.

we call them takeaways not takeouts. Now tell me why this wasn’t our girl?”

      “She wouldn’t have vandalised anything Pete, perhaps breaking a lock to get in would be all, but she doesn’t want anyone to know where she is. So why would she draw attention to herself by damaging her hideout? Besides, the vandalism began before she came onto the scene.”

      “She could have done it to make it look like the vandals.”

      “No. She’s smarter than even she thinks she is. If she’d seen the damage she wouldn’t have felt safe enough to stay here in the first place – she would have moved on.”

      “Ah, the other caravan park you circled on the other map?”

      “Yep. There, the Asian takeout, takeaway,” he pointed. “Damn it, they didn’t wait.”

      Pete parked in front of the little restaurant and Barnes raced inside. Happily he noticed the boxes of supplies piled on tables in the restaurant. He apologised profusely to the little man waiting in the kitchen doorway, the small face of a child peering around his legs. The owner confirmed what he reported on the phone this morning. Someone had broken in through the back door, and after stealing or consuming almost every morsel of food, had cleaned up afterward. The only food left were the top leaves of a celery stalk sitting beside the fridges, the teeth marks evident on the stalk. Barnes deposited the celery into a small plastic bag. He apologised again and walked out the front door, trailed by Pete who had remained totally silent during the five minutes in the shop.

      “You’re excited boss. You think it was her?”

      Barnes ignored him and walked around to the rear of the shops. He walked over to the dumpsters. Underneath a bag of garbage, he found yesterday’s newspaper on top of a carrot bag full of crushed cans, food remains and two flattened milk cartons. He extracted an onion with a single bite mark and left the remainder. The onion followed the celery stalk into its own little plastic bag.

      “What are we doing boss.”

      “She was here Pete, she was here. She found the newspaper here too with the headline article about her, and that’s what made her ring last night looking for me. I had them trace this mornings phone call but I forgot to ask about the one last night. I bet it came from around here somewhere.”

      “How can you know that? It looks to me like someone just stocked their pantry, larder.”

      “They didn’t, she didn’t, she ate it all on the spot. Look at the onion man, how famished must she have been to bite into that?”

      “Still doesn’t mean it was her.”

      “No matter, c’mon, let’s get to the next trailer park.”

      “Van park, caravan park we call ‘em.”

      The Manager of this park was a nonchalant fellow, and drawled in an accent that Barnes could almost equate to the mid-west back home. The major difference was Barnes could have understood someone from the mid-west. He gathered enough of the gist from the man’s painfully slow observations to recognise that it had to be Vivienne. His excitement grew by the minute with each new discovery. The Manager stood aside after showing them the van in question, a broken lock the only visible damage.

      “Okay, now I’m beginning to see the connection. She’s neat, like a good housewife would be expected to be. She even made the bed. And you see over the vacant lot there,” Pete pointed, “is the Franklins store she escaped from.”

      “She never slept in the bed,” Barnes stated matter of factly, and he knew without looking where the shopping centre was. He’d already made a mental note from the map back in the pantech at Police Headquarters, dismissing it at the time. He was certain the Police search would have included such an obvious location, even though it was not documented in the report. “She slept on the floor.”

      Pete looked at him sceptically. “I know you know that boss, but why would she do it when there’s a perfectly good bed to sleep on right beside her, and how can you be so goddammed sure that’s what she did?”

      “I just know Pete, trust me, I know. Drive me past the other trailer park on the way back to the truck will you? I want to see if it fits her comfort zone. Then I need to do some analysis on the food from the takeout.”

      “You gonna make veggie soup with it? I’m famished. You eaten?”

      “You, we can grab a burger on the way back to the truck. Or you’ll have plenty of time afterward – before the stakeout.”

      Chapter 16

      “Nightmare”

      The brightly lit ceiling flared and made it difficult to see. The smell was antiseptic, strong antiseptic, and it too hurt her eyes. She squinted and tried to turn her head. She now felt and recognised motion from features that passed by against similarly brightly lit walls. Glistening stainless steel water fountains, lowset sinks, blindingly white uniforms, lots of voices, close, talking low, the almost constant orders barked from overhead speakers, the chirp as the p.a. system cut in and off, and the swing of IV lines.

      “I’m not sick,” she yelled but couldn’t hear her own voice except as screams inside her head. She strained to look at her body, the swelling of her small breasts inside the green hospital smock, almost the same size before she’d had Tricia. She closed her eyes but the bright light remained painful even behind screwed up eyelids. When she opened them again, her breasts were like mountains tinged by sunset. A light seemed to emanate from her torso. It radiated and enriched everything it touched with a soft glow that was much more preferable to the loud hallway fluorescents. An IV line swung into sight. The clear tube suffused with the bright rainbow colours from her torso, then it swung away again to blandness. It came into view again and she lifted her arm to see where it entered, to ensure it was the rainbow she absorbed, not the bland. Her arm wouldn’t move more than a few inches and she frowned, trying again to lift her head to see why.

      A voice, distinct finally, came from in front of her, above her. A voice that was piloting the gurney on which she lay, the voice of control, not the p.a. voice, not one of the creeping minions of voices that suffused across the abhorrently bright corridor. It was the voice in charge.

      “Lay still Mrs Curtis. The Doctors are waiting. Everything is going to be alright.”

      Vivienne screamed the scream where no sound passed her lips, her arms and legs immoveable, restrained, her head almost as secure. The gurney bowled along the never-ending hallway of bright light and unsourced voices. In panic she managed to bend her knees slightly and raise her torso, her neck straining the bond across her forehead as she strove to see her surrounds. The pent up scream finally escaped her enraged mouth in a long and intense howl that shattered the lighting for twenty feet. The scream failed, dying with her breath, followed by a golden silence that was reverent, as supernatural in its suddenness as the hallway had been long and severe in its illumination.

      She sat up on the now stationary gurney, alone. The golden glow continued to emanate like diffused torch light from her lower belly, painting everything in its reach with the flecked sparkle of firelight. There were no restraints, no straps, no marks on her wrists or ankles, no IV bottles or tubes, no needles in her arms. Yet the hallway stretched off into an infinite darkness in front and behind her.

      The glow from her belly strengthened, stretching her smock like an instant pregnancy, then burst, ruptured from her belly in a torrent of flaming red and yellow flares. Her second unrelenting scream and pain filled writhing shattered the silence and brought her instantly back to consciousness.

      And