The Auction a Romance by Anna Erishkigal Page 45

  I waded in up to my waist, ready to swim when the bottom dropped out.

  "I'm coming, sweetheart."

  Flashing blue lights shone through the front picture window and danced around Sienna's living room walls. I rolled over and pressed my face into the back of her couch. Someone pounded on the door. I groaned and rubbed my aching back. I was getting too frigging old to couch-surf!

  Sienna hurried out of her bedroom, tying her bathrobe around her waist. "Bloody hell!" she cursed. "It's not even two-thirty a.m.!"

  "I've got it," her boyfriend Brad said. Or was that Ted? Sienna's relationships had always been rather nebulous. He swung open the door. "Can we help you, officers?"

  The blue lights flashed into the still-dark living room and caused me to throw my hand over my eyes. Not Mimi's, but a police cruiser parked outside.

  "We're looking for Rosamond Xalbadora," a voice said. "Is that her car in your driveway?"

  "Uh, y---"

  Brad, or Ted, suddenly grunted in pain, as Sienna's elbow made contact with his belly.

  A sense of fear gripped at my gut. With a bitch like Eva Jackson out for revenge, who knows what kind of bogus charges she might have trumped up?

  "Who wants to know?" Sienna challenged the police. "Do you have a search warrant? Is she in some kind of trouble?"

  "We need her help," the voice said. "The girl she used to babysit? Either she's been kidnapped, or the girl has run away."

  *

  Three hours and twenty minutes. That's how long it had taken me to drive from Nutyoon to Sienna's apartment in Gold Coast, so black-eyed from crying it was a wonder I hadn't ended up in a ditch. It didn't take me anywhere near that long to be deposited back on Adam's cattle station, even after the police finished giving me the third degree. When the Jackson Oil Princess went missing, the Queensland police sent a helicopter.

  My stomach lurched as the chopper began to descend. I'd been up in an airplane twice to travel back and forth to Spain, but nothing prepared me for the sensation of riding in a death trap whose every burp and fart reminded you, if the engine failed, the propellers would drop you out of the sky like a rock. The pilot spoke into the headphones which were inadequate to drown out the bone-jarring vibration of the rotors.

  "Buckle up. We're coming in for a landing."

  I clenched the safety harness which held me securely in my seat and forced myself to look down even though I wanted to close my eyes. Adam's station looked different from the air, especially in the grey pre-dawn light with dozens of cars, trailers filled with spotlights, and a second police helicopter skimming the trees above the river with a spotlight aimed down into the water. An odd feeling of coming home made a lump rise in my throat, but I forced it down. The helicopter swayed back and forth as it hovered over the pasture behind the barn.

  Take that, brown snakes…

  The chopper bumped once, twice, and then the seat beneath me assumed a feeling of solidity even though the rotors still made the helicopter shake. The door swung open. A policeman reached in and offered me his hand.

  "Thank you for coming, Ms. Xalbadora," the policeman shouted over the deafening roar of the propellers.

  He was full of crap. The first thing the Gold Coast police did was take me into an interview room and drill me with questions about the last time I'd seen Pippa, and then question Sienna and her boyfriend. It was a good thing I'd saved the petrol receipts, because my first gas fill-up in Marburg had been before the last time Adam checked and found Pippa in her bed. Barring time-travel, I hadn't had time to double back to kidnap Pippa and her horse.

  I followed the policeman to the inside of the monitor barn. The first door we passed was Luna's empty stall. Around a bench which had been dragged out into the center aisle to make a command center stood a half dozen policemen and Adam Bristow. He looked tired, and haggard, from more than twenty-four hours without sleep, his expression so grim he was the spitting image of his father. He looked up and our eyes met.

  "Rosie, I was hoping…"

  "What did you -do- to her?" I hissed.

  Adam appeared wounded, but I was way past the point of tolerance for his angsty, passive, poor wounded father bullshit. When Adam had to be an asshole, he knew how to be one. If he couldn't man-up enough to stick up to his ex-wife, than the only use I had for him was a doormat.

  "Miss Xalbadora," a Queensland police officer wearing the stripes of a deputy-commissioner said. "We were hoping you could give us some insight into where Miss Bristow might have run to."

  "What happened?" I asked.

  The Deputy Commissioner looked to Adam as if to say, 'you tell her.'

  Adam's eyes were filled with torment, but I was so furious at him right now that it only gave me a feeling of satisfaction.

  "After Eva blindsided me in court with pictures of Pippa lying on the barn floor with that horse," Adam said. "She used it to get the court to unseal your juvenile record, claiming you were too emotionally unstable to watch Pippa, and that I was too close to see what you were doing to our daughter. When the judge read you'd once stabbed somebody and been into court dozens of times as a runaway, he awarded custody to Eva until the trial."

  "Why didn't you show the judge the video of Eva beating Pippa?" I shouted. "Every media outlet in Australia showed that video on the mid-morning news!"

  Adam shoved his hands in his pockets. His mouth turned down into a mournful expression.

  "I didn't see the video until after Pippa ran away."

  "So what did you -do- to her, to make her run?"

  His eyes glistened aquamarine. Part of me wanted to reach out and hug him, but I'd already held Adam once after his daughter had run away, and he'd thanked me by throwing me out like a piece of trash.

  "I told her that her horse was too sick for her to ever ride," Adam's voice warbled. "And that without her here, there would be nobody to take care of it, so it would be kinder to put it down."

  "You told her you were going to kill her horse?!!" I screamed at him. "And you wonder why she ran away?"

  The Queensland Deputy Commissioner stepped between us before I could do something rash, like kick Adam in the balls.

  "Please, Miss Xalbadora," the Deputy Commissioner said. "Mr. Bristow advised us he fired you unfairly. You can argue about it later, after we find the little girl. Do you have any idea where she might have gone?"

  "Where's Thunderlane?" I asked.

  "Who?"

  "The dog," Adam and I both said together.

  "Thunderlane is missing as well," Adam said. "Wherever she took them, the dog won't answer."

  I gave him a dark, raised eyebrow. Even the dog had abandoned him? I snorted with disgust. It was the height of all butt-wipery when man's best friend turned against you.

  I glanced at the policemen who crowded around the map of a search grid with large X's all over it. They'd already expanded the parameters well beyond the grounds and begun to drag the river for a body, although with the water table so low, there weren't many places left where Pippa, and her horse, and the dog all could have drowned.

  Unless…

  I met the gaze of a policeman who looked familiar.

  "You're Harold, right?" I asked. "The police chief?"

  "Yes," Harold said. "We met at church."

  Ahh… Yes. The cop who'd told Eva Jackson he'd arrest her after she'd made a scene at Adam's mother's funeral.

  "Come with me," I said. "I think I know where's she's gone."

  "I'll come with you," Adam said.

  I whirled to face him.

  "No. You won't. You'll stay here, with them. Right now you're the last person Pippa wants to see."

  Adam grimaced as though I'd just kicked him in the gut. Good! The bloody bastard deserved it.

  "Just you," I told Harold. "Nobody else. Or I guarantee she'll hide and you'll never be able to coax her out."

  I took off without waiting for an answer. The first blush of pink brightened the sky, but it was still murky, so I fished my key
chain out of my purse and unscrewed the little blue LED flashlight they'd given me at the local Miter-10. I followed the path past the place where Pippa had fallen down into the blackthorn until I reached the familiar rocks with the faded grey petroglyphs. Just beyond it, an impenetrable hedge of blackthorn, gum trees, and other shrubbery protected the small billabong from view.

  I turned to Harold, who had been a friend of Adam's father, and touched the petroglyph of the big man with the reaching arms, a fierce guardian-spirit who protected the sacred well.

  "Trevor Bristow kept this place a secret from everyone," I said, "including his own son. I asked you to come because I think he trusted you about as much as he ever trusted any man?"

  Harold ran his fingers across the faded petroglyphs.

  "I thought this place was just a local legend."

  "Well it's not," I said. "And Adam's daddy will get up out of his grave and ride that big painted stallion of his right into your nightmares if you tell anybody about this place, including Adam."

  Harold's leathery skin wrinkled up into a wistful grimace.

  "You sound like you knew the man."

  I gave him a grim nod.

  "Stay here. I'll let you know in a minute if Pippa is here."

  The ground beneath my loafers was so dry it betrayed no sign of Luna's hoof prints, but here and there a bent blade of grass whispered something big had passed not that long ago.

  "Pippa?" I called out. "It's me, Rosie. Don’t be scared. It's just me."

  I picked my way down the embankment, earning a few deep scratches from the blackthorn before I reached the bottom. The ground down here felt spongy beneath my feet, and the entire oasis smelled of gently rotted leaves. While the temperature was warm at the top of the hole, down here, the proximity to the well made it a good ten degrees cooler.

  "Pippa?" I shone my tiny flashlight until it settled upon a small, white pony, wrapped in her Uncle Jeffrey's blue denim quilt, so emaciated and thin it was a wonder the poor thing could even stand. "C'mon, Pippa. I can see Luna, so I know you're down here."

  "Don't tell Daddy," Pippa whispered from the darkness. "He said he wants to put Luna to sleep."

  "He can't," I said.

  "But he said he would."

  "He can't," I said. "Because your father doesn't own him. I do. Remember? The knacker made me sign the contract, and the money came from my bank account. I have the receipts to prove it."

  "Really?"

  "Really," I said. "You watched me sign it."

  "Do you promise you won't let Daddy hurt Luna?"

  "Luna is sick," I said. "There's no guarantee she'll make it. But if she does die, it will be in her own bed, surrounded by the people who love her. And she'll be buried in a grave where you can go and visit her afterward. Not sent to the knackers to get chopped up for dog food."

  "Just like Grandma?"

  A lump rose in my throat.

  "Yeah, sweetheart. Just like your grandmother."

  A pair of white-blonde pigtails and pale-skinned face separated from the darkness and stood up. She let the dog go where she'd been holding him by the collar. Thunderlane walked over, tail wagging, but even the dog was in on the conspiracy to hide. From the glisten of Pippa's silver eyes, I could tell she had spent the last 48-hours crying. She threw herself into my arms and wrapped her arms around my waist.

  "Daddy sent you away!"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "Because he was angry I let you buy a horse."

  "I hate him."

  "I know," I said. "But as far as fathers go, you could do a lot worse."

  Pippa sniffled.

  "The Fairy Queen said if I ran away and hid here, Daddy would have no choice but to bring you back."

  "She's a smart woman," I said.

  Luna snuffled Pippa's pigtail.

  "C'mon, nipper," I said. "It's cold down here, and Luna's still really weak. Let's get her back to the barn and wrap her in something nice and warm."

  "Can I sleep with her?"

  "Yes," I said. "But she's walking around now, so I insist you sleep in the next stall so you don't accidentally get trampled."

  It took quite a bit of coaxing to get Luna up the embankment. Pippa glanced back at the billabong, which disappeared into the undergrowth as if it didn't exist. I stared at the impenetrable darkness to a place where it appeared a dark rider, darker than the other shadows, waited on horseback to make sure I'd finished the job.

  Thanks, mate…

  "How did you find me?" Pippa asked.

  I almost said your grandfather showed me, but I didn't because the only time she'd ever met the old curmudgeon, the jerk had thrown her off of his land.

  "A blue Mimi fairy showed me the way."

  "The Fairy Queen said we must keep the well a secret."

  "Yes, I believe we must."

  Thunderlane ran ahead and barked at Harold just past the petroglyphs where I'd made him wait. The moment the police chief spotted us, he tilted his head down into the microphone clipped to his shoulder and broadcast the happy news.

  "We found her. The little girl is safe."

  Adam ran to meet us long before we got back to the barn. He held out his arms.

  "Pippa!"

  Pippa glowered at him and threw her arms around Luna's neck.

  "I hate you," she hissed. "Stay away from me."

  Had Luna kicked Adam in the face and repeatedly trampled him while he lay helpless on the ground, his expression couldn't have appeared more pained. Good. The bastard deserved it. I moved to walk on Luna's other side, a wall of feminine, protective flesh around the small white pony who'd inspired Pippa to declare she would no longer be a victim in her parents' private war.

  "Luna is my horse, Adam," I said. "I'm the one who bought her. And I have the bill of sale to prove it. Had you bothered to talk to me instead of just ordering me off your land, you would have found out that she was one of the things you'd have to forward to my new apartment."

  "But … I thought … it was for the best."

  I jabbed my finger into his goddamned, clueless, drop-dead gorgeous chiseled face.

  "Don't you know when you kill a girl's horse," I screamed, "you kill her?"

  "Rosie, I…"

  My entire body shook with fury.

  "You say Eva unsealed my juvenile record? Did you even read it? Huh? Did you read why I stabbed a man with a pitchfork? Or why the judge dismissed the charges and ordered the record sealed?"

  Adam's face fell.

  "No," Adam said. "Eva blindsided us with the photos, so there wasn't any time."

  "Well it doesn't matter," I said. "Just give me twenty-four hours to figure out where I can board Luna, and then she, and I, will be out of your hair."

  He followed behind us as me and Pippa walked Luna back to her stall in the rising sun, told the policemen to get the hell out of the barn, and prepared the white pony for bed.

  Chapter 49

  It was Harold, the police chief, who finally intervened. When Eva Jackson arrived at noon like a conquering warrior queen to claim her court-ordered prize, Harold intercepted her limousine at the cattle guard and arrested the Jackson Oil heiress for assault and battery on a child.

  Good for his word, not only did he invite the local newspaper to witness the arrest and take pictures of her in handcuffs and behind bars, but he also invited in the television networks and told them, on live television, about Eva's earlier assault on Adam at his mother's funeral. The witnesses arrived at the police station before the arrest, eager to help Adam by telling the television reporters how frightened they'd been of that crazy woman, and how upset Pippa had been afterwards. Eva made bail within an hour. You don't have a daddy as rich as Maynor Jackson and not have a few judges sitting in your pocket, but Harold refused to drop the charges. After the media spectacle, along with the video that had gone viral on YouTube, this time the bloody bastard wasn't about to make Eva's misbehavior go away.

  The veterinarian came. He ran
some tests and gave Luna a new IV filled with medicine and electrolytes, but already her bloodwork had begun to improve. Never have I seen an animal fight so fiercely to stay alive. It was as though Pippa's adoration possessed some magical elixir, and the more she hugged Luna, the more corporeal the ghostly white pony became. Love will do that for you, I guess. Heal the wounds that others say are hopeless. I sure wished somebody loved me like that. But nobody did. Oh, well. Life goes on.

  Plates of cucumber sandwiches, cut into little heart shapes, along with food and water for the dog, appeared on the table on the center aisle, covered with picnic-screens so the flies couldn't get at it, but Adam had enough sense to stay out of sight. Towards the end of the day a pair of sleeping bags and pillows appeared, along with Pippa's favorite My Little Pony nightgown and a gently used negligee which, judging by the style, had once belonged to Adam's mother. We made a nest of straw in the adjacent, empty stall, rolled out our sleeping bags, and swatted at mosquitoes until we fell asleep. Pippa viewed it as an adventure, but to me, it seemed too much like couch-surfing.

  I awoke Saturday morning to find Adam seated on an upended wooden crate, his chin sunk into his hand like a Rodin statue of The Thinker. I glanced over to make sure Pippa was still safely asleep in her little bed of straw, and then sat up to meet his gaze.

  "Adam."

  "Rosie."

  We stared at one another in awkward silence. He looked so old, beat up, and defeated. I resisted the tug which made me want to pity him.

  "Julie Peterson said I can board Luna in the stall next to Polkadot until I find someplace permanent," I said. "I just have to find somebody with a float. I should have her out of here by sundown."

  "Don't bother," Adam said softly. "You can keep her here as long as you need."

  He got up and strode quietly out of the barn. Thunderlane trotted after him, but after a moment the dog came back. When Pippa woke up, we ate the hot breakfast he'd left of not-too-terribly-browned pikelets, powdered sugar, strawberry preserves, eggs, milk, and hot Turkish coffee for me.

  Saturday passed much the way Friday had, only this time we were better rested, so Pippa began to get antsy. The tiny toilet and sink in the barn was adequate to wash up and brush our teeth, but after a while of not being able to take a shower, my skin began to itch. Most of my clothing had been left, along with my car, at Sienna's house when the cops had helicoptered me back here, but in the tack room I had some winter clothing, toiletries, and my teaching textbooks. I dug them out and resumed Pippa's lessons.