Already Dead by Jaye Ford Read Free Book Online

smile curled one side of her mouth, making her feel a little like Brendan with his soft chuckle. She glanced his way, saw him waiting for more. Why the hell not if it was keeping him calm?
    â€˜Not brain surgeon smart but Nick liked to understand things. He’d pull them apart and find how everything was connected. I don’t mean cars or vacuum cleaners; he was hopeless at fixing anything around the house. I mean organisations, businesses, groups of people. He could figure out how they operated, where mistakes were made, how something underhanded could be hidden.’
    â€˜Like that compensation thing.’
    â€˜Yeah, like that.’ He’d spent two years on that story, digging and asking questions, carrying around the details in his head like they’d been surgically implanted. He’d worked long hours, taken a lot of trips, mostly around Australia but once to Afghanistan, another time to Iraq – dangerous places to visit if you’re a reporter. It’d been the reason she’d resigned from the paper four years ago and started freelance writing: job sharing the parenting doesn’t work when one half of the partnership is entrenched in something else, something important. More important than her three days a week. ‘He hated to see peoplewronged and once he knew there was a story in it, that he could do something to change it, he wouldn’t let it go. Nick was a crusader.’ Hard to live with at times, but he’d done good things for people who needed help.
    â€˜Do you miss him?’
    â€˜All the time.’
    â€˜Has it been hard for you?’
    â€˜It still is. I can’t seem to get back on track. Any track. I feel like I’m not the me I used to be.’
    â€˜I know what that’s like.’
    She pressed her lips together in a small smile of acknowledgement. He probably understood more than anyone else she knew.
    â€˜You’re moving to Newcastle, aren’t you?’ he asked.
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Is that why?’
    â€˜No. Kind of. I couldn’t afford to keep the house and my aunt has more room than she needs. She didn’t want to sell, she’s got a great spot overlooking the beach, so she offered to have us there until, well … until I get myself better sorted.’
    â€˜Do you want to live there?’
    â€˜I don’t know what I want. I need to have a home for my daughter and a job to support her but I don’t know what I want anymore.’
    â€˜I’m sorry.’
    â€˜Thanks.’ She licked her lips, thought, What the fuck am I doing having this conversation with him? Even worse – why was she taking comfort? He’d lost touch with reality and he had a gun in his hand. Had she lost her mind too?
    She checked the traffic in the lanes either side, wishing the twin service stations were closer. The grey nomads andtheir caravan were almost alongside her in the outside lane, creeping up on her left as though she’d been holding them back. On her right, another P-plater: a young girl in a red hatchback, speeding along as though the colour really did make you go faster. Behind Jax was a dark-blue sedan, headlights on despite the daylight, a man in sunglasses behind the wheel. No white coats, no cops in patrol cars, no-one pointing a gun out the window. She took a quick look at the sky. No choppers either. Just making sure .
    Oh, man, she had to get out of this car. ‘I’m not just lonely, Brendan. I’m scared.’ She caught his eye for a moment, looked back at the road as she spoke. ‘I’m scared about what’s happening here. I want to get back to my daughter. She’s already lost one parent.’
    It was the wrong tactic. Anxiety began oozing out of him again, making his body tense, his jaw tighten, his hands curl into fists. He shifted the gun from its loose hold on the edge of the seat to beside her on the centre console, his hand pushing at the lid as though it