Rainbow Fire

by Emilie Richards

  ALL KELSEY'S THOUGHTS of pride and pizza were forgotten. "Tried to kill you?"

  "It's a distinct possibility."

  "Why haven't you mentioned that before?"

  Dillon leaned back in his chair and toyed with his beer. "To be honest, it didn't occur to me."

  "Occur to you to mention it."

  "Occur to me that someone was trying to kill me."

  "Sort of a relaxed attitude, wouldn't you say?"

  He shrugged. "I was on my way home from the Rainbow Fire four days ago. Jake was feeling crook, so he'd taken my ute home earlier. The engine on his was missing badly, so I'd told him I would drive it back. I'm a better mechanic than he is."

  Kelsey hadn't thought that her father might have transportation of his own. "Where is it now?"

  "Jake's ute's as old as this continent, and with more problems. I drove it to the mechanic this morning before I came to get you. He'll need it when he comes back."

  If he comes back, she amended silently. "Go on."

  "We'd had some rain." He stopped, a glimmer of a smile in his eyes at the disbelief in hers. "We do have rain here. In an average year we get five inches or so. That day we got a full half inch."

  "An honest-to-God flood," she marveled.

  His smile reached his lips. "Ever dribble water on a dried-out sponge?" He watched her reluctant nod. "It doesn't soak in, does it? Well, three weeks ago the ground didn't know what to do with water, just like an old sponge. Do you remember the large hole in the road on the way to the mine?"

  "The dry lake?"

  "It wasn't dry that day. I stopped on the edge of it and got out to check and see how deep the water was. The sky was getting dark, and I remember thinking that I was going to be late for a meal at the pub if I didn't hurry. When I bent down to measure the water with a rod I found in the back of the ute, a bullet sailed over my head."

  Kelsey picked up her slice of pizza and took a large bite. "What did you do?"

  "What any good ex-Digger would. I flattened myself to the ground and swore. There were two more shots, then nothing."

  "And you never thought that someone might be trying to kill you?"

  "What I thought was that someone was behind some nearby hills, shooting roos, or that some kid was using anything that moved for target practice. I shouted, and the shots stopped, but I never saw anyone. When I got back into town, I asked around, but no one had any answers. I didn't think much about it until yesterday."

  "And what changed your mind?"

  Dillon reached into his pocket and held out two lumps of metal for Kelsey to investigate. "These. I dug one of them out of the ground beside my truck the day I was shot at."

  "And the other?"

  "I went back to the mine this afternoon after I dropped you off. This one came out of the dead roo. They're both plain-based lead bullets. Somebody hand cast them."

  Kelsey knew little about weapons, but she knew enough to know how unusual that was. If Dillon was telling the truth, this was no coincidence. "Why would someone go to the trouble of making their own ammunition in this day and age?"

  "A labor of love... or hate."

  "Then you think the roo was a warning?"

  "I shouldn't like to say."

  "If there was a roo." Kelsey finished her pizza and wished she hadn't let Dillon stop her from viewing the evidence herself. This could be a trick to turn suspicion away from him. "And if you were shot at."

  "You're a hard case, Kelsey." Dillon set another slice of pizza on her plate.

  "You've said that before."

  "I'll probably say it a time or two more before we're done. There's something else I'll be saying, too."

  "What's that?"

  "If you continue to waste all your energy being suspicious of me, you'll be no help finding who really injured your father."

  She wondered why it pleased her that he wanted her help. "Then you're admitting, loud and clear, that you think someone injured my father?"

  He nodded. "The same person who tried to shoot me. Someone who thinks there's more to the Rainbow Fire then the few stones Jake found. Someone who listened to one too many of his stories. Someone who wanted us both out of the way so he could rat the opal."

  "I assume that means steal it?"

  "Precisely." He watched with satisfaction as she picked up her second slice of pizza. "Opal ratters are the lowest form of life."

  "Similar to men who force pizza on starving women?"

  He grinned and wondered when she had noticed. "Similar."

  "Did you really think I didn't know I was eating?"

  "Did you really think I didn't know how hungry you were?"

  She let a bite melt on her tongue before she answered. "Just why should you care, Dillon?"

  He liked the way she said his name almost as much as he liked the way her eyes showed just a touch of gratitude. "You're Jake's daughter."

  "That's never gotten me any mileage. Being Jake's daughter was always a little like being a leper, only there wasn't any cure for it."

  "Jake would expect me to take care of you."

  "Jake has always expected someone to take care of me," she said philosophically. "But I take care of myself."

  "If you don't need anyone, Kelsey, why did you come?"

  She tried to ignore the warmth in his eyes, the empathy in his voice. "I came to put an end to a chapter in my life."

  She was lying, but he wasn't sure she realized it. All her yearnings for love and acceptance had surfaced yesterday when she had found out about Jake's injuries. She was trying to bury those yearnings now, but it was too late. He had seen them, and he wouldn't soon forget.

  "You should leave," he told her, reaching out to touch her arm. "If someone tried to murder Jake and me, you're not immune to the same fate. If you want a reunion with your father, you need to stay alive."

  She couldn't find a trace of deceitfulness in anything he had done. He had brought her here, tricked her into eating dinner, told her his theories about Jake's accident, and now he was trying to protect her again. She couldn't find one thing to fault him for.

  "You know, you'd be easier to distrust if you'd just stop being so nice," she said. She licked her fingers before she reached for another slice of pizza. "And if you just weren't so sincere."

  "I sincerely wish you'd leave Coober Pedy."

  "I sincerely intend to stay." She shook her head as he started to speak. "I'm going to stay, Dillon, I owe it to Jake for fathering me, if not for any other reason. You're right, I was hungry. I don't have much money, and that's dwindling fast. But I'm going to find a way to stay here until I'm not needed anymore. I can camp at the Opal Cave, if I have to, and eat peanut butter sandwiches three times a day. I've lived that way before, and I'm still alive to tell about it."

  "Someone may try to kill you."

  "I'll be ready."

  And she would be. Dillon could see it in the way she held herself. But what good was karate against a plain-based lead bullet?

  "The pizza's getting cold," she warned him.

  He was so deep in thought, he didn't even hear her. Anyone could come and go at the Opal Cave without raising suspicion. Living there, Kelsey would be an easy target for violence. And no one, no one, would notice if she didn't come home one night.

  "If you don't eat your share," Kelsey warned again, "I won't be responsible for the consequences."

  Could he be responsible for the consequences if Kelsey were killed? Beyond being the one to have to tell Jake, could he live with it if anything happened to her?

  "Dillon?"

  He grimaced and brought his fist down on the table. "There's nothing for it, then," he said.

  Kelsey looked up from her pizza. "Nothing for what?"

  "You're going to have to move in with me."

  She took her time finishing her slice. "Are you subject to these attacks on a regular basis?" she asked at last.

  "I'm not any happier about it than you are." Which was a lie, because some substan
tial part of him was as happy as a swagman waltzing his Matilda. He concentrated on the more realistic part, the part warning him that Kelsey was going to be nothing but trouble.

  "Then why the offer?"

  "You're determined to stay. I'm not going to let you starve, and you can't stay at the Opal Cave just to save money. You'll be too exposed there. How could I tell Jake I let you come to harm?"

  "Let somebody else tell him."

  His hand covered hers as she reached for another slice. "Look, Kelsey, there's room enough for you at my place. You can use the room Jake's been staying in. It's in a separate wing from mine. You'll have your privacy, I'll have mine. More important, you'll be safe."

  "Safe from whom?" She pulled her hand from under his, sliding a pizza slice with it.

  He sat back. "Where does such a little woman put all that pizza?"

  "This was your idea, remember?" She took a bite and chewed blissfully. "Besides, I'm storing up calories."

  "You won't have to store up anything if you move in with me. Your father paid me rent until the end of the month, so in a way, the room belongs to you already. You can save your money for a place in Adelaide when the doctor advises you to go down."

  "How much does a room underground cost, anyway?" she asked curiously. She had investigated the Opal Cave earlier. It was little more than a man-made cavern, cool and dry, but with none of the luxuries of the motel room. Camping there would be comfortable, but not exactly like home. She wondered how the Coober Pedy residents who lived underground year round survived the austerity and claustrophobia.

  Dillon wasn't about to tell her the whole truth. Jake had moved in with him when he couldn't pay the rent on his own dugout. He had paid Dillon for the favor with a smile and a promise—Jake's usual form of reimbursement. "You don't need to worry about cost. I gave Jake a bargain."

  She tried to imagine being in a cave with Dillon stalking her. Caves usually didn't come with back doors. She shook her head. "I've learned a lot from karate. One of the most important things was never to get my back against a wall. Another was never to put myself at an opponent's mercy."

  "I'm sure you also learned to trust your own judgment and count on allies when you need them."

  Despite her arguments, Kelsey could see the wisdom in Dillon's offer. She knew she had come to a crossroad. Either she trusted Dillon or she trusted all the other residents of Coober Pedy, including the one who might have tried to harm her father. She was no longer in the position of being able to trust herself alone. Dillon was right. If someone had tried to kill Jake, and if someone had really tried to kill Dillon, then she could be in danger, too. She would need an ally.

  She didn't even know she’d sighed until Dillon touched her arm. "Trust me, Kelsey. Your father's trusted me all these years, and now it's your turn to carry on the tradition."

  "I can't imagine living underground."

  "Then come see what you've been missing." Dillon had heard the remnants of doubt in Kelsey's voice, but he had also heard the beginning of acceptance. "We can finish the pizza there."

  "There's not much of it left."

  He laughed. "Next time I'll order two."

  * * *

  KELSEY KNEW LITTLE more about Coober Pedy housing than she had the day she had walked down Dillon's road searching for her father. But at least now she knew that all those peculiar doors built into hills were houses—or rather dugouts—where the citizens of Coober Pedy holed up like prairie dogs in a burrow to keep cool.

  In Raleigh she lived in the upstairs of an old house where North Carolina sunshine spilled through leaded glass windowpanes and sent rainbows dancing along gleaming wooden floors. Her apartment was crowded with plants and noticeably short on curtains. And on days when thunderstorms split the sky, she turned on every light to remind herself the sun would shine again.

  She wasn't a great candidate for underground living.

  Dillon turned off the ute's engine but stayed behind the steering wheel. "This is what we call a semi-dugout because it's got a sunroom in the front. Lots of dugouts just have a door in a hill."

  "I thought those were mines when I first saw them."

  "A dugout can be as luxurious as a castle or as nasty as a rat's hole. And you can't always tell from the outside which it's going to be. Ready to see mine?"

  Kelsey wasn't sure she was ready, but she had already come this far. She opened her door in answer.

  The day she had met Dillon here, she'd had neither the strength nor the inclination to examine the porch closely. Now she took in the artfully arranged garden at the end away from the door. Potted plants of all sizes and varieties accented natural rock sculptures, uniquely shaped stones that Dillon had obviously collected from the surrounding hills with painstaking care. Sandwiched between two large slabs of nearly transparent gypsum was the cat she had seen the first day.

  "Who's your friend?" she asked as Dillon unlocked the door.

  He turned to see where she was pointing. "That's Jumbuck."

  At the name the cat rose and arched his back in a time-consuming stretch. Then he limped over to see Dillon. Dillon squatted and fondled the cat's ears, as if Kelsey weren't standing there watching him. "How was your day, old boy?" he murmured. The cat rubbed against his leg in answer.

  Kelsey had known plenty of large, strong men. Not one of them would have squatted on the ground to ask a cat about its day. "What's Jumbuck mean?"

  "It's the Aborigine word for sheep." Dillon stood, and the cat limped back to his home among the rocks. "You know waltzing Matilda, don't you?"

  "Can't say it's in my repertoire."

  "Most Yanks think it's a love song about some sheila named Matilda. Actually it's the story of a swagman, a drifter, who steals a jumbuck and stuffs it in the sack where he stores his food. Unfortunately he gets caught and escapes into a water-hole, a billabong. His ghost haunts it forever after."

  She never would have guessed. "So where'd the cat get his name?"

  "I found some kids in town stuffing him into a bag. I doubt they were going to eat him, but I doubt they had anything good in mind, either. His leg was broken, that's why he limps."

  "And now he's yours?"

  "As much as he'll ever be anyone's. He's a proud old bloke. Won't come inside. He scours the hills for food, but he doesn't mind taking a bite of fish from me every once in a while. When it gets really hot, he takes a bath in that saucer behind the rocks over there. I keep it filled for him." Dillon swung the door open and stood back. "After you, Kelsey."

  What could you say about a man who rescued a moth-eaten tabby cat and kept a clay saucer of water for him to bathe in? She shook her head as she preceded him into the dugout. The hardest thing about watching her back would be remembering she had to.

  The dugout was a complete surprise. The room she stepped into was flooded with light from the tall windows that faced the porch. There were plants here, too, plants hanging from hooks, plants sitting on the floor, plants decorating shelves.

  "This doesn't look like a cave," she said, feeling immediately at home.

  "I added the sun porch to get some extra light after the rest of the dugout was completed. In the hottest part of summer I draw my draperies, but only when I must."

  "I like it."

  "So do I." He gestured to the room in front of them. "Welcome to my parlor, said the spider to the fly."

  Kelsey ignored him. She walked farther into a room that was like none she had ever seen before. There was nothing remotely cavelike about it except that the walls were the same rust and cream colored swirls as the Rainbow Fire. In every other way it resembled a normal living room.

  "Not what you expected?" Dillon asked, amused.

  "Not at all." She ran her fingertips along one wall, which was smooth and shining. "It's lovely." And it was. The room was medium size, but not an ordinary rectangle. There was a cove built off to the left, a cove with an arched ceiling, surrounded by bookshelves carved right into the rock walls. In the center of it w
ere a comfortable easy chair and a small table. "Your library?" she asked, strolling over to admire the selection of books. She saw he favored British mysteries and the classics, with a smattering of science fiction thrown in for good measure.

  "One of the advantages of a dugout. If you need something, you just carve it out of the stone. I added this last summer with a pick and shovel."

  "Innovative. Most people have to haul building material in, you just have to haul it out."

  "By the time I finished, I'd gladly have traded, although I actually made money off this room."

  "Made money?"

  "When I dug it out, I found enough opal to pay for it one and a half times over."

  He moved her along to the next room, but not before she'd had a chance to admire his selection of furniture. It was sturdy and comfortable, pine mostly, with casual blue-plaid upholstery. "Step down," he warned.

  Kelsey took the three steps and realized she was in a family room. "Look at this. Dillon, this is delightful."

  He smiled at her tone. Every once in a while she forgot to be cautious, and he got to admire the real Kelsey Donovan. There was a lot to admire. "You like my lounge room?"

  "I do. But you should have children to enjoy this. It's a child's dream."

  Dillon watched her circle the room.

  "Pool table, television, stereo. Wet bar."

  He shrugged. "Adult toys, I'm afraid."

  She wondered suddenly about his past. Had there been a woman he had wanted to share this with? A woman he'd wanted to have his children? "There's room for a toddler to ride a tricycle," she observed. "Room for enormous cities of blocks, room for an easel and a sand-and-water table."

  "It sounds like you know children."

  "I assist in a first grade. I only have one more semester of college to go, then my internship, and I'll be able to teach."

  "The kitchen's next." He led her through a carved archway into an efficient kitchen with a dining area off to the left. "I built it here so that the playroom would be right off it."

  She wondered if he had imagined a wife watching out for children as she cooked the family meals. Her curiosity increased. As he led her back through a wide hallway, she noted the shafts in each room, narrow pipes that led to blue sky. "Are the shafts for ventilation?"