Free Floored by Ainslie Paton Page A

there looking at her. He was still wearing his leather vest, his t-shirt tied around his arm, but he’d cleaned up some; his hands and chest weren’t bloody. He shook the envelope. “Are you going to take it?”
    She looked up at his face, into those rich blue eyes.
    “It’ll be fun.”
    “It won’t be fun for me. It’s work.”
    “Right.” He shook the envelope again. “You should take the money.”
    It was just work. And a good chance at greater safety. One she’d been too short-sighted to take before. But if she took the money now, she couldn’t go through this torturing herself about the right and wrong of it every day for the next two weeks. If she took the money, she had to suck up the guilt, throttle it down and swallow it whole. That’s something she should be used to anyway. She knew the taste of guilt. It tasted oddly the same as freedom.
    She held out her hand and he put the envelope in it. It felt like security.

10: Bolt
    Caitlyn was determined to beat Fetch back to the car. But there he was, leaning on the boot waiting for her. He had a new grey t-shirt on under the vest, but there was dried blood splattered down the leg of his jeans that didn’t look like it would ever wash out. She wondered if your average suburban mall could suitably outfit a Black Pariah in new bikie scunge. He was surrounded by store bags: Athlete’s Foot, Lowes, Chemist Warehouse, a hardware store—she didn’t want to think about what he’d bought there—and Target, where she’d thankfully managed to avoid him; because running into Fetch with an armload of underwear was up there with embarrassing moments that could scar you for life.
    He reached out to take her bags, but she stepped aside. She could manage without his help. He should know that from the beginning. She popped the boot and he stood back while she dumped her bags in, and followed with his. When he closed the lid, she had the back door held open for him. He gave her a flash of those amused eyes and climbed in. She got in the driver’s seat and went for her belt. His phone was ringing. He put it to his ear but said nothing. He was back out of the car before she had a chance to click her belt in place.
    Now he was talking, she could hear him through the open back door. She should get out and close it, but he was standing right there. “Wasn’ me. I didn’t do it.” He sounded whiney and thickheaded. He was talking to someone called Wacker and alternatively complaining and pleading. His voice sounded rougher, he was less articulate. He dropped his letters and stumbled over words. He said, “N-n-no. No. I didn’t, didn’t do it. It was done before I got there. I ain’t comin’ back. I don’t got the money. Red took it all.”
    Caitlyn was mesmerised. She should’ve turned the radio on to block the sound of him out, but the sight of him stalled her. He’d wandered a little way into the next empty car space. Even his posture was different. He was hunched over; he looked smaller, shorter, more volatile. A man who’d hit you as easily as he looked at you. He was a different man to the cool-headed pseudo-gentleman she’d had riding in her car. The man she watched, almost cowering while he was on the phone, did look like someone’s scared to death messenger boy.
    She turned the radio on. She didn’t know anything about Fetch and she didn’t want to—except he’d missed his true calling. He should’ve been an actor, because his performance was outstanding.
    But when he got back in the car and said, “Sorry about that. Let’s get out of here,” and didn’t drop a letter or stutter, or look about furtively as though he thought someone might pounce on him any moment, she understood his routine.
    He was an undercover cop.
    She’d had the notion fleetingly when he’d been so knowledgeable about phone number blocking. It’d been a rogue thought then, now it was a fully-grown brainstorm. It fitted. His inability to explain himself—the whole