Summary: Somebody returns, somebody leaves, somebody is kidnapped, and somebody's in luuurve....
Rating: M15+
Category: action, romance, major denial
Dedicated to Rachael Wakely, because this story literally wouldn't exist without her persistent coercion, editing, and inspiration. You're a legend, Rach, seriously - but also completely pathetic, and don't you forget that!
Nowhere to Run
Chapter 1 of 10
by Vanessa
[nemesis@graffiti.net]
6 August - 5 September 1999
I feel you like the rain, I feel you like
a storm cloud building in my heart
I wonder if you know the pain, to want
the one thing that you haven't got
just a twist in time...
and you could be minePolice Launch Nemesis raced across the water, crossing under the Sydney Harbour Bridge, then out past Kirribilli Point in pursuit of a high-power speedboat. They had a clear view of their suspect, who was navigating the small craft, but even through binoculars Constable Tayler Johnson couldn't see what he'd done with his kidnap victim. Lowering the binoculars, she sighed in frustration.
"He's too far ahead now, Gav. I can't see where she is; he must have her on the floor."
"You know I can't go any faster, not until we hit open water. And if he makes it that far..." Gavin trailed off. They both knew that once they got out of the harbour, they'd never catch the other boat. Until then, their chase was restricted by safety speed limits.
Gradually, however, the Nemesis began to regain some of the distance. Noticing this, Tayler frowned. "He's slowing down."
"Maybe he's giving up," Gavin suggested optimistically.
"Why? It doesn't make any sense -- he was too far ahead. He's up to something."
"Great, just what I need," muttered Gavin. The accident still haunted him; the thought that he had caused a man's death, killed him beneath the propellers of the boat he worked on every day. Even being cleared of blame by the inquest did little to console him -- he was still paranoid and edgy when piloting the Nemesis.
Sensing this, Tayler placed a supportive hand on his shoulder. "Just keep your head, Sykes."
Suddenly, the boat ahead of them threw a rapid u-turn and sped back past them. "What the hell is he doing?"
"He's trying to throw us," Gavin realised, turning the Nemesis in a wide arc to continue the pursuit.
"He must be mad," Tayler remarked, then picked up the radio to contact headquarters. "Police Launch Nemesis to VKG Sydney Water Police..."
"Nemesis, this is VKG. Go ahead," Helen Blakemore's calm, authoritative voice responded immediately.
"Sarge, we're still in pursuit of the powerboat -- uh, that's the ferry kidnapper -- but he's just turned around and is heading back up the harbour."
"Where are you now, Tayler?"
"Near Garden Island."
"Right. I'll see if I can send Harpy out to give you a hand. In the meantime, keep after him."
"Will do. Nemesis out." Tayler ended the radio transmission, then returned her attention to the situation on hand. They had started to drop away from the other boat at first, but were now right on his tail. Furthermore, they seemed to be shepherding him right into a small cove.
"Nice work, Gav," she commented, then started up the radio again to request some backup on the shore.
The perpetrator stopped his boat, seeming to have realised his mistake in getting trapped too close to shore. Gavin pulled the Nemesis up beside him, close enough to converse with him.
Conversation, however, was not what the other man had in mind. Grabbing his victim and yanking her to her feet, he held her tightly in front of him. She was gagged, with ropes around her wrists and ankles, and Tayler could see raw red marks on her wrists where she'd been pulling to get free. Fixing the two police officers in an angry glare, his dark eyes blazing, the man yelled at them. "Don't try anything! You can't shoot me without getting her first."
"We won't try anything if you don't," Gavin said reasonably.
"Look, you can make this a lot easier for yourself if you'll just let the woman go," Tayler told the man. "You won't achieve anything by hurting her."
"I'm not letting her go," he replied firmly, shaking his head. As he did so, a few locks of hair fell across his forehead, not quite long enough to reach his eyes.
"Why, what do you want with her? Negotiations? Go ahead, talk, we're here. But we're more likely to cooperate if you do."
"I don't want to cooperate, I don't want to negotiate. I want Sim." Then, sarcastically, he added, "Obviously, you two missed Kidnappers 101 at the Plod Academy. But generally, a kidnapper without out a kidnappee is just a pathetic waste of space."
"Then take me," Tayler offered.
"Tayler!" Gav protested.
Ignoring him, she persisted. "You want a kidnap victim, you've got one. Hand the woman over to Senior Constable Sykes and you can have me."
The man grinned, as though amused by a lame joke. "Nice try, sweetheart, but I don't think so. If I can't have her, you can't have me." Still grinning, he leapt overboard, dragging his victim with him.
Tayler and Gavin looked on in wide-eyed horror, waiting for them to reappear. After a few painful minutes passed with no sign of either, Gavin kicked off his shoes. "I'm going in," he said tersely. "You get onto Helen, have her send Dave and Woodsie now." Then, tossing his blue police cap aside, he dived in. Tayler reached for the radio again.
"Nemesis to VKG Sydney Water Police..."
Water Police HQ
Tayler sat behind the front desk of the police station, twirling a strand of her curly red hair in her fingers anxiously as she waited for the radio to come to life, with news of the dive search results. While she was waiting, Gavin came down the stairs in a fresh uniform, rubbing his blonde, close-cropped hair dry with a towel.
"Any news?"
She shook her head. "But if you couldn't find them, just after they'd jumped... that poor woman, Gavin. We should have saved her."
"It's not our fault."
"Isn't it? We were there; we could have stopped him. What if it was something we -- I -- did, that made him go overboard? Something bad, something wrong," she babbled, until Sykes placed two firm hands on her shoulders and forced her to look at him.
"You didn't do anything wrong," he told her, trying to catch her eyes in his gaze. "But you did do something stupid -- if he'd taken you up on your offer, Johnson..."
"I can look after myself. And we would have saved her."
"Maybe. But we would have lost you." They were only centimetres apart now, near enough to feel each other's breath on their face. Tayler's eyes flitted all over her colleague's features, trying to interpret his meaning, while he looked steadily at her.
Suddenly, the phone rang. Caught off guard, Tayler jumped and spun around to answer it, whacking into Gavin in the process.
"Hello, Sydney Water Police," she answered, a now automatic response. Watching on, Gavin's curiosity was piqued as her mouth dropped open in amazement, and he tried unsuccessfully to fill in the gaps of the conversation. "What are you--? But I thought... No, it's great! No... yeah... yes! Definitely... Of course... See you then!"
As she hung up, Gavin couldn't resist asking, "Who was that?"
"I've got to find Helen," was all Tayler said. "She's not going to believe this."
now the man meets a woman unlike all the rest
he doesn't know it yet but he's out of his depth
and he thinks he can run, it's a matter of pride
but he keeps coming back like a cork on a tideThe water police detectives returned just under an hour later. Seeing them arrive, Tayler immediately pounced on Michael Reilly, the most junior of the trio.
"Mick, what's the story?" She stepped in front of him, preventing him from following his two colleagues upstairs to their office.
"Dive squad recovered two bodies; one male, one female, and they seem to fit the description you and Syksie gave us. We sent them to the morgue, gotta try and get positive IDs on the pair of them." Reilly looked impatiently up the stairs, thinking that he should be doing that now.
"Right. Listen, do you think you could head up to Middle Harbour? There's a, uh, stolen boat reported missing or something, we need someone to investigate." Tayler smiled at him hopefully.
"Me?"
"Yeah. Goldie and Jack can handle things until you get back."
"Middle Harbour?" Mick was still sceptical.
"Gavin will take you," she informed him. "He was headed up there anyway. Do you want to go by car or boat?"
With a sigh, Mick decided it was easier just to give in and headed back out to meet Sykes.
Meanwhile, Helen Blakemore had similarly distracted Jack on his way upstairs. "Detective Christey, just the man I was searching for!"
"Didn't think you were looking for a man, Helen," Jack retorted dryly.
"Oh, yes, very amusing. Remember that drug bust, a couple of months back?" She asked, her eyes flicking from Jack, to Rachel Goldstein, to their office, then quickly back to Jack.
"Yeah, isn't that coming to court soon?" Jack replied, not really giving a damn about anything she was saying. He was more interested in the case at hand -- and he'd much prefer Rachel's company to Helen's.
"Exactly! We need to go over the police evidence for it."
"Well, what about Rach? She was there, too," Jack said, willing Goldie to come back.
"But she's not being called as a witness," Helen countered. "Come on, Christey."
Goldstein watched with amusement as the sergeant dragged her unwilling partner into the break room, then continued down the hallway to their office. When she swung the door open and stepped inside, what she saw made her stop in her tracks.
"Francis Holloway." She was so surprised, his name was all she could manage to say.
"G'day, Rachel," Frank replied with a nervous smile. He was standing in front of his old desk, toying with the nameplate that now read 'Jack Christey, Detective Sergeant'.
A few awkwardly silent seconds passed, seeming like decades. Finally, Goldie forced herself to speak.
"I... I didn't expect to see you back so soon. Hell, I wasn't sure if I should ever expect to see you back here--"
"Rachel--" he protested.
"You never wrote, Frank. Not once, not even a postcard. You promised me a postcard." The words felt a little ridiculous as they left her mouth -- a tad petty, like a school kid whose best mate had gone to Noosa on holidays. But he had promised, and she had waited months for his stupid postcard that never came. At first she had been worried, concerned that something had happened to him. Then she'd convinced herself that he'd simply moved on and forgotten her, and had set out to do the same herself.
"I'm sorry. I didn't..." Pausing himself, Frank shook his head. "I had my reasons. But I'm back now."
"Yeah, you're back." Rubbing her eyes with both hands, as though weary, Rachel sighed heavily. "Look, Holloway, I don't know what you want with me now but we've -- I -- Jack and I have work to do."
"Jack Christey," Frank said, his tone flat. "Well, I'll leave you to it." He dropped Jack's nameplate haphazardly back on the desk, knocking a few papers flying, although he seemed not to notice. "Catch you later."
"Yeah, see ya," Rachel replied hollowly, stepping back to allow him through the doorway without coming anywhere near close to touching her. When he was gone, she closed the door behind her, stepped over the disarrayed papers to her own chair and sat at the desk with her head buried in her hands.
could you believe that life could go so wrong?
look at all the hours wasted
that you can't have over again
when a second is too long...Detective Senior Constable Reilly was not a happy man. His usual easy-going and tolerant good nature was wearing a bit thin after getting halfway to Middle Harbour before discovering that the street address he'd been given didn't exist. Not according to the UBD, not according to the SydWay -- which, for some reason, they had one of. Mick wondered whether anyone had told Gavin, or the New South Wales Police Service, that no self-respecting Sydneysider referred to a SydWay street directory, no matter how lost they were.
"Maybe we should have taken a boat," Gavin had suggested helpfully. "Tayler said the owners have a waterfront property."
After a few unsuccessful attempts to obtain further information, including the phone number of the missing boat's owners, Gavin had even more helpfully suggested that they head back. Only too willing to do so, Mick realised that he'd been sent on a wild goose chase.
Fortunately for herself, Tayler had finished her shift by the time they returned to the police station. Gavin, also finished for the day, quickly disappeared to change out of his uniform before heading home. Mick made a mental note to complain about his little errand later, then strode up the stairs two at a time, to his office.
Not fully paying attention to where he was going, Mick literally bumped straight into Frank in the hallway. He began apologising, but stopped short when he realised whom it was.
"Hey, Mickey boy!" Frank exclaimed cheerfully. "How's it goin'?"
"Frank -- how long have you been here?"
"Aw, not long. Just dropped in to say hello. Hey, are you about to knock off? We should go have a couple of drinks at the pub," suggested Frank, grinning as he remembered the last time he'd taken Mick out for a night. Poor kid had taken days to recover. Still, it wasn't Frank's fault -- he had only been upholding the traditional way to kick-start a new posting in the service.
"Yeah, maybe some other time," Mick grinned in spite of himself. "We've got work to do."
"So everyone keeps telling me." Suddenly remembering something, Frank fumbled around in his pocket to produce a scrap of paper, which he handed to Mick. "You got a call from the morgue. I meant to tell Rachel, but it's sort of slipped me mind. Anyway, they want to see you tomorrow morning, something about some bodies you found?" Frank's brow crinkled, then he shrugged. "I said you'd call first."
"Right, ta." Mick squinted trying to make out the handwriting on the note. "Hey, Frank, now that you're back, will you be working here again?"
"If I did, you'd have to have a drink with me to celebrate, wouldn't you?" Frank replied, then departed down the hallway. When he'd gone, it occurred to Mick that he hadn't actually answered the question.
End Chapter 1