"Speaking of our better halves," said Martha. "Where are Joey and Georgie, I thought they'd have been back by now."
Charlie glanced at her watch. "It has been a while," she murmured and reached for her phone. She was just about to hit the speed dial for Joey's number, when the phone blared to life in her hand, causing her to jump. "Damn, I hate when that happens." Charlie recognised the number immediately and she was hoping like hell, that Hogan wasn't calling for her to be back on duty.
"Stepping in front of me like that was dumb," Watson told John as she used the remnants of his shirt to rewrap the wound on his arm where the bullet had struck him. "You could have been killed."
"You're my daughter Georgie and whether you believe it or not, I love you," he said. "And you would have done the same to protect someone you loved."
"It was still dumb," she muttered. "But thank you." The fact they were still alive was a miracle. After John had gone down, Hugo had momentarily freaked out about hitting the wrong person, before having her and Joey help John to Hugo's car, where he then held them at gunpoint while he had Joey drive them to this small, smelly and hot fishing boat. They'd been locked below deck ever since and she had a pretty strong suspicion that they would only have a short reprieve from their impending deaths. When Hugo returned, he'd more than likely planned to take them far out to sea before disposing of their bodies.
"I only wish I could have protected you when you were a child," John said and Watson was dragged from her rather depressing thoughts by his words.
"We can't change the past," she eventually said.
"Georgie, why do you blame me for your mother's death?" he asked out of the blue. The timing might not be the best, but if the worst were to happen, he at least wanted to try to clear the air with his daughter before they died.
Joey shrank a little further into the corner where she was sitting. She wasn't sure if they'd forgotten she was there or not, but she felt awkward about listening in. Not that she could do much about it when they were all trapped together in this confined space. When Watson didn't respond to John's question, Joey was beginning to think she wouldn't at all. She finally did though.
"Because saying you were my father was the last thing my mother said before she was beaten to death."
As softly as Watson had spoken, the words still carried weight and Joey couldn't stop her gasp from escaping and John was equally stunned.
"That's why dad flipped out that day, because mum confessed that he wasn't my father," she said. She shook her head. "Actually, it was more of a drunken taunt intended to humiliate him than anything else." Watson squeezed her eyes shut against the memories. It did no good. They came flooding back, as they always did. "For years, he'd railed on me and mum with his fists or the back of his hand, yet even after he'd treated us like a punching bag for so long, I knew this time was different. There was this look in his eyes I'd never seen before. He was filled with such a rage when he picked up the rolling pin and he just kept hitting her, over and over. I was so close to her, I could feel her blood on me every time he struck her." Her voice shook as she spoke and John was feeling terrible for having asked this of her. "I just stood there and watched, I didn't even try to stop him."
"You were just a child Georgie," John told her. "And if you had tried to stop him, in the rage he was in, he could easily have turned on you."
"He did turn on me."
"He did what?" John's voice had gone so chilly that even Joey shivered from it and she had a brief thought that it was probably a good thing that Georgie's step dad was safely tucked away in jail right now.
"He didn't actually hit me, but he held up the rolling pin and threatened me with the same if I said anything," she quietly said. "I'm not sure if he meant about you or about what I saw or what really, I don't know, it was too hard to concentrate on anything else at the time. All I could see was the rolling pin in his hand with my mother's blood dripping from it to the floor." She shuddered.
Joey remembered hearing the story from Charlie of how Georgie had been found that day, covered in her mother's blood. Hearing her now describe it as she was, then it was any wonder she had refused to speak for a day after that. How does anyone, let alone a child, put something so horrifying into words?
"Even to this day, I can still recall with absolute clarity the sound of the rolling pin hitting her skull." Watson shuddered again. "The feel of her blood all over me. It was everywhere."
"I am so sorry Georgie," John quietly said. She didn't seem to hear him though, as she carried on.
"I was thirteen years old and I'd just seen my father bash my mother to death and the last words I remember her saying, was that he wasn't my father, that some guy called John Palmer was," Watson murmured. "So I turned that blame onto you. I blamed you for abandoning me to regular beatings, I blamed you for my mother being too weak to leave him, I blamed you for her dying, I blamed you for it all, because I couldn't help it. Mum was gone and all I could think of were her last words and over the years, my resentment at you grew and grew." She sighed heavily. "Looking back, I know I've been unfair to you," she said. "None of it was your fault, but it's so hard to let go after spending so much time viewing you as a constant reminder of mum's death and always wondering what my life could have been like if you'd actually been in it from the start."
"If I'd had any idea your mother had lied to me back then and I had known what you were going through, I would have protected you Georgie."
"Charlie's here," Avery said and Hogan glanced over his shoulder. He was already walking toward the car before Charlie had even gotten out. Hogan raised a brow of enquiry to Charlie and nodded his head in Shandi's direction, when she too jumped from the car.
"Hey, it was hard enough keeping Martha and Gina from coming," she explained to Hogan. "Shandi was a compromise," she added.
"More like she couldn't stop me," said Shandi. "There was no way I was staying behind when my father and sister are missing."
"So stubbornness does run in the family then," he murmured.
"Ok, fill us in on the details you have gathered so far," Charlie asked of him.
"A passerby saw the cars here and stopped to check it out. He found the passenger door on Georgie's car open and thought he'd better call it in when he couldn't find anyone about," Hogan told them. "Georgie's pump was still out when we got here, so I'm guessing she had a flat," he said.
"Dad must have seen them on his way back to the Bay and stopped to help," murmured a worried sounding Shandi. Charlie offered her a smile of encouragement, but it was hard, because she held her own fears for Joey and the others.
"There are tyre tracks behind Georgie's car that shows there was a third car here," Hogan informed them. "We also found blood on the ground."
"Blood?" squeaked out a worried Shandi.
"How much blood?" Charlie wanted to know.
"Not enough to cause too much worry," he tried to reassure them.
"Couldn't this other car have taken them to the hospital because of some accident or something?" Shandi asked.
"We would have heard from the hospital by now if they had gone there," Charlie quietly answered her.
"I guess I already knew that when I asked," Shandi said. "I'm just so worried though."
"We all are," Charlie said. She looked to Hogan. "When you called, you said their phones had been left here. Where exactly?" she asked, preferring not to spend too much time focussing on the blood. She wasn't ready to deal with worst-case scenarios just yet.
"What's left of them are right here." He pointed to the ground where both Charlie and Shandi could see the remnants of the phones. "Looks like someone took a boot to them," he said. "We managed to salvage the sim cards, which enabled us to confirm that the phones had belonged to Georgie, Joey and John."
In a way, those remnants worried Charlie more than the blood, for those destroyed phones suggested that someone didn't want their missing trio to be tracked and found. "Where the hell are they," she muttered.
"You said mum had lied to you," said Watson. "How exactly did she lie?"
"That day when I saw you with your mum, I thought I felt a connection to you, so I dug a little and found out how old you were. Then when I confronted your mother, she denied it, even agreed to a DNA test," John told her. "The test said I wasn't your dad."
"I didn't know about the test," murmured Watson. "I don't understand though, if the DNA test said I wasn't yours, yet mum said you were."
"That was part of the lie," he replied. "Turns out, she'd had a friend at the hospital alter the results before they were sent to me."
"Had to be Angie Mullens," she muttered. "She was a nurse and friend of mums. She used to patch us up at home whenever he went too far with a beating, before Angie drunk herself into an early grave."
John fumed at this bit of information and if this Angie Mullens hadn't already died, he definitely would have had something to say to her about her part in covering up the abuse.
Watson looked at John. "You've never said any of this to me before."
"You weren't ready to listen," he said and Watson nodded in acknowledgement. He was right, she wouldn't have listened to anything he had to say back then or even quite recently.
"I still have the letter your mother left to me on her death, if you'd ever like to see it," he told her. "In it, she explained her reasons for the deception."
"I can guess," she said. "Mum lied because she was scared of how dad would react if he ever found out the truth." God damn it mum, she thought. If she'd never gotten drunk that day and blurted it out like she had, she might have survived.
"Yes, that's the reason your mother gave." And her fears had proven justified after what his daughter had just told him. Not that that meant John could ever forgive her for keeping his daughter from him. He could understand though. "She also included an unaltered copy of the original DNA results."
"Then I really am a Palmer then."
"You most certainly are," he said. "I just wish I'd known the truth back then."
"Mum always did love a good lie," Watson murmured. "She was always lying to herself at how things would get better with dad," she said. "She even told me that Uncle Ross had turned his back on us."
Joey winced at that and the more she heard today, the more she better understood Georgie's behaviour and also her subsequent reactions to the rest of her family after her mother's death, especially toward John and the Bucktons. Not only had Georgie's childhood been one of abuse, it appeared it had also been one that was lacking in honesty. No wonder she had such trust issues back then.
"I didn't know until much later, that she had been the one who had rebuffed Uncle Ross and his offers of help to get us out of there." She leant back against the wall with a heavy sigh. "There are times when I hate my mother," said Watson. "I hate her for marrying that drunk and for never standing up to him and for continually denying he was abusing us whenever someone questioned her." She shook her head sadly. "Then I hate myself for hating her. As a cop, I've seen more than enough examples of domestic abuse to know how hard it is for battered women to break the cycle and mum did the best she could under the circumstances." Watson's weary eyes closed. "Hatred and resentment are such hard work," she murmured. "Sometimes I don't even remember why I feel this way. It's become more of a habit and I am so tired of it."
John held out his hand, hesitated a moment, then rested it on hers. She didn't pull away. "I'm sorry I wasn't there for you," he said. "You have to believe me though, if I had known the truth, I would have been there for you and I would have done all I could to get you out of that house and away from him."
Watson opened her eyes to look into his. She saw a lot in those eyes, including the truth. She slowly nodded her head. "I do believe you," she said.
He smiled in reply. "Georgie, I'd really like for us to work through this so we can find a way to be a family, if that is at all possible."
"I've carried this around with me for so long, it's not that easy to let go of." She took a deep breath, then slowly let it out. "Maybe we could try to work it out though." She was caught off guard by the look of hope and joy on his face at her words.
"My, what a touching father/daughter moment," sneered Hugo. None had heard the door open and for a short time there, both John and Watson had forgotten their current predicament.
"You bastard," snapped Watson as she struggled to her feet.
"Oh look, the cripple is trying to be tough."
"That's enough Hugo," said John.
"You should have stayed out of this John," he told him. "I didn't want to have to hurt you as well."
"And you won't," replied John as he too got to his feet. "You won't kill us," he said. "You could have killed us earlier, but you didn't and I don't believe you will kill us now," he said in a reasoned voice. "You're not a killer, Hugo."
"Tell that to Angelo," he said. "I found killing him extremely easy and satisfying."