Bodyguard: Target (3 page)

‘
Don’t
lie to
us!’ snapped Jenny, Charley’s foster-mother. ‘We know you
weren’t at school. We’ve just spoken to your form tutor.’

Charley stared sullenly at the bare
wooden floor of
her foster-parents’ house. It was bound to come out. The shark
attack had been all over the local news when she’d got home the previous
evening and speculation was rife about the mystery surfer girl. During a TV news
report, Bud had been interviewed and Charley’s heart had stopped in her mouth.
The last thing she’d wanted was her foster-parents to know that she’d
skipped school
to surf. And although Bud had kept her identity to himself –
for which Charley was grateful – her foster-parents had still guessed,
resulting in yet another argument in their ‘happy’ home.

‘You could have been
killed,’ stated Pete, glaring at her from beneath his bushy eyebrows.

‘But I wasn’t,’
Charley mumbled, wondering how two puritanical churchgoers could only focus
on her
lies and not the fact she’d saved someone’s life.

Jenny folded her
arms. ‘You’re not going surfing ever again.’

Charley looked up in horror. ‘You
can’t take that from me,’ she begged.

‘Yes, we can. You know how we feel
about
surfing
.’ She said the word like it was a vulgar term.
‘It leads to immoral and sinful behaviour – as your persistent truancy
and
dishonesty proves.’

‘Your board’s going to the
dump,’ Pete agreed with finality.

Charley’s mouth fell open. Surfing
was the lifeline that kept her going. Overcome with fury, she screamed, ‘I
wish
you
were dead and
not
my parents!’

Storming out of the hallway, she slammed
the front door on them, then stood, fists clenched and body shuddering, on the
porch. From the
other side of the door, she heard Jenny cry, ‘The Lord
Almighty give me strength! Why do we even bother? She’s a lost
cause.’

‘We must remind ourselves
Charley’s been through a lot,’ said Pete. ‘We need to make
allowances.’

‘We’re
always
making allowances while
she
puts us through hell! I’ve lost count of
the times she’s lied, skipped school and been in trouble
with the police. What
I’d give to see the back of her.’

Pete sighed. ‘If that’s how
you feel, my love, then perhaps it’s time we spoke with the social worker
about rehoming her …’

Charley blinked away the sting of tears.
She knew she’d never made it easy for them. The fact was they simply
couldn’t understand her. They weren’t her parents,
never would be. But to be treated
like some dog to be ‘rehomed’ cut deep
and her heart hardened against her foster-parents.

Charley strode down the driveway,
kicking over one of Jenny’s prized potted plants. As she reached the road, she
noticed a white SUV with tinted windows parked a little way from her
foster-parents’ house. Charley couldn’t be certain, but she thought
she’d seen the same vehicle the
night before. White SUVs were commonplace in
her neighbourhood, but this particular one had cruised up and down as if the driver
had been looking for someone. At the time Charley had thought it might be a
freelance reporter scouting for the mystery surf girl. But its continued presence
this morning raised alarm bells.

As she crossed the street in the
direction of school,
Charley casually glanced over her shoulder and made a mental
note of the SUV’s licence plate – 6GDG468. She wasn’t taking any
chances. After Kerry’s abduction, her parents had become understandably
overprotective. For the first few months they hadn’t let her out of their
sight, but eventually they realized she needed more freedom to have a normal life.
So the compromise had been
for Charley to take up self-defence classes and a
street-awareness course. One of the key lessons had been to stay alert for unusual
behaviour or repeated sightings of people and vehicles.

As she reached the next junction,
Charley looked up and down the road for traffic. But she was only interested in
spotting one vehicle: the white SUV.

There was no sign of
it and
Charley relaxed. Evidently her gut reaction had been wrong. Heading across
the road and down the hill, she wondered how to persuade her foster-parents to let
her out that evening for Bud’s beach party. She wanted to thank him for
keeping her name out of the news. But there was no way they’d give permission.
Not at her age and especially after their last argument. She could say she’d
been invited to a friend’s sleepover, but she was probably grounded for life
– if she wasn’t already rehomed, that was! She’d just have to
sneak out when they went to bed.

Charley waited at a set of traffic
lights for the pedestrian signal to turn green. Several vehicles pulled up. The
fifth in line was a white SUV. Charley clocked the licence plate – 6GDG468
– and
felt her pulse quicken. Could it be a coincidence? The road did lead to
the highway, after all. But, to rule out any possibility of being followed, Charley
took a left instead of going straight on and cut across a small park to a
residential road that ran parallel to the highway.

The route was clear, but then she
spotted the SUV turning into
her
road. Charley quickened her
pace, her
heart thumping. The advice from her street-awareness course on being followed was to
head for a populated area and find a safe location – a friend’s house, a
police station, a restaurant or a library. Charley hurried into downtown San
Clemente, a wide tree-lined boulevard with mom-and-pop stores on either side. They
were just opening so only a handful of early-morning
shoppers could be seen.

Charley stopped
outside a beauty parlour. She needed a good look at the driver to confirm her
suspicions, without him knowing. So she pretended to study the beauty treatments on
offer. In the reflection of the shop window, she watched as the white SUV rolled
down the street and parked in one of the bays opposite. No one got out.

Charley felt eyes
upon her and a shiver
ran down her spine. The driver’s face was obscured by a tinted windscreen, but
she could make out a bald head. Her throat tightened as an old fear gripped her
heart: the man who’d taken Kerry had finally come back for
her
!

Seized by a panic attack, Charley
half-walked, half-ran down the street. Her foster-mother worked in the community
centre near
the pier. If she could just reach there, she’d feel safer. Charley
risked a glance back. The driver was getting out. He was stocky with a short goatee
and pale skin, the lack of suntan confirming he was no local. Dark sunglasses
concealed his features and Charley’s memory of the kidnapper’s face was
hazy after so many years. But one thing was certain – this man was following
her.

With her attention distracted, Charley
ran headlong into the arms of another man.

‘Whoa, slow down!’ he said,
grabbing hold of her wrist as she stumbled back from the impact.

Charley stared into the flinty eyes of
the stranger she’d met on the dunes.

‘We just want to talk,
Charley,’ he said, jutting his jaw at the bald man approaching from behind.
Now Charley
was even more spooked.
He knows my name!

‘Get off
me!’ she cried, spinning her wrist to break his grip and kicking him hard in
the shins, just as she’d been taught in self-defence class.

The man grunted in pain and let go.
Charley sprinted past him and across the street, only to collide into someone
leaving a coffee shop. A fresh cappuccino and sugared doughnut went flying.

‘
What the heck!
’
cried Deputy Sheriff Jay Valdez as he shook hot coffee from his hands and inspected
his stained uniform.

‘Thank God,’ said Charley,
grabbing hold of the officer. ‘I’m being followed!’

The deputy looked beyond her and across
the street, a dubious frown on his face. ‘By who exactly?’

Charley spun round. There was no sign of
the SUV. The stranger
and his accomplice had seemingly vanished into thin air.

‘We’ve talked about this
before, Charley,’ said Deputy Valdez as he sat opposite her in one of the
coffee shop’s red leather booths. ‘You can’t keep skipping
school.’

‘But I was being
followed,’
Charley insisted, a warm latte cupped between her hands.

‘So
that’s
your
excuse this time?’ The deputy sighed and put down the napkin he’d been
using to mop up his uniform. With a kindly smile, he continued, ‘I know
you’ve had a troubled past and it can’t be easy for you, but you need to
shape up, Charley. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Don’t throw
it all away just because you’ve had a rough start.’

‘A rough start!’ Charley
gripped her cup so tightly she thought it might crack. ‘My best friend
abducted and my parents killed in a plane hijacking. How much rougher can it get?
I’m sorry if I’m not exactly looking forward to the rest of my
life!’

Valdez propped his elbows on the table
and leant forward. ‘Listen
to me, Charley. We cannot change the cards we are
dealt, just how we play the hand.’

Charley stared into
the froth of her latte. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘That it’s not life’s
challenges or setbacks that define who we are. It’s how we
react
to
them that defines us,’ he explained. ‘You have a choice. You can give up
and let life defeat you – or you can rise up
and become stronger.’

‘That’s easy enough for you
to say,’ she mumbled.

‘Yes, it is. Because I know all
about rough starts.’ Valdez tugged back the sleeve of his uniform to reveal a
small faded tattoo of a five-pointed crown on his inner wrist. ‘When I was
your age, I was in a street gang.’

Charley glanced up in surprise.

‘Drugs, drink, violence, guns.
That
was my world as a boy. My brother got killed in a fight during a turf war. Then
my life spiralled out of control … until a police officer arrested me. But he
didn’t take me to the station; instead he took me back home and told me
exactly what I’ve just said to you.’ He fixed her with his brown-flecked
eyes. ‘His advice changed my life. I can only hope it changes yours
too.’

Uncertain how to respond, Charley
continued staring at the froth in her cup. The deputy’s words had struck a
nerve deep inside her. But she had no idea where to begin, or even if she had the
strength to fight back against life’s challenges.

‘You have real potential, Charley,
if only you’d apply it,’ Valdez encouraged. ‘I know Pete and Jenny
are at their wits’ end with
you. Don’t you want to make them proud of
you?’

‘What do they care? They’re
not my parents.’

‘No, but
they’re good people, trying to do right by you. And you’re not making
their lives any easier with your truancy and storytelling.’

‘I
wasn’t
making it
up!’

‘OK, I believe you,’ replied
the deputy, holding up his hands. He tapped a finger to the notepad in
his pocket.
‘I’ll look into the licence plate you’ve given me. Just promise to
think about what I’ve said.’

‘Sure,’ agreed Charley,
relieved that he was at last taking some action.

Deputy Valdez reclined in his seat and
gazed out of the window. ‘You wouldn’t happen to know who rescued that
boy from the shark attack yesterday, would you?’

‘No … I don’t know
what
you’re talking about,’ said Charley, taken off-guard by the sudden
change in topic.

Valdez looked sideways at her, a knowing
smile on his lips. ‘See what I mean? Potential. Don’t waste
it.’

The door to the coffee shop opened. A
customer walked in and seated himself in a booth by the front window. Charley almost
spilt her drink. She leant across the table and hissed
under her breath to Valdez.
‘
That’s one of the men I was telling you about.
’

The deputy glanced over at the
silver-haired man by the window. Sat ramrod straight, the stranger gave the
appearance of someone not to be messed with. He looked in his mid-forties, but had
the physique of a much younger man. And, while he was dressed smartly in a suit, his
craggy face and visible
scar around the neckline told of a more violent past.

‘OK, let me
speak to him,’ said Valdez, rising from his seat. ‘You stay
here.’

The deputy strode across to the stranger
and stood over him, his hand resting lightly upon the gun on his hip. Charley was
too far away to hear their conversation, but she saw the stranger hand over his ID.
Valdez inspected it, then raised
an enquiring eyebrow. The stranger passed Valdez a
file. The deputy flicked through it. They talked for several minutes, Charley
growing more concerned with each passing second. Then Valdez handed back the
documents and, to Charley’s astonishment, saluted the man.

Valdez returned to Charley’s
booth, the expression on his face unreadable. ‘I think you should hear what he
has to say.’