Chapter 1
As usual, Lydia Sommers was somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be.
Admittedly, this particular Wednesday night -- an unfortunately soggy one, at that - she hadn’t planned on being crouched behind a Carlton skip bin, risking a tear in her new french heel stockings. She’d planned to be good for once, and meet the supposedly-very-nice-HR-manager Damien for a drink at the supposedly-very-nice new tapas place near the office.
But that was before Josie called.
Or rather, before Josie called her back.
“Seriously Lyd, how did you hear about this? Because if it wasn’t from Drunk Me, then I’ve got bigger problems than the Santino brothers.”
“You know I can’t tell you that,” Lydia said, tugging a jammed archive from The Sentinel’s temperamental photocopier machine.
“What was that noise? Are you at a car wash?”“You know I can’t tell you that either.”
Josie laughed. Genuine, but shorter than usual. She was worried. She had every right to be. In Lydia Olsen, she’d found a reporter capable of keeping her word and protecting her sources, even if it meant being dragged before the editor and told, in no uncertain terms, to cough up.
Lydia kept quiet, the digital disruption kept growing and, after six months relegated to the property desk, that editor was out and she was back into the investigative unit where she belonged. Her favourite coffee mug -- lime green, with “YOU COULD BE WRONG” in bold black typeface -- had molded up nicely during her hiatus. She didn’t care. She blasted it with hot water, shovelled in four tablespoons of the bitumen-flavoured supplied instant coffee, and got back to work.
Two weeks later, she’d already pinned down a new lead. The heir apparent to one of Melbourne’s biggest property tycoons had been spotted sharing a negroni with Daniel Hawke, a young prosecutor with Ezra Miller cheekbones and a talent for turning to the courtroom media seats when he was about to intone a particularly quotable sound bite.
In itself, the pairing wasn’t remarkable. What was remarkable was the other figure spied at the dimly lit table: Con Santino, convicted fraudster and father to infamous brothers Tony and Mike.
It wasn’t a story. It was a hunch. A hunch Lydia had to confirm by literally hunching in an alleyway, in the rain, outside the back entrance to The Cellar Door, favoured haunt of politicians, businessmen and crooks alike.
Why hadn’t I just gone into project management like Dad said to, Lydia thought, wet strands of hair sticking to her temples.
Would’ve made more money and been able to claim overtime spent crouching in alleyways.
She steadied herself on her heels and braced against the brick wall, feeling the tell-tale squish of used gum press against the exterior of her trench coat.
Fantastic. Back to the dry cleaners tomorrow it is then.
The neon gleam of her iPhone flashed through her pocket’s damp fabric. Stealthily, she dared retrieve it and read the message from underneath the magnifying raindrops quickly clustering the screen.
She should’ve have guessed Josie wouldn’t have taken no for an answer.
I’m serious. If you are where I think you are, leave. This isn’t advice. It’s an order. You’re putting us all at risk.
Lydia bit her lip. That wasn’t like Josie, to be so definitive. Nervous pangs started to mass in her stomach. To quell them, Lydia did the only thing she knew how to do: consider the facts.
What did she know? What didn’t she know? What did she absolutely, 100 percent have to find out?
She knew Josie had never spoken to her like that, so she must be serious.
She knew if that was true, going against her wishes could burn her best police contact for good.
She knew this story was too good to pass up, but it was earlier than early days.
She knew the potential fallout from a dodgy prosecutor teaming up with a dodgy businessman to help some dodgy criminals could be huge. Career-defining huge.
She knew it was possible Josie knew something she didn’t know, that once known, would shift her journalistic hunch.
And she knew she was so soaked through her underwear was likely pretty much transparent.
A door creaked open in the alleyway, and the sounds of affable male chatter started to mingle with the patter of the rain.
Lydia reflexively ducked further down, out of sight. She strained to hear the voices. One definitely had the round, private school boy cadence of Daniel Hawke, but years of blasting Rihanna on the treadmill made her distrust her auditory ability. The others were lower pitched, and harder to hear over the rain.
There was only one thing to do. Lydia balanced herself on her heeled haunches, and lifted herself, centimetre by centimetre, up to the rim of the skip.
When her hazel, myopic eyes cleared the rim, she peered to make the men out.
One was definitely Daniel. Lydia could see the bright floral tie and glint of his cufflinks as he raised a cigarette to his mouth, grinning at two other men with their backs to her. He took a long drag, blew the smoke into the air, and nodded knowingly at some wisdom his companions had shared.
Lydia watched as one of the unidentifiable men pulled out his own cigarette and beckoned Daniel to ignite it with his lighter.
She watched as Daniel offered up the gold-plated lighter, only for the man to shrug and gesture with his free hands to the dormant cigarette end.
“What, am I your servant?” Lydia thought she heard the prosecutor say.
He rolled his eyes, and flicked the lighter cap back, shielding the narrow flame from the rain and guiding it carefully to the man’s mouth.
That’s when she saw it. The gun, sleek and dark, sliding down the other man’s sleeve. Daniel preoccupied, clearly pissed, and struggling to keep a lighter flame dry in an open alleyway.
The barrel rising to his forehead in a swift, practised sweep.
He’s going to die.
A fingertip tightening on the trigger.
“Watch out!”
Fuck. FUCCCCK. FUCK FUCK FUCK.
The words beat off the alleyway walls at the same time as the lethal click of the silencer and before Daniel Hawke’s blood spilled onto the wet ground, Lydia was standing, soggy and startled, directly in front of the two assassins.
Two assassins she could now clearly identify.
Tony and Mike Santino.
Her heart was in her throat. Her pulse was EDM. She slapped a hand over her mouth, redundantly, and watched as Mike started to raise his gun a second time.
She saw it happening. She was watching it. Why wasn’t she moving? RUN, her brain was screaming. But it was like her legs were bolt-screwed to the ground.
She was going to die. In an alleyway. With a ladder in her new tights.
The obituary copy would pretty much write itself.
INTREPID REPORTER SHOULD HAVE PROBABLY BEEN MORE TREPID.
She almost laughed out loud. Would her last conscious thought really be such a workaholic cliche?
The barrel was almost at her hip height now. It was like it was happening in slow motion. Why wasn’t she dead already?
Then, red.
Red and blue.
Red and blue, and red and blue, again and again, flashing all around.
“DROP THE WEAPON! HANDS UP!”
Sirens.
Josie.
“YOU TOO! HANDS UP!”
The glare of a flashlight stung her retinas.
Was it Josie, there to save her? Or, more likely, there to finish the job and kill her?
Lydia couldn’t bear to find out.
Her legs shuddered back into action and with a Jeffrey Campell-soled pivot, she turned and bolted down the far end of the alley, into the night, and down a path she could never turn back from.
