Page 56 of The Question of Us
He huffed. “Maybe. You wanna know what stopped me?”
I rested my chin on his shoulder. “Of course.”
“The realisation that if it hadn’t been for them and what they did, I would never have met you. How’s that for a fucked-uprevelation? After that, the anger disappeared and all I felt was guilty.”
I gathered him close and showered his shoulders with kisses. “It’s a fucked-up thing, isn’t it? And I don’t think there’ll ever be an answer that makes sense. It’s a one-foot-in-front-of-the-other process. It happened. We did meet. Davis died. And now we have each other. It’s how it is. I can’t think beyond that. You can’t let those animals live in your brain like that. Don’t give them the satisfaction. They’ve had enough of you already.”
Nick went quiet for a moment, then he lifted my hand to his lips and kissed the palm. “Thank you.” He kissed it again and gave a soft huff. “Yet another topic to take to my therapist. The list is growing by the day.”
I chuckled and rested back against the bath. “Okay, well, I have another equally awkward question as well, if you’re up to it.”
He groaned. “Go on then.”
I leaned forward and nipped his shoulder. “Are you truly not worried about Friday night? I need you to be honest.”
Nick didn’t respond right away, which I took as a good sign, meaning I’d get a serious answer. He shuffled ninety degrees, leaned back against the wall, and hung his feet over the edge of the spa bath. “I’m notnotworried,” he answered cryptically. “There are risks, for sure, but I see it as the best opportunity we might get. Turning up at his house uninvited is pretty much off the table after the supermarket conversation. I doubt we’d get a different answer and could even put him at risk. But he doesn’t know Gazza, so the party offers a perfect opportunity for another go. And because Marty and his friends will be there, Lee will likely try to avoid a scene.”
I frowned. “There’s a lot of ifs involved, don’t you think?”
“Doesn’t stop it being our best chance.” He cupped my cheek. “But if Lee shoots us down a second time, we need to agree to leave it, okay? We can’t help him if he doesn’t want it.”
I bristled at the idea but I knew he was right. “Agreed. But there’s a wrinkle in the plan you seem to be avoiding.”
Nick angled his head. “And that is?”
“Samuel. Your brother-in-law.”
He groaned. “I’m not avoiding?—”
“We have to tell him, Nick.” I jumped in before Nick could go off on all the reasons Samuel didn’t need to know our plan. “If anything goes wrong and we need help, someone has to have our back. Someone has to know where we’re going and when.” Nick fell deadly quiet and I could tell he wasn’t happy with me. Too bad. My reasoning stood.
Eventually he nodded, grumbling, “Fine, I’ll call him. But not tonight. I don’t want to give him time to pull the plug on us or set his Aussie cop on our tail.”
“He can’t do that,” I said evenly. “Gazza has a legitimate invite to a legitimate party. No one can stop him from going.”
“What about me?” Nick reminded me. “I don’t have an invite.I’llbe trespassing.”
“Well—” I took a second to remind myself of that inconvenient truth. “—we don’t necessarily have to tell himeverything,do we?”
Nick chuckled and settled back against me, his body loose in my arms. “I thought you were a rule follower.”
“I am,” I answered saucily. “As long as they’remyrules.” I pinched his waist while he wasn’t looking and he jumped, sloshing more water onto the floor. “See, Icando subterfuge.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Thursday
Madigan
We spentmost of Thursday doing reconnaissance around Marty’s address and checking out the adjoining farms to see if Nick might have easier access via that route. Unfortunately, Marty’s backyard was heavily screened and fenced on the neighbour’s side, leaving hiding in Gazza’s car still the best option.
A constant stream of party traffic and delivery vans heading up the property’s service road about one hundred and fifty metres from the house indicated there had to be another way into the backyard. We left Gazza skulking in bushes at the side of the road to check it out. Waiting until the next delivery van approached, we simply followed it in and hoped we looked like we belonged.
The road headed up the small hill to a turnaround at the top, bordered by a banksia hedge about sixty centimetres high. Beyond the turnaround, the road continued through a numberof horse paddocks, some of whose occupants had wandered up to the turnaround to see what all the fuss was about. At the far side of the fields, about five to seven hundred metres away, a massive double stable block stood alongside a training track and various outbuildings, horse transportation vehicles, and all the necessary accoutrements one might need for a horse stud.
Knowing we’d stick out like a sore thumb if we poked our noses that way, we slowly circled the turnaround instead, weaving between the various vans and people carrying boxes, decorations, and chilly bins. They were heading down a wide path that had to lead down to the house, but the idea of using it for Nick’s escapade seemed dodgy at best.
Any hope we had of getting an actual look at where the party was being held was quashed in an instant. Only the white roof of the marquee was visible above the dense foliage in between the trees. The entire backyard must have been dug into the hill, creating a kind of amphitheatre bordered by these thickly planted terraced gardens. Marty sure liked his privacy, even in the middle of the country, which only had me questioning exactly why that was. The first answer that sprang to mind. So that no one was privy to how Marty treated hispartners.
