Blood Secret (9 page)

Max phoned at lunchtime, told her he'd discovered them tucked into the folds of his jumper. Rennie hadn't thought to call him. Her key ring was distinctive, a miniature hand weight, a weapon and a tool in one, and she hadn't imagined he'd mistake them for his own, but as soon as he'd told her, she realised how it'd happened. He'd tossed the jumper on the kitchen bench when he was getting organised for work, must have put it on her keys then taken both when he left.

Now, as she drove along the water's edge for the third time since she'd lost Max, she wondered about the keys. How she'd kept searching the same places, how she'd tried to find reasons to explain why they'd be somewhere she'd never put them. How all the time they were somewhere else, somewhere logical that she'd never
considered possible.

Was that where Max
was now?

 

 

12

Rennie had expected to see Naomi's car in the driveway and when the white dual cab came into view, hope and relief caught in her chest like a gasp – then she realised it was James's and she was driving Max's work truck. Beyond it, the front door was wide open. Was Max back? Was there news? Walking quickly to the porch, she heard TV voices and a brief clatter from the kitchen and her mind conjured the sight of Max in the next room, while instinct told her not to cross that bridge prematurely.

Hayden was slumped on the sofa, eyes glued to the flat screen, feet on the coffee table and a dirty plate balanced on a cushion. Further into the room, Naomi glanced up from the sink and sent her a
thin smile.

It told Rennie all she needed to know. Max wasn't here and there was no news.

She did nothing for a second as her needy, wishful self crashed in on itself. Then she raised brows at Naomi, flicking her eyes at Hayden. Naomi shook her head. She hadn't told him. Rennie swallowed hard and tried for a smile. ‘Hey, Hayden. How'd you sleep?'

His body didn't move as his eyes rolled condescendingly in her direction then back to the TV. Translation: what made you think your presence was recognised in
Hayden World?

Rennie was tempted to bark that his father was missing, that he should pay some goddamn attention but she reined it in, looked to Naomi for an
alternative approach.

She shrugged, made a what-do-you-do face. ‘Have you eaten? I didn't know what you had in the house so I brought a loaf of bread and some ham.'

Naomi was right. Calming down and improving her blood sugar level was probably a better way to start. She ignored Hayden as she passed between him and the TV and took in Naomi's tired face and the hand pressed to the small of her back. ‘You look like you need to take a load off. I'll make something.'

‘No need. I've already done it.' Naomi opened the fridge, pulled out a plate and slid it across
the counter.

Rennie eyed the thick slices of multigrain and the lettuce fringing the crusts, not sure she could relax enough to force any of it through the tension in her throat. ‘Thanks. And thanks for coming.'

‘Let's sit at the table,' Naomi said, then lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘So Hayden can't hear.'

Christ, there was more and unless it was a map to Max, Rennie wasn't sure she wanted to hear it, but she carried the plate to the table that overlooked the garden and the gums and the lake beyond, sat with her back to the rest of the room and waited until Naomi had settled her pregnant belly. ‘What?'

‘Brenda rang.'

Brenda was Max's mum, James's aunt – and maybe she did have a map to Max. ‘Has she heard from Max?'

‘No. I think she just rang for a chat.'

Brenda and Mike rang every weekend, talked to Max about the garden and his cooking exploits and the weather on the lake. It was so far removed from Rennie's parental experience that she'd listen to Max's end of the conversation with a mixture of scepticism and longing. ‘What did you tell her?'

Naomi made a face, like she wasn't sure if she'd done the right thing. ‘Well, I didn't want to start a panic, and I wasn't going to say anything at all, but then I wasn't sure if you'd told her already and I figured if she was starting one of her weekend ring-arounds, she might hear it from someone else. So I told her Max was missing.'

Rennie imagined Brenda at the breakfast bar in the house at Yamba, sun streaming in, the hiss of surf in the distance and her hand on her chest in shock. ‘Was she okay?'

‘She was all, “Oh my goodness” and “Oh dear”, and she kept relaying the information to Mike in the background.'

Rennie winced. Their visits to Haven Bay could be awkward, Brenda flushed with maternal warmth, Rennie decidedly uncomfortable with it. But to watch her and Mike laughing and fussing over Max was like a window to another kind of life. ‘Did she have any ideas?'

‘Not really. She seemed as baffled about it as we all are. But she was going off to make a few phone calls, see if anyone's heard from him.'

Was she baffled Max had disappeared or that he'd left another woman?

Naomi pulled the cling wrap from the plate and slid it closer to Rennie. ‘Have something.'

She took a bite, forcing it down. ‘How come you've got James's car? I thought he was going to the office.'

‘He came with me.'

Rennie glanced into the empty yard, a sudden flare of possessiveness at the thought he might have turned his attention to her own private space in the studio. ‘Where is he?'

‘In the study looking through Max's stuff.'

She swung her head towards the hall, possessive on Max's behalf. She returned the sandwich to the plate and pushed her chair back. Slow down, she warned herself. James wasn't just a business partner. He and Max grew up together, shared a happy kinship all the way into adulthood, forging some kind of proprietary bond that Rennie had never understood. She'd always assumed it was her distrust of family and blood ties that was the real problem. She trusted Max. It didn't extend to relatives. Max could explain him all he liked but James's unreadable face had never changed
her mind.

They had something in common today, Rennie reminded herself. He was worried about Max, too, so she should cut him some slack, and maybe he'd see something in the study she'd missed. She got to the door, expecting him to be standing in the room as she had, eyeing the shelves and desk, but he wasn't. He was in Max's swivel chair, parked in front of the computer, hand on the mouse, screen alight, making himself at home with a cup of coffee and a half-eaten sandwich.

She couldn't keep the surge of possessiveness from her voice. ‘What are you doing?'

His shoulders tensed for half a second before he turned. There was no greeting; he just spoke as though he'd been waiting for her to get there. ‘Do you know Max's password?'

She folded her arms and asked again. ‘What are you doing?'

He frowned a little, just a hint of what's-the-problem? ‘I'm trying to get into his computer.'

‘Our computer,' she corrected. ‘Why?'

‘I thought there might be something on there that would tell me . . . us where he went.'

As though there was forethought to it? ‘You think the kid in the four-wheel drive sent him an email?'

He raised his eyebrows. ‘You think a teenager in a four-wheel drive took him?'

‘I don't know what's happened.'

He watched her for a second, maybe weighing up the edginess in her voice and the day they'd both had. ‘Okay, look.' He rubbed a hand across the stubble on his chin, took a deep breath and let it out. ‘I'm not sure what to think, either. I just thought it was worth a look.'

She'd been out to Garrigurrang Point twice for the same reason. ‘Okay.'

‘What's his password?'

‘For the email?'

‘That too, but I meant for his files.'

Rennie stared at the monitor and the screensaver photo of a sunset over the bay. ‘There isn't a password.'

James swung the chair back around, gave the mouse a nudge and the picture was replaced with the desktop photo – another one of the bay taken from Garrigurrang as huge storm clouds gathered like a Hollywood version of an alien invasion. He held the arrow over the icon labelled Max's Stuff, double clicked and a password window popped up. ‘Yeah, there is.'

When had Max put a password on his files?

‘Any ideas?'
James asked.

Was Max worried about her looking at his files? Or maybe he was worried about Hayden getting in and moving things around. He'd done it before. But if he was concerned, why hadn't he told her to do the same? ‘No, no idea.'

‘I've tried names and birthdays and combinations thereof. His, Hayden's, yours, his family's, mine. Are there any other names he might use?'

‘Try Max-Renée.' She spelt the combination of upper and lower case letters that they'd used for internet security: MaXReneE.

James hit enter and an electronic beep sounded an invalid password. ‘Are you sure of the capitals?'

‘Yes.'

‘Spell it again.'

She watched the keys as he tapped, lifted her eyes to the screen as the beep sounded again. ‘I emailed a file to the office for him a while ago and there was no password.'

‘When was that?'

‘Maybe two weeks ago.' She watched James, thinking the time frame might make sense for him. Possibly there was work that required a password, something with privacy issues. He kept his eyes on the screen, his face expressionless as a muscle at the hinge of his jaw started a slow pumping. If something clicked, he wasn't talking
about it.

‘What about his email password?'
he asked.

‘That's the one I gave you.'

He tried it with the email and was refused entry. ‘He must've changed it.'

Rennie slid her hands into the pockets of her jeans. It was good practice to change a password and Max had every right to alter it whenever he wanted but, as far as she knew, he'd used the same collection of letters for four years, since she'd moved in and contributed to the cost of the computer. She kept her emails separate, had several accounts, used a different password for each of them, none of them in her real name. She'd encouraged him to be more careful but he always claimed the chances of forgetting a new password were higher than the likelihood of someone hacking in.

Naomi's voice cut the silence. ‘Have you found anything?'

‘We can't get in,' Rennie
told her.

Naomi stood at the door, her gaze moving from Rennie to James and staying there as though she was reading something in his face. Maybe Rennie was the only person who couldn't do it. She glanced at him and saw their silent exchange. Some kind of question from Naomi, an answer from James. Then Naomi smiled at Rennie. ‘Come and eat your sandwich.'

She hesitated, trying to interpret what hadn't been said out loud. Was it: Do you need her help?/No, I'm fine? Or: Are you two all right in here?/No, get her out?

‘Come on, you should eat. And we have to talk to Hayden.'

Maybe it was Trish's earlier bombshell making her brace for more or the ghost of her past still crowding the corners of her mind or that she just didn't like to be excluded in her own home – but suspicion flared.

She turned to James. ‘What are you looking for?'

 

 

13

James watched her a second, tipped his head slowly, pensively to one side. ‘I don't know.'

It seemed like he'd taken the time to consider his answer, given her the best one he had, but there was something about it, something that made her gut tighten with doubt. Rennie glanced from Naomi's encouraging smile to James's concerned sincerity, feeling the silence stretch with her hesitation.

On the other side of the wall, the toilet flushed, a door banged and then Hayden was in the hallway, speak­ing before they saw him. ‘When's Dad coming back?' He must have expected to see James in the study and seemed surprised when all three of them turned to look
at him.

There was no time like the present, Rennie told herself. ‘We should talk.'

Hayden rolled his eyes. ‘I just want to know when Dad's coming back.'

‘That's what we need to talk about.'

He heaved a sigh and slouched against the wall. ‘What then?'

‘In the living room.' She didn't want to do it crowded into the tiny study or with Hayden taking a stance in the hallway. And she needed the walk to shake off the previous moment and find some empathy for
the kid.

Rennie took a seat on one side of the corner formed by the living room sofas. Hayden slouched on the other, as far from her as he could get. Naomi perched awkwardly on the coffee table between them, as though she didn't want to take sides.

Rennie ignored the look of practised boredom on Hayden's face. ‘I don't know where Max is.'

His brief sneer said, Is that it? ‘So you don't know when he's getting back?'

Naomi shifted uncomfortably on
the table.

Rennie started again. ‘He disappeared from a party last night. I don't know where he is.'

‘So he went somewhere. Big deal.'

Maybe to his fourteen-going-on-twenty-three logic, it was cool to go off without letting anyone know – after all, he'd jumped a train in the middle of the night. Or maybe he was too intent on pissing off Rennie to get the message. She continued, her voice a little firmer. ‘When the party was over, he was gone. He hasn't come home and he hasn't rung.'

He shuffled himself a little more upright and lifted his chin. ‘So, what are you saying? I've got to go to Cairns with Mum? I can't. The plane's already left.'

‘No, Hayden. I'm trying to tell you your dad's missing. I don't know where he is.'

He didn't say anything, at least not for eight or nine seconds. It was sinking in, Rennie figured, like a puddle into a rock. She waited, expecting to see alarm or concern grow on his face. Instead, one side of his mouth turned up in a nasty smirk. ‘What, he left you?'

Her skin turned cold, anger hardened in her gut and she wanted to deny it resolutely enough to shut down the doubt that was souring in the back of
her throat.

‘Hayden,' Naomi reproached quietly.

‘Well, I would. She's a bitch.'

‘
Hayden!
'
Naomi snapped.

Rennie clenched her teeth. He's a kid. Don't let him get under your skin. Lay it out and move on. ‘I've reported him missing with the police. I'm waiting to talk to a detective.'

‘You called the cops?' He said it like it was an over­reaction, like maybe his mother had called the police when he hadn't come home before. Maybe she'd called them last night when he was on the train instead of in bed.

Rennie tried to keep the bleedingly obvious tone out of her voice. ‘We're worried about him. We're trying to find him.'

‘He's just gone somewhere.' It was a barely veiled What the hell would
you know?

‘Have you spoken to him?'

‘No.'

‘Do you know where he is?'

‘No.'

She hesitated. ‘Do you?'

He turned to Naomi and pulled a face that said Rennie was a total loser.

‘Hayden,' Naomi said gently. ‘Do you know where your dad is?'

Whether it was the gravity in her voice or the fact that it was Naomi who asked, he lost the scorn. ‘No, I said. You believe me, don't you?'

He was attempting to get Naomi on side and Rennie didn't have the patience or the diplomacy for this kind of conversation. She shifted to the edge of the sofa, gritting her teeth as she tried to find better words than the ones running through her head. ‘This is not about you, Hayden. There's a chance something's happened to Max.'

He swung his face around, ready to unleash another round of go-fuck-yourself but whatever he saw in her expression stopped it before it reached his lips. Comprehension slid through his eyes and suddenly his arrogance looked more like vulnerability. ‘What do you mean?'

Naomi shot her a glance, another silent communiqué like the one she'd shared with James. This one Rennie could read: go easy.

‘I'm worried he might be lost.' Be honest, Rennie. ‘Or hurt.'

He watched her a second, then Naomi, then Rennie again. Uncertainty morphing to fear morphing to agita­tion. ‘Nah. No way.' He sat up straight, agitation morphing to something angrier. ‘No way he got lost. He knows this place better than anyone. Better than Uncle James.' He narrowed his eyes at Rennie, his voice abruptly loud. ‘He's probably not even here. He probably hitched a ride to the station and jumped a train. Probably to get away from
you
.'

Her chin jerked up as though he'd given her an uppercut. Today, after her sister's voice doing the rounds in her head, after Trish's revelations, his words stung. She stood and stalked to the
bay window.

‘That's not fair,' Naomi was saying. ‘We don't know where he is. And he loves Renée. You know that.'

‘Well, he's not lost,' Hayden insisted. He still had his brain stuck so far inside his teenage resentment that he was missing the point.

Rennie walked back to him, no desire to soften the blow this time. ‘He might be hurt. One of the options here, Hayden, is that someone hurt him. That someone took him and hurt him. And you need to get over yourself so we can concentrate on finding him.'

As soon as the words were out, she wanted to snatch them back. Hayden was a brat, no two ways about it, but he was also the same kid who'd come here last night to see his dad. And there were tears in his eyes. Shit.

‘No one would hurt my dad. You can't say that.'

‘Hayden.' Naomi reached for
his hand.

He pulled it away. ‘He's gone somewhere, that's all.'

‘Hayden, honey,' Naomi
tried again.

‘
She
probably made it all up so I'd have to go to fucking Cairns.'

Rennie watched as he turned his back on her, grappling for Naomi's sympathy, his blame game not biting now, just throwing up memories of herself at his age. No, a year older and with worse news: her mother's murder. She'd reacted with disbelief, too.

She couldn't believe her mother had been right. After all the years of telling her daughters he'd come, drilling them to flee at a moment's notice, waking them in the night for practice, climbing out windows in their pyjamas, going hell for leather to the allotted hiding place – enough paranoia to make Rennie think her mother was the one with the mental problem – and he'd actually, finally, brutally done it.

In all the time they'd been on the run, the cops had turned up only once. It was early on and their father had unearthed them at a block of flats. Rennie and Joanne, both too young for high school, had fled like they'd been taught. He'd beaten their mother senseless, would probably have killed her then if a neighbour hadn't intervened. Their mother claimed he'd found them other times after that, not that Rennie ever saw him. Every now and then, their mother would turn up at school or walk in after work, say, ‘He's here. Go pack your bag.' And she'd load them into the car, no goodbyes and nothing that wouldn't fit in their kit. Rennie once saw the slashed furniture in their on-site van before they left but that had been well before her mother became the suspicious, over-disciplined, unhinged person she was at the end. By then, Rennie had decided her father had forgotten them, that it was her mother who was crazy, who couldn't give up
the chase.

Then he parked a car right outside their van one night. Joanne was working, making burgers at a takeaway. Rennie was given the whispered order:
Go!
She'd answered back –
For God's sake, Mum, we've only been here three months.
Her mother dragged her from the kitchen nook, pushed her towards the back of the van, angry, insistent.
Go! Now!
So she had, past the allotted safe spot, not stopping until the pent-up anger was run out of her. When she got back, the cops were there and Sergeant Evan Delaney sat her down in the back seat of a patrol car, knelt by the door and explained her father had been there. No, she had no father. Her mother was crazy; it was all in her mind, she'd told him. But the fatal knife wounds
were real.

Rennie had fifteen years to prepare for it and she hadn't been able to believe it. What could she expect of Hayden – an indulged kid with two safe homes and parents who
loved him?

She backed off as Hayden shot to his feet and made no attempt to stop him as he stomped across
the room.

‘I'm outta here!'
he yelled.

‘Hayden, wait!' Naomi called, going after him as the front door swung open and hit the wall.

‘Let him go,'
Rennie said.

‘But . . .' As loud footsteps crossed the deck, Naomi looked anxious, holding onto her stomach as though she might follow if she didn't have the weight of an almost full-term baby to haul
with her.

‘If he can catch a train in the middle of the night, he can go for a walk in Haven Bay,' Rennie said. ‘Let him work it off.'

Rennie wanted to join him. Not literally – pacing it out alongside Hayden would probably do both their heads in. But remembering her mother's late-night drills and the organised pick-up-and-run routine made her want to do something now. Anything except standing around feeling useless and uncertain. She thought of her mother tossing a sandwich or pack of chips into the back seat after she'd filled up with petrol on those get-the-hell-outta-there trips.
You should eat now. I don't know when we'll be stopping again
. Rennie walked to the dining table, picked up half of the sandwich Naomi had made, stood at the back windows looking out at Max's garden and forced herself to eat.

‘Sorry that went so badly.' Naomi stood next to her, the rest of the sandwich on a plate in her hand. ‘I don't think I helped much.'

‘No, you were great. It would've been worse if you weren't here.'

‘He doesn't mean what he said. He's just upset.'

‘Don't be too sure about that.'

Naomi made a face – sympathy and comfort. ‘How're you holding up?'

‘I don't know. I'm worried more than anything. I think it's something bad. That kid in the car. But then . . .' She turned a little to see Naomi's face better. ‘Trish told me Max disappeared a couple of times when he and Leanne were together.'

A small frown was followed by a gasp of memory. ‘Oh God, I'd forgotten about that.' Then uneasy eyes met Rennie's as the significance hit home.

‘We had an argument last night,' Rennie told her. ‘Before the party and then at the party. Just a few nasty words but it was the last time I spoke to him.'

Rennie saw the torment on Naomi's face and knew not all of it was about Max. She hated to see people upset. She didn't watch sad movies because she couldn't bear it, even on screen. Rennie had heard her go beyond the call of duty to find nice things to say to people who didn't deserve it or want it. Now, biting her lip, forcing a comforting smile, she looked desperate to say something reassuring but struggling to find a direction. ‘It was a long time ago. He was different back then. Before the cave-in.'

And yet he was missing after they'd had an argument. ‘I thought we were okay, that everything was fine but . . . if he was unhappy . . .'

‘Rennie, he loves you.'

Yesterday, she would have said, ‘Well, yeah, obviously.' Today, she wasn't the same Renée Carter, the one she'd ‘discovered' in Haven Bay. Today, she had voices in her head – Hayden's, Trish's, Joanne's.
Who can love that?
And her own voice was asking,
Does he?

A sound from the study made her glance around, another question in mind. ‘What's James looking for?'

‘He said there was some work stuff he needed for next week, you know, in case Max . . . isn't back. Or needs some time off after . . . just if he needs some time off.'

Rennie frowned. ‘That's not what James said.'

Naomi's eyes flicked briefly to Rennie's, too quickly for another of those unspoken conversations, long enough to reveal the discomfort
in them.

‘Naomi, what's he looking for?'

The shake of her head was almost imperceptible. ‘I can't . . .'

Then James was at his wife's side, a proprietary hand on the mound of her stomach. ‘Everything okay?'

‘No, James. Max is missing,' Rennie snapped, mad at him because there was no
one else.

‘I meant with Hayden.'

‘Oh, that was peachy. A real bonding moment. Did you find it?'

He hesitated, then glanced at Naomi.

‘She didn't tell me what you were looking for but I want to know.'

‘Rennie, I don't think . . .'

‘If you know something, tell me. I just want to find Max.'

‘You should tell her, James,'
Naomi murmured.

He didn't say anything, simply watched Rennie for a long drawn-out moment. Not tense, not relaxed, just still and unreadable like always. The landline rang, shrill and urgent in the silence. She wanted to bolt across the room and grab it but she held her ground. There was something else and James knew what
it was.