Leopard Dreaming

PART ONE

The Littlest Leopard

Hope is a waking dream

Aristotle

ONE

Mira paced impatiently in the foggy alcove, keeping near to the ghostly sandstone walls of the Drift Inn.

Her sunglasses stained the fog sepia, while damp shadows helped to conceal her movements beneath the balconies of the five-storey hotel and kept her out of sight from most of the yachts in the marina. Or so her bodyguard assured her.

The unusual nature of her crystalline eyes prohibited her from seeing anything real around her. She could only see their yester-ghosts; after-images of slow light from where they’d once been, which also meant she could only navigate safely around the things she could see if they also happened to be in the same place as they’d been. Like the power poles and buildings. Their ghostly spectres overlaid precisely in both time and space.

Even so, Mira stayed right where Lockman had left her, more or less, while he scouted the crooked alley ahead with his own form of unusual vision. In his case, binoculars that could see inside buildings using sonar waves like a bat as well as infrared.

Ambush alley. She’d already lost one good bodyguard in there, weeks ago, near the shower block for transient sailors. The raw memory of that gunshot set her nerves on end and made her fidget, even when she commanded her legs to stay still. There were simply too many places for that killer to hide behind all the drapes and darkened windows above. Or perhaps aboard a vessel with a partial view into that alley. So much opportunity, especially for a rogue colonel with skills as a sniper. He could slice people away from her with a bullet as precisely as any surgical knife.

Yet the treacherous path served as the fastest route for hunting him now that he’d taken up the additional business of kidnapping and torturing Mira’s friends. The alley also provided the likeliest route he’d taken from the car park to the smaller piers which stretched like fingers into the neighbouring estuary — and from there, she suspected he’d taken his latest victim out into the deceptively calm waters of Moreton Bay.

Poor Matron Maddy. She’d texted the word help from somewhere out there. Or somebody had, using her mobile phone. Two days ago, and already emergency services had given up searching the shark-infested bay and moved on to other areas.

Eerily quiet in the alley, pre-dawn.

Mira’s sharp hearing kept her on edge, while her warm sensitive skin turned the mist into tears that seemed to cry against her cheek. Distant sobbing called to her. Imagination, she hoped, since the only disturbances she’d hoped to hear remained limited to those she could already detect. Little more than the occasional clap of a small wave against the piers, the soft click of Lockman’s binoculars switching modes from night vision to thermal imaging, or the quiet tread of his boots as he scanned through surrounding walls in search of any threatening heat signatures.

The alley cat made more noise than him as it jumped onto a rubbish bin.

Mira heard him pause inside the passage near the site of the first ambush, and wondered if he could also hear the young girl sobbing.

Probably not, since the alley took him in the opposite direction. She heard him turn north, heading deeper into the alley, while the girl kept to the south, far side of the car park. Mira heard her call the name Lucky several times, and imagined a kitten or puppy stuck somewhere in a drain, liable to drown soon with the incoming tide.

A ruse to draw her further from Lockman?

In the past, he would have sent a two-man team to investigate, and a second team to cover their rear, while staying glued to her side himself, but since she’d severed all ties to the military, including the rest of his unit, they had only each other for backup. Now, as civilians, she had to rely on his survival skills and instincts in order to hunt their common enemy, while he relied on her ability to see backwards through time — even though the very nature of her crystallised eyes left her blind to him … and to virtually everything else that didn’t overlay precisely in time with the yester-images she could see.

Compared to him, she felt vulnerable and useless, wandering about in the mists of time — and she’d had far more than her fill of that after a decade in straitjackets. All those quacks who knew that her visions could be nothing more than delusions. They’d tried to convince her of it too with drugs and shock treatments. Even Matron Maddy, at first.

Mira clenched her fists at her side, trying not to see the quirky young matron as the colonel’s latest victim. Tried not to see him torturing her for information about Mira’s top secret talent. The vision of her crisp uniform and spiked hair pummelled down into submission; unthinkable. Abducted from her office at Serenity, most likely, and defiant to the end, despite the small leg and shrivelled arm which she wore like badges of honour after defeating childhood polio. As close to a mother as Mira …

She tried to stand still again, but couldn’t. The ephemeral sobbing taunted her. She couldn’t rescue Matron Maddy yet. Couldn’t even track her from the last known position of her mobile phone until after Lockman gave the all clear through the alley and out the other side to the estuary, but she needed to do something now.

Her skin stretched taut, like a balloon swelling, fit to explode.

‘Lucky, please,’ sobbed the girl. ‘Where are you?’

Mira’s hand reacted automatically, rising to the sidearm of her sunglasses. To anyone else, they should appear like any normal set of Ray-Bans, aside from the colour controls on each side, and the tiny battery compartment which powered her ability to change hues and intensities for each shade.

She toggled the mini-mouse and sensitive slide controls, both disguised in the pattern of a rose and vine along the sidearm, and adjusted the colour and hue of her shades from yester-month sepia to yesterday violet. At her fingertips, the controls provided an infinite range of colours to act as filters for every possible wavelength of light from past to future — violet being the nearest time period to the present that she could see without collapsing in agony. Even this close to the normal visible spectrum she needed to clamp her eyes shut briefly to help ease the eyestrain and pain of changing filters too swiftly. The sharper and faster the light, the closer to the present, and the more it felt like burning hot needles through her eyes and synapses into the back of her brain.

Fog thickened and thinned in time with the days passing. The moon chased the sun across the sky several times in a few painful seconds, and luxury cars filed in and out from the inn’s car park — until the public car park for the marina finally emptied out, save for a few dew-covered vehicles. All in the section reserved for permanently berthed yacht owners. Mostly rusting four-wheel drives, an old Bentley and one gleaming Lamborghini Gallardo. All different colours, judging by the various hues of violet, like a monochrome movie filmed through a camera with a purple filter.

Still no sign of the ephemeral girl crying. Mira only noticed one female with a reason to cry; a pigtailed woman in a spotted bikini, who tripped and skinned her knee the previous night on the pier as she fled the biggest yacht, only to be caught against the Gallardo by her pursuer. A shirtless, tattooed young man with a fearsome temper, passionate hands and a demanding kiss. But at least the new shade gave Mira a better chance of crossing the car park to check on the crying girl without bumping into anything. Or so she hoped. Fewer things changed in a day than in a month, typically. In the last day, she noticed even fewer changes than usual. Aside from the shuffle of cars amongst different parking spaces, a sign with hotel vacancies had incremented from none to nine, and two ruts in the bitumen had widened and dug deeper into the underlying gravel.

One step off the kerb, and she caught the hem of her cotton sundress on the corner bullbar of Lockman’s Hilux. Her car, according to the registration papers, but whoever heard of a blind girl driving? The truck remained invisible to her, like everything else in the present. She could only see it on the rare occasions when it happened to overlay in time with its yester-spectre, like all the ghostly wharves and buildings. So it might as well be his for as long as they worked together.

Stupid! She scolded herself. Too easy to remember which space they’d parked in at the kerb, but not how far forward in the park. She should have afforded herself a little extra room. She did on the next try, and bumped into the rear of another invisible vehicle hanging over from the neighbouring park. A van, by the square shape of it, and pale blue, judging by the cool energy of the colour she could detect through the span of her hypersensitive fingertips. Like her hearing, taste and smell, her sense of touch had also developed in the last decade since she’d lost the last of her normal sight as a twelve-year-old.

Her fierce drive for independence kept her going unaided, even when she could have snapped a branch from a sapling in a nearby garden to use as a walking stick for fending off tripping hazards. But after ten years in captivity, she much preferred to appear clumsy than blind, for as long as the choice remained hers.

A crying child seemed unlikely to notice or care anyway. Couldn’t be older than six or eight, judging by the immature pitch in her voice. And her childish lisp.

‘Where are you?’ the girl sobbed as Mira drew nearer. ‘Where are you, Lucky, you little pick-nose? Front and centre, right now!’

Passing the Gallardo, Mira ran her hand across the rear tailfin, finding it parked precisely as it had been the day before; and warm orange in colour, according to her curious fingertips, despite the apparent ghostly sheen of yester-violet.

‘No, no, no, no!’ sobbed the invisible girl. ‘You have to be here, Lucky! Where are you, you rotten little …’ She scuffled about, as if crawling around the driver’s front corner of the Gallardo in clothes that squeaked and rustled like thin leather or vinyl. ‘I’ll find you, Lucky or not!’

Her movements sounded heavier than an eight-year–old’s. Her language too, despite the lisp and tone. Not that Mira had much experience with guessing kids’ ages since graduating from orphanages to asylums herself, but at best guess, she revised her estimate of the girl’s age up to an immature twelve.

‘Need help?’ Mira whispered. She kept her head low and level with the driver’s side window of the ghostly Gallardo.

The girl spun around, squealing in fright. ‘Get away from me! No pictures, no comments!’

‘What are you talking about? I don’t even own a camera.’

‘You’re not a reporter?’

‘Me?’ Mira laughed. ‘If I were I’d have to ask: what are you doing out here?’

‘That’s none of your business! Like I told the paparazzi yesterday, I didn’t have nothing to do with that kid’s death. So what if I saw him painting the toilet block once or twice? Doesn’t mean I pushed him off the roof. Maybe he was high and thought he was Superman?’

Mira shook her head, keeping her face down. ‘Honestly, I have no idea what you’re talking about.’ The only graffiti she’d seen had all been blacked over, leaving only a ghostlier than usual impression. ‘I only came over because I thought you might need some help.’

‘Help … me?’ The girl burst out laughing — a sad little maniacal laugh as if nobody could help her.

‘Have you lost a kitten or something?’

‘No!’ She laughed again. ‘What’s it to you anyway?’

‘That depends on when it went missing.’

‘Come to gloat? I told it to you straight already. You should have been here yesterday.’

‘Then maybe you are lucky. I can help you find it.’ From the east, a gentle breeze began to stir the damp air along the shoreline. Stirring trouble too, if Lockman returned and found her missing from the alcove. ‘It’s dangerous out here. What’s your name?’

‘Maybelline, as if the whole world doesn’t know that already.’

‘Why, are you famous for something?’

‘Duh! Read any magazine.’

Mira frowned. ‘That’s not as easy as it sounds for me. Do your parents know you’re out this early?’

‘Parents? Are you blind, lady?’

Mira recoiled from the accusation.

‘Oh, wait! You are blind?’ The girl laughed, hysterically. ‘What a joke! How did you expect to help me see Lucky, then?’

‘I didn’t say see him. I said find him.’

‘How? Are you psychic?’

‘Not exactly. Unless you mean extra-sensory-perception in a non-traditional, purely scientific … Listen, do you want help to get home before sunup or not?’

‘Of course, but … I mean … well … okay, I guess I am kinda desperate. But you can’t tell anybody. Not that you would if you’re blind, right? Who’d believe you?’

‘Who indeed. Now, what kind of pet is he? Or she?’

‘Not a pet. A pick,’ the girl huffed. ‘A lucky guitar pick. It’s made of jade, and inlaid with the image of a golden good luck dragon. Named Lucky in Chinese, I think. And he’s 24 carat gold, with ruby eyes.’

‘Is he yours?’

‘Are you suggesting I stole him?’

‘Hardly.’ But something in the girl’s tone warned Mira that maybe she should be more suspicious. ‘So whose pick is it?’

‘It’s my, ah … my daddy’s.’ She giggled. ‘My sugar daddy’s. Can you find it or not?’

‘That depends if you lost it here. What makes you think that you did?’

‘Because I … ah, mean … I saw … someone run this way with it last night, and she dropped it, somewhere around here.’

Mira heard the lies in the girl’s voice, louder than any guitar could play. She wondered about mentioning the place on the pier where she’d seen the pigtailed woman trip and skin her knee — until she heard heavy boots headed her way, with a stride that she recognised as Lockman’s.

‘I think you’d better go,’ Mira warned her.

‘I can’t until I find it. You don’t know what hell it’s making my life, lately. Declan thinks I stole it, even if I only intended to hide it until he finally gives me some more sugar.’

‘Is that code for drugs?’

‘From Declan?’ She laughed. ‘No, Lady. It’s code for loving. Chorus girls like me are a dime a dozen … or do you need a translation into Braille, maybe?’

Mira shrugged in the direction of the alley. ‘Can you see that man coming?’

‘You mean that hot guy in the black jeans and jacket?’

‘Does he look happy?’

‘Ah, no. Actually, he looks set to kill somebody.’

‘And do you really want to be here arguing with me when he gets here?’

‘Message received.’ She scampered away so fast Mira barely had time to notice which pier she ran along. Sounded like the longest, which serviced only one yacht at the deepest end of the marina. The sleekest, most opulent cruiser she’d ever seen in her life. The Liquid Limo. It looked like a pale whale docked with its mouth open, and dark windows down its flank like gills for a fish. One huge circular window also gave the impression of an eye watching her.

As Lockman neared, Mira braced herself, already knowing that she’d let him down by straying too far out into the open.

‘Wait,’ she said, raising a finger. ‘I can explain.’

Lockman swung around the tail of the Gallardo, catching Mira around the waist and pinning her against the driver’s door, as if shielding her from onlookers.

She couldn’t see him, but she could feel him radiating an energy that made her far too aware of how formidable he could be with an enemy. Yet for her he remained gentle, and as respectful of her personal space as he could afford to be. He touched her no more than necessary, and planted his hands on the roof of the car, either side of her bare shoulders. His face plunged nearer to hers, and she felt his warm breath on her ear.

‘What’s the problem?’ he whispered. ‘Was she bothering you?’

‘What? No! It wasn’t like that.’

‘I heard arguing.’

Mira shrugged. ‘She’s just a girl who lost a guitar pick.’

‘And you had to help her find it now?’

‘I could spare a few seconds.’

‘Out here? With a geosynchronous surveillance satellite stationed due north over the air base?’

‘I kept my face down. The mist feels thick enough to shield us from facial recognition programs for at least another hour or so anyway.’

‘That’s exactly my point, Mira. We have only a set window of opportunity to pick up the colonel’s trail and set after him. If he still has contacts in the military, he could hook in and be watching us come for him.’

‘Don’t lecture me. I had to make sure she wasn’t a threat first.’

‘You did? Fine. Then what’s my job?’

‘You were busy.’

‘Mira, please. How can I keep you safe if you won’t trust me to handle my end?’

‘Safe?’ She laughed. ‘I can’t be safe until my friends are. You’ve experienced the colonel’s hospitality first-hand, and you’ve seen what he did to Ben. So you tell me. He’s the best friend I ever had, and now he’s stuck in a wheelchair for the next eight weeks, not to mention therapy until he can think my name without throwing up on himself. So how much more inventive do you think Colonel Kitching will be with Matron Maddy? She’s even more protective of me than Ben is. And her body’s more fragile.’

‘Running away won’t help her, Mirage.’

‘Hey, I didn’t run. I’m right here, Lieutenant.’

‘Don’t call me that when you’re mad at me. I’ve cut my ties to the military too.’

‘Then don’t call me Mirage. My mother only named me after her visions as a sick joke, and you never would have known that name in the first place if you hadn’t been spying on me.’

‘It’s not like I had a choice.’

‘And I did? We’re stuck with each other for now, but if we’re going to work together you need to remember I’ve been locked up for ten years. I hate to admit that, but sometimes the pressure gets a little claustrophobic out here and I just need some space occasionally.’

‘I give you as much space as I can.’

Using her smallest finger, she pushed him back a little. ‘You talk about me not trusting you, but what about you trusting me? Did you honestly think I wouldn’t be back in time when you needed me? This hunt for Maddy was my idea. And I’m barely fifty steps from where I’m supposed to be anyhow. What’s the big deal?’

‘Oh, Mira.’ His tone softened without sounding too frustrated. ‘You’re so used to fighting the world, you’re fighting me without even realising it.’

Mira chewed on her lip, slugged by an ugly truth that she hated about herself. After ten years of fighting for her freedom, and still struggling to regain the peaceful hermit life she’d once lived with her parents, she’d inadvertently brought harm to everyone she’d ever known, and lost sight of what she really wanted in life. Her parents were both dead by their own hands and her childhood home had been bulldozed. So she had no way back and no clear way forward, either. All she had was the mission to rescue Maddy, and then nothing. No plans for the future, aside from a campsite somewhere in a nameless rainforest.

‘All I did was try to help someone other than myself for a few seconds.’ She ducked under his arm and headed back to the alley. ‘It’s not like I was wasting time. If anything, I was making the most of it until you gave the all clear.’

‘Fine,’ he said, keeping pace with her. ‘I can appreciate that, but with your track record, everyone you meet ends up fighting for their life, while everything you do spins around to bite you.’

She clenched her fists, furious. ‘Are you telling me I can’t get out and meet new people now?’

‘Heaven forbid. Your social guidance is Ben’s department anyway. I’m only suggesting, as your security adviser, that until this is over, it might be easier on everyone if you hold off on making new friends.’

Mira opened her mouth to argue, but couldn’t. Coincidence or not, everyone she’d ever met had been attacked or hospitalised within a week. ‘Message received,’ she said, adopting a line from Maybelline. She sighed and tried to find a positive note to cling to. ‘Considering my track record, I suppose she just dodged a bullet.’

Lockman chuckled. ‘Considering your track record, you should send her a get well card anyway. Post it express, and hope it gets there in time.’

A bug flew into Mira’s eye, startling her as it slipped in and out behind her glasses.

‘Brilliant,’ she muttered and tried to rub out the pain without tripping over her own invisible feet. ‘Not enough stress in my life already.’

Stopping at the mouth of the alley and tugging off her shades, she felt a sting and a gritty burning sensation inside her left eyelid. Clamping her eyes shut made it feel even worse, and without the time-filtering effects of her shades, history swept back over a hundred years to the only wavelengths she could see with her naked eyes. Yester-century blue. Hazier too, with blue trees and blue sails in the harbour, where clipper ships and steamers replaced the modern boats at the marina.

Glancing down, she startled at the sight of water flowing beneath her in the wider and wilder mouth of the estuary. Her feet hovered metres above it!

She lost balance. In reflex, she grabbed for the branch of a nearby mangrove tree — not there any more — and she fell.

Lockman caught her against his chest. ‘Let me guess. We’re standing on landfill.’

‘Stupid developers.’ She struggled with her eyelid, making it worse.

‘I’ve got you. Hold still.’ He steadied her by the shoulder with one hand, and peeled open her left eye a little wider with the other.

‘Ow, ow, ow, ow!’ she complained as he ran his thumb along the lower inside edges of her eyes. ‘Hey, no mining! They only look like diamonds.’

‘Worth seeing up close, but your miner today was a kamikaze. She’s left a wing behind as a souvenir.’

‘What from, an emu?’

‘Mosquito.’

Tears welled before he released her eyelids, and the salt water refracted light from another time. Pain shot to agony as the sharper frequency pierced her lenses like white-hot lasers and burned through the delicate lacy thresholds from past into future. For a single heartbeat as she swept through the present, she saw Lockman materialise from the mists of time in full colour. His face so near to hers, and so full of concern.

If he hadn’t been holding her eye open, she’d have missed him entirely. Such a fractional moment. She locked gazes with him briefly — until her tears thickened too much and golden light outshone all others. Time swept her forward another hundred years, away from him.

‘Hey, what’s happening?’ he asked. ‘Your eyes, they’re …’

Lockman disappeared, replaced by a row of three hovercraft, all racing in to land; and one of them headed straight for her. More like a squashed Volkswagen without wheels; top half painted in racing patterns, while the undercarriage remained clear for visibility. Piloted by a young boy, barely four years old; he caused Mira to duck tighter against Lockman in reflex to avoid him.

‘Don’t!’ she shouted at the boy.

‘Don’t what?’ Lockman released her instantly.

She realised what she’d done and shoved away from him, hating how her body could react like that to visions, even when she knew none of those threats were real yet, and wouldn’t be until long after she died of old age.

‘I wasn’t talking to you.’ She swiped the tears away fiercely, causing time to sweep back again. That rollercoaster of pain engulfed her, but she clamped her eyes shut before the climax and missed the confusion of images with their burning bright light and jolts of raw agony. She missed glimpsing Lockman again too, but that threshold from past to future and back again had never been a fun ride.

‘Are you okay?’ He pulled her closer for another inspection.

She blocked his hand before he could peel open her eyelids one more time.

‘I’m fine. It just happens sometimes.’ She tried to turn away, but he’d have none of it, leading her aside instead and shielding her inside the mouth of the alley to put her out of sight of any yachtsmen.

‘Don’t tell me you’re fine. What just happened?’

‘My eyes watered. What did it look like?’

‘Pain. And for a second there, I thought …’

‘You thought?’

‘I thought you saw me. I could have sworn it.’

Mira shrugged. ‘I see through you all the time.’

‘This was different and you know it. You saw me. I saw your pupils dilate and lock on me. Even if it was only for an instant.’

‘So what if I did? I can’t control it. And it hurts far too much to endure for long anyway.’

‘But if it’s possible, then there’s hope that maybe …’

Mira shook her head furiously. ‘I don’t need a doctor. I need a bodyguard. May I have my glasses back now, please? I need to get focused.’

He cleaned them first, and his silence warned her that he’d be watching her more closely; precisely the last thing she wanted.

Donning her shades, she wished they could hide her whole body from him. ‘So what day am I looking for?’

‘Aim for the day before yesterday. Early dawn. Maybe an hour or so before General Garland called us to warn about the matron’s last text for help from her mobile phone.’

‘General Garland?’ Mira huffed. ‘Now there’s another name I’d rather never hear again. You’ve had as much luck with commanding officers as I did with psychologists.’

‘She promised she’d leave you alone so long as you stay out of enemy hands.’

‘Yeah, right. She classified me as a national secret. And how’s she going to know if I’m out of enemy hands, unless she’s watching me as closely as she ever did?’

‘I must admit, I’ve been thinking the same thing. She told me the last known coordinates for the matron’s phone, and then warned us to stay away. That’s like hanging out a carrot with a sign for rabbits to take a hike. So either she’s using you again, or she lied and misdirected us here to keep you out of harm’s way while she closes the net on Kitching somewhere else.’

Mira laughed. ‘I’d pay for box seats to that. He’s been giving her the slip for years.’ She reached for the nearest wall to brace herself. ‘I’ll start with yesterday and scan backwards.’ Not that she had much choice. Without any ghostly clocks, calendars or newspapers within sight, she couldn’t skip any shades of violet or purple without the risk of missing the day that she hoped to find Kitching or Matron Maddy passing through the alley. ‘These controls are too sensitive. If I’m not methodical, I could skip back five days instead of two and not know it. The shades can seem that close in this light.’

‘Whatever it takes. I’ve got your back.’

As she adjusted the controls and scrolled time backwards a day or so through all the wavelength layers, the bare skin of her shoulder found the cool sandstone building.

Aligned precisely with its ghostly image, the past overlaid in time with the present, making the sandstone blocks feel far more real than they appeared. Less blurry than further back in time too, thanks to gravity, which seemed to hold the slower and weightier particles of light in orbit forever, while Mother Earth continued to wind time around the sun and universe. Mira didn’t need to understand the science of it any more. She only needed to keep reminding herself that the yester-world she could see wasn’t the real world she could feel, hear and otherwise perceive.

Yesterday’s silence seemed all the more surreal as the future wakened slowly around her. The alley appeared empty and lifeless, while an alarm buzzed noisily in an apartment above her. Probably rang yesterday too, but she could only see the past, not hear it.

Static buzzed too, and a male voice swore at his radio. No reception, apparently.

Pans clanked against the other side of the wall, making her jump.

‘Chef’s apprentice,’ Lockman said. A familiar click reminded Mira that he could see through most walls using sound waves and thermal sensors akin to radar imaging. ‘He’s preparing to bake. That should keep him busy for a while.’

Mira stayed on edge anyway. Since she’d left Serenity, most loud bangs had been accompanied by bullets flying in her direction.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked. ‘You’ve gone a bit pale.’

She nodded, but felt an urge to simply clamp her eyes shut and run through to the estuary so she could pick up the kidnapper’s trail from out there on the water.

Mira cleared her throat, hoping she didn’t sound too worried. ‘Was it all clear around the next bend?’

‘Would you be this far in if it wasn’t? Or I can check again, if it makes you feel better?’

‘I didn’t mean today, I meant … you know. Any leftover evidence from other times?’

‘It’s all clear,’ he assured her. ‘Aside from the quick recon today, on stakeout yesterday I saw a media circus pass through, leaving nothing more than empty water bottles, some chip packets and a few old lens caps.’

‘What about bloodstains?’

‘For paparazzi, they didn’t look that cut-throat.’

‘I didn’t mean their blood.’

‘I know what you meant.’ His tone stiffened, and she heard something in his voice that suggested he’d been thinking about past events too. His sergeant had been murdered in this alley, and the killer had tried to frame him for it; had beaten Lockman too, right there near the industrial bin.

‘It’s history,’ Lockman assured her. ‘Nothing can hurt you now, so long as we’re careful.’

‘Yeah, right.’ She wished she could believe it, but as she rounded the first bend, she saw the full length of the industrial bin by the rear door to the kitchen, and guilt slugged her in the stomach. If she hadn’t witnessed his sergeant’s murder just as the killer returned to the scene of the crime, then more people would still be alive, starting with the female bodyguard who’d sacrificed herself to ensure Mira’s escape. One of Lockman’s team. Her blood had painted the alley too; history repeating itself, the same but different. Same killer, different motives. Same scene, different bodies.

‘I just want to find them before anyone else gets hurt.’ Third time lucky, according to an old Braille quote — one that her mother had embossed into her favourite tree on the last day she’d climbed to the top.

‘That’s the plan.’

Mira paused and turned around, scanning up five storeys and examining all the balconies to see who else had been awake at dawn the previous day.

‘How can you stand coming here so easily?’ she whispered.

‘What makes you think it’s easy?’

‘You sound calm; your voice, your stride.’

‘You can’t see my hands shaking.’

She couldn’t imagine it either. ‘Seriously, is it justice or revenge that’s driving you?’ On the one hand, he had a chance to nail Sergeant Hawthorn’s killer, and on the other, he could gain revenge for the torture session he’d been put through at the hands of his superior officer who’d tried to pull a confession out of Lockman, since the killer and Colonel Kitching were one and the same.

‘Keep your voice down,’ Lockman whispered.

‘I thought you said it was clear?’

‘It is, but —’

‘How am I supposed to trust you better if I don’t understand why you’re here? You’re not working for General Garland any more, allegedly.’

‘Allegedly?’ He sounded hurt. ‘I’m here for the same reason as you, Mira. To find Matron Sanchez. The colonel’s military crimes are bad enough, but he’s crossed the line, abducting innocent civilians.’

‘Plenty of nasty people in the world,’ she argued. ‘I don’t see you going after any of them.’

‘Few have the means to weaponise you. Kitching can, and will, first chance he gets, and if that happens, it’s game over for every law enforcement agency on the planet.’

‘How? I’m not that valuable. Seeing history doesn’t mean I can change anything the way he wants it.’

‘You can see any password, reveal any secret.’

‘So? I’d never work for him. Bet your life on it. I’d cut out my own eyes first. Or lie. If he wants me to watch any of his enemies or agents plotting against him, I’ll just tell him something else instead. Something that will end up with him dead.’

Lockman sighed heavily. ‘We’ve played this song before, Mira. If you try to mess him around, he’ll take your eyes, and reverse engineer them into hardware that he can sell from a production line — like all the other advanced tech he’s stolen over the years.’

‘That would take forever, if at all. He can’t reverse-engineer my hardware without the software that goes with it.’ She tapped her temple to remind him of the synapses that ran like wiring from her eyes to her brain. ‘He can’t even detect the slow light without the whole kit. He might as well invent a light bulb in a world without electricity.’

‘Don’t underestimate him, Mira. You’re not just an opportunity to him. You’re also a huge threat. He’s already escaped one court martial where you’re the primary witness. He’s also head of a major international black market in weapons, where you can track every dirty deal he’s ever done, or point a finger at every face or name he’s ever dealt with.’

Mira shook her head determinedly. ‘The risk is the same as it’s always been. He’s had plenty of chances to kill me. He could drop a missile on us right now from a mile offshore, if he really wanted to, and yet he’s going to such lengths to learn my strengths and weaknesses. Taking Ben, and now Matron Maddy. Therefore he wants me alive. Therefore I’m safe, relatively speaking.’ She patted his chest and mustered a brave smile. ‘You’re the one who’s expendable to him. Maybe you should hide behind me.’

‘Like that’s going to happen. We can’t be sure what he’s really got planned for you. We don’t even know what he’s been planning for all the advanced weaponry he’s been stockpiling. Last report I saw, he’s not only stealing and trading, he’s also expanding into production and keeping all the best stuff for his own forces.’

Mira threw up her hands in frustration. ‘I’ll make a wish list for you and keep watch for any clues. But I’m only one person, and first I have to find Matron Maddy.’

‘Agreed. Only watch your step.’

‘I’m watching!’ She glanced from balcony to balcony on the higher storeys, and saw her first reflections of the estuary, where the muscled armatures of sailing boats bobbed at anchor, or hugged their berths along the piers.

‘No, really.’ Lockman grabbed her by the elbow and tugged her sharply sideways. ‘There’s broken glass right there. Watch your step.’

‘Oh, sorry.’ Glancing down, she saw the remains of the beer bottle too. ‘Smells stale. Fresh yesterday, though. This time yesterday, the spillage was still soaking away.’

At least it seemed like the same time yesterday. Over the roof of the public shower block, a ghostly purple sun seemed to rise in time with the warmth she could feel from today’s invisible dawn.

Mira turned around, and walked backwards. Easier that way to watch for movement on the upper apartments she’d passed already without straining her neck.

‘What are you doing?’ Lockman asked.

‘This place is giving me the creeps. If I’m walking into a trap, I want to be facing the shortest path to run out.’

‘You’ve got that feeling too, huh?’

‘Squeak, squeak, and Matron Maddy’s the cheese.’

‘If there’s trouble here, it’s still off my radar.’

‘Nothing stirring upstairs?’

‘Nothing that shouldn’t be stirring for work on a weekday anyhow. Same goes aboard all of the nearest sloops. Further out may be a different story. These Night Owls only have a range of three clicks in this mist. Not great for binoculars in day mode.’

Mira chewed on her lip, trying to keep her thoughts clear. ‘No sign of Maddy yesterday yet either. I wonder: instead of doing a full sweep of the alley for each time frame, maybe I should scan each section in here thoroughly before we pass each bend.’

‘Won’t that hurt more, changing shades back and forward so often?’

Mira shrugged and moved to brace herself against the wall again. ‘If it wasn’t for Maddy, I’d still be in a straitjacket at Serenity. Or worse. A lab rat for military research.’

Clever Colonel, she thought. He knew exactly how to pull her strings to get her to hunt him here. Except she couldn’t imagine any reason why Kitching would try to lure her to this particular alley using a text message from the matron’s phone. She had to be missing something. A vital clue.

‘More glass,’ Lockman warned her.

Mira turned to check, and found Kitching’s ghost with his back to her, crouched in the middle of the alley, looking lankier and creepier than ever in a dark dripping wetsuit — and doing something to a slim, naked body sprawled out in front of him.

Young, blond and … face down.

A teenaged male.

Relief swept over her — but left her guilty for feeling it when someone else was still dead. It wasn’t Maddy lying there, but the adolescent would never take another breath.

Maybelline’s superman.

His boyish shoulders and hips lent him a youthful innocence beneath all the gothic body art — tattoos from neck to toes with snakes and spiders; so thick on most parts of his body they covered him like winter clothes.

A ghostly snake slithered along a nearby wall, away from the body. Strange place for a harmless tree snake, Mira thought, but at that pace it wouldn’t be around for long.

Kitching rose and headed out of the alley; one snake outpacing the other towards the estuary. He didn’t look back but Mira did, and saw what he’d left behind.

A stuffed toy in the halo of blood.

A leopard with diamond-shaped eyes.

Blind like her, yet watching the ghostly killer walk away.

TWO

Lockman scanned the apartment balconies over the inn, keeping watch for any trouble above and behind them. He heard Mira stop and saw the colour run from her face.

Reflex snapped his hand inside his jacket and he swung about with his Glock drawn, silencer on, in search of a target before logic reminded him that whatever had spooked her had happened yesterday.

His hands trembled with unspent adrenaline; too quick on the draw and too ready to kill if the situation presented. Demons that first awakened in the jungles of East Timor. His darkest secret; his fear that they’d set him down the same fatal path that had taken his father. A ticking time bomb. A man who’d burst onto a city street in pursuit of rebel militia, and fired shots that missed his targets and struck a bus full of school children.

Outcast.

Out of control.

Out of his mind and dead now.

In the end, his father had been so lost, he’d been unable to defend himself, let alone his family; a wife, two daughters and son. Lockman’s sisters seemed fine; one a mother herself now and the other in high school. But Lockman knew all the symptoms of stage one off by heart now: edginess, headaches, insomnia — and it wasn’t the killing that bothered him. So far, he’d never hurt anyone who hadn’t deserved it. Stage one complete. Stage two in progress. The pattern made him worry whether the army had trained the killer into him, or merely awakened it from a deeper darkness that had always lurked within him. Either way, the itch to kill Kitching felt like acid creeping under his skin.

Unlike Mira Chambers. Inspirational beyond her beauty and grace. She’d been treated as insane for a decade and somehow come through it strong and resilient. Training had taught him that her level of resilience should have been impossible; that even the best of the best in special forces could break under a cocktail of drugs and a few years in solitary. He’d been rejected from that elite band of brothers for failing to function as part of a team. Too much of a loner, they’d warned him. Yet she had a certain quiet determination about her that mesmerised him and calmed him in a way that nothing else could. Part wildcat, part angel. The more fiercely she flared, the less he needed to, and it was a kind of magic he needed to learn before she no longer needed him.

Holstering his Glock, he let his eyes linger on her a little too long — until he realised she was staring at the chalky outline of the dead teenager from yesterday’s crime scene. Partially trampled by the media circus that followed. At least that was all he could see. Ironically the chalk line was the final graffiti tag that vandal would ever make, and it had not only been drawn by police on his behalf, the overnight dew had already softened and faded the final remnants.

Mira spun against Lockman, looking ill and clutching her stomach.

‘Not pretty,’ he said, wishing he could take her in his arms and comfort her properly. Catching her from falling didn’t count. He’d seen the gaping ravine across the kid’s forehead during his stakeout, the main wound stretching from left eyebrow to ear, and for her it must have looked just as fresh.

‘You okay?’ He clutched her against his shoulder, trying not to be distracted by the soft spill of her hair over his hand.

She nodded, but not convincingly.

‘Suicide,’ he said, ‘… if you found the dead adolescent.’ He’d listened in on the whole police operation. No point exposing Mira to a hot zone for satellite surveillance until he could be sure she’d be safe, so he’d left her sleeping at their campsite in the nearby rainforest. ‘I should have warned you, sorry, but I didn’t expect you to be so thorough and start the search with yesterday.’

‘Didn’t expect? Or didn’t want?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean? You couldn’t come with me yesterday without getting your face plastered all over the tabloids. And last I knew, you needed at least twenty-four hours between an event and being able to —’

Quiet! she signalled, and leapt to cover his mouth. Glancing over her shoulder, she behaved as if the body might still be watching her. Someone’s listening, she warned him instead. Her elegant hands whispered for the deaf; akin to the abrupt stealth signals he’d used with his team, so he understood her well enough. He only wished he could answer her the same way, without needing to bring her back again the next day so she could see him.

‘Impossible,’ he whispered. ‘I left a signal jammer in the truck with a range of three clicks. Didn’t you hear the static on the chef’s radio? Nobody gets TV this morning either, until after we leave.’

Mira laughed. ‘Are you expecting me to believe that nobody can see us?’

‘Or hear us. Local vandals take out the security cameras whenever they’re fixed, and the jammer takes care of anything they missed.’

Good, she said with her hands. So you’re the only one who’ll get to see this …

She splayed her hands across his chest, backed him against the wall, and switched to finger Braille that she typed as if his shirt had become a keyboard. Slower, working in coded chords of words, letter by letter, but as an alternative means for silent communication, she could use the whole vocabulary and reduce the risk of misunderstandings.

Doing it back to her also meant he could reply silently in real time.

Argu as much as u want aloud, she typed, abbreviating to allow for speed and help minimise her contact with him, but trust me, please … and believe only this. I saw Kitching … ‘Quit holding out on me,’ she demanded out loud at the same time. ‘Save me the pain of watching the kid die. If you really believe it’s unrelated, just tell me what the police were doing here yesterday.’

Running her light touch down his arms and commanding his attention in every way possible, she found his hands, locked fingers with him, and drew his hands up with hers, splaying all her fingers and thumbs against his as a silent invitation to respond, using her hands as receptors instead of her chest.

Not for the first time, he blessed his lucky stars that his grandmother had taken the time to teach him the rare form of communication when she’d lost her own sight years ago.

What’s the problem? he asked. ‘I only know what I saw and read in the papers.’

‘Don’t lie to me, Lieutenant.’ Did they find a toy leopard?

A what?

Mira rolled her eyes, and spelled it out again with longer breaks between the letters.

‘I’m not lying!’ No toy. Just the body. ‘Cops arrived same time as a swarm of media, and had their work cut out securing the area.’

‘And since when do the media give two cents about a street kid suicide?’

‘Oh, they weren’t here for the kid, sorry. They were here for the neighbours who witnessed it. Cops barely rolled out the crime scene tape and had to roll it up again when a trio of big names came forward with enough details of the kid’s swan dive off the roof of the shower block.’

‘Big names, like who?’

Don’t ask, he replied with his hands. ‘Just the penthouse owner and a couple of singers.’ You met one in the car park. ‘They live on a boat, I think. Nothing to do with us.’

‘Okay, which penthouse?’ she asked.

He pointed up, then remembered she couldn’t see him. Easy to forget when she always seemed so capable. ‘There’s only one. It takes up the whole top floor. Owner is a woman who’d seen the kid dealing drugs in the alley a few times, and tagging walls with obscenities. Same story from most of the other boat owners. None of them saw the leap itself, only the fall, and evidence suggested either suicide or he slipped by accident. Bottom line: police wrote him off as a death by misadventure.’ So where does the toy fit in?

I saw Kitching leave it with the body. ‘What else aren’t you telling me, Lieutenant?’ She threw his old rank at him as if it was mud — a performance for whichever ears she believed had found a way to listen in, he realised, but it still frustrated him that she persisted in driving that spike between them.

You first. ‘He was just a street kid. Kevin Stoush. Age nineteen. No fixed address. His blood tests returned positive on a cocktail of drugs and alcohol.’ Are you sure it was a toy leopard?

Spotted cat. Fake eyes and fur. What else could it be? ‘Come on. You must know more if you know the results of his blood tests? Media wouldn’t be getting that bulletin until later today, surely?’

Maybe a lynx? ‘Not sure what you mean.’ And he really didn’t. Sure, his sergeant had been murdered in the same alley. Same shade of twilight over the bay; the sarge dead by dusk, the kid by dawn. Same splay of the arms and legs too, more or less. But that’s where the similarities ended. No sign of a bullet in the teenager. No spray of his flesh on the wall.

‘I mean, maybe you’ve still got a few lines open to military intelligence. If there’s someone leaking inside information to you about him, makes me worry what you may be leaking back to them about me.’

‘Mira! I’d never —’

Sorry! She shouted silently with her hands. He mustn’t know how much I need you! ‘Talk’s cheap,’ she added, then laid her hands and forehead softly over his heart in a rare show of affection. ‘I have less faith in you than I ever did in Ben.’

She smiled up at him and patted his chest.

He couldn’t stand it any longer; he grabbed her by the shoulders, spinning her back to the wall, exchanging places. His killer instinct awoke with a jolt. If anyone wanted her now, they’d have to get through him first.

She found his face with her magical fingers, cupped his cheek, and the rage drained almost instantly.

‘You scare me,’ she whispered. ‘You really do.’

He sighed heavily, wishing it wasn’t true, but whenever that killer instinct awoke, he scared himself. ‘I don’t mean to.’ The idea repulsed him, yet every time he thought of her in enemy hands, he lusted for blood in a way that needed no gun.

‘Back off then, and give me some space.’ Splaying open her hands, she invited him back to her instead. ‘I’m working here.’

‘Then let’s work.’ He met her slim fingers in keen relief. You had me for a second. Right up until she’d said that thing about not trusting him or Ben. If he didn’t know her so well, or hadn’t seen the truth shining up from her smile, he might have believed that too.

What’s a lynx? she asked, all business again.

His hands took a little longer to settle; a slight tremble, the Braille equivalent of a stutter. Made him feel stupid and pathetic in front of her.

Like a small leopard, he explained. Think of a bobcat from North America. ‘You wanted to know about the penthouse. Did I mention the owner’s name?’ He glanced up, keeping his hands in light contact with Mira’s … Can’t be coincidence. No such thing. ‘Headlines called her Lina the Lynx.’

‘Sounds mysterious.’

‘More like a socialite who’s aged into a recluse. Her husband went to jail a few years ago for playing naughty games in their rooftop spa with minors.’

Mira shook her head, thoughtfully. It can’t be a message for her too. Those eyes … it had to be a warning for me.

What warning?

I can’t tell you here. There’s no time.

She moved to turn away, but he pulled her back to him, matching thumb to thumb and fingers to fingers, re-enabling their two-way conversation. Make time.

She chewed on her lip, as if the slipping seconds were only the smallest of her concerns. I wasn’t the only patient at Serenity with Fragile X Syndrome, she confessed silently. The frail gene that made me like this is actually more common than webbed toes or fingers, and normally just as harmless. Follow me?

He tapped his thumbs with hers twice to signal agreement. You’re suggesting there could be someone else like you? Seemed inevitable eventually, since roughly half the population of the world carried the frail chromosomes, and not just humans. Every species with an X–Y male–female paired gene experienced unique mutations every few generations. Bloodstock 101; essential knowledge for any kid growing up on a cattle station. I’m probably a carrier myself. So what of it?

Coincidence is the biggest bastard in a gene pool.

No such thing as coincidence, but fate can be cruel … You said time was short?

She nodded. Colonel Kitching has an older brother.

Freddie Leopard? Lockman frowned. Don’t tell me you mean that old screwball at Serenity who thought he could hear the …

Uh-oh, Lockman thought. The future?

Mira nodded. He really can. I see the past, he hears the future.

Oh, hell, he thought. Does the Colonel know?

He shouldn’t. He dumped Freddie at the asylum decades ago so he could run off and join the army and they haven’t seen or spoken to each other since. That’s the last I knew, but we have to be careful. That toy leopard has to mean something.

Maybe Ben said something while he was being tortured for information about you?

Maybe, but at the time he was taken, he’d been designing social programs for Freddie as if he was just plain old vanilla crazy. Outside of Matron Maddy, you’re the first I’ve ever told.

And now the Colonel has her.

Actually, part of me still hopes she’s just a normal missing person.

Lockman spun away, raking his fingers through his hair. He’d grown used to missions blowing up in his face, but this seemed way out of his league.

Mira’s hands found his back, distracting him.

What’s wrong? she typed lightly across his shoulders.

‘Don’t,’ he said, before he could stop himself. He turned and gathered her hands. Sorry, it’s just a lot to process.

What’s to process? Sound waves and light waves aren’t so different, Lieutenant. The crystalline abnormalities in my eyes are akin to his, in the basilar membranes inside his ears. Distortions are similar too. Mine are blurry. His are echoes. Mine hurt. His drive him crazy.

But in your case, working with you for a while and noticing little things gave me time to warm up to the idea. Since then, he’d been forced to reassess virtually everything he’d ever known about time, fate and perceptions of reality, but some surprises were simply too