Floored Read Free Page B

He’d have to risk calling it in. He took out his phone, and made the call.
    “I’ve had an accident.”
    “Didn’t you get a toilet training certificate before they sent you out?”
    “Fuck off, Stud.”
    Raucous laughter was followed by, “What do you need?”
    He said, “Towie,” gave the address and hung up.
    The dog guy and one of the other drivers helped him right the bike and drag it to the side of the road. Traffic started flowing around the other cars. He pulled his saddlebag off the bike and waited until the tow truck arrived. When they started to load it, he backed off. His knee was already stiffening up. He went down the street to a council bin, dropped his phone, crushed it under his heel, fished out the sim and pocketed it, and dumped the remains of the plastic.
    He kept walking. He needed a taxi. Nothing doing. It was 3pm, driver changeover time. He found another bin and dumped the sim card. Two streets over his luck changed again.

4: Luck
    He was a surgeon, famous for separating conjoined twins. Caitlyn would’ve been happy to drive him around for weeks. In a previous life: Before Justin—she’d have been happy to take him to lunch, dinner and breakfast the next morning. He was Indian, born in Madras, educated in London. He was handsome, with large dark eyes and milk coffee skin. He had a Daniel Craig accent and liked a good chat. It was his first trip to Australia. He was consulting on a case—another set of twins, joined at the spine. He was a cricket tragic and proud of it. And a practiced flirt, and it was hard not to give in to that.
    She’d picked him up at the airport and driven him to Westmead Children’s Hospital. Someone else would get the gig to drive him anywhere else he needed to go. The job had been an extra, on top of providing transport for minor celebrities to and from a movie premier and a nightclub into the small hours of the morning. She’d had about four hours sleep and was feeling every missed moment in her gritty eyes and stiff neck. Parked in the hospital’s drive after the wonder surgeon disappeared inside, she dropped her head into the headrest and closed her eyes. Five minutes, if she could just sit here quietly for five minutes.
    The back door went thunk, and she opened her eyes to see Grizzly Adams slide into the back seat. “I’m not a taxi.”
    He leaned between the seats and slapped a fist full of cash on the console. “A thousand bucks says you are.”
    He’d been in some kind of an accident, or more likely a fight; his cheek was grazed and bloody. She looked at the money. She saw a bathmat and new curtains, a rug for the bedroom floor. He was a passenger like anyone else, even if he looked like his job was to officially frighten small children. She could only really see his scratched up face in the rear-view mirror, tucked in between a lot of hair and sunglasses. God knows what the rest of him looked like.
    “Where to?”
    He wanted to go to three suburban addresses, two close by, and one further afield, and for her to wait at each. Then he wanted to be dropped off at home. Simple. She checked the addresses on her GPS and headed out.
    Unlike Dr Wonderful, Grizzly wasn’t talkative. Unlike Dr Wonderful he didn’t inspire lust-filled musings. He sat slumped in the back seat, head turned to watch out the window. The first stop was a house in a quiet street. Front lawn needed a good mow and a coat of paint would’ve done wonders for it. She parked, and he got out and went to the front door. He carried a saddlebag over his shoulder, and he limped, favouring his left leg. When he disappeared inside she closed her eyes. There was no way to know how long he’d be. He hadn’t said a word after giving her the addresses. She could’ve asked, but there was something about him that made her want to limit contact. She pulled her hat down further over her eyes and smiled. This was a take the money and run situation if ever she’d seen one.
    Caitlyn sighed audibly