Free Hostage by Karen Tayleur Page A

Griffin had slowed down.
    ‘You help me then I help you. I think you owe me, don’t you?’ said Tully.
    ‘Is that right?’ said Griffin.
    Tully didn’t answer as she watched him cut across lanes to turn left at the intersection.
    That’s right, she thought.
    Mangella Psychic Reading 26/9
    Sixth sense is well-developed, but I do not trust it.
    Ruling planet, the Sun.
    Love compat. with Leo, Sag, Aries
    Spec. Nos, 8 & 9
    A stranger will help me take a personal journey that I must make alone (??)
    Will marry and have 3 kids. 96V

25
    Christmas Eve
    The clock on the dash didn’t work but the sun shone at a higher angle through the window, leaving Tully to guess that it had been around an hour-and-a-half since they’d left Deer Park. She had made Griffin take a detour so she could look at the house of the Angel sisters where she had lived with her mother. After a few false starts, she finally found the street and they pulled up out the front, the engine idling. The front garden was as neat as ever but the house sported striped sunshades that Tully couldn’t remember and there was no sign of life either inside the house or out in the garden. After five minutes, Tully told Griffin to drive on.
    Now, the hills on either side of the road folded into each other, like bolts of brown velvet left to fall on a haberdasher’s floor. Griffin only grunted answers to Tully’s chatter. Once or twice he turned the radio up but she ignored his pointed actions and only talked louder.
    ‘I knew we were on the right track when we passed through Ballarat,’ said Tully.
    ‘Straight ahead?’ said Griffin.
    ‘Straight ahead,’ said Tully as they passed through a small town. ‘So like I said, I thought I’d hate it, but it’s cool living near the city. It’s good to be in the middle of things, you know?’
    ‘Huh.’
    ‘There’s always something happening. I saw this man the other day doing wheelies in the middle of the road—in his wheelchair. Wheelies! He saw me watching and asked if I wanted a go. But I didn’t. He was pretty good. I don’t think he had any legs. It makes you wonder what happened to him. Bamps says everyone has a story.’
    ‘Uh huh.’
    ‘And there’s this woman? She lives two doors down from Bamps and she’s some kind of mystic or something. Do you believe people can read minds? Or see the dead? I’d like to think so. I like the idea of magic. She will tell you your future for thirty bucks. My aunt goes to her once a month. Must be a boring visit. Nothing much happens in Aunt Laney’s life.’
    ‘Do you always talk this much?’ Griffin asked, slowing as they approached a railway crossing. He looked left to right then kept going, the tracks making a thud thud under the tyres.
    ‘No,’ said Tully. She looked down at her fingers and tore another strip off her thumb nail.
    After a while, Griffin said, ‘I need some petrol.’ He slowed down as the speed limit dropped on the outskirts of another small town.
    ‘Um, sure,’ said Tully.
    The petrol station wasn’t like the glassed-in designs from the city. A half-faded sign announced it was Joe’s Roadhouse. There were three pumps out the front, and Griffin parked next to the unleaded.
    Tully tried the door handle. ‘Have you got a child safety lock on this or something?’
    ‘That door’s stuffed,’ he explained. ‘You need to thump it down there,’ he pointed below the handle, ‘then it should open.’
    Tully shook her head. ‘You mean I could have got out of this door any time?’
    Griffin shrugged.
    Tully thumped a few times and the door finally opened. She walked towards the roadhouse, aware that Griffin could leave at any moment. But then, he needed her. She was sure of it. For some reason the thought of their skin touching skipped through her mind. She stood taller, without looking back, and opened the screen door. A tinkling bell announced a new customer to the man behind the counter and he gave her a nod.
    ‘G’day,’ he