“Thanks, Mac.” His expression is all gratitude. “He doesn’t need a card though. Cards are for girls.”
“Tim is a girl.” I redo the button on my suit jacket and smooth a hand over the sleek fabric of my pants. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go find Jake. He promised me lunch, and I’m ready to collect.”
Leaving Casey’s office, I look over my shoulder. He’s moving around to his side of the desk. His brows are drawn when he takes a seat and lifts the lid of his laptop.
Satisfied his focus is on his work and not me, I walk past Tim’s desk and lift a file from the new case tray without breaking stride and without having a clue of the contents. Casey might be willing to put in a good word for me, but that doesn’t mean Travis and Jared will listen. I still need to prove myself.
I slip the file inside my tote and head off to find Jake.
MAC
Later that night I’m at the Florence Bar where Jamieson is playing. The venue is booked to capacity to see them live. I switch my sharp office suit for skinny black jeans and a fitted I’m with the band tee shirt. When I arrive at the venue to oversee the setup, I put the stolen file to the back of my mind. It’s resting in the locked drawer of my desk at home. There hasn’t been time to look inside it yet, but I’m eager to get started. This will be my first case for Jamieson & Valentine Consulting. Granted, it’s unofficial, but that only makes it all the more challenging. I’ll have to utilise all my skills to pull it off without relying on anyone else.
“Where do you want this to go?” a burly man asks as he climbs the stairs off the side of the stage. A massive amplifier is wedged high on his shoulder.
“Just over there,” I tell him, pointing to the right-hand corner.
We have a crew do our hard labour now, but they still need direction. The band sits backstage, chilling and getting ready, basically acting like big deals. They deserve to, though, because they are. It’s their hard work that got them to this point so rather than take their egos down a notch, I let it slide. Mostly.
The venue is already hopping, the dance floor a complete crush as revellers dance and drink their Friday night away, waiting for Jamieson to take the stage. A DJ sits in the booth, pumping “Do I Wanna Know,” by the Arctic Monkeys when an argument in the crowd catches my eye. Normally I’d ignore it. Despite us having our own personal security, the Florence Bar employs the best bouncers in the city. They can handle anything. But this argument happens to be with our own personal security—Casey and a brunette in a red dress. It takes a lot to ruffle his smooth feathers, but right now they’re standing on end. His eyes are hard and every muscle tense. Casey is riled.
“If Jake keeps looking at you the way he does, I’m going to have to punch him,” Jared—the other half of our personal security for tonight—grumbles from beside me.
My eyes shift from Casey to Jake. He’s the only one in the band who helps with the setup, mostly because he doesn’t trust anyone else with his equipment. If a single drum is placed even an inch out of the alignment Jake prefers, he throws a tantrum of the likes you’ve never seen.
Right now he’s seated at his drum kit, sticks in hand and eyes on me—just like my brother said. I want to tell Jared that if he so much as touches a hair on Jake’s head, I’ll shave his eyebrows off while he slept. It wouldn’t be an idle threat either, because I’ve done it before. The night before Jared’s school formal. The best part of the entire retribution was seeing my eighteen-year-old brother in a suit, minus two eyebrows, while our mother asked him if he wanted her to draw a pair on his face for him.
Jake doesn’t need me defending him, though, so I bite the threat back. Instead, I give my brother a steely-eyed stare. “After everything that’s happened, you think Jake would tolerate you even looking at him crossways? If you so much as tried punching him, he would put you in the ground.”
“He would not,” Jared mutters.
“Would too.”
“Would not.”
“Oh my god.” I give him a withering look. “You’re going to be a father and you’re still ten years old. Your future kids are lucky they’ll have an Aunty Mac in their lives to teach them how to kick your sorry ass.”
Jared folds his arms, turning his glare at Jake toward the bopping crowd instead. “You wouldn’t dare.”
I snort. “This is me you’re talking to.”
He sighs, his eyes moving over the mass of dancers. “I know.”
With the setup under control, I motion to Jake, silently asking him if he wants a drink. His answer is a cute grin and wink that has me sighing.
“Be right back,” I tell my brother.
My heels click as I make my way down the stairs. I skirt the pulsating dancers as I move toward the bar. I’m halfway there when I notice Casey still arguing with the brunette. Now that I’m closer, I realise she looks familiar. I veer toward them. They’re so caught up in their disagreement, they don’t notice me.
“You’re wrong, Morgan,” I hear Casey saying, and it hits me. She’s the new detective in Sydney’s Cybercrime division. I’ve not only seen her in this very bar once or twice before, I’ve heard Travis bitching about her involvement with Casey before Grace arrived on the scene. “Grace isn’t leaving.”
Leaving? Like hell. Even if Grace had planned on leaving, I’m hedging my bets on Casey not letting her go anywhere.
“Oh, but I’m not,” I hear Morgan reply. “You see, her return flight is already arranged. She booked the ticket yesterday morning.”
Goddammit, Grace, what are you doing?
“Don’t you see?” she continues, leaning close and putting a hand on his crotch. “Grace doesn’t want you. But I do.”
If Casey’s expression is anything to go by, Morgan is about as wanted as a shit sandwich. When her tongue goes for his neck, he grabs a fistful of hair and yanks her off him.
“Don’t touch me again,” he growls, shoving her away. Her shoulder smacks against the man behind her, and he throws Casey a filthy look as he helps right her.
Morgan clearly deserves a fist to the throat, but it goes against the man code to punch her. Luckily, I’m female and not confined to those rules. I’m quite happy to enact violence on Casey’s behalf, but the silly twat doesn’t seem quite done with her diatribe. Eyes wide with amazement, I watch as she continues to antagonize one of the few people who has ever had my back.
She even has the gall to sneer at him. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That you’re just like your loser father.”
Casey doesn’t talk much about his past. He had a shitty childhood and lost his family, including his violent drunk of a father, in a shooting. That she dared say such a thing would cut him to the bone.
“What do you know about my father?”
Her brows rise coolly, her expression triumphant as if she holds the ace card in her back pocket. “It’s all in the report.”
A loud disagreement erupts between two buffoons behind me and I miss Casey’s reply, but I don’t miss the spark of fire in Morgan’s expression. “Believe me, you’ll be sorry,” she says with a hiss.
My eyes narrow.
“Is that a threat?” Casey growls.
“You can take it any way you want to.”
He jabs a furious finger toward the exit. “Leave. Right now. I’ll get the damn report some other way.”
So that’s what she’s holding over Casey’s head. A report relating to his family. Clearly it’s important to him. I don’t know why Morgan has it, or why it’s important, and unless he wants to share it’s not my place to know, but damned if I’m going to let that bitch hold it over him.
If she isn’t going to hand it over, then I’m going to get it.
Unfortunately I’m waylaid from retrieving the report after Jamieson’s show. Casey and Grace have one hell of an altercation in the back room when the band finishes their final set. It seems Grace saw Casey and Mor
gan together, and it hasn’t gone down well. Her reaction isn’t irrational. Her ex-boyfriend is a philanderer, and she has issues with trust. But I was there. I know what really went down. And although Grace deserves an explanation, she has nothing to fear. But instead of Casey getting the chance to explain, everything gets heated. Henry is furious. Grace is his little sister and it’s only now that their relationship is coming to light for him.
Poor Henry. He’s always the last to know anything. He cocks back a fist, ready to smash Casey into the wall, when Jared gets in the way. To Jake’s (probable) delight, Jared takes the punch and almost goes down. In the fracas, Grace steals the keys to Casey’s beloved Marjorie, his beautifully restored Corvette Stingray, and takes off. He chases after her, naturally. And that’s the last we see of them.
I have faith in Casey, so I leave the back room to direct the pack-down. Thirty minutes later, Jake finds me on the stage. His face is pale. I’m almost scared to ask. “What is it?”
“Henry just got a call from Travis, and …” He takes a deep breath.
“Spit it out, Romero,” I snap, my chest beginning to tighten with dread.
“Casey and Grace have been in a car accident.”
“You’re wrong.” It can’t be happening again. “They were just here and … and …” I was about to say everything was fine but their actions when leaving were volatile.
“Mac … I’m sorry, but it’s true.”
I close my eyes. My legs feel ready to give out as I relive my own nightmare. The grinding of metal. The shattering of glass. The absolute fear. It’s something that stays with you forever. I sink down on the amplifier that the stagehand is trying to take away. He gives up and goes to find something else he can do. I open my eyes and look up at him. “Are they okay?”
“Casey’s in an ambulance. They’re cutting Grace from the car.”
“Jake,” I swallow, my hand reaching blindly for him.
He takes it and holds tight, his huge palm offering warmth and comfort.
“We need to get to the hospital,” I say.
“I’ll take you. Everyone else has gone ahead.”
I nod, letting him lead me off the stage so I can collect my bag. We reach the back room and Jake folds me up, securing me in his arms. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I croak.
“Don’t lie, Princess. Not to me.”
“It’s just thrown me, that’s all. Car accidents aren’t fun, you know?” I say, trying to be glib while I pull myself together. I step back from his embrace. “We should get to the hospital.”
JAKE
Mac steps away, not willing to open up. I let it go until we’re both in the car and on our way. Her car accident is not something she’s spoken to me about, yet it’s clearly still affecting her. “Tell me about your accident, Mac. Please? I need to know.”
“No you don’t, Jake,” she says, turning her head out the window. “It’s in the past where it belongs.”
“Where I belong?” I ask, my voice bitter as I slow the car to a stop at a red light.
“Don’t be dramatic,” she snaps, her quills rising. “I’m just saying there’s no point in rehashing past hurt.”
“How is it rehashing if we haven’t talked about it before?” I argue. The light turns green and I accelerate.
Mac swallows, a flush appearing high on her cheeks. “It’s just … hard to talk about.”
I reach across and squeeze her knee. “But if you can’t talk about it with me, then who can you talk about it with?”
“What’s the point in talking about it at all?”
Frustration rises and I suppress the emotion. “To share the burden.” I shift my hand and take hold of hers, linking our fingers in her lap while I drive with one hand on the steering wheel. “With me.”
There’s a long pause. It stretches into a minute, then two, and just when I’m beginning to think she’s not going to say anything at all, she speaks. “My brothers were lecturing me. Again,” she says, her voice sad and distant. “We were on the Motorway, and I remember being angry. So angry with you I couldn’t think straight. They were relentless and wouldn’t stop, even Jared who was speeding along the road. So I told them the one thing guaranteed to shut them up.”
“Which was what?” I ask.
Her breath hitches with a choppy sound. “That I was pregnant.”
The road blurs in front of my eyes, and I squeeze her hand in mine.
“It shocked Jared the most. He veered right off the road and before he could recover control, the car hit loose gravel and that was it. I remember the car flipping like it was in slow motion. Travis and Eli were in the back with me and even though I had my seatbelt on, Trav still reached out to pin me back in the seat.”
Her head bows and the sight is a knife to my heart. We reach our destination and I indicate, turning in to the hospital parking lot. It’s late at night and there are plenty of spots available. I find one and ease to a stop. After turning off the ignition, the car settles into silence. All either of us can hear is the quiet ticking of the heated engine.
“When I woke in the hospital, our baby was gone like it was never even there.”
I turn in my seat and look at her. She’s staring out the front windscreen, remembering.
“I’m sorry,” I say. The words feel trite, but they need to be said regardless. “I’m sorry you went through it alone. I would have been there in a heartbeat had I known.”
Mac nods. “I know. I should have known all along, but I was young enough to still have faith in my brothers. I trusted them.”
“I would have held you through every minute and never let go.”
But she never got to have that. She was robbed of that comfort and her emotional wounds never healed as a consequence.
“I appreciate hearing that, Jake, but like I said, it’s in the past and we should leave it there, ok?”
I nod. It’s a touchy subject. That I got this far at all is an achievement.
Mac fumbles with the door handle. When it opens she snatches up her bag. “I’ll see you inside,” she says and takes off, clearly needing space.
I huff and tip my head back against the seat. “Shit,” I say with a heavy heart, letting the stillness settle over me as I contemplate my next move.
My mind is perplexed. On one hand it would be easier for all of us if I walked away. I’m a daily reminder of what she lost and a contributing factor in how she lost it, which is likely making me a hindrance to the healing process. On the other hand, I love her. Not being around her feels entirely impossible. Does that make me selfish?
A rap comes at the driver’s side window of my car, startling me from my internal contemplation. I tuck away my thoughts for another day and turn my head. My eyes widen in shock. It’s Luke Fox. He’s wearing a paramedic’s uniform. His blond hair is longer and tied in a stubby ponytail at the base of his neck. He gives me a brief wave and steps back, allowing me room to open the car door.
“Jesus Christ!” I exclaim as I get out, shutting it behind me.
Luke grabs me in a bear hug. We slap each other’s back before stepping away, both of us grinning. “Romero.” He shakes his head as if he can’t believe I’m standing here.
I do the same. “Little Fox.”
We both speak. “What are you—”
“How are—”
Then we both stop and my face sobers. “My friend was in a car accident,” I explain, waving to the hospital entrance. “Walk in with me?”
“Shit, mate,” he says, falling in to step beside me. “He okay?”
“I just got here so I don’t know.” I pocket my car keys and shrug. “Last I heard he was brought in by ambulance.”
“Oh geez. The Corvette Stingray guy?”
“That’s the one.”
“I’m the one who brought him in.”
I stop Luke with my hand and search his face. “And?”
“And he and the girl are both going to be fine, but …”
/> Luke trails off and his heart looks ready to bleed out. My stomach drops. “But what?”
“His car, man. It’s gone. Never seen anything break my heart so bad as seeing that beautiful piece of machinery crumpled across the road.”
I feel sick. Not Marjorie. Casey will never recover from the loss. Luke pats my shoulder in sympathy. “You need a barf bag?”
I take a few deep breaths. “No. Your shoes will work just fine.”
“Ha. Get stuffed, Romero.”
I chuckle, suddenly realising how much I’ve missed my old friend.
“What?” he asks, putting hands on his hips. Luke is so grown up now. Still his old self, yet appearing capable in a way he never was before. And confident.
“You’re a paramedic now? And in Sydney? Seems a profession that’s too respectable for your sorry ass. How did this come about?”
His eyes harden. “Well, I’d tell you, but one day a few years back I woke to find my best friend had left in the middle of the night without a word, so it seems like what I’ve done since then is none of his business.”
I nod slowly. Luke has every right to be angry. “That’s fair. You don’t owe me anything. Leaving the way I did wasn’t right. You deserve an explanation and maybe one day you’ll be ready to hear it. When that day comes, look me up, ok?”
There’s nothing more I can say, so I turn and walk toward the emergency entrance. The automatic doors whoosh open and cool air escapes.
“Ah hell,” I hear Luke mutter. “Romero?” he calls out.
I turn. Luke is jogging toward me, his heavy black boots slapping against the pavement.
“You know I can’t hold a grudge,” he complains as if he really wants to be mad at me but finds it impossible. “And I know why you did it. I was proud of you for getting out. For a second I was just pissed because…” he clears his throat “…I didn’t realise until now how much I missed you, ok?”
I nod, my eyes looking everywhere but at him because showing emotion with your mates is painfully awkward. “I missed you too.”