Keeping Thyme (Thyme Trilogy) Read online

  Copyright © TJ Hamilton 2014

  First published May 2014

  The right of TJ Hamilton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000

  This work is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the author. Only exception being when quoting directly from the book.

  Cover design: Buying Ham Productions

  ISBN 13: 9781311118042

  Keeping Thyme,

  TJ Hamilton

  Fiction – Romance/Mystery/Espionage

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters and identities are the products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Only the locations are real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is strictly coincidental.

  Except the original material written by the author, all songs, song titles and lyrics contained within this book are the property of the respective songwriters and copyright holders.

  Please note: The spelling in this book is Australian English

  The content of this book is graphic with strong sex scenes and language. It is for an adult audience only.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I always struggle making sure I thank everyone I need to in acknowledgements. There is a whole team of support that goes on behind the scenes in TJ’s world.

  Every person within my life helps these stories come out. My husband scarifies his weekends off, to run the kids around to the weekend sport, birthday parties etc, just so mummy can write. He’s also had to cook dinner, bath the baby and tuck them in to bed, just so that I can pursue a dream. When my mum sees my hair hasn’t been brushed for days or there are a couple of flies buzzing around me, she always offers to have the little ones over. There are no words for this kind of support, it just makes it all work.

  My editor Lauren McKellar, who I very aptly coin Lauren McStellar, is the most loyal and ridiculously witty editor. I love her ability to make dull things shine. I’m pretty certain she is a contortionist the way she bends over for me. She delivers a gem every time I give her a diamond in the rough. This book would not have even been here without her. I am eternally grateful for her skill and tenacity.

  The readers are the driving force behind these books. People may go on about how much they love their readers, listeners, fans, but you will never truly comprehend the value you have on these people when you start a journey like story telling. A message, review or simple ‘like’ on Facebook bring so much satisfaction and keeps you going when you sometimes question yourself.

  I hope you have enjoyed these characters as much as I’ve loved writing their story.

  If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.

  -Orson Welles

  CHAPTER ONE

  Exactly six hundred and sixty minutes ago my life changed forever. Six hundred and sixty minutes ago I saw the love of my life lying, as cold as stone, on a steel table in a morgue.

  Everything is different now. I breathe different air. It now smells rotten, and life tastes sour. For seventy-three minutes now I’ve lain on my bed, staring at a mark on the outside of my seventy-second floor window, unsuccessfully willing it to move.

  My faithful feline friend, Flossy, has come to see if I’m still alive twenty-six times. Her little wet nose sniffs my cheek until I say her name, then she leaves me alone before she does it again forty minutes later. For two hundred and thirteen minutes I cried. The first hundred minutes I cried without sound, then the next hundred and thirteen minutes I made a crying sound without tears. For fifty-four minutes, I forced myself to eat four Oreo cookies, and I’ve now listened to the same four-minute song on repeat one hundred and fifty-four times … make that now one hundred and fifty-five times.

  I don’t know how to pull myself out of this, but I have to soon. I have a job to do: I have to find out what Joe Tench is doing. Whatever it is, it must be bad enough to kill my friend when she found out, and have the Organised Crime Taskforce Unit on his tail with their best operative in charge of it. Or, their best operative was in charge of it, until he died during a training exercise. That alone seems incomprehensible. It’s like when Steve Irwin died. He wrestled crocodiles for fuck’s sake, only to have a stingray kill him? There’s just something wrong about that whole ironic scenario. People like Nick Davis didn’t die in training exercises. He’d been in far more dangerous situations than that.

  The three loud thuds on my front door send me into a downward spiral of questions. Who would that be? Only the agency knows where I am. I told the Commander of OCT-U that I would disappear if someone came to me, and not the other way around. So why is there someone at my door now?

  I peel myself from the bed and make my way to the front door. Inhaling the nauseating air around me, I close my eyes and count to three before I peek through the peephole, trying not to lose control of my temper that is wildly teetering on the edge. I immediately recognise Liz Donohue on the other side of the door. Why is she here? I stand motionless for a few more seconds, contemplating whether to just ignore it altogether.

  “Open the door Mia. I know you’re in there. You have a tracking device in your leg, remember?”

  Fuck! She’s right. I almost forgot about that. Those fucking assholes! I unlock the door and fling it open to give Liz a mouthful of my anger, but as soon as I do she shoves a bottle of vodka at my chest and walks straight past me without saying a single word. Surprised by her actions, I turn and watch as she storms into my apartment and notice that she’s dragging a baseball bat behind her. Something tells me she means business. Without hesitation, she brings the bat behind her and swings it straight at the mirror above my hall table. I flinch as the mirror shatters and the fragments of glass fly through the air around her. She hurtles the bat once again towards the remaining glass until there is nothing but a frame left on the wall.

  Liz looks down at the mirror shards at her feet and raises the bat above her head again before smashing it down on the ground repeatedly, destroying what pieces were left. She heads straight for my stereo and brings the baseball bat down onto it, as if she’s chopping a piece of wood. Laura, the song that meant so much to me for the past eleven hours, ceases immediately as Liz continues hacking at the device. She doesn’t so much as look at me when she finishes and makes her way to the bathroom to repeat the same crazed assault on my bathroom mirror. Each blow brings a more noticeable insidious look upon her face. She turns to me as she storms out of the bathroom and breathes a subtle two-worded sentence as she passes.

  “One left.” Her eyes dart toward my bedroom.

  The mirror at the entrance to my closet is Liz’s final target and she unleashes the same vigour upon it, smashing every last piece until it no longer resembles any reflective surface at all.

  “There’s something therapeutic about smashing the shit out of things.” She smiles maniacally. “Here, you wanna have a go? Might do you some good?”

  I’m unusually lost for words, staring blankly at her with the bottle of vodka still clutched to my chest.

  “Let’s just smash all the mirrors,” she says as she throws me the bat and reaches for the bottle firmly gripped within my hands.

  The wicked gleam in her eye causes a spontaneous chuckle to seep from my pursed lips as I snatch the baseball bat. Liz shoves me out of the bedroom and before I register exactly what’s happening, I’m swinging the bat, full-pelt towards the mirror in the second bathroom. Once that mirror is disintegrated, I head to the spare bedroom and begin blasting the mirror at the end of the be
d, finally taking the last of my vicious swings out at the flat-screen TV in the lounge room. There’s one last mirror that I need to smash, to smash away a memory: the mirror that’s already cracked in the foyer. I need to get rid of the mirror that Nick and I cracked when we were about to have sex for the first time … before he walked away from me.

  I fling the front door open and take out that mirror with more anger than I had for the others. I bring the bat down on it over and over and over until I feel Liz’s hand on my shoulder.

  “I think you got that one, Mi.” Liz’s voice startles me from my outburst of total madness. I stare with bewilderment at her for a moment, which quickly morphs into fits of uncontrollable laughter. My laughter is contagious and Liz snorts as she giggles at me.

  I drop the bat on the floor and double over. The pain from it is too much. Every time I look back up at Liz and our eyes meet, the crazy-woman snorting-laughter spills out with yet another spate of rumbling giggles from the both of us. Eventually, we exhale with loud aaaaahs as our bodies wind down from the ridiculous outburst.

  “Right. Let’s get drunk!” Liz demands.

  We both sit on the couch and stare out of the huge windows in front of us as Liz pours the straight vodka over the ice-filled glasses each time they empty. Finally, I feel the effects of the alcohol and find the words that I was missing for so long.

  “Were those bugs always in here? Nick told me I found all of them … Oh … Nick …” My voice cracks.

  When I say Nick’s name out loud, the thought of him not actually being here anymore brings tears to the bottom of my eyes and I splutter my next drunken breath. Maybe talking wasn’t such a good idea. I suck the tears back as I suck the reality of the situation to the back of my mind. Liz takes another sip from her glass of vodka and lets out a puff of air.

  “No, they weren’t in here before. The agency put more in while you were at the morgue ... with Nick. I can’t stand it, Mi. They’re not treating you like you’re part of the team, and I won’t have it. Nick wouldn’t have allowed it if he was still here …” Liz’s eyes fill with the same salty sadness as mine. “I’m going to miss him so much Mia. I still can’t believe he’s gone. It doesn’t feel right. I loved him like a brother. I hated the hell out of him most of the time, but for the last seven years of my life I’ve had him in it. I honestly don’t know what to do now. The boss has put me in charge of the operation …” Liz takes a solid gulp from her glass again before she continues, “… and it’s what I’ve always wanted. Now I have it … but it’s only because Davis bloody died on me. What a prick.” She buries her head in her hands and her shoulders shake as she lets out gentle sobs.

  My eyes fill with tears again as I move next to Liz and put my arm around her. I never really thought how Nick’s death would be affecting Liz. Selfishly, the thought never crossed my mind. Liz’s red, tear-soaked eyes look straight through me as she looks up.

  “Mia. You have to finish what Nick started. You don’t understand how good you are. You know, it has taken me eleven years to get where I am in the agency. First Nick came along and within a year, he was where I had tried to get for over four years. And you have now done it in less than a month! Nick saw something in you, and he was bang on the money. But you can do a lot more than these men would ever give you credit for. Trust me! I know. I’ve had to work my ass off to get just a fraction of the clearance and access that you have got, so exploit it! Exploit these men for the stupid species that they are! Find out everything there is to know about Joe Tench and then get the fuck away from this life.” She stares into the emptying glass of vodka and shakes the ice inside, “Don’t end up like me, Mia. I have nothing but my work. No love, no man, just working to satisfy a boss who pays very little attention to women.”

  I smile and squeeze Liz. “I couldn’t have said it better myself. Except for the part about having nothing. You have me, mate. We can do this together. Let’s show those assholes that two chicks can do more than the whole agency combined.” I pause for thought, and imagine the possibilities, “I want my only contact with the agency to be through you. You can deal with the boss, but I refuse to. I’m not doing this for them. I’m doing this for me, then I want to get the hell out of this life, and I need your help to get me there. We can do this, Liz … Get me every bit of information you have on Tench. Is the apartment next door to here still vacant?”

  Liz nods, blinking her tears away.

  “Good. We’ll use that as our forward operating base. I need you to get my firearm, too … and any other arsenal, for that matter. And I need plenty of bugs. We are going to do this properly and take Tench down forever.”

  A smile finally surfaces across Liz’s strong features. “Shit you’re good, Mia. I’ll be onto all of that for you tomorrow. We can do this.” She raises her glass towards me. “Here’s to finishing what Nick Davis started.” The pair of us drunkenly clang our glasses together.

  I try not to cry after our empowering speeches, but the grief in my heart feels so heavy. I scull the straight vodka and pray that it clouds my emotions for a bit longer. I’ve got to do this for Nick.

  The morning’s harsh sunlight feels like it’s burning a hole straight through my vacant heart. The wild drinking the night before has done little to help me escape the fact that Nick is still dead. As my mind slowly adapts to the waking world again, I realise that no amount of alcohol will change this.

  I squint at the bright sunlight upon my window but I can’t move my head yet. My mouth feels like something ghastly has crawled into it and died within the two hours that I have been passed out on my bed. As I move my mouth to swallow I feel the dampness around my cheek from where I have been drooling in my heavy unconsciousness. What a beast!

  I hear the muffled sound of talking out in the kitchen of my apartment. Who is here with Liz? I close my eyes again and focus on the voices. I can faintly hear a man’s voice with Liz … Nick?

  I launch myself from the bed and shake my head to rid the pounding. I knew it! It wasn’t real. It couldn’t have been. Nick is still alive!

  I launch out of the bedroom and stagger towards the kitchen. My heart is playing a vicious rhythm in my chest and my head pulses with each beat.

  I fall through the kitchen’s entrance and into the strong arms of my brother, Simon. He grips onto me tightly and the weight of grief crashes into my body again like a freight train. My legs give out and I succumb to the urge to cry. I shake and sob as I beg aloud, over and over, for my wish to come true. I just want Nick to come through my front door and tell me it’s all a lie. Simon’s strong embrace only makes me miss Nick more and I cry out, “Why Simon? Why did this have to happen?”

  I can’t bring myself to stand and Simon holds me up in his arms.

  “I don’t know what to say, sissy. I wish I could take your pain away for you.” He walks me out of the kitchen and towards the couch in the lounge room.

  “You can take my pain away, Simon. You can tell me this is all a big mistake and find Nick alive for me. I don’t believe he’s gone. I won’t believe it. I can’t …” I bury my head back into Simon’s chest and wail loudly. My mucus membranes open as liquid leaks from everywhere.

  Simon strokes my hair and holds me tight. I just wish there was a way to change this. Why couldn’t the agency stop this from happening? He was my love. I loved him and now he’s gone. They took him from me.

  “Mia. You’re going to have to pull yourself together,” Simon gently coaxes. “Liz has been telling me about your next steps. You know what to do now, so do it.”

  I look up from his chest and study his expression. I know my twin better than anyone. Why isn’t he mentioning anything about Nick? Is it because he’s still alive? Simon’s mouth curves into a sympathetic smile.

  “What about Nick?” I whisper.

  I feel Simon’s frame expand around me as he heaves a sigh. “You will have plenty of time to grieve once you finish this operation. I was just telling Liz that I will take you to one of o
ur safe-houses in Seychelles. There are only a few of us in the world who have access to it. You can spend your days crying there. I will be with you. It’s very beautiful.” Simon sells his idea to comfort me.

  I can’t help but smile at his effort. “That sounds nice. But I’ll still have trouble believing that Nick is really gone.”

  Simon’s frown returns. “It’s hard for me to believe too, sis. It’s hard for anyone to come to terms with death. But it’s real. What further proof do you need other than his dead body? You have to just accept this Mia.”

  I can hear frustration building in my brother’s voice. I look down again. Why can’t I accept this and just move on like he says? Will I ever get over this? It feels harder to deal with than my father’s death was. Maybe that was easier to deal with because I was young when my father died. Being older and a similar age to Nick, I can’t imagine my life without him in it. We had our whole future ahead of us. How am I ever going to get over that?

  Liz gets up and clears her throat. My reeling is thankfully interrupted. “Mi. I’m going back to HQ to get everything we need to keep going with this.” She stares at me, waiting for my response.

  I wipe the back of my hand across my puffy cheek and nod. “You’re right, Liz. Let’s get on with it. The show must go on.” I feel the corner of my lips stretch out, but it’s not a real smile. I don’t know if I’ll ever really smile again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  When both Simon and Liz have finally left me alone, my annoying intrigue fails to subside so I make my way across the main foyer to the adjacent apartment. I’ve wanted to see what was in there for so long. I pause for a moment as I twist the handle and hear the latch unlock. Holding the door ajar, I wonder if there could be anyone in there. Why would it be unlocked?