The Sister(102)

Twenty minutes later, she arrived at her destination. Her evasion tactics had made her ten minutes late.

Tanner ordered her a drink. She downed it. ‘Are you driving?’ he said.

‘Not if I’m coming back to your place,’ she said with a mischievous smile.

‘Same again?’





When Theresa had asked Tanner if she could talk to him outside work, he dared to hope, but never dreamed they'd become lovers that night. She’d surprised him with her voracious appetite for him. They were barely inside the house, and had said very little before they devoured each other hungrily. The thick dark auburn hair that framed her face became tangled and bedraggled; her eyes were intense, filled with greedy desire, the enigmatic smile replaced by wicked glee as she whispered in his ear. Don’t tell Kennedy! He paused at the mention of his name. She giggled, and he laughed, resuming with a new vigour. Eat your heart out, Kennedy. She let herself go completely. Two lonely people in need of more than just company, swept away in a tidal wave of passion.

He lay there afterwards, thinking about a possible future and pinched himself. She was all he’d dreamed of and more; he couldn’t believe she’d been right under his nose all this time. He never realised just how good she would be for him.

She stroked his chest, lazily running the tips of her fingers across his skin. The sensation soothed him. He kissed her hair and closed his eyes.

‘John,’ she said, drawling his name in her familiar way, but she sounded different. She sounded scared.

He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling without saying anything, waiting.

‘John, I didn’t tell you everything.’





When she’d finished telling him what she’d done, he faced a dilemma. He’d just begun to picture her in the future with him. Now he had to make a choice. Would I have done anything different, faced with her choices?

Her next words clinched it for her. ‘The thing is, John; I think it’s Kennedy who’s been calling me.’

He shook his head and said, ‘That’s crazy, Theresa, and you know it!’

‘Don’t you think I know that? You’re going to have to bear with me a minute here. I think Kennedy is the caller. He’s compromised me. He thinks he can demand sex, and I can’t do anything about it. But I don’t think it started like that. I think he tried to make me feel sorry for him, that he was being targeted by some manipulative...somebody.’

‘Well it’s an interesting theory, but what made you come up with such a thing in the first place? He’s never tried anything with you, has he?’

‘No, he hasn’t, but it’s the way he looks at me sometimes, and not only that, the voice on the phone, it sounds like him.’

Tanner froze. A seed of doubt formed in the darkness at the back of his mind. It would explain the jealousy, the outburst, and what about the call he’d taken. That caller had sounded like Kennedy too. Where was Kennedy that morning? Could he have set the whole thing up himself, for reasons that hadn’t yet become clear? He shook his head, more at himself than anything else. To go to such lengths to get a woman in the sack seemed extreme. He just couldn’t see it.

She pulled herself into his arms and squeezed him tight, whispering, ‘John, what are we going to do?’





Chapter 86



When Monday morning came, once Tanner dropped her back to collect her car, she handed him a piece of paper with the telephone number she’d called and the registration number of the motorcycle that tailed her.

One thing was for sure, if they could catch her tormentor, they would be able to keep her off the hook. He put it in his pocket, telling her, ‘I’ll get those checked out.’





An hour later, when he checked the bike’s registration, he couldn’t believe his eyes, yet in some crazy way, it made sense to him. He didn’t relish the coming confrontation, but he knew he couldn’t shrink from it either. The telephone number drew a blank, just as she’d expected.

‘Out on our bike the other night, sir, were we?’

‘Are you being serious?’ Kennedy said, folding his arms.

‘Why would I not be?’

‘Because my bike is in bits, on my garage floor and has been for months.’ Kennedy frowned. ‘Why did you ask me that?’

‘It looks like someone has cloned your registration, sir.’

‘How come?’

‘Someone was talking about a road rage incident in my local. They got the registration number, and I thought—’

‘I'd have thought you have better things to do with your time, Tanner. What’s happening with that fairground boxer you were tracing?’

‘Waiting for a call to tell me when he is next fighting, it might take forever. He’s an ex-champ who still fights, but rarely these days.’

‘Well, get to it, will you. I can’t believe you can’t trace him until he comes out of the woodwork to fight.’

‘There’s no official record of him, sir, we only have a twenty-year old photo of him and nobody knows where he lives. So, where exactly do you suggest I start?’

Kennedy seemed deflated as he shrugged. ‘Somewhere in the woodwork, I would think.’