Cold Deception

Secrets, lies, deception. That’s what it takes to stay alive.

At 20, Julia Taylor went to prison for murdering a man who deserved it. Ten years later, she’s ready to put the past behind her and get on with her life. But someone won’t let her. Someone will do anything to drive Julia away, including murder.

As the body count rises, Julia is forced to accept the help of Dylan Andrews, a cop with dark secrets of his own. Unfortunately help has a cost. Dylan is digging into Julia’s past, uncovering secrets she is desperate to keep.

Julia must keep Dylan at a distance, or else risk her own safety, and the safety of everyone she loves …

For my sisters,

Cathryn Hayward, Judith Allen and Margaret Allen

with love

And in memory of my parents

Betty and Len Allen

It will have blood, they say.

Blood will have blood.

Macbeth Act 3, Scene 4.

Julia Taylor stood in the sun outside the jail and prayed for rain. A strong, fierce torrent; enough to wash away the grime of the last ten years. Instead the sun beat down, exposing her solitary figure as she waited.

She’d given away most of her possessions except for some books and the farewell gifts from her mates. Cards and earrings and bits and pieces gleaned from their trash and treasures. Some of the other girls had bags and boxes of stuff they’d accumulated, trying to make their slot a home, but she couldn’t bring herself to make jail anything other than what is was. Hell.

She’d gone into the place with the clothes she’d worn when arrested and was leaving in the same clothes. Ten years ago, at twenty, she’d been thinner. Years of prison food had packed on some weight, but the jeans and T-shirt fitted well enough. No jacket. Even though it was nearly winter, the sun was warm on her skin.

She turned and looked back into the prison foyer. No clang of the jail gates nowadays, just a soft swish of an automatic door opening into a foyer that could be a doctor’s office.

“Got someone to pick you up?”

The female prison officer, who’d completed all the paperwork with her, stood in front of the glass doors and let them close behind her. She didn’t exactly smile, but she wasn’t hostile either.

Julia licked her dry lips and didn’t know what to say. For the first time in a lot of years she could ignore anyone if she wanted to but found ingrained habits were hard to let go.

“Yeah, she’s a bit late.” She stared down the long driveway to the road. “I might wander down to Bathurst Road and wait for her there.”

“Okay. Good luck. Don’t come back.” The PO smiled at her and Julia tried not to laugh. As if she’d ever come back to this hell hole. Lots of women did, but she wasn’t lots of women.

She started the long walk to the road, marveling that it wasn’t five o’clock in the morning and she wasn’t headed to the dairy to milk the cows.

The green fields of minimum security Emu Plains Correctional Center looked benign and peaceful. She could almost be on a stroll in the country, walking down a poplar lined pathway, kicking the autumn leaves as she walked. She heard a yell from the field on her right.

“See ya Jules! Don’t forget us!”

She spied Jodie about to start up a ride-on lawn mower. She waved back and blew her a kiss.

I’ll never forget you, never forget the lost years and wasted lives.

“Bye Jodie,” she yelled back. “Look after yourself. Don’t fuck up again.”

Jodie laughed. “Not after all those lectures from you. I’d be in deep shit.” She turned the ignition and roared off with a trademark, “Yee haa!”

Julia waved again and continued walking to the road.

Dee was late. That wasn’t like her. Always on time, always reliable. The last ten years had been bearable because of Dee’s solid, unwavering support.

Julia reached the road and stood there, uncertain. Trucks lumbered past and threw choking dust up into her face. A car with a couple of blokes inside slowed and stared at her. She braced herself to run, her heart pounding hard, not knowing them but seeing the sneering ridicule on their faces.

One of them yelled at her, his face distorted with hate and lust.

Scum. Waiting for any fresh jail meat standing on the road, any woman who might want something or someone to take them to their new life.

“Just get out, love? Wanna party? Got some stuff here you might want. Waddaya say, eh?”

She gave them the finger then breathed again when the one who’d yelled at her spat out his window as the car sped off.

Charming. Better get used to it.

She knew men saw women who’d been in jail as easy pickings. Preyed on their loneliness and crippling need for everyone’s approval. The fact that most women were addicted to something, whether it be drugs, alcohol, or loser men, made them radiate their victim status as soon as they got out.

That wouldn’t be her. She wasn’t a victim and she didn’t need anyone’s approval. All she wanted was a quiet life where she could work out what to do next. She knew it wouldn’t be easy. Better to realize first off just what she’d be up against. No one liked ex-crims. They were never seen as ex. Once a criminal always a criminal.

Especially me. No one will ever forget what I’ve done
.

She pulled her bag closer to her and peered down the road. A cool wind picked up, lifting her dark hair from her shoulders.

As soon as she got home she’d get a decent haircut and some new clothes. No more green or maroon. She’d ban those colors permanently from her wardrobe.

Another car slowed and she braced herself for abuse, but breathed with relief when she saw it was Dee in a van with the name of her business painted in lively colors on the side. A Passion for Plants. Vines and roses and sunflowers covered the outside. She looked like she was driving a living garden. Julia smiled then laughed as her stepmother leaped out of the van and scooped her up in a bear hug.

“I’m late. I’m so sorry. The traffic down the mountains was hellish. You won’t believe what they’ve done to the road. The continuing obsession with getting somewhere fast. They’re widening the highway. All the trees gone. Look at you! You look great! Is that all you’ve got? Yes? Okay. Let’s get going. Your mother is waiting.”

Julia laughed some more as she was released from a hug and bundled into the van by what seemed like a whirling dervish. Small but solid, Dee never seem to change. Her sleek gray bob and the sparkly earrings she always wore were exactly as they had been when Julia first met her as an anxious fourteen year old.

Dee threw her case in the back and climbed into the van all the time chattering about the road, the weather, what they had to pick up at the shops on the way back. Then she stopped suddenly and turned to Julia, tears pouring down her face.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice hoarse and raw. “I just can’t believe it. I can’t believe you’re finally out of that horrible place. You should never have been there.”

She burst into noisy tears and leant her head on the steering wheel. Julia froze. She knew she should do something, offer some support. This was Dee, her stepmother, the woman who loved and lived with her impossible mother, who stood by her when nearly everyone else had either deserted Julia or been pushed away.

For ten years Julia had avoided any emotional entanglements. You could get sucked into the vortex of emotion in a women’s prison and that was dangerous. Too many dramas, too much estrogen, too much despair and loneliness. And truth be told, no longer being responsible for Eleanor and Blossom, just leaving them for Dee to deal with, had been her secret relief. Now, as she stared at her stepmother, emotional entanglements started their insidious wrap around her mind, like the vines on the van she sat in.

Julia shook herself and reached for the older woman. Gathering her into her arms, she stroked her back and shushed her.

“It’s okay, Dee. Everything is okay now. We’ll get over it won’t we? All the years you’ve been visiting me we talked of this day didn’t we? It’s a happy day. A day for plans and looking forward. Isn’t it?”

Dee pulled away from Julia, brushed her tears from her face and squared her shoulders. “You’re right. Absolutely right. This doesn’t help anything.” She took in a deep breath and the Dee that Julia had known for so long appeared. Solid, reliable. Always there to lean on.

Dee put the car into gear, watched for the traffic, then performed a brisk U turn, taking them back the way she’d come, back up to the Blue Mountains. Back home.

*

“You need to prepare yourself,” Dee said, resignation in her voice. They were on the last stretch of the freeway at Lapstone about to head into Glenbrook.

“Why is that?” Julia knew she was about to hear something of the latest wild plan of her mother’s.

“Ellie wants to have a welcome home party for you.”

Julia’s stomach sank. “No, no, no! Why does she do this?"

“You know what she’s like. Now that you’re out your mother wants the world to know she’s not ashamed of you or what you did.” She slanted a glance at Julia. “Or what you claim you did,” she muttered.

Julia ignored her last remark. She’d never discussed that day with anyone other than her lawyer and she never intended to. Dee had tried everything to get her to open up over the years and hadn’t succeeded.

“Nice of her to let the world know. Perhaps she could’ve told me first.”

“She loves you Julia. You know that don’t you?”

Yes, she did. She’d always known that. Even at the worst time, when Eleanor couldn’t function and the State stepped in, Julia knew her mother loved her. Trouble was, love was rarely enough for a child. Other more basic needs were required. Like food, shelter, and care.

Julia scrubbed at her face wishing she could scrub out the memories of that pathetic, neglected waif.

“What has she got planned? Welcoming signs? Balloons up and down the street? Marching bands?”

Dee snorted with laughter. “I wouldn’t put it past her.”

Julia gazed out the window and tried to stop the hammering in her chest. The hammering had started as soon as she’d walked out of jail and hadn’t subsided. She tried to take in where she was and what she was seeing rather than worry about what lay ahead. Live in the present, her jail meditation teacher told her. Forget the past and don’t worry about the future. She’d had a lot of time to practice that in her cell. Jail life was surprisingly uncomplicated but she suspected it wouldn’t be so easy on the outside.

The van made its way up the mountain highway and Julia started to focus on the trip. Emu Plains was at the foot of the Blue Mountains, and Katoomba almost at the top. Between were villages all linked by the ubiquitous Great Western Highway, the road that lead from the Emerald City, Sydney, to western New South Wales. Whenever she’d made this trip Julia used to think of it as making a trip on a knife edge. Even more so today.

She saw the lower mountains villages nowadays looked like any old suburb of Sydney but hoped the upper mountains still maintained their old-world charm. But the highway widening filled her with dismay.

Julia felt tears prickle at the back of her eyes as they climbed the Bodington Hill at Wentworth Falls, past the landscape nursery and the garden pot shop with its eternal sale. The full horror of the road works lay before her.

Most of the trees had gone. It was like some psychotic giant had ploughed through the area with a blunt chainsaw. A building site made of tin demountables cluttered one side of the highway and trucks and tractors were gouging out the earth. Julia thought it looked like a scene from another planet. Alien and inhospitable.

The only thing that hadn’t changed was the mist that could descend in minutes and turn the world into a gray impenetrable blanket. As if on cue, Julia thought, so I don’t have to see this wreckage.

Is this what everything will be like? Torn up and destroyed?

Dee slowed to a crawl as the mist transformed into a heavy fog. “Typical,” she muttered. “Get to Wentworth Falls and the weather changes.”

“I don’t mind,” Julia said. “At least it’s familiar.”

She calmed slightly when they got to the village itself, which didn’t look all that different. The German cake shop was still there.

“Have to stop and pick up some pretzels and a cake. Want to come?” Dee asked her tentatively.

Julia was silent as Dee pulled up the van outside the shop. She peered at the cars and the people amid the swirls of fog and took a deep breath. May as well start the way she wanted to go on. “Okay.”

Her heart started a panicky rhythm.

On closer inspection, everything here looked the same but different. Different shops, a different look to the others, a kind of spruced up look. The old post office had become a restaurant. New shops were open at the end of the strip. She didn’t see anyone she knew.

The air was much colder when she got out of the car.

“I should’ve bought you a jacket,” Dee said as Julia stood shivering outside the cake shop. “I didn’t think.”

Julia smiled and shook her head. “Don’t worry. It’s kind of nice. Mountain cold feels different. Cleaner.”

“Come inside. It’s warmer.”

Dee opened the shop door and held it for her to follow. Panic clutched her entrails in one twisting grip.

No, no, not now
.

“Maybe I’ll wait in the car.” She turned and fled. When she got to the car, she leant on it and closed her eyes. Breath in, breath out. That’s all she could do.

“Damn it all to hell.”

Her eyes snapped open to see a man bending over to pick up the paper bags he’d dropped. From the look and smell the bags were full of meat pies just bought from the cake shop. He swayed a little as if he couldn’t quite focus on what he was doing. Finally, he scooped everything up and stood peering around, looking for something or someone. His gaze fell on Julia and her heart turned over.

“Julia Taylor, as I live and breathe.”

The sound of that sneering drawl made her blood run cold. Mid forties, muscle turning to fat and muddy bloodshot brown eyes. He looked like the kind of man who had some glory days as an athlete but was starting a slow decline into heart attack land. Even at ten o’clock in the morning, she could smell alcohol on him. But there was something about him, something that made nausea bubble in her gut.

“Just got out?”

She tensed and said nothing. The cold air couldn’t stop the trickle of sweat slide down her spine.

“You don’t remember me do you?”

She couldn’t speak.

“I arrested you.”

Her breath strangled in her throat. The coppery taste of blood flooded her mouth. Images from that night, that terrible night, sliced into her brain making her gasp. She could smell stale cigarettes and disinfectant and hear the cries of Nessa in the cell next to her …

“I remember you,” she muttered, willing her stomach to stay where it was. “Gary Randle.”

He stepped closer to her and smiled.

“I bet you remember Angus O’Reardon too.”

She nodded, not trusting her voice.

“Quite the entrepreneur is Angus. Needed a bigger landscape than being a small town cop. He’s someone in this town now. Someone who matters. Who would’ve thought?”