Indigo Storm Read online

  She was so grateful they didn’t have any children. There was no way she could escape if there had been little ones involved.

  One day, when Ashleigh had served his eggs soft instead of hard, Dominic had picked up the plate, food and all, then thrown it in her direction.

  And then there were the two weeks when he didn’t speak a word to her.

  His behaviour had filled her with such rage, she’d almost flung herself at him, wanting to pound him as hard as she could, so he understood how it felt. She’d wanted to scream and yell while pummelling her fists against his chest. But she’d held herself back, knowing that leaving was getting closer.

  Ashleigh was patient and would wait until the time was right.

  Chapter 3

  There were two dark streaks against the light salmon pink on the horizon, which, Eliza thought, looked like her streaked mascara. Taking her hand off the steering wheel, she swiped her throbbing face again and instantly sucked in a breath. She kept forgetting the cut that ran the length of her cheek and touched it too hard every time she tried to wipe her tears away.

  Bastard!

  Five hours before, Dominic had hit her. But it would be for the first and last time.

  ‘Never again,’ she muttered as she straightened her back and lifted her head with a defiance no one else could see.

  The fight the previous evening had brought her plans forward. As she saw it, she didn’t have a choice.

  She was Eliza now.

  She’d turned into Eliza the minute she’d lifted her head and seen the pure hatred in his eyes.

  ‘I saw you smile at him,’ Dominic had growled as she’d come out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel.

  She hadn’t known what he meant.

  In one swift movement, he’d yanked her towel away, leaving her feeling vulnerable and exposed. Ashleigh had tried to cover herself but that had made him angrier.

  ‘Why did you look at him like that? Every bit of you is mine. I don’t take you to functions to flirt with investors in my business!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ she asked, near tears.

  Then he’d pushed her down and climbed on top of her. She’d tried to fight him, to wriggle out from under him, but he held her tight. He grabbed a handful of her hair and wound it around his fingers as he lifted his other hand. With her face raised to him, she gazed in disbelief as he slapped her across the cheek.

  Her head felt as if it would explode with the pain.

  When she let out a scream he immediately let go of her hair, clamping his hand over her mouth and pushing down with all his strength. All Ashleigh wanted to do was bite him. Hard.

  She could feel something warm running down her cheek. Tears or blood, she couldn’t be sure.

  With a final shake, he let go. Ashleigh scrambled away, grabbing the doona for cover and security, her breathing ragged. She watched through tear-filled eyes as he left the room without a backward glance.

  She heard the front door slam, the car engine start and the wheels give a short, sharp, high-pitched screech as Dominic pulled away from the curb.

  She knew what would happen next. He would go to the pub and get his little gang to join him—the local policeman, the doctor. Respectable members of the community, who had secrets that Dominic knew they wouldn’t want anyone else to know about. These were people who rarely saw his dark side and would protect him from anything because they had to. They were all people who broke the law from time to time and covered for each other. They were the untouchables and Dominic was their chief.

  They would sit in a small room out the back, drink grappa and whisky. Smoke cigars, play cards and laugh. Tell dirty stories about which young girl they had picked up during the weekend or which prostitute they had bedded when they were last in the city, and not think of anything else.

  This was her chance! He would be gone for hours. She quickly gathered her things and threw them into the car. She didn’t have much, just her clothes and some jewellery she planned to hock when she arrived in a city.

  Now she was Eliza, she did not hesitate to raid the cash that Dominic kept in the top drawer of his desk. Quickly counting it, she was relieved to find there was four thousand dollars. She would add it to the two thousand she’d managed to skim from the housekeeping money over the last year.

  She knew the combination of the safe and opened it, grabbing a few items and throwing them into her handbag.

  The last thing Eliza had to do before leaving Jindabyne forever was to change the numberplates on her car. Deftly, she replaced them with the plates she’d stolen four months ago, from a car parked on the side of the road with a defect sticker on it.

  With the new numberplates on, she climbed into the driver’s seat and drove out of town without a backward glance.

  Eliza focused on the white lines, her eyes flicking from side to side, looking out for wildlife. The kangaroos and wombats were thick on the ground at this time of the night and she didn’t want to hit anything.

  The road from Canberra to Jindabyne carried long lines of cars. Mostly city drivers. Ones who had their minds on the day of skiing ahead, not the fact that random wildlife could hop or crawl onto the road in front of a moving car. Eliza had passed two police cars and an ambulance, and her stomach had constricted at the sight. She’d watched in the rear-view mirror to see if the police turned around or put their lights on, and breathed a sigh of relief when neither of these things had happened. Eliza knew that the police would be picking up people for speeding and the ambulance would be taking a few to hospital to be checked out after small accidents. She wondered how there weren’t worse ones. The sheer cliff drops close to Jindabyne would be a killer if a car accidentally drove off the edge of one.

  Her thoughts returned to Dominic. The wildness in his eyes flashed before her and she shuddered, which made her accidentally turn the wheel slightly. Instantly she corrected and steadied the car.

  ‘Be careful,’ Eliza muttered to herself. ‘Don’t call attention to yourself.’

  Dominic had contacts everywhere. He was so powerful. She was sure the first thing he would do would be to call Simon McCullen, his copper mate, and get him to put a watch out for the car.

  She hoped the different numberplates would throw everyone off until she got across the border.

  There were still hours of driving before that would happen.

  With any luck, Eliza thought as she glanced down at the clock on the dash, he wouldn’t be home yet. The gang get-togethers could go until the very early hours of the morning, and Simon would be hung-over, so he wouldn’t be much use for a while.

  Glancing down at the fuel gauge, she saw she only had a quarter of a tank. Not knowing when she’d been going to run had meant that she’d left without a full tank of fuel.

  ‘Damn,’ Eliza muttered, scanning the side of the road for a sign that would tell her how far away Cooma was.

  All she saw were headlights reflecting off the stark white bones of dead kangaroos which had been hit by cars many months before.

  Shouldn’t be too far, she thought. Maybe another twenty minutes. Should be okay.

  Even so, she watched the fuel gauge closely until she drove into a servo on the outskirts of Cooma.

  She pulled up next to a bowser and got out, holding her mobile phone close to her side. Before she started to refuel, she placed the phone in a bin. She’d turned it off before she’d got out of the car, so he wouldn’t be able to track her. That had been another piece of advice from the websites she’d been reading: the GPS in her phone could give away her location. Eliza couldn’t risk that. She smiled grimly, knowing that it could only lead Dominic as far as this rubbish bin.

  Eliza scanned the area.

  The air was as frigid as it had been when she’d fled Jindabyne and she felt exposed under the harsh fluorescent lights. Her breath came in short white puffs and her cold fingers struggled to undo the fuel cap.

  The black cap she’d bought a few weeks ago was pulled down tig
htly over her blond hair and she wished she could have worn her sunglasses, but that would have drawn more attention to her, since it wasn’t light yet.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a police car turn the corner and drive slowly down the road.

  She ducked her head as it drove past her, so she had no idea if the policemen were looking out the window at her. As she hung up the hose, she saw their brake lights go on.

  A breath caught sharply in her throat and she threw open the car door to find her purse. Quickly, she walked into the station, and stood waiting to pay.

  The sleepy clerk looked up, becoming more alert as he noticed her face but, just as quickly, his eyes slid away.

  ‘Sixty bucks eighty,’ he muttered, still not looking at her.

  Eliza, having forgotten about her face, fumbled for the money, handing over a hundred-dollar note. She wanted to drop her head forward and cover her cheek but, instead, pulled her hair down over the injured side of her face and waited impatiently for her change. All the while, she tried inconspicuously to see if the police car had turned around.

  ‘Have a nice day,’ the man said to her, again without looking at her.

  Obviously, a beaten woman’s too confronting to look at, she thought bitterly. She hurried out the door to her car. The police car wasn’t in sight and she breathed a sigh of relief.

  Keeping her cap on, she drove out of town, still undecided about where she was going.

  Eliza pulled into a small town off the main highway just as the sun was setting.

  Cruising down the main street, she noted a deli, a small supermarket and a chemist and, further down, a pub. She parked over by the chemist and went in.

  ‘We’re just closing,’ a young girl whose name badge read ‘Jessie’ said as she pushed a trolley of nail polish inside the door.

  Eliza felt herself sag. After a day’s driving she was exhausted and didn’t need any complications. ‘I won’t be long,’ she answered. ‘Just a couple of quick things. Do you mind? It’s a bit urgent.’

  Jessie sighed. ‘I guess.’ Her tone indicated it was an inconvenience.

  Eliza quickly found scissors, non-prescription glasses, foundation with sunscreen and nail polish. Gathering her purchases, she went to the counter.

  ‘Is this all?’ Jessie asked, looking straight at Eliza’s bruise.

  ‘Yes, thanks,’ Eliza answered, trying to resist the urge to look over her shoulder.

  ‘Not much that’s urgent in here, if you ask me,’ said the girl in a sullen tone.

  ‘No,’ Eliza agreed, thinking, Certainly not to you, but to me they are. Out loud, she said, ‘Um, can you tell me if there’s somewhere to stay in town? A motel or something?’

  Jessie scoffed. ‘Not in this one-horse town.’

  ‘Right. And you live here because . . .?’ Eliza’s patience was wearing thin. A bad headache was forming behind her eyes and her jaw ached. ‘I’ll have a packet of Panadol too, please.’

  ‘I’m not staying here long,’ Jessie answered and Eliza stifled a sigh, knowing she was about to hear a life story she had no interest in. ‘I’m going to Sydney real soon, to try out for X Factor,’ Jessie continued proudly as she twirled some hair around her finger and cracked her gum.

  ‘That’s great. I’m sure you’ll do very well. Um . . . somewhere to stay?’

  ‘There’s only the pub.’ Jessie rang up the purchases and held her hand out for the money. Then she added, ‘Your old man knock you around or somethin’?’

  A shiver ran through Eliza. ‘Uh, no. No. Just had a little accident.’ She handed over the money, desperate to be out of the tiny shop that no longer seemed to have any oxygen.

  ‘Yeah, right. You’re still in the denial stage,’ Jessie said, handing back the change. ‘My mum looked like that all the time after me dad had finished w’her,’ she went on, oblivious to the look of shock on Eliza’s face. ‘Blokes suck, hey? That’s why I’m a lesbian.’

  ‘Oh. Ah, well, that’s one way around it,’ Eliza groped for words. If it was so obvious to a young girl, who couldn’t be more than sixteen or seventeen, it would be clear to everyone she came in contact with. ‘So, the pub?’ She had to get out of this shop. She had to hide.

  ‘Oh yeah, the pub. I’m sure Sal will have a room clean enough for you.’ Jessie paused for a moment, then continued: ‘Make sure you ask for one with a bathroom. There’s a few rooms that you have to share the loo down the end of the passageway. Still, it’s not like there’s going to be a heap of people staying there.’

  ‘Sounds fabulous,’ Eliza muttered sarcastically. ‘Thanks again.’

  She turned to leave but Jessie had one more thing to say.

  ‘If you’re running, good on ya.’ She slammed the till shut and turned the key, before flicking the light switches and throwing the shop into darkness.

  Chapter 4

  The front bar of the pub was clean enough but it smelled like spilled beer and vomit. Sal had handed over the room key with nicotine-stained fingers and a toss of her head in the direction Eliza needed to go.

  Jessie had been right on two points—Sal had a room that was clean enough and there weren’t many people staying in the pub. In fact she was the only guest and had managed to get a room that had its own bathroom. That was one small mercy.

  Eliza let herself into the small, dark room and groped for the light switches. A bare bulb hanging on a piece of electrical wire dimly lit the space and revealed brown curtains covering the window. The bed had a distinct sag in the middle and the room had obviously last been occupied by a smoker.

  Throwing her bag on the bed, Eliza felt tears sting her eyes. She wondered how she had got into this situation. A woman on the run, from a man who supposedly loved her.

  Flopping onto the bed, she let the tears run down her cheeks. Exhaustion, fear and sadness slid onto the pillow.

  Eliza realised she had drifted off to sleep, because when she opened her eyes, it was dark outside.

  She didn’t move. She just kept lying there and thinking. Slowly, a plan came to her. A couple of frights she’d had yesterday had caused her to get off the highway and take some less busy roads.

  First, the police she had seen when she’d stopped for petrol had followed her. In the rear-view mirror, she’d seen one of the policemen talking into the radio—she was sure they were doing numberplate checks. If they were, she was stuffed. The plates she was using would have been reported by now, surely, and they wouldn’t match the description of the car they were attached to.

  Her heart had thudded hard and perspiration beaded across her top lip. Then, for no apparent reason, the police car had pulled out and overtaken her. Within a few minutes, it was out of sight.

  The second scare had been when she pulled in at another roadhouse for more fuel and something to eat. A lady had baled her up in the toilets and insisted she go to the police about her face.

  ‘Whoever did this to you needs to be held accountable,’ she’d said, shaking her finger at Eliza as if she were the one who had caused the injuries.

  ‘Thanks very much, but I’m fine,’ Eliza had answered, trying to move past her supposed good Samaritan.

  ‘No you’re not. I can see it in your face. I knew I’d meet you today. I dreamed about you, I just didn’t know it was you. I’ve been sent to help you.’

  Eliza had finally lost her temper, and pushed past the crazy woman, before racing to her car and driving off.

  Getting off the bed, she went into the bathroom and leaned against the vanity, staring at her reflection. She gathered her hair and held it back, before bunching it up in a bob-like look. Which changed her face more?, she wondered.

  Having decided the bob might be an easier style to cut without any experience, she got the scissors and started hacking. As her long blond locks hit the floor, she could feel the last traces of Ashleigh leaving her.

  Two hours later, she was staring at a different person. Her hair was black and the glasses were in place. Practising with th
e foundation, she patted it on, and paid particular attention to her cheek. The make-up didn’t completely cover the bruising, but it certainly reduced the colour. The cut was still very obvious.

  Still, it would fade with time. That was something Eliza had lots of.

  Eliza stared at her reflection, hoping the changes were enough. Fingering her shortened hair, she decided she would get a proper cut when she got to a city.

  A city! Now—where was she headed?

  What was she going to do? She needed a job. And there was another question—what could she do? The woman she now was, Eliza, didn’t have any qualifications. All she had was a love of animals and kids and a good work ethic. This work ethic had come from a desperation to get away from the house on the outskirts of Adelaide she had shared with an old couple who should never have been allowed to be foster parents. The house had been small and cramped; her foster parents had smelt like mothballs and the carpet of cat pee. They hadn’t cared for Ashleigh or nurtured her in any way. They had only been in it for the money.

  She had been okay at school—finishing somewhere in the middle of the class—and had gone on to study teaching. Dominic had made her give it up when they got married, insinuating they would have children right away. Having been madly in love, she hadn’t initially had a problem with his demand, but, as time had gone on, the situation had upset her more and more. She missed the kids and their constant laughter and chatter, and she wasn’t going to have a child with a man who behaved the way Dominic did.

  Teaching was actually how she’d met Dominic. He was a major donor to the local school in Jindabyne, and was asked to attend prize nights and sports days to hand out the trophies and awards. As the year-eight coordinator, she called out the names of the children who had won, while he stood alongside her and shook hands with the kids.

  He asked her on a date at the end-of-year school concert. Ashleigh had been wearing a knee-length sleeveless black and white dress with a belt at the waist, and red shoes.