he found websites in some Scandinavian language that didn't help even when he hit translate. He signed up to a search engine for archived newspapers and magazines but she'd lived all over and after three hours of trundling through national dailies and regional rags, Rennie came home from work and he had nothing except a raft of unanswered questions and the same possibilities of undercover cop, witness protection and bad girl on the run.

Max took up the crawling again, trying to figure it out, wondering if he'd already discovered the answers and couldn'
t remember.

He doubted she was an undercover cop, not because she wasn't up to it. She spent her time working in a cafe in Haven Bay – what was there
to investigate?

Witness protection fitted. The contents of the zip lock bag might be the last scraps of her old self. Maybe whoever she was being protected from was still walking the streets or she doubted how well she could
be concealed.

On the run was his least favourite possibility. She could be hiding from the police and he didn't want her involved in something that could send her to prison. On the other hand, if it was bad guys, bad enough that she needed to change her name and carry a gun, what could he do to protect her?

He paused, panting and aching, apprehension and misgiving heaving in his chest. Had whatever she was running from found her? Had it found him, too?

Was he meant to protect Rennie? Was that what he needed to do that he couldn't remember?