Heller's Girlfriend (39 page)

“He’s not answering his
phone.”

I summarised what I’d found out
about Violet. It left Daniel scratching his head as well over a
possible motive for the deception.

“Maybe she thought being an art
dealer would attract his attention more?”

“That’s what my brother said
too. But that assumes she had this whole charade ready to roll on
the chance of picking someone up. She’s obviously pinched her
sister’s licence and credit cards and business cards.”

“Maybe she likes to pick up men
for dirty one-nighters, but doesn’t want them to know who she
really is. Because she’s a cop.”

It sounded feasible, but I
wasn’t convinced. “Using her own sister’s name? It’s a bit too
close to home if she wanted to remain unknown. And with all those
different forms of fake ID? Heller went through her bag when she
was in the shower and he said there was lots of corroborating ID.
That’s so much effort to expend just to pretend to be someone else.
And another thing, if she likes casual pickups, why would she pay
to stay at one of those expensive top hotels? Brian said she’s a
constable – I don’t think they’re paid a lot. The hotel bill must
be killing her.”

Daniel shrugged helplessly. “I
can’t answer any of those questions. Are you thinking that she
deliberately targeted Heller? Did all this to pick up
him
?”
He thought for a moment. “Oh shit! You don’t think this is some
sort of police sting?”

“Nah, I think it’s personal.
Deeply personal,” I said, remembering Heller’s Mercedes. “But
there’s something really off about this whole situation. I’m
worried about Heller. I’m worried she’ll do something to him.”

“He can look after himself,
Tilly. You don’t need to worry about him.”

And although his words were
sensible, my feeling of dread wouldn’t go away. With nothing I
could do until Heller chose to ring me back, I reluctantly went to
bed for the evening. I lay awake staring at the ceiling thinking
that even though I was unbelievably angry with him, the thought of
anything happening to him clenched my stomach tight with fear.
Maybe I cared about him more than I was willing to admit to myself.
And on that troubling thought, I fell asleep.

In the middle of a delicious
dream where I was amorously trapped in a man sandwich between Bick
and Farrell, I was shaken roughly awake. Slow to rouse, a sharp
blow across my temple knocked my head sideways.

“Shit,” I moaned. Something was
snapped tightly around my wrists and someone climbed onto me,
sitting astride my legs.

“Wake up, bitch-face,” snarled a
voice that I didn’t recognise.

I opened my eyes, struggling to
sit up, but constrictive plastic straps restrained my arms and a
hand on my chest pushed me back down to the bed. My brain kicked
into gear.

Oh, dear God
. It was my
worst nightmare. Looming over me was the bunny boiler, her face
ugly with hatred, a gun pointing at my heart.

“How did you get in here?” I
spoke, hoping my voice sounded calm and not as frightened as I
felt. The Warehouse was a security fortress. There should
never
be an intruder in my flat.

“I’ve been watching this place
for months, every spare second I had. And every time someone opened
the garage door or front door, I took photos of the interior. I
memorised everything, working out the blind spots in the security
camera range. I crept in through the garage when the door opened to
let a vehicle out. But as for finding out exactly where
man-stealing, bitch-face Matilda Chalmers lived in the building –
that was too easy. Remember those workmen who installed your panic
button – and yeah, I know
all
about that, so you can forget
it. I fucked one of them and picked his brains. He was very
helpful, even drawing me a mud map of everything he could remember
about the inside of the building and your place. It’s surprising
what some men will do for the promise of some hot, rough sex.”

“There are cameras in the
hallway. They’ll see you entering my flat,” I blustered. “There
will be men here any second.”

She smiled and it wasn’t a
friendly smile. “I think you’ll find that particular camera is
temporarily out of action.”

Surely someone will notice
that?
I thought, panicked. But in truth, I had no idea how
regularly those cameras were monitored or even who was responsible
for the monitoring, if anyone.

“What are you doing here?”

“It’s all because of you,” she
stated, her voice low and menacing.

“I don’t know what you mean.” I
had no idea what she was talking about. She didn’t care for that
response and backhanded me across the face, flinging my head
sideways. I groaned in pain.

“Don’t lie to me. You’re the
fucking whore who’s stolen Heller from me. God, I hate you.”

I tried to reason with her. “I
honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. This is a surprise
to me. Whatever’s happened between you and Heller has nothing to do
with me. I thought you were still going out.”

“He won’t answer my calls or
texts or emails. He won’t see me. When I follow him and try to
speak to him, he blanks me. It’s like I don’t exist for him any
more. I
love
him. I
need
him. I can’t live without
him. Do you know what that’s like? To have that hunger for a man,
that
need
? And then to have him taken away from you by some
cheap whore.”

“I haven’t –”

“All I ever heard the whole time
was fucking Matilda this and fucking Matilda that. You seduced him,
didn’t you? With your hair and your eyes and your lips and your
tits. Your long legs and your tight arse. Living here with him day
after day. Flirting with him. Parading around in skimpy clothes in
front of him like the whore that you are. Flaunting yourself. How
the fuck am I supposed to compete with that?”

She poked me in the chest with
the gun.

“You’ve got it all wrong. He’s
not interested in me. I just work for him,” I insisted. “He’s all
about you. All the time.”

“Really?” She stopped the poking
for a second. “What’s he said?”

I quickly weighed up my options.
She was medium height and slim, but I didn’t underestimate her.
She’d been trained to subdue people and probably knew the same
moves I did. I didn’t know if I could psych her out, because she
was already so disturbed. I found myself secretly begging for a
white knight to arrive.

I bluffed. “He says how exciting
you are. And sexy. He’s never been more satisfied with a woman.
You’re everything he’s ever needed. He told me that he loves you.”
And I bullshitted on in the same vein for a good couple of minutes.
She drank it in ecstatically before turning her full attention back
to me.

“That just confirms that all I
need to do is to get you out of the picture and he’ll come back to
me.” Another poke with the gun. “Get out of bed.”

She climbed off me and I took
advantage of that momentary diversion in her concentration to
spring out of my bed, elbowing her roughly in the face. She
staggered backwards, grunting. I reached for her gun, but was
hampered by my hands being tied together. She flung herself at me,
spinning me around and clamping her arm around my throat. She
jabbed the gun into the base of my neck.

“If I shot you right now, you’d
be dead in an instant,” she laughed. “Is that what you want?” She
poked the gun harder. “Is that what you want, bitch?”

“No,” I replied faintly. Tears
pricked my eyes. She was scaring the shit out of me.

“Get moving,” she ordered and
marched me out to my living area.

She pulled one of my dining
chairs out from under the table and told me to sit down, the gun on
me the whole time. I planned on taking advantage of any chance of
her being preoccupied to run to the door to seek shelter with
Daniel. But she was swift and deft, undoing my restraints to
roughly jerk my hands behind the chair and re-securing them.

My sole attempt to make a run
for it was abruptly met with a crack to the side of my skull that
left me groaning, my head hanging in pain. And before long, she’d
tied me tightly to the chair, my mouth firmly gagged. Pain
jackhammered in my head and nausea rolled through my stomach.

I tested the bindings on my arms
and legs, but they were fastened professionally. Violet busily
tapped on the keypad of her phone with her thumb. She was probably
harassing Heller again. My own phone rang from the bedside table
where I’d left it last night.
Was it Heller? Was he back
home?
A small whimper of distress escaped me and she looked up
from her phone.

She dropped her phone carelessly
onto my coffee table and stalked over to me, as lithe as a
predatory cat. She stood in front of me, smugly regarding me with
her black eyes, flicking her long black ponytail back over her
shoulder.

“Do you know what little sluts
who steal other women’s men need?” she asked, her head on one side.
“They need to be taught a lesson to keep their whoring hands to
themselves.”

She crouched down and rummaged
through a small black backpack she’d brought with her, smiling when
she produced a Stanley knife. My heart, already doing a maraca solo
in my chest, beat even faster. I wondered if I was going to have a
heart attack. Maybe that would be a mercy for me.

She leaned over and gently
pushed my hair back from my neck. She bent down and kissed me on
the side of my throat, then bit me hard in the same place. I
flinched, not able to cry out because of the gag. She stood up and
contemplated me before she leaned down and bit me again on the
neck, followed by another five quick bites on my shoulder. She sank
her teeth into my flesh, licking the last bite, which must have
drawn blood.

“There. That should warn other
women that you’re a whore. Who else but a whore would have bite
marks on her neck?” She brandished the knife. “But I need to make
sure that
you
never forget that you’re a man-stealing
whore.”

She licked her lips and began to
carve into my neck. If I hadn’t been gagged, I would have been
screaming as the sharp blade cut into my yielding skin. The blood
rushed from me, pouring down my pyjama top. She admired her work
and cut another three incisions. I was almost sure she’d cut a ‘W’
into my neck. She smiled with pleasure at her handiwork.

“Excellent! Now every time you
look in the mirror, you’ll remember to keep your hands off other
women’s men.”

My heart leapt.
Was that it?
Could it be over already? Was that the lesson I was supposed to
learn? Was that my punishment?
Because although it hurt like
hell, I was still alive. But she killed my hopes immediately.

“And now,” she said calmly, “the
other side.”

No!
I screamed in
silence, but had no choice but to endure while she carved a ‘W’
into the other side of my neck. When she’d finished she left me
bleeding, the white of my singlet top drenched with red, while she
texted again.
What was she writing? Was she confessing? Was
Heller on his way, ready to burst through the door and save me?
I wanted to believe so much that it was true that when nothing
happened in the next minute, tears of disappointment pooled in my
eyes. I blinked them away because I didn’t want to cry in front of
the bunny boiler.

She looked at me with scorn.
“Heller’s full of shit. You’re not so tough. Look at you – about to
cry at a little pain. How about we see how tough you really
are?”

She went into my kitchen and
ransacked my pantry, throwing food on the floor carelessly. She
came back holding a familiar white container.

No!
I thought desperately
to myself.

She poured a huge handful of
salt into her palm and rubbed it first into one side of my neck and
then another palm full into the other. The pain was intense,
excruciating. I’d never experienced anything like it before – on a
scale of one to ten, it was ninety-nine. I screamed through the
gag, tears flooding my cheek. I struggled ferociously against my
restraints, twisting and turning, trying to stop the pain. My chair
tipped over and I crashed to the floor, achieving nothing with my
struggles except chafing my wrists cruelly against the
bindings.

With great effort she righted
me, laughing in pleasure at my pain.

“That’s just the beginning,
bitch,” she promised me, a wicked little smile on her face. She
leaned down until her face was mere centimetres from mine. “You
caused me a lot of suffering by stealing Heller from me with your
slutty body. You need to suffer twice as much to make up for it
before I take him back from you.”

I couldn’t think of any escape
from my situation. I knew this flat like the back of my hand, but
nothing at all sprang to mind to help. The knives were in the
kitchen, out of my reach. I had no gun myself. My capsicum spray
was in my handbag, which was thrown on my dresser in the bedroom, a
whole ten metres away from where I was. I was in my pyjamas, just a
singlet top and some boxer shorts, barefoot. No pockets with
weapons, nothing. The panic button was nowhere near me, tucked
under one of the kitchen benches. It became my holy grail. I
thought about its black shininess with longing. If only I could
reach it, within seconds there would be dozens of brawny, angry men
swarming my flat with guns. It was so far away though. I was left
with nothing to defend myself but my teeth, which were useless with
the gag in my mouth, and my fingernails, which were equally useless
with my hands tied to the chair behind my back.

I started to lose control.
Silent tears poured down my cheeks. I would never see Mum or Dad
again. Or my brothers and their wives. Or my nieces. Or my
grandmas. Or Dixie. Or Daniel or Niq. And they were only a few
metres away. They’d be devastated when I died. They’d tear
themselves apart thinking they should have known I was in trouble
and could have saved me. But no one was psychic.