Free ARC: Peacemaker by Marianne de Pierres Page A

like a cricket upfront of a tornado when I told him you’d headed Parkside.”
    I expelled a breath. “Thank you, Greta. Chef, I have to go but the food was the best, as always.”
    His beam got wider and his grip loosened. “I launch ze new menu in two days. You must come and mingle. We drink Starka.”
    “ Na zdrowie !” I lifted an imaginary glass.
    “ Na zdrowie !” he shouted in delight, flinging an arm back. “Bring a boy. Or a girl.”
    I blushed some. Chef Dab was almost as bad as Caro when it came to fussing about my love life.
    “Ping me an invitation,” I said, taking the opportunity to slip out of his arm lock.
    I pecked Greta on the cheek and headed right on out of there before he gave me a giant Serdelki sausage and some sauerkraut to go.

 
     
    Chapter Eleven
    I couldn’t help but feel a bit jumpy on the taxi ride out to Divine, constantly checking the rear view to make sure I wasn’t being followed.
    If the driver noticed my agitation he didn’t say anything except “I stop here!” when we got to the Laksha station.
    The never-seen-better-days station house was the only stop along the rail line near Divine after it left the Western Quarter on its way south to Jesbo and Big Domain. It seemed like even the train didn’t want to come in any more contact with Divine Province than it had to.
    It had taken me almost an hour to find a taxi driver who’d drop me at Laksha after dark and even then I’d had to pay in advance. I barely had time to close the door before he was spinning the wheels to leave.
    That left me facing the chicken wire and splintered weatherboard of the stationhouse alone. Where a spluttering sodium light would’ve completed the uneasy atmosphere, a brilliant high wattage spotlight perched, and rotated on the roof instead – lending it a less-seedy-slum and more-concentration-camp ambience.
    I wondered whose initiative that had been to put that up, Aus-Police or Neigbourhood Watch? The Watch had developed teeth as the police force’s recruiting dropped off in the last ten years. Suddenly no one wanted to be paid to enforce the law s of the country in general, everyone just wanted to join the Watch group and take care of their own small community.
    Dad had seen it coming and been appalled. It was one of the rare issues we disagreed upon. I figured it was better when each community took responsibility for itself, rather than relying on the government to make everything better for the whole. Dad said it led to bad decisions and persecution. I told him I thought there was plenty of that the way things were – how could this be worse?
    I still think I was right, only Dad wasn’t here to argue it with me.
    My phone rang then. It was Caro.
    “Leo Teng used to be a contractor working out of Indonesia and Japan but he disappeared off the grid a while back. Seems like most people thought he was feeding fish in the Pacific, but now they’re saying he was off finding a new religion. He’s been out of town. Came in from North America a few days before your Marshall friend.”
    “He’s not my friend,” I said automatically.
    “Colleague.”
    “So you mean Teng’s a… contractor as in…”
    “Yes, that’s exactly what I mean?”
    “Then someone hired him to abduct me?”
    “Maybe? If he’s supposed to have found religion, it could’ve been a belief-based act.”
    “How could my beliefs offend anyone? I don’t share them around?”
    “Maybe it’s what you stand for… Honestly, Ginny, I don’t know. I’ll keep digging but that’s all I got at the moment.”
    “Thanks, Caro. That’s more than the police would’ve shared.”
    “They may not even know some of it. I had to go pretty deep to get this.”
    “Hope you’re not racking up too many favours on my account?”
    “Hope in vain,” she said.
    “In the name of friendship?”
    “Whatever.” She hung up.
     
    I climbed through a hole in the chicken wire, ran up the stairs and checked the line. No train