Page 64 of Whispers of Sweetwater

Hayden muttered, ‘Bloody hell.’

Brianna opened another file, an audio clip this time.

Jack’s voice again, hurried. ‘If anything happens to me, if I go missing, or worse, someone was likely behind it, and someone needs to look here to find out who it was. They need to know who’s pulling the strings. Not just Len, or even Craig. There’s someone else. Someone bigger. She’s …’ No name sounded; instead there was an intense static.

Brianna replayed it, but the static remained.

Sherlock let out a low growl, as if echoing the tension.

Hayden stared at the laptop screen with his jaw clenched tight.

Brianna clicked open another document. An expense ledger, peppered with dates, transaction IDs, and names coded with initials. One entry read simply CD / drop, $4,000, Cane fire. Another, LD / tune & hush, $1,200. And more, stretching back years. Enough to make a case – if you knew what you were looking at, and looking for.

‘This ties Craig and Len together financially,’ Brianna said, her voice barely above a whisper. ‘Whatever this is, it’s organised. It’s layered.’

Another video loaded. This one was darker. The resolution was poor, but it showed what looked like a shed interior, somewhere rural.

A man offscreen asked, ‘Are we cleaning this one up the same as the last?’ It sounded like Craig, but they couldn’t be sure.

Another male voice replied, ‘No trace, you got that. Because if he talks, we all go down.’

Molly’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘That voice, I can’t be sure, but I think it was Joe.’

Hayden felt the air squeeze out of his lungs as they sat in stunned silence. Jack had tried to catalogue the network. Not just to protect himself, or Molly, but maybe to bring them down.

Brianna closed the folder. ‘We have to be careful. We can’t just hand this over to the police, not until we know who’s involved and who’s watching, unless …’ She hesitated, then added, ‘My dad’s a sergeant over in Huntingvale. He’s straight. Tough. The kind who’d burn his own station down if he found rot inside it.’

Molly looked up, startled. ‘You never mentioned your dad was a police officer.’

Brianna shrugged. ‘Didn’t seem relevant, until now. If you wanted, I could show him this. Quietly. He wouldn’t involve anyone local unless he was sure it was safe.’

Molly pressed her lips together, visibly torn, and after a long beat, she said, ‘Hayden, your thoughts?’

Hayden exhaled through his nose with his eyes still fixed on the frozen video frame. ‘I think we give it another twenty-four hours. See what shakes loose. This thing, I reckon it’s deeper than we realised. If Jack was right, and someone’s still watching, we need to tread really careful.’ He finally looked at Brianna, then Molly. ‘If nothing new surfaces by tomorrow, we take it to your dad, Bri. But only if we’re sure it won’t put him, or anyone else, in the firing line.’

Brianna nodded slowly. ‘All right. One more day. But we stay sharp.’

Molly murmured, ‘We’re in this now, aren’t we?’

Hayden’s jaw tightened. ‘We always were.’

CHAPTER 17

Brianna stood barefoot on the front verandah, her fresh cup of coffee warming her hands and Sherlock sprawled lazily at her feet. The sun was barely up, casting long shadows across her tropical backyard. Everything was still, deceptively calm. But her mind refused to follow suit. Her thoughts darted like startled birds. There were way too many what-ifs, way too many unanswered questions. She kept seeing Jack’s note in her mind’s eye, the words Cane Fire flashing like a warning light she couldn’t shut off. How deep did this thing run? Who else was involved? And why did she feel like they were all on borrowed time? Even the peace of a country morning couldn’t calm the feeling crawling under her skin, that something was about to break open.

Trying to sway her mind to something calmer, something normal, she thought back to her patients the afternoon before. She’d driven from one callout to another, her body on autopilot. There’d been a calf with a torn dewclaw. An old dog overdue for vaccines. A goat that wouldn’t stop limping. This morning would be no different. She had two more callouts – an abscess on a station mare’s flank, and an elderly cattle dog with arthritis acting worse than usual. She’d reshuffled everything else.

She caught herself glancing towards the edges of her yard, half expecting movement in the shadows. The weight of everything was pressing harder now. And not just because of what they’d uncovered, but the implications of it. Even though her work gave her a sense of accomplishment, of giving back to the world, every familiar task had felt surreal under the pressure of what she now knew. That Jack hadn’t just been in over his head. He’d been hunted.

Her mind trailed to Hayden. To how he looked in the early-morning light when he’d slept on her couch, hair tousled, sleeves rolled, muscles shifting beneath a shirt that never quite hid what it needed to. And she knew she shouldn’t be thinking about him like that, not now, not with everything else going on. But she couldn’t help it. He was steady. Kind. Protective in a way that wasn’t overbearing, instinctive in a way that fascinated her. He was a man her father would be proud to call his son-in-law. That was for sure. The thought made her heart clench. She was getting way beyond herself, and reality.

The sound of footfalls pulled her from her reverie. Molly’s soft tread on the old timber floors, approaching from inside the cottage. Then the flyscreen door squeaked as she stepped out and joined her, a steaming mug of tea in hand.

‘Morning, Molly.’ Brianna glanced at her. ‘You sleep?’

‘Morning, Bri. A few hours, if that.’ She offered a tiny smile. ‘You?’

‘Barely slept a wink. My head won’t shut up long enough for me to rest.’