Page 11

CHAPTER TEN

Nick

I parked alongside the caravan but didn’t get out, frozen in place by a deluge of memories that threatened to break me apart. Davis and I had spent a lot of time at the caravan when we were first dating, taking advantage of the seclusion and quiet to get to know each other. As time passed, we came less often, caught up in our own busy schedules until it was only Davis who really spent any time there at all, opting to sleep over a night or two when he needed to focus on his writing or a deadline.

I stared across the water toward Manukau Heads, the sun painting the ripples on the incoming tide with brushstrokes of silver. It had been a mistake, letting those visits slide. My mistake.

I’d missed the place.

Would we have ever built a home there if Samuel had been right about Lizzie’s intentions? I wasn’t sure. Davis would have lived there in a heartbeat. It would have been me dragging my feet, complaining about the distance from the city, the fuel cost, the general inconvenience. I was pretty sure I’d have said no, the way I thought back then, and that would’ve been another mistake.

The land had been a steal when Lizzie bought it, even allowing for the fact it spilled onto its own small but perfectly formed little beach. The population of the tiny township had exploded over the years with city commuters spreading further and further into the suburbs, and the empty section had rocketed in value. The family never built on it, choosing to camp there instead, every summer until the boys had left home.

Davis had even proposed to me on the same tiny beach as we’d lain wrapped in a blanket under an autumn sky beside a sputtering bonfire. I’d said no, of course, and Davis had simply laughed. He’d known I would hold out even if I didn’t understand why. His solution was to roll me onto my back and fuck me silly until I got over myself and finally agreed. It worked.

I glanced at the box sitting in the footwell of the passenger seat, then climbed out of the car and shut the door. Then I closed my eyes and let the feel of the place sink back into my bones. It had been a long, long time.

The sharp tang of salt air slid over my tongue, unwrapping memories and snapping my senses to attention. I lifted my face to the burning sun, the peaceful flip-flop of wavelets slapping the sand a soothing balm to my soul. Heat prickled my skin and perspiration trickled down my back.

I groaned and opened my eyes, squinting into the searing sun. So many memories made in that place. So many reasons to stay away. But the sting of grief was fleeting, quickly subsiding to a melancholy thrum under my skin. A reminder of all the good things. I wasn’t sure what it meant but I was grateful.

I popped the boot and grabbed the empty cardboard box I’d brought to pack up Davis’s things. The closer I got to the caravan, the more my heart began to wobble in my chest. The van was as much Davis’s space as his office, or his place beside me in our bed. It was another holy grail.

I paused at the door and rummaged through my jeans pocket for the key. It turned easily enough, and a rush of hot sour air hit me in the face.

“Whoa. Damn, that’s hot.” I hooked the door back against the aluminium siding and stood back for a minute to let the super-heated air drain. Then I drew a deep breath and stepped inside, opening every curtain and window in the cramped place until the onshore breeze finally licked at my skin.

That done I stood in the middle of the relatively spacious interior and took a look around. It had been one of the larger caravans on the market in its day, with its own bathroom and shower, a compact but functional kitchen, a good-sized booth-style dining area that converted into two beds, and a permanent double bed with its own bedroom at the back.

My attention lingered on the small worktop next to the sink where two coffee mugs sat upended on a tea towel along with two dinner plates and two sets of cutlery. If Samuel and Lizzie hadn’t visited the van since the accident, the tableau had to be of Davis’s making. All of it. Everything the way it was when he last walked out of the place. The idea that he might’ve eaten his last meal off these sat weirdly in my heart, the question repeating in my brain.

Two sets?

I frowned at the small collection. Two sets of everything.

I checked my paranoia and took a look in the small rubbish bin next to the counter. An empty plastic salad container and a scrunched-up supermarket bag with a plastic wrap bearing the label sliced ham . Another was labelled roast beef . There was also an empty sushi container, a flattened milk carton, and two empty juice bottles. It was a lot of food for one man’s lunch.

Two plates. Two lunches?

Stop it.

The fridge was next, which proved a huge error of judgement and answered any questions regarding the source of the rancid smell. It held another carton of what would once have been milk, a few cans of beer, a wheel of what looked like cheese—or at least it had been—and a couple of indeterminate food items, which had morphed into some unearthly vision from the seven circles of hell where black mould prevailed.

Well, fuck that. I slammed the door and dry retched into the sink, vowing to trash the entire fridge and its contents into the local refuse centre on my way home. There was no way I was leaving that for Lizzie to find.

I wiped my mouth and began a thorough search of the van starting in the bedroom—every cupboard, every drawer, every storage nook opened and checked. I found nothing apart from some spare toiletries, including a half-empty tube of lube, a few of Davis’s clothes, and more books than any one man could possibly need.

It wasn’t until I was almost done that I finally struck gold. The laptop. Stashed in a cupboard above the dining table along with Davis’s research folder, a desk calendar, notebooks, a stationery shop load of pens, and a selection of language and style books that he often used when he was writing.

I moved everything onto the table and then opened the laptop. It was dead, because of course it was. “For fuck’s sake.” I searched the overhead cupboard once again, locating the power cord stuffed right in the back. I plugged the laptop in to charge and began leafing through the other stuff while I waited.

The Hot Silver Fox desk calendar I’d given him the previous Christmas caught my eye, and I smiled at the photo of me that I’d taped to the front. As I flicked through the months, I saw that Davis had circled the days he’d spent in the caravan and jotted notes about deadlines, word counts, groceries needed, and so on. Scrawled by the fourth of June was also the note, wrote 7000 words today, best day ever!! I remembered how happy he’d been when he’d arrived back at the townhouse and we’d celebrated with Thai takeout.

Impatient, I jumped ahead to the week of the accident... and... froze. What the hell? I flicked back to the previous week, then the one before that, and then swept through the month before that, my heart galloping in my chest. Over those six weeks, Davis had spent three to four days of every week at the caravan, and he’d never mentioned a single word of it to me.

I stared at the dates, a sour pit opening in my belly. It made no sense. He wasn’t writing or editing at that time. He was planning and researching, and he never visited the caravan for that.

I dropped the calendar back on the table and took a moment to reset. As I did, other things began to register. Like the fact that on at least half of the days Davis had been at the caravan, the initials L. K. or a singular J. were noted like an appointment.

I scanned the other stuff on the table but nothing jumped out. The research folder contained a surprisingly sparse amount of material for a month’s work—a few pages devoted to a rough plot outline of an espionage thriller set in Australia and not much else. No detailed character drafts beyond a general physical description—nothing at all compared to what he would usually have ready after six weeks of planning. What the hell had he been doing?

I closed the folder and shoved it away, frowning as the change of angle highlighted a slight bulge. I dragged it back and flicked through the pages until I located the source—Davis’s driver’s licence and passport held together with a rubber band.

What the actual fuck? I stared gobsmacked at the small bundle that I could’ve sworn I’d seen in the top drawer of Davis’s desk not that long ago. Was I losing my freaking mind? What the hell were they doing in the caravan?

I shoved them both in my pocket and then stared again at the initials on the calendar. L. K. and J. Something dark wormed through my stomach and my gaze slid to dishes on the countertop. Two sets. And a half-empty tube of lube beside the bed.

Don’t go there. Don’t do that to yourself.

Davis was never that guy. Ever.

Of course he’d have bloody lube. The man had been fifty at the time, not fucking dead. And he sometimes stayed three or four nights if he was in the writing zone.

My attention snapped back to the laptop, and I opened my phone to the photo of the three possible passwords I’d discovered in our shared password lockbox in the notes section. One seemed more likely than the others since it fit the time frame, was simply labelled 2 , and was way more complicated than what Davis usually ran to. It wasn’t that he was sloppy with his security, but he generally opted for easily remembered phrases rather than long runs of numbers, symbols, and letters. If it worked, then it had to mean something that he hadn’t tried that hard to hide it, right?

I looked upward with a smile. “You sucked at secret spy stuff, just so you know. But also, I’m so fucking pissed at you right now.”

I entered it wrong the first time around and had to try again. On my second attempt, the screen lit up with a photo of the two of us taken on holiday in Adelaide a few years before. We’d had a fabulous seafood meal at a restaurant with a view over the beach. Davis had drunk far too much; we both had. His expression shone with unmistakable happiness.

See, my heart admonished. He loved you, idiot.

Okay, good. Things were looking up. My stomach settled.

But the relief only lasted as long as it took for me to open the laptop’s account details to find it was loaded from an entirely different unconnected account, which explained why it hadn’t shown up on the cloud.

I stared at the screen, real doubt beginning to eat at my heart for the first time.

Why a different account?

Why a new laptop?

Why complicate things?

And why not tell me?

Mostly that last one.

I swallowed the mounting panic and kept looking. As I did, things began to make sense. Most of Davis’s book research and planning was contained in a folder on the home screen rather than the physical folder he generally—no, obsessively preferred—and I tried not to let that rattle me further.

Davis had changed his methodology. So what? People did that kind of thing. Authors did. They found a better way of doing things.

Except that when it came to his writing, Davis was a creature of habit. In the rest of his life he was quite the spontaneous guy, but his capacity to write thrived on routine. He used the same coffee cup for ten years, the same expensive biro I’d given him when he first started writing, the same desk, the same playlist, the list went on and on. Davis hated change in that part of his life... any change.

The content of the research folder didn’t raise any red flags. It held all the usual stuff I’d expect for one of Davis’s books where the plot seemed loosely centred around an international sex-trafficking ring, a storyline that fit right in alongside his other thriller narratives. The plot wasn’t fleshed out beyond a sparse outline and there were dozens of research questions unanswered in the margin.

I emailed all the files to myself, bile rising in my throat at the unfamiliar sender address that popped up: twicebitten . Just another thing I hadn’t known about. Jesus Christ, Davis. What the fuck were you doing?

The hits kept coming.

I moved on to the internet history where most of the searches were clearly tied to his new book—loads of unsettling material on sex trafficking and the policing thereof that I left for another time. Law enforcement task forces. Methods of selling merchandise . International money laundering corridors, and so on. There was a ton of stuff and I left most of it to study another time.

However, the last topic puzzled me. Money laundering was my jam. I worked on it every day as part of my job. But Davis hadn’t come to me? Why spend hours searching online when he was married to a damn expert? I slow blinked, then scrubbed my hands over my face and told myself to get over it. But there were too many things that didn’t make sense.

I closed the search history and peeled my damp T-shirt away from my hot skin to waft some air between the two. Davis clearly hadn’t wanted to talk to me, let alone have me stumble onto any of his notes. It was the only explanation for all the secrecy and the fact he’d kept me in the dark about how much time he’d been spending at the caravan.

Shifting me attention back to the laptop, I glanced nervously at the twenty-seven emails sitting in the inbox like they might jump off the screen and bite me. Many were spam, but the remainder were from a single source, someone called Lachlan, no last name given. The email address, pieinthesky, told me absolutely nothing, but it wasn’t a leap to wonder of this was the L in the L. K. from Davis’s desk calendar.

Fuck. I rubbed my hands together, sent a silent prayer skyward to who the fuck knew, and then opened the first email.

It had been sent the day before Davis’s accident.

Lachlan—Are we still on for tomorrow?

Shit. My heart lurched.

Davis—Yep. See you at the caravan around ten. I’ll grab us lunch on the way.

Lachlan—Great. How long do we have?

Davis—A couple of hours maybe. But I can’t keep hiding this from Nick. It’s killing me and it’s not fair on him. We need to make a decision.

Lachlan—Agreed. Let’s talk tomorrow.

The caravan faded into nothing and I fell back against the seat, the boiling air pressing down on my chest, dense and suffocating. It’s not fair... we need to make a decision. I couldn’t breathe, my heart rising into my throat, my pulse racing.

This couldn’t be right. It couldn’t be happening.

It just fucking couldn’t.

The voice of reason told me to calm down. Don’t jump to conclusions. And I was trying, I really was. But it wasn’t easy. In fact, it was pretty fucking impossible.

I scrolled to the next email, and the next, all sent over a few days, each trying to get in contact with Davis, each sounding more desperate than the last, starting with the night of the accident, the night we were supposed to be celebrating our anniversary.

Acid churned in my belly but I couldn’t stop reading.

Lachlan—What’s happening? You’re not answering my texts.

I blinked at that. Davis’s phone had been crushed in the crash but I’d downloaded all his stuff to a new phone and there’d been nothing like this in his text history, which meant only one thing. The receipt for that new phone hadn’t been a mistake.

“Bastard.” I swore at the ceiling, then kept going. Bring it the fuck on. I wanted to know. I needed to know.

The next email was sent the day after the accident.

Davis, what the hell’s going on?

Good fucking question.

Then later that day. I’m freaking out here. Please, Davis, text, or email, or something! I’m worried. Please!

Then a couple days later. Call me at the office. I mean it, Davis. You have to call me.

The final one had been sent a week later. I’m gonna stop using this email just in case. You know where I am. Jesus, Davis. What the fuck happened?

“Just in case what?” I slammed the screen shut. “In case your fucking husband finds out?”

Oh god. A gaping hole ripped open in my chest and I barely made it outside before spewing the contents of my stomach onto the brittle brown grass. Again, and again, until my belly felt hollow, my cheeks wet with tears. When the cramping finally stopped, I spat the sour dregs onto the ground and grabbed a water bottle from the car to sluice my mouth.

I drank until the bottle ran dry, a war of emotions raging in my chest. Pain. Grief. Hurt. Disbelief. And above them all blazed a white-hot fury.

I roared and threw the empty bottle across the grass, dragging my fingers through my hair as I fell to my knees, my heart breaking open on the sun-baked earth.

It wasn’t true. It wasn’t fucking true.

I can’t have been wrong about him all those years? Believing he wasn’t that guy? That he would never do that to me. Davis hated cheaters, at least that’s what he’d said. He’d been furious when a friend of ours had cheated on his boyfriend and I’d believed that indignance with all my heart.

I still wanted to believe it. None of this fit the man I knew. None of it.

But my desperation to believe did nothing to explain away the gut-wrenching facts. Davis had been spending a lot of time at the caravan without telling me. Meeting up with men I knew nothing about. He’d bought a new laptop under a different account. He’d exchanged emails with the same guy from an address I didn’t know. And it seemed they exchanged texts on a phone I had no idea existed.

All in all, it was pretty fucking hard not to read between the lines and draw a conclusion that smacked me right between the eyes. The life I’d loved and believed in so much was unravelling at the edges. All of it potentially a lie.

Goddammit . I pressed my palms to my eyes and told myself to calm the fuck down. Epic fail. Twenty months of grieving and fear and plain fucking misery, and then I discover he’d been seeing someone?

I’d been a fool.

And suddenly, I needed to get the hell out of there. I needed to think somewhere that didn’t reek of Davis and... whatever.

I headed back into the caravan and returned with a load of Davis’s clothes, toiletries and a few bits and pieces I recognised as ours which I threw onto the back seat. Then I swept all of his work stuff into the box and closed all the windows and curtains. Samuel would have to deal with the fridge. I didn’t have the stomach for it, and I had no intention of returning to the caravan, ever. Whoever the hell this Lachlan guy was, I didn’t want to ever be reminded of him again.

If Davis had truly fucked up, the details would stay buried from Lizzie. She’d lived through enough. Samuel too, if I could manage it.

I’d carry that pain for all of us.

What was done was done.

Davis was dead.

There was no point fucking everything else up.

I took a final look around the van and growled into the hot dank air, “What the hell were you thinking? If you weren’t happy, we could’ve talked about it. We could’ve worked through it. We could’ve at least fucking tried. Jesus, Davis, it wasn’t like I didn’t know how damn lucky I was to have you love me in the first place. I would’ve let you go if that’s what you’d wanted. I only ever wanted you to be happy. You didn’t have to be an arsehole. And then you went and fucking died.” The last came out a broken whisper and I slumped against the countertop wishing I’d never fucking found that receipt.

Thunderous silence slammed through my heart—the only answer I’d ever know. I took a shuddering breath, secured the box under one arm, and stepped outside.

The blow came from my left, the force of it snapping my head back against the open door, white heat arcing through my jaw. I flew sideways off the step, the box tumbling to the ground as my shoulder hit the baked earth, pain lancing through the joint and spearing upwards into my neck. My head followed, landing with a brain-juddering crack, kicking dust around my face. A guttural cry split the humid air, and in the fuzzy recesses of my brain, I knew it as mine.

I rolled sluggishly to my knees, but my legs wouldn’t take any weight to get me upright. Dust choked my throat and bile dribbled from the corner of my mouth. A pair of heavy boots was all I could see. One lashed out and caught me on the shoulder, flattening me back on the ground.

“Don’t move,” a thick male voice ordered.

“Who the hell are—” I rolled just in time to empty another surge of bile onto the ground.

“Hey!” a second man’s voice called from the direction of the beach. “What’s going on here?”

The boots whirled and took off for the road.

I tried to get a look but I could barely focus, my head spinning like a top. A car door slammed in the distance, followed by the roar of an engine, and then everything fell quiet.

“Are you okay?” Gentle hands helped me to my feet.

I coughed up more phlegm and spat it sideways to the ground before lifting my gaze.

My rescuer was a thirty-something man who was watching me with concern. “Did you know that guy?”

I shook my head, still coughing. “I have no fucking idea who it was.”

The man looked in the direction my attacker had fled. “Lucky for you I came along when I did. Whoever it was looked like he meant business.”

I glanced toward the open gate and nodded. “Felt like it too.”

The man stepped back to study me. “You sure you’re okay? You want me to call the police?”

I rubbed a hand along my tender jaw and gingerly rolled my shoulder, pulling a face both times. “Nothing broken.” I stretched my neck and tried not to wince. “Just my pride. Did you get a look at him?”

The man shook his head. “Not really. Light skin, dark hair, thirties maybe. You should really report it. We’ve had some dodgy characters hanging around here this summer. Cars broken into, that sort of thing. Locals are pissed.”

“Doesn’t seem much point. Neither of us got a look.” I offered my hand. “I’m Nick, by the way. Thanks for helping.”

He shook hands. “No problem. You might wanna put some ice on that jaw. Bruise is gonna be a doozy. I hope you didn’t need whatever was in that box.”

My gaze snapped back to the caravan. The door was still hooked back. The steps were lying on their side. And the box with all Davis’s writing stuff, including the laptop, was nowhere to be seen.

“Goddammit!” I kicked a cloud of dust into the air and the man patted my back.

“I guess that answers that. If you’re sure you’re okay, I’ll let you be. Don’t forget the ice.”

I watched him go, my head exploding with questions starting with, what the actual fuck was going on?

Still rubbing my jaw, I snatched the Mickey Mouse keyring from the dirt and locked the van. It wasn’t until I was almost back at the car that I remembered the police box still sitting in the passenger footwell. I ran the last few steps and tore open the door, relieved to find it untouched. Thank Christ. The guy couldn’t have had time to check.

I rounded the car and stood for a moment with the engine on and driver’s door open, the air con as low as it would go. I shook off the hypocrisy of being happy to cool my car but not my house. As I waited for the temp to drop from peel-your-skin-from-your-flesh hot down to tolerable for desert-dwelling dung beetles, I pressed gently on my jaw and winced.

The guy had a mean right hook because fuck, that hurt.

I circled my neck, and yeah, that wasn’t much better, and my head throbbed like a motherfucker. I debated the chances of being assaulted and robbed twice in two months and didn’t like the odds. Then again, the alternative seemed equally disturbing because that would mean I’d been targeted. The next questions were who and why?

The list of possibilities was short, as in non-existent. The guy had only grabbed one thing, the box. Hell of a risk to steal a random box with the owner standing right there. Why not wait until you had the place to yourself?

Then it hit me. I’d lost the laptop and the desk calendar. What a fucking waste of a day. I slapped a hand to my forehead and immediately regretted it as pain rocketed through my jaw. “Ow, ow, ow.”

I collapsed behind the wheel and slammed the door shut, the cold air rolling like a blessing over my thirsty skin. I angled the vent until an arctic blast buffeted my face and took a last look at the caravan, my imagination taking flight.

Davis... inside... with another guy... discussing what to do about me. Davis upset about hiding what was going on, and he would’ve been. I knew that. He hated deceit—an odd thing to think, all things considered—but it only meant he must’ve felt strongly about the other guy to take that path.

The realisation pricked at my eyes and I jerked my gaze back to the windscreen.

If that’s what even happened, I reminded myself. You don’t know shit for sure.

I didn’t. But I was struggling to come up with another explanation.

I threw the car into drive and headed out, making it as far as the motorway before I realised I wasn’t heading home. I couldn’t. Not right then. Not to the townhouse we’d shared and the bed we’d slept in. Memories of a life that could’ve been a lie.

Instead, I pulled into the far-left lane and took the next off ramp leading west. I knew the name of the road and figured I could pick out his house from the video tour. Modern barn conversion he’d called it. With a bit of luck, he’d even have his name or business on the letter box.

I could’ve called, of course, but I didn’t. Because I wanted to back out if I needed to. Because I was embarrassed. Because I didn’t want him to say it wasn’t convenient, or that he wasn’t home, or refuse because I’d been an arsehole avoiding him. Because then I’d have nowhere else.

I made a quick stop at a liquor store on the way. If he was out, I’d sit on his deck and wait... and drink.

It was a plan.

Good or not remained to be seen.