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his apparent meekness inflating them with false feelings of superiority and security that could be used against them. In many ways Ed could still be mistaken for the pale, bespectacled kid who had been knuckle-bait every lunch hour in school, the wimpy boy with no friends, no pocket money, no clean clothes. But that was a deception. Ed had since found his power, and he was eager to regain the freedom to exercise it.
    Stevens flicked the TV on for him. It faced Ed’s cell from the safety of the prison corridor.
    ‘Thank you so very much. I do so appreciate it.’
    As was his routine, Ed would go to sleep after watching the news and the daytime TV shows, his last bit of homework for the day. ‘I don’t know how you can watch that shit,’ Stevens had once said. Ed had only smiled in response.
    Put your stilettos on, Makedde.
    I’m coming for you…

CHAPTER 5
    Makedde sat straight up, jolted awake by a nightmare that faded as soon as she opened her eyes. Her heart pounded like a hammer in her chest.
    What…?
    Oh yes…you are safe…Sydney hotel room, courtesy of the Crown. You closed your eyes for a moment, that’s all , she recalled. Another nightmare. Should she enter it in her book? For over a year Mak had used a small notebook, a dream diary of sorts, to try to keep track of her strange nightmares and broken sleeping patterns. She had suffered from insomnia after the events of the last Sydney trip, and back in Vancouver, Dr Ann Morgan, now her father’s girlfriend, had used Makedde’s notes to help her decipher some of those nightmares. One rather telling dream revolved around Mak wearing her father’s uniform and watching helplessly as Ed Brown killed her mother in the same fashion he had almost killed Mak herself—with a scalpel.
    This time Makedde couldn’t remember her dream so she simply entered the date and the word ‘Nightmare?’ in her notebook. Her jaw ached andshe felt an unhappy twinge in her neck. She had probably been grinding her teeth during her doze. After the stress of the past two years it was amazing she had any canines left at all. Mak stretched her sore jaw muscles, opening and closing her mouth in a series of painful yawns. She rolled across the unfamiliar bed in search of a clock, the tangled hotel sheets wrapping her weary limbs like a shroud.
    You’ve got to get yourself up, girl.
    Mak planned to have a quick stroll around the city to stretch her legs and acclimatise herself before her seven o’clock date with some of the prosecution team. She was dreading it, picturing it in her imagination as some kind of ‘Welcome to Sydney where your Worst Nightmares Come True’ dinner. Will Andy be there? Do I care? She untangled herself from the sheets—her T-shirt seemed to have put itself on backwards—and rolled the rest of the way over to the bedside table. The glowing red digits of the hotel clock were bad news: 6.01 p.m. You’ve got to be kidding! She’d passed out for at least five hours. So much for the stroll. So much for getting a decent sleep tonight. She had just enough time to bathe and change, and try to snap herself out of her malaise before facing the team in charge of Catherine’s post-mortem justice.
    That’s it, Mak. You have nothing to do now except take the witness stand. There is nothing left to focus on. Just this trial. Just him. Facing HIM in that big bloody courtroom.
    Facing Ed Brown and being forced to recall every last painful detail of the things he had doneto her would be hard, she knew, but getting the guilty verdict that would lock him up forever should be a given, shouldn’t it? It’s not as if there were any question of Ed Brown’s guilt. After all, he had been caught red-handed during his attack on her. Both Andy and his police partner, Jimmy Cassimatis, had walked in on the scene. Andy shot Ed right then and there, though not accurately enough for Mak’s liking. A criminal could hardly be guiltier than that. How would his defence team even