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CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“OH, WILL YOU just shut up?” Bindi marched across the room and stood in front of the lump of quivering man flesh. “What the fuck do you have to cry about? I’m the one who nearly died. Mack is the one with the stab wound. You don’t even deserve to feel sorry for yourself.”
She was so mad she was practically vibrating. The anger had surged up from deep in her gut, possibly in response to the hot flashes of other emotions searing through her veins over the past few minutes. She’d been scared out of her mind when Mutt attacked her, then adrenaline had kicked in as she did everything in her power to ward him off, and that’d morphed into sheer relief when Mack and Timmo had arrived. So she became a quivering mass of unspent hormones and feelings. Which left her irrationally, irredeemably mad. She was mad for lots of reasons. Mad because she’d become complacent enough to let Mutt ambush her. Mad because he had the audacity to attack her with a knife. Mad because the crazy Maori had slashed her man across the arm. And mad because this stupid person lying on the floor in front of her continued to blame her unfairly for her brother’s death. Well, she was going to set the record straight, once and for all.
Wait…
Backup a second.
She reversed all those thought bubbles until she came to the one that’d caused her to pause.
She’d called Mack her man. Admittedly, it was only in her head—thank God—but was he? Her man? She didn’t have any claim on Mack. They’d agreed to be friends, that was all. Even if he was sweet to her now, kind and respectful. All things he hadn’t been when she first met him. That didn’t mean—
“I’m sorry,” Mutt sobbed, breaking her absorption with her convoluted feelings for Mack.
He was sorry? He had no right to feel sorry.
Mack walked over and stood next to her, almost pushing her out of the way, as if perhaps he thought to make a human shield of himself. Well, she wasn’t having that. She wanted to hear what Mutt had to say, so she stood her ground.
Mutt sat up slowly. The man was a mess, tears and snot streaked his face, and his vain attempts to wipe the streaming mucus away did no good with his hands firmly tied behind his back. He sat on the ground staring up at her, eyes imploring, like a dog who’d just been beaten.
“I’m sorry,” he sobbed again. “I should never have done that.”
“Done what?” she snapped. “Tried to kill me?”
Mack slipped his hand into hers. Whether to hold her back, so she didn’t strangle Mutt, or as a form of comfort, she wasn’t sure.
“Yeah, I shouldn’t have done that. I really wasn’t aiming to kill you.” He looked up at her, blinking like an owl.
“It certainly looked like it from my angle,” Bindi spat. “A knife aimed at your heart only means one thing, as far as I’m concerned.”
“I know, I know,” Mutt sniffed. “But it was like something came over me. Some kind of evil spirit took me over, you know.”
“No, I don’t know,” Bindi said. What was going on with Mutt? He’d never apologized to her in the whole time she’d known him. “You’ve had it in for me ever since Kai died,” she went on. “That was seven years ago. I can’t believe you still hate me so much.”
Timmo re-entered the room, but hung back when he saw them talking. Seeing Mutt was no threat, he remained watching and listening from behind Bindi’s left shoulder.
“I don’t hate you, not really.” He dropped his gaze to the ground, and Bindi stood, waiting for Mutt to explain himself. “It’s true. I needed someone to blame when Kai died. I was so destroyed when he took his own life. I couldn’t understand why he’d do something like that. And leave me all alone.” Bindi’s heart softened slightly at the torment in Mutt’s voice. Then he muttered the words she’d suspected all along. “I was in love with him. He never knew it, because he would never have accepted it.” The truth was finally coming out. Mutt was gay, but had never admitted it, not even to the man he’d adored. It was a little sad, really. Love made people do strange, surprising things sometimes.
“So, why did you attack me?”
“When I saw you at the rodeo, it was a complete surprise,” Mutt continued. “I didn’t plan that meeting. I made it all up on the spot to scare you. Because when I saw you, it brought all those buried feelings flooding back. And I hated you so much at that moment.”
“So, you didn’t come to Australia to track me down?” Bindi asked.
“Nah. To tell the truth, I’d nearly forgotten about you. I moved away from Nelson a few months after Kai died and you left. Tried to start anew in Auckland, but that didn’t go so well for me, either.”
Bindi could just imagine. Mutt and his gang had been involved in drugs and petty theft. And a leopard never changed its spots. Just because Mutt moved towns, it probably didn’t mean he’d climbed any higher up the socio-economic ladder.
“But when I saw you again, it was like something clicked in my mind. Like a white-hot heat took over, and I was completely devastated by Kai’s death all over again. I wanted you gone. So I didn’t have to keep feeling this way.”
In a twisted way, Mutt’s explanation made a strange kind of sense. It didn’t excuse his behavior, or in any way justify it. But it added a level of understanding. “Go on,” she prompted, needing to hear the whole story. “Because you clearly followed me out here to finish your dastardly deed.”
He grimaced, then said, “It took me a few days to track down where you lived. And a few more days to come up with a plan. I got a new job, you see, and I didn’t want to just up and leave. So I waited until I had no shifts rostered and came up here to find you. I’d been waiting all day in the main street of that shitty little town, when you happened to walk out of that supermarket. It was as if the Gods smiled on me.”
“Yeah, I bet it felt like that to you. It was a little different from our perspective.” Her hand jerked convulsively in Mack’s as she thought about the look on Mutt’s face, right before he went to ram their car. She was sure he’d meant to kill them. And he’d been prepared to go through Mack to get to her. Mack would’ve been collateral damage, and Mutt wouldn’t have cared one jot. Mack was doing a good job of not interrupting her questioning of Mutt, as if he sensed this was something she needed to do.
“Well, you can tell your sob story to our friend, the senior sergeant. He’s on his way, and I’m sure he’d love to hear your justifications for all of your murderous intents,” Timmo interrupted.
