Bodyguard: Target (2 page)

Charley gazed at the thin line of horizon
separating sea and sky. In the sun’s warm summer glow, she waited for the
telltale ripple that would swell into the perfect wave
to ride. Yet, as the ocean
lapped gently against her surfboard, a shudder of uneasiness swept through her.

On instinct she glanced around but saw
only other surfers bobbing on the water, each biding their time for the next decent
wave. Charley shook the dark feeling away and focused on the horizon. She was
determined not to let old memories surface and cloud the rest of her
day.

She surfed to forget.

Out on the water, the rest of the world
disappeared. It was just her, the board and the waves.

In the distance a ripple grew into a
promising swell. Charley splashed saltwater in her face and ran her hands through
her damp sun-bleached hair to clear her mind. Then she heard a name she thought
she’d left behind for good.

‘Hey, Charlotte!’
called a
voice. ‘Charlotte Hunter?’

Charley turned to see
a young, tanned surfer paddle up beside her. No one had called her Charlotte since
she’d moved down from North Tustin to San Clemente on the coast.

‘It
is
you,’ he
declared, sitting up on his board. A mop of tousled sandy hair half-covered his eyes
but stopped short of concealing the easy smile that greeted her
gaze. A couple of
years older than Charley, he wore a tight black vest that emphasized his impressive
physique.

Good-looking as he was, Charley
didn’t recognize him. ‘Sorry, you’ve got me confused with someone
else,’ she said.

The young surfer studied her a moment
longer. ‘No, it
is
you,’ he insisted. ‘I saw you a couple
of summers back at the Quiksilver surf championships.
You were truly awesome!
Totally deserved to win. Takes some serious skills to pull off those turns. And that
final kickflip was sick!’

Blindsided by his praise, Charley
mumbled thanks, then returned her attention to the approaching swell.

‘So, where have you been
hiding?’ he asked, not taking the hint. ‘After you won, you kinda
dropped off the radar.’

Charley’s
gaze didn’t waver
from the horizon and she kept the grief from her voice. ‘My parents died in a
plane crash.’

The surfer opened then closed his mouth,
the lapping of the sea and the breaking of waves on the shoreline filling the
awkward silence.

It took all Charley’s willpower to
suppress the despair that threatened to engulf her. If losing her best friend
wasn’t enough,
her parents had been killed during a
terrorist hijacking of a passenger jet only two years after Kerry’s
kidnapping. The double tragedy had almost broken her.

Charley desperately willed her wave
closer. She needed to be in its pocket, surfing at the edge of her ability, where
thoughts of her parents – and of Kerry – were drowned out by the sheer
power of the ocean.

‘No offence, but I like to surf
alone,’ she said, circling her board round in readiness to catch the oncoming
wave.

‘Sure … I understand,’
said the young surfer breezily. ‘But if you want to hang out some time
we’re having a beach party tomorrow night. My name’s Bud –’
The urgent honking of car horns from the coastal road interrupted his pick-up
attempt. ‘What’s got
them so freaked?’

Then they both spotted a huge grey
dorsal fin cutting through the waves.

A lifeguard’s cry of
‘SHARK!’ sent a spike of fear through every surfer in the water.

‘Let’s bail!’ said
Bud, paddling furiously for the shoreline with every other sane surfer.

But Charley remained where she was.
Shark or no shark, she intended to wait for
her
wave. It was
a beauty
– powerful, glassy and promising a perfect A-frame break. And if she was going
to be shark bait, then so be it. In her experience of life so far, she’d
learnt that fate had already dealt the cards. She couldn’t change the outcome.
That fact didn’t make her any less scared of the shark. Just realistic.

She watched the ominous fin slice
through the water,
then disappear
beneath the surface. The
presence of the predator at least explained her earlier unease.

With the swell rolling in behind her,
Charley began to paddle. She felt the rise of the ocean and the intense energy of
the wave building. A familiar thrill pulsed through her veins as her board rapidly
picked up speed … then, just as she was popping to her feet, the shark broke
the
surface. It was a great white, some four metres long.

Charley almost wiped out. Only now did
she regret letting her stubborn need to surf override her survival instinct. But the
shark wasn’t interested in her. Its target was a young lad on a long board
much closer to shore. Charley watched in mute horror as the great white bore down on
its prey, opening its formidable jaws
and sinking its teeth into both boy and board,
before dragging them under.

Recovering her balance, Charley took the
drop down the wave. It was a clean break, offering a safe run all the way to the
beach … but she made a snap decision to change her line when the boy popped up
again. Screaming for help, he was still caught in the jaws of the great white, only
his long board
preventing him from being torn apart.

She carved her way towards him. She
figured she had a slim chance of saving the boy if she could time her descent to
collide directly into the shark’s head.

Charley had just a second to realize how
crazy her stunt was before the tip of her board struck the shark with such force
that she flipped over the top. Somersaulting through the
air, she plunged head first
into the sea. The wave broke
hard, barrelling everything along in
its path. Charley was spun over and over. Water roared in her ears. For one
horrifying moment she believed she might never surface again. Then the mighty wave
passed and her head bobbed up in the foaming water.

Gasping for breath, she searched around
for the boy. By some miracle
her insane plan had worked. The great white had
released its death grip, and the boy was floundering a few metres away, blood
pouring from his wounds. Retrieving her board on its leash, Charley paddled hard
towards him. She could see the great white circling for another attack.

‘Take my hand!’ she
cried.

The boy weakly reached out and Charley
pulled him to her just
as the enraged shark exploded out of the water. The great
white missed the boy by a fraction, its jaws clamping down on to his long board
instead. Still attached by the leash, the boy was almost torn from her grip. Charley
snatched the small dive knife strapped to her ankle and cut the plastic line.

With blood swirling in the sea, the
great white whipped into a feeding frenzy.
Within seconds the creature had shredded
the long board to pieces, then its cold black eyes turned to Charley. Suppressing a
stab of panic, she grabbed the flailing boy and hauled him on to her own board.

‘Hold tight,’ she told him
as the next wave rolled in.

Kicking hard, Charley body-surfed
towards the beach. The wave bore them all the way, mercifully dumping them both
in
the shallows. Four surfers ran in and dragged
them the last few
metres to the safety of the shore. Once on the beach, the lifeguard began emergency
medical treatment on the boy.

‘Call an ambulance!’ he
ordered one of the surfers.

‘Will he live?’ asked
Charley, getting shakily to her feet. She was breathless and her heart pounded.
Bystanders were asking if she
was all right, but she waved them away.

‘I should think so,’ the
lifeguard replied as he stemmed the boy’s blood loss. ‘Thanks to
you.’

Charley nodded, then retrieved her board
and quietly disappeared into the gathering crowd.

Having washed the blood off herself and
her board, Charley sat down on a secluded sand dune to inspect the damage. Not to
her own body, which had escaped with only a few scrapes and bruises,
but to her
precious surfboard. Remarkably, the board had survived the encounter with the great
white. Only the nose had suffered a bad ding.
That’ll cost quite a few
bucks to get repaired
, she thought. But money was not the problem, as long
as her foster-parents allowed her access to the trust-fund account.

For the time being Charley sealed the
damage with some epoxy resin
from her board bag. As she squeezed the tube’s
contents over the ding, she noticed her hands were trembling and realized her
fixation on the board must be the result of deep shock. She had no idea what had
possessed her to tackle a great white head on. It had been insane!

Yet, despite the terrifying encounter,
she also felt strangely elated. For the first time in her life she’d
confronted death … and won.

How Charley wished
she’d possessed some of that courage during Kerry’s abduction. There
wasn’t a day that she didn’t think of her friend. Despite the state-wide
search by police and all the publicity, Kerry had never been found. Nor had her
abductor.

For the past four years Charley had
played the nightmare scene over and over in her head.
How the situation could have
been different if only she’d acted on her instinct sooner. If only she’d
offered to look at the map. If only she’d reached out and grabbed her friend.
If only she’d screamed for help. If only she’d taken the vehicle’s
licence plate.
If only …

Tears welling in her sky-blue eyes,
Charley forced herself to take several deep breaths. She swallowed
the sharp pain of
her grief that never seemed to dull with time. Gradually the trembling subsided and
she regained control.

While she waited for the resin to dry,
Charley sat in the dunes, knees hugged to her chest, and stared out at the limitless
expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Gulls flew overhead in a cloudless blue sky. Bright
sunshine glinted off emerald-green waters.
And glassy waves, now abandoned and free
of surfers, peeled along the coast in perfect white lines. The sight was
breathtaking.

There was no indication that a deadly
predator swam just beneath the surface.

Just like it is in life
,
thought Charley bitterly
.

‘Thinking of going back
out?’ enquired a deep gravelly voice.

Charley snapped her head round to see a
man cresting
the dune. She raised a hand to shield her eyes from
the sun. The stranger was tall and broad with close-cut silver-grey hair. Despite
wearing a faded O’Neill T-shirt and board shorts, he was no surfer. A jagged
white scar cut across his neck. But it was the man’s English accent that put
her most on guard.

‘Maybe,’ she replied
tersely.

The man raised
a questioning eyebrow.
‘You have a death wish?’

Charley shrugged. ‘At least
I’d get the waves to myself.’

The stranger grunted a laugh, then
glanced at the beach where the injured boy was being transferred into an ambulance,
its lights flashing. A TV news camera crew was now filming the scene.

‘That was a remarkable act of
courage,’ he said. ‘Everyone else fled,
but you surfed right into the
danger zone. Did you know the boy?’

Charley shook her head.

‘So why risk your life saving a
stranger?’ he pressed.

Charley was uncomfortable with this
personal line of questioning. ‘I don’t know,’ she replied
honestly, then narrowed her eyes. ‘I suppose I don’t like the strong
taking advantage of the weak.’

The man seemed to smile
at this.
‘And why walk away? You could be basking in the limelight, rather than
sheltering alone in this dune.’

‘I don’t like
attention,’ Charley replied.

‘That’s good,’ said
the stranger, taking a step closer. ‘Nor do I.’

Charley tensed,
growing ever more fearful of the man’s intentions.

‘What’s your name?’ he
asked.

‘What’s it to you?’
Charley
shot back.

‘I’m not a reporter, if
that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘That’s
not
what
I’m thinking.’

The man studied her intently, his
flint-grey eyes finally coming to rest on her damaged board. ‘I can see you
want to be left alone.’

With that, he tipped his finger to his
brow by way of goodbye, then strolled off. As he disappeared over the dune, Charley
relaxed
her grip on the dive knife she’d kept concealed beneath the board.
Only when she was convinced he had gone did she slide its blade back into its
sheath.