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Will looked at his hands resting on the tabletop. His knuckles were bruised, like his eye s
ockets. He had grime under his nails. These were the hands he’d used to build his life. To clear land, to chop wood, to hold books he’d struggled to understand. These hands had fought for his safety, protected Pete and built them a fortune. But they’d always been stained by guilt no matter how hard he’d worked to make good. He knew what Pete was thinking and wouldn’t say.
“I might have killed Feng.”
“No, Will.”
Will closed his eyes. He was back in Tara. It was dusk, mosquitoes thick in the air. It was the evening his life changed forever, for the better. “I sat on that bank and I let him drown. You don’t think I’m capable of killing a man? We know I am.”
Pete’s head shot up, his raised voice made the guard outside the door eye them through the window. “You let him drown, you didn’t hold him under.”
“If he’d tried to set foot on land I would have.”
“You didn’t kill him, the drink did.”
“I could’ve saved him.”
“No. He’d have dragged you down with him. If you didn’t do what you did, he’d have killed one of us, both of us.”
Will’s hand went to his side, to the burn scar. Norman had come close to killing him, and closer to killing Pete, on more than one occasion. That night when he’d taken a drunken swim, Will could’ve saved him, but he didn’t. And if he had to make the same choice again he would.
“I killed Norman Vessy. Then I committed fraud by taking his pension and unemployment cheques and cashing in his inheritance.”
“It would’ve come to me anyway. If you hadn’t taken it he’d have pissed it all away.” Pete’s voice broke, “We were kids, Will. What were we supposed to do?”
“We got away with it then, so maybe now I have to pay.”
“No, Will. No. You didn’t kill Norman, and you didn’t kill Feng. You can’t think like that. Will, look at me. You didn’t do this. The one who made this mess is that bitch, Darcy Campbell. This would never have happened without those pictures. She incited this. You were right all along to be so cautious.”
Will’s long-healed burn scar itched, and his broken ribs telegraphed an ache through his torso, but watching Pete struggle to accept the truth of this—that his brother might be a murderer twice over—was a greater agony. Pete’s fists were balled but his eyes were wet. He would fight this with everything he had, but it might be more than Will deserved.
On the creek bank it had suddenly fallen silent when Norman stopped splashing, when he stopped yelling. Will sat there for hours, never taking his eyes off the water, being eaten alive by the mossies, frightened it was a trick. Frightened the minute he relaxed Norman, like some creature from a horror movie, would spring back to life, bigger and stronger than ever. It was the night of his sixteenth birthday.
The night when Feng pulled a knife, he’d been almost ten years older, and he’d learned that once you put them down hard, monsters didn’t get up again. He’d hurt Feng. He’d stood over him to make sure he wasn’t getting up, and he’d left him on the street to fend for himself, just like he’d left Norman to drown.
It was the same thing. It was time to pay. Pete just hadn’t recognised it yet. He reached across the table and grasped Pete’s hand. It was too much to hope there was another way. It was too soon to tell him to let go.
“Make sure Bo is okay. He’ll need something to do. And leave Darcy alone. You’re not to go after her. Promise me.”
Pete glared at him. “Stop it. Right now stop it. You’re getting out. You’re getting your life back.”
Will nodded. It was too hard to fight Pete. A wave of exhaustion had cracked over his head. He felt like an old man. He needed to lie down. Pete was saying, “We’re getting you out, we’re getting you out,” over and over, but all Will understood was the sound of his hubris smacking him on the back of the head and laughing.
23. Accused
“It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.” — Confucius
The reporters, photographers and film crews hanging about outside twenty-seven Zhongshan Road were bored, hot and hostile to a newcomer, especially one who had no official press credentials.
Darcy was lucky it wasn’t a name tag required event. She knew she was better off looking like a random hopeful than being identified as part of the reason for all the hanging around.
There was no news about Will Parker’s kidnap, and no one from Parker Corp was talking. Will had been missing for ten days now and for every one of those days Darcy felt the weight of her own responsibility squeezing her like too tight shoes, hobbling her emotions with remorse, and crippling her intentions with doubt.
There was a direct line between the publication of Will’s pictures and his disappearance. He’d been paranoid about protecting his image for a reason, and as it turned out, that paranoia wasn’t so irrational. She’d effectively carved Will Parker’s reputation up, then served him to his kidnappers. It was worse than legally questionable, worse than ethically and morally reprehensible. It’d made her sick on the flight over and unable to sleep or look at herself in the mirror of her cheap hotel.
And if he died, and the betting was he was already dead, days ago—Darcy could barely begin to comprehend what that would do to her. Especially as she had unfinished personal business with Will Parker.
She stood in the hot sun, ignored the aggression and closed ranks of the existing press pack, and worried about how she was going to get inside to talk to Peter Parker.
