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CHAPTER ONE
WARWICK NOBLES TURNED the air conditioning up another notch and squinted through the windshield, letting his gaze drift out over the scrubby plains. Glare from the fierce sunlight reflected off the dry earth, almost blinding him, even through his sunglasses. The temperature gauge on the dash said it was already thirty-four degrees, and it was only nine am. The sandy ground ahead shimmered with heat, concocting mirages that turned the earth into water and the outback bushland into sky.
The dirt track was faint, winding around and between stands of acacia and saltbush, but he was almost there. A two-hour drive, and another two hours back to the lodge. That was four hours out of his busy day he couldn’t afford. But there was no one else to check on the water trough, so he had to suck it up. Wazza’s boss, Steve, had noticed the camera wasn’t working at trough number nineteen yesterday morning when he did his routine check, but the bore runner normally employed to check that all the bores were in top-notch working order was all the way out on the other side of the cattle station. Tad had called in this morning to say a broken bore pump had held him up, and he couldn’t make it to number nineteen, so Wazza had drawn the short straw. The water troughs scattered around the large, outback station were vital for the cattle’s survival during the extended heat of the dry season. It wasn’t a job that could be left until another day.
Normally, he would’ve made sure he had some tunes to keep him occupied on the long drive. But he’d left in such a hurry, he’d forgotten to download a playlist onto his phone. And there was no radio reception this far out. So Wazza was left with nothing but his own thoughts.
As usual, his mind wandered to contemplation of Karri and what might have been. What would he be doing now if Karri were still alive? Would they be playing happy family’s somewhere, together? Perhaps he’d have continued to work at Stormcloud, supporting Karri and the baby. She might’ve wanted to be a stay-at-home-mom. Or she might’ve wanted to keep working at Stormcloud, too. Either way, he would’ve been happy. She might’ve even returned to Koongarra Station, where the community of local Djungan indigenous people ran a successful pastoral lease. Bring up her daughter surrounded by her own culture, show her the ways of living on the land. It was less than an hour’s drive away from Stormcloud, on a neighboring property, and Wazza would’ve been happy moving there, as well. Or at least, that’s what he told himself.
All this could’ve been possible if she hadn’t been brutally murdered, taking their unborn child with her. Taking his daughter with her. Wazza still didn’t like to go back to that section of the creek, it reminded him of finding the body. He could still see her. A dark, amorphous lump caught at the edge of the fast-flowing stream. It wasn’t until he turned her over and saw her eyes, open and vacant, staring back at him, that he realized it was Karri. At least, Steve seemed to have worked out Wazza’s aversion to that area of the creek now, and always sent Dale or Julie if the cattle needed checking near that spot, for which Wazza was eternally grateful.
He shied away from the image of Karri, floating faceup in the water. Down that path lay darkness and misery. Instead, he let his mind return to the fantasy he’d created. He liked to think the baby would’ve been a girl. Karri was less than two months pregnant when she died, but Wazza still mourned her death. Mourned the death of what could’ve been. Would his little girl have been walking yet? She would’ve tuned one year old a few months ago. Hadn’t he heard kids started walking around their first birthday?
In his mind, he’d named her Ava. It was a nice name; sweet and innocent and wholesome. Would she have had dark hair, like his? Or a blonde tinge, like Karri’s? Would her skin have been dusky, inherited from her mother’s indigenous lineage? Eyes dark, or blue as the sky? The possibilities were endless.
Sometimes, he’d have quiet conversation with his little girl, usually while he was lying in his single dorm room, unable to sleep. They’d talk about silly things like the pretty pink-and-gray birds in the eucalyptus tree this morning, and how balloons frightened her, but not if they were purple. That always made him smile.
But it was all in his head. Sometimes he had to remind himself of that fact. Funny, it’d been nearly two years since Karri had passed, but in all that time, the solid stone of melancholy had sat heavy and cold in the pit of his stomach. He’d thought it might get easier as time rolled by, but so far, it hadn’t. Most of the time, he managed to keep his despondency hidden behind his smile and his Akubra hat. Few people understood how deeply Karri’s death had affected him. They’d only been seeing each other for three months, or so, when she died. And it’d been a mainly physical relationship; both in it for the fun and the sex. It wasn’t until after her murder, that he’d realized what he’d lost.
Perhaps it was time to move on. A change of scenery might do him good. His guts lurched as he thought about the email he’d sent yesterday, applying for the job at the Gondwana Pastoral Company. Was he doing the right thing? It would be a big change to his work as leading hand at Stormcloud, but perhaps that was what he needed to get him out of this funk.
Too late to contemplate that now. The watering point appeared through the glare across the windshield, and he slowed. Wazza stopped the four-wheel-drive next to the concrete trough. There were no cattle around, which was a little surprising. But the ground was churned up, covered with hoof prints, so they must’ve been here recently. He cut the engine and got out to stand next to the car, eyes searching the surrounding bushland. He always felt like a speck of dust in this vast land, totally alone and insignificant. The quiet of isolation was emphasized by the call of a single bird floating on the hot breeze high above. A flurry of flies encircled him, and he wished he’d brought the insect repellent; they were always worse out here where the cattle congregated.
Time to check the trough. He strode over and examined the long concrete gutter. It was full to the brim with sparkling water, and Wazza let out a relieved sigh. At least the cattle still had access to plenty of life-giving liquid. This watering point was fed from a bore over two kilometers away. Wazza gazed in the direction of the main bore, where a diesel pump ran twenty-four hours a day, keeping the storage tank full. But it was too far away to see much of anything, and he couldn’t even hear the faint hum of the pump that sometimes drifted over on the breeze. That particular bore fed three other watering points in this area. It was the reason they employed a full-time bore runner. The job of checking all the bores on this large station every other day kept Tad a busy man.
Looking up, he spied the little solar-powered camera mounted atop a metal pole, pointed at the trough. They used them to monitor stock health, to detect any leaks or problems with the water, as well as site security. It was state-of-the-art equipment, using satellite links to send a series of still photos back to Steve’s computer in the office.
Something was covering the camera. A piece of clothing, if he wasn’t mistaken. And it looked like it’d been draped there on purpose.
Wazza stepped onto the edge of the trough and reached up to drag the material off the camera. It was a light blue shirt, the type a woman might wear, and he crumpled it into a ball in his fist. His height made the job easy, but he wondered who had covered the camera, and why? Jumping down onto the ground, he bent his head to study the churned-up dust. There. A footprint amongst the cloven hooves of the cattle. He got down on one knee and studied it. The print was as clear as day, and it overlaid the cattle marks. Which meant it must’ve been made today. More footprints encircled the trough. Most of them were scuffed and muddled, but he could make out the shoe size. They were small, the size of a woman’s shoe, or a small man. He gazed at the shirt in his hand and then back at the shoe print. Something odd was going on here.
The bore runner hadn’t been out to this trough in three days. Who else would be out here, then? There was nothing for hundreds of kilometers around, besides cattle and flies. Wazza looked up, a puzzled frown creasing his brow, a sudden prickle of unease running down his spine. As he stood, he felt the back of his neck tingle, like he was being watched. He spun around in a full circle, but there was nothing to be seen. The area was mostly cleared, just a dry, dusty plain, with a few patches of acacia trees huddled together, and a couple of large bottle trees standing tall and aloof, their branches breaking up the unadulterated blue sky.
“Hello.” His voice sounded inadequate in the vast expanse of desert, so he drew a deep breath and called out again. “Hello. Is anyone out there?”
Nothing moved, and no one answered, but his feeling of disquiet grew.
Wazza sidled closer to the car. Should he call this in? There was a CB radio mounted on the dash. He could call someone at the lodge and let them know. But what would he tell them? That he had a feeling? They’d laugh him all the way back to the lodge.
As he stood next to his vehicle, pondering his next move, something moved in his peripheral vision. He whirled to face a figure emerging from behind a small stand of ironbark eucalyptus trees, around twenty meters away.
A woman regarded him warily. Dark eyes fixed on him, she balanced on the balls of her feet, as if one wrong move from him would send her running. She was petite; the top of her head wouldn’t even come to the middle of his chest. Wearing denim shorts and a slim-fitting T-shirt which exposed supple legs and graceful arms, her skin was the color of mocha. A long, dark braid fell over her shoulder, a few strands of limp hair, damp with sweat, hanging around her face.
“Hello,” he said again, raising his hands, palm forward to show he meant no harm. “My name is Warwick. I work for the owner of this property, Steve Williams. Who are you? And what are you doing out here?” he added as an afterthought.
She ignored him, gaze darting from his face to his vehicle and back again. He guessed she was assessing the risk he posed, because she still looked as if she might run at any second. What in hell was a young woman doing alone out here?
“Have you got any water?” she asked, in a tightly controlled voice.
Before he could answer, a child’s voice emanated from farther behind the woman, in a clump of wattle bushes. “Mummy. Is the man going to give us some water?”
Wazza leaned sideways so he could look around the woman. Sure enough, a little girl, perhaps three or four years old, was peering out from between two low branches, dark eyes full of hesitant watchfulness. She had the same mocha skin and soft features as her mother. Not just a woman on her own, but a woman and a small child. This was going from bewildering to all-out-crazy.
“I told you to stay hidden.” There was quiet exasperation in the woman’s voice.
“But I’m thirsty, Mummy.” Tears tracked down the little girl’s face.
“All right. Come here, then.” She held out her hand, and the girl ran to her mother’s side. The woman kept one eye on Wazza the whole time. She held the little girl’s hand tightly, tucking the child partway behind her legs and staying next to the tree, as if it could somehow shield them from harm, glaring at him suspiciously. It was only now he noticed the state of the woman’s clothes. They were filthy, as if she’d been wearing them for days, covered in dust and streaks of grease and red dirt. The same for the girl.
