The Recipient (5 page)

Casey nodded confidently. “I'll deal with Prishna. I've given the Cyber-Crime Unit more assistance than just about any other consultant out there. I think I've proven myself more than enough with them.”

Though his doubt lingered, Peter chose to let it go. Reaching for the wine bottle in the middle of the counter, he poured himself another glass.

“How has your sleep been?” he asked.

Casey blinked at the sudden change in subject.

“It's okay,” she stammered. “It'll be better now that I've finished this job.”

Her response was unconvincing. She saw his concern and she looked away. There was no doubting how well Peter knew his daughter.

He reached into his pocket, fishing around until he clasped a pair of keys. He lay them down on the counter and slid them towards Casey.

“Take these. Drive yourself up to Hambledown and hide out at the beach house for a couple of weeks. Go see your grandparents. Get some fresh air into your lungs again.”

Casey regarded the keys in front of her and managed a weary smile at her father.

She got up from the bench, rounded it and planted a tender kiss on her father's forehead.

“Thanks, Dad. I am okay. I
will
be okay.”

He nodded, even though there was a clear sense of doubt etched into his features.

Casey turned to one of the kitchen drawers behind him, opened it and took out a familiar red box containing a deck of
UNO
cards.

She tossed it to her father, who quickly caught it.

“Best of ten?” she challenged, taking up her seat once more.

Peter chuckled at the sight of the cards and he took the deck out as Casey sat down in front of him and rubbed her hands together eagerly.

“Best of ten,” he echoed as he began shuffling. “But we'll play for real this time around.
Moneybags
.”

CHAPTER 5.

I
n the depths of night, Casey ran at a steady pace on her treadmill. Her eyes were closed in concentration as she exercised her arms and legs, tuning her mind to her muscles while she balanced her body in full stride. She listened to her breathing, regulating her respirations in time with her strides so each intake of air filled her lungs and emptied out in a satisfying, effortless rhythm.

The heart pumped in synergy with the rest of her body, receiving blood from her extremities, pushing it on to her lungs, where it was re-oxygenated before returning to the foreign cardiac tissue. The heart beat, ejecting her blood back out and into her body once more; the perpetual cycle that sustained Casey.

She was in tune with her body. Yet, she felt incomplete. An unnerving darkness clung to her from within.

She fought to ignore it. But, no matter how hard she tried, the beating of the heart pounded in her ears, carrying with it a taunt that demanded her attention. It was as though nothing could compete with the sound of the foreign organ beating inside her, and it angered her. Without realising it, Casey had dramatically increased the intensity of her exercise. She ran harder and faster. The machine responded to her effort. The longer she ran, the more intense her anger became.

Already, Casey was regretting her decision to take a self-imposed vacation. It had only been a week and she hated not having anything to do, no work to keep her mind engaged. A restless mind like Casey's was a dangerous thing.

She'd looked for any activity she could find. She'd started out by moving all of her furniture and stripping the timber floors of her apartment, re-lacquering them and moving temporarily downstairs into the garage while she waited for them to dry. After moving everything back in, Casey turned her attention to her computer hardware.

With the precision of an army sniper, she stripped the machine down to its component parts then rebuilt it. She rewrote the customised operating system—her own design—and loaded it, spending hours testing and retesting it, losing herself in the code.

She cooked. She cleaned. She rearranged. She watched old movies she had seen a dozen times before. She ran on the treadmill. But there were only so many times she could repeat these tasks.

Though Casey considered it, she hadn't taken up her father's offer of the beach house. The thought of leaving the protective cocoon of her apartment was too much. Her fear of driving, of being on the open road in the wide open spaces beyond Melbourne's urban sprawl gnawed at her. Her agoraphobia had gotten the better of her before she'd even challenged it.

All the while her thoughts played upon her. Her fears. The most worrying of them was the apparent silence from her clientele.

She had put it out there, via her usual lines of communication, that she wouldn't be available to take on any new work for a month or so. Casey didn't expect that they would take her at her word. They hadn't in the past. When she had gone off the grid, she would still find herself bombarded with requests for her services. This time, her inbox remained starkly empty. Her smartphone remained quiet. The message boards she frequented were strangely silent. It worried her. Casey had begun to think that her last job had put off a lot of her regulars. The intensity of it, the nature of it, the hours she'd had to devote to it at the expense of additional work was now, seemingly, returning to bite her on the arse.

The worry fed her anxiety and her anger and all she could do was to focus that into her exercise. Casey wasn't just jogging now. She was running at a speed that verged on sprinting. She was running on automatic. Then, she realised what she was doing and it shocked her. Shaking herself back into the present, Casey fought to refocus on her activity. She immediately dialled down the intensity on the treadmill controls, wincing as her muscles ached in protest. Slowly but surely, she returned to a jog, then a walk, breathing long and hard. Grabbing the handlebar of the treadmill, Casey lowered her head as sweat dripped from her brow. Finally she stopped, exhausted and spent.

Casey felt the need to close her eyes and rest. As she stood on the now stationary treadmill, her head resting on her arms, the temptation to give into that need became increasingly pronounced. She could feel herself drifting on the very edge of sleep. But something made her flinch and she whipped her body into an upright position, blinking the sleep from her eyes.

“No,” she muttered through quickened breaths and a surge of adrenaline.

She could not submit to sleep. Not now. Not here.

The chronograph on the treadmill's display read: 1:11AM.

Casey's lips creased into a smile.

Sixty-five hours
, she computed.
Not bad
.

There was a world record for the longest period without sleep. Casey had looked it up. Attributed to an eighteen-year-old named Randy Gardner in 1965, he set the record by going eleven days: 264.4 hours. Though he had done it without the aid of stimulants of any kind.

Casey's smile faded as she recalled that last nugget of information. Casey had not managed even half that. The furthest she had been able to stretch herself was 118 hours but she'd had to rely on numerous drugs to keep herself awake and functional.

Stepping from the treadmill she peeled off her top, sighing as the cool air caressed her skin. Casey glanced across at the Modigliani print on the wall. The eyes of Jeanne Hebuterne studied her thoughtfully, questioningly.

And Casey responded.

“What to do,” she ventured. It was less a question as it was a prompt to something that was already beginning to foment.

Daubing her face with a towel, she stripped naked then padded barefoot across the apartment to her work table.

Opening her leather smartphone case, she thumbed through a collection of business cards until she found the one she was looking for and plucked it out.

Scrawled in pen on the card was a curious but familiar name. Casey quickly keyed in the number then hit dial. It rang several times before diverting to an operator voicemail. She hissed between her teeth.

“Typical,” Casey scowled, ending the call. She set the phone beside the card. She glanced sideways once more at Jeanne Hebuterne's portrait.

“Guess I'm just gonna have to go see him,” she scowled. Casey tapped the card with her finger.

She whispered the name scrawled there into the darkness of the apartment, before turning toward the bathroom.

“Sasquatch.”

___

The Blue Heeler Bar stood on a dark side street, several blocks back from the beachfront. The street was populated by a mixture of tall residential and commercial buildings on both sides. In the darkness, they appeared to close in on the street itself, creating a sense of protective encapsulation around Casey as she walked cautiously towards the old Victorian building. Architecturally, the Blue Heeler Bar seemed more suited to a Parisian laneway than a Melbourne backstreet, with its tall arches, wrought iron balconies and outdoor eating areas that were nestled under broad canvas shelters. It was a much-loved bar that drew in a vast and eclectic clientele and catered well to them.

Thumping folk-rock music pumped out from inside the stained glass windows as she approached, loud enough that it almost deterred Casey from going inside. The popularity of the establishment as a live music venue was renowned and it was clear that renown had drawn a significant crowd tonight.

Though the Valium she had taken prior to leaving the apartment had taken a significant edge off her anxiety, the marijuana countered it with a weird surge of adrenaline. Her breath was quick. Her senses were acutely attuned. The heart beat fast. Yet, she remained singleminded in her purpose, so she could focus effectively and ignore the crowds inside. She needed only to complete her task and then get the hell out of there and back to her solitude.

Approaching from under the orange glow of a street lamp, a security guard on the door looked in her direction and recognised her almost immediately. He offered her a courteous nod and gestured with a subtle flip of his thumb towards a side entrance, down an even darker laneway that flanked the pub. Casey headed in that direction while the guard spoke into his head microphone.

One of the advantages of being a regular at this establishment was that it afforded Casey some measure of preferential treatment.

They knew why she was here.

Entering through the side door, Casey was confronted by a robust crowd: patrons mingling around circular tables adjacent to the bar or listening to the five-piece band on the corner stage to her right.

Through her marijuana-induced fog, the din threatened to overload her senses.

The noise of conversation, the clinking of glasses, the raucous music from the bandstand. She noticed the presence of the band and their instruments: acoustic guitars, a fiddle, a shining chrome banjo that reflected glitters of light back into the room, the caramel vocals from a pretty, young woman at the microphone. All of it thickened the atmosphere and assailed Casey's senses all at once. Though she struggled to contain the bubbling cauldron of panic, for the briefest of moments she had an incongruous image of a crowd of flamingos chattering away.

The smell of various brands of deodorant, aftershave and perfume mixed with sweat from scantily-clad bodies hit Casey's nostrils and she couldn't decide if the combined aromas repulsed her or aroused her. Her skin bristled as she pushed her way through the throng. She fought the adrenaline surge while fingers of panic crept up her spine. Casey squeezed her eyes shut until she reached the bar. Feeling for the timber surface and grabbing it, she opened them again.

In the darkness of the pub, the garishness of the lights pointed at the house band, and the soft downlights of the bar, she finally spotted the individual descending from a staircase. Relief flooded through her as she took a breath and pushed her way across the room.

Patrons parted as a bear of a man dressed in a dark shirt, dark pants, and steel-capped boots stepped off the bottom stair and approached. Standing over six feet four inches tall, his intimidating presence commanded respect, even reverence. Sporting huge, toned, tattooed arms that were anchored to equally massive shoulders, he strode confidently through the throng, his stone-cold eyes focused forward. His jaw was squared off by a thick, sand-coloured goatee. His expression was hard, giving no sense of his state of mind or his personality.

That was until Casey emerged from the crowd and stopped before him. With a suddenness that caught a few nearby revellers who were watching him, the man's poker face melted into a warm, almost beatific smile. With a glint of light flashing in his eyes, he held his arms out as Casey embraced him. She planted a kiss on his cheek.

“How are you?” she shouted above the crowd.

Drawing back, Casey looked up as his half-serious frown was quickly replaced with a cheeky grin. He gestured with a nod to the stairs behind him.

“Good. Let's get out of here,” he suggested in a heavy Scottish accent.

He shepherded Casey towards the stairs and together they disappeared.

The rooftop garden was significantly less raucous, though a large group of patrons was scattered across the various lounge areas and bars. At least here, Casey could hear herself think.

The smell of pizza wafted across from an ornate stone oven being tended to by a pair of enthusiastic kitchen staff who were entertaining the group seated around it. Casey felt her stomach rumble. She realised she hadn't eaten anything for at least a day.

Her companion gestured towards a small gazebo situated in a quiet corner, away from the main entertaining area that was occupied by a pair of wrought iron chairs and a matching table. As they passed the open bar, Sasquatch gestured with two fingers towards the girl serving there. She nodded, fetching two beers from a refrigerator.

Casey and Sasquatch settled into their seats and nodded as the server set the bottles down on the table along with a bowl of mixed nuts. Casey dove her hand into the bowl and tossed a handful into her mouth.

The photo ID card he wore clipped to the lapel of his polo shirt identified him as Scott, without any mention of the nickname that Casey used.

It was true that there were only a handful of people who could get away with calling Scott Taylor by that nickname. In the six or seven years that she had known him, Casey had never given any consideration to the consequences that might befall someone who wasn't welcome to refer to him by that honorarium because the nickname itself felt so natural to her.

Settled away from the throng, Casey's panic was quickly dissipating. In the presence of a man she could call a genuine friend, she felt at ease.

“So,” Scott began, taking a long swig from his bottle. “What brings a crazy person like you to a place like this?”

Casey chuckled. Before she could speak, she caught his questioning frown.

“Aren't you supposed to be off the grid?” he probed.

Casey nodded slowly, as she swallowed a generous lug of beer.

“Allegedly. That is the rumour doing the rounds presently.”

“I've heard those rumours,” Scott replied. “I've been relaying that to various interested parties who've been making inquiries of late.”

Casey's eyes flicked up into Sasquatch's own and he could see the worry reflected at him.

“Really?” she ventured hopefully. “Inquiries?”

Thoughts of the silence from her email account, her cell phone and the message boards returned.

“Mmm-hmm. I followed your directions and told them they'd have to wait for a while.”

Casey slumped back in her seat, the disappointment clear on her face, which only made Scott's frown more pronounced.

“I-I thought that's what you wanted!” he exclaimed. Casey nodded slowly, a bitter smile creasing her lips.

“It is what I wanted,” she responded with resignation. “But…”

“But you're having a hard time taking things down a gear,” he ventured, confident from reading her body language that he knew what she was thinking.