Page 9 of Lethal Abduction

All I wanted was to travel and paint. And neither of those looked anything like a life plan to my parents.

They refused to pay for art college, and if I’m honest, I didn’t really expect them to. They didn’t see the point in me setting off to travel with no clear plan of what I wanted to do afterward, and I didn’t have the words to explain to them how I felt. All I knew back then was that the world beyond Australia felt like an endless palette of vivid color, while staying in Leetham was like choosing to sketch in gray pencil for the rest of my life. My parents’ home felt stifling, a trap I needed to leave immediately or submit to forever. The need to escape it was urgent, visceral.

And despite all the disasters which followed my decision to leave home, the world beyond Leetham really was far bigger than even I could have imagined. It altered my perspective. The years away painted my internal landscape in new colors, created a portrait of a much different Abby. The years changed me so much that I began to wonder if perhaps my problem with Leetham had been one of perspective, rather than Leetham itself.

Maybe, I’d thought, if I went back to normal life, I would become the masterpiece I went away to find in the first place.

Now that I’m back, I’ve realized that thenormal lifeI’d begun to idealize is no more my life now than it ever was. It provided a foundation I will always be grateful for. But it’s like a sketch, only the bare outlines of who I am.

After three months of being home I still don’t know what my masterpiece is supposed to look like. I don’t know what to leave in my self-portrait and what to leave behind. And I don’t know who belongs in the picture with me.

I have to give Dimitry an answer, and I have no fucking idea what to tell him.

The bar door swings open, bringing a gust of hot, dry wind in with it. I look up and feel the sudden, icy rush of fear that I thought I’d left behind long ago.

Two of the three bikers walking toward the bar are huge, bearded, and covered in tattoos. The third one is a good decade younger than the other two, with a narrow face and hard eyes. All wear black leather jackets emblazoned with the wordBanderos, in red on a white background.

It isn’t just their riding leathers that give them away as bikers. I know who they are because it’s the third day they’ve come here.

One night, I can understand. Two, if they had a mechanical issue or needed a rest.

But three nights in Leetham, with no good reason, makes me nervous.

I force a smile as they approach the bar. “Hey, boys. What can I get for you?”

“Three rum and cokes, thanks, love.”

Is his smile a little too friendly? Are his eyes a bit too sharp?

I mix the drinks with my back turned, keeping a close eye on them in the mirror.

Are they staring at me or just at the bottles on the bar?

I turn back and hand over the drinks. The three men pay and take a seat in the far corner, where they sit with their backs to the wall—and with a direct line of sight to me.

I turn away to serve the backpackers, trying to still my thudding heart.

Will this feeling ever go away?

I thought that leaving Dimitry would be the end of feeling like this. Of looking for guns under every table, of scanning every figure for possible danger. Sometimes I still think that if I just hide away in Leetham for long enough, I will relax and stop thinking that death hides behind every hard face that walks in. Or at least, start to believe that the hard faces aren’t looking for me.

Instead, I’m starting to realize the fear isn’t going anywhere.

The truth is I’ll never be able to outrun the people who want me dead. The shadows will always chase me.

That has nothing to do with Dimitry, or Roman Borovsky. It never did.

Deep down, I always knew that. Just like I always knew I’d be looking over my shoulder.

It’s one of the reasons I never came home before. I didn’t want to risk bringing that kind of darkness into my parent’s sweet, wholesome world.

Not because I want their approval. I gave up long ago hoping that my parents’ conservative farming hearts would ever approve of their art-loving, bohemian daughter. But because no matter how different we might be, Peter and Susan Chalmers are good people, and they’re still my parents. They might always prefer my brother, James, who went to agricultural college and returned straight afterward to help Dad with the farm, before going on to marry Belinda, a perfect girl from an even bigger farm than ours. But preferring James doesn’t mean my parents didn’t love me. I knowthey did. And hard as these past months have been, I know they still do.

I also know they don’t trust me.

And given the fact that I still jump every time a shadow moves the wrong way, I can’t really blame them.

I sneak another glance at the bikies in the corner. One of them has his phone up, camera pointed in my direction. I quickly turn away.

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