Last Bridge Before Home

by Lily Malone

  ‘He said did she bring her bathers, and of course Jaz brought her bathers. They go everywhere in her bag now, and he said he’d call Jaydah to tell her he was taking Jaz for a swim, and he made a call. He isn’t smiling anymore but Jaz didn’t notice. He said something was wrong with the battery in his phone and could he use the phone in the house and Jaz said Mummy has a phone now. He asked for it, so I gave my phone to him and Jaydah answered because she thought it was me.’

  Rosalie’s voice broke.

  The truck swerved and jounced, and Brix was forced to slow down even while every breath in his body yelled at him to hurry.

  ‘Did you hear what he said to JT on the phone?’

  ‘He told her she sure did herself alright, didn’t she?’ Rosalie mimicked Keith’s deeper voice. ‘She sure did herself alright when she hooked up with a Honeychurch brat. It was a nice place they had here, and he was looking all over Jake and Ella’s nice things. He said something about the rum being top shelf, and he took the bottle out of the cupboard and pulled up the stopper with his teeth and swallowed …’

  They bounced through another sandy section and Rosalie’s voice cut off with a squeak as she jolted against the seat belt. Pretty soon he’d have to stop and turn around before he drove them into a section so rough Rosalie couldn’t drive herself out.

  ‘Jaz got changed into her bathers and he told her to wait out in the car. When she left, he tied off my feet and my hands and my mouth and he said he should have sent me back to Manila and now I was going to die here if I wasn’t quiet. If I didn’t close off my mouth he’d kill me. If I screamed he’d kill me. He made me lie there and he shoved the couch at the wall so hard and the tape got stuck in the carpet, and I thought it would cover off my nose and I wouldn’t breathe.’

  Brix swore beneath his breath. ‘We’ll get him, Rosalie. This time the cops will throw him in a cell.’

  ‘He doesn’t care about police. He never did. He thinks he is too smart to ever get caught because he never got caught all these years for what he did. My Jaydah doesn’t trust the police. She doesn’t trust anyone to help us because nobody ever helped us, until you. Ayayayay. She will kill him. And she will go to jail. And he will win. Even if he is dead he will win.’

  Brix braked and yanked the wheel hard right where the bush thinned. Throwing his arm across the back of the seats he turned to see the view to the rear and shoved the ute in reverse. The truck groaned but obliged and he shifted the gears to edge forward again, driven by a new fear.

  How many times had Jaydah told him she’d kill her father?

  Too many. She’d do it too. He didn’t doubt it.

  ‘Come on,’ he urged the whining engine, working the wheel and gears as he executed a tight multi-pointed turn that would let him face the Toyota back out the way they’d come.

  ‘This is it, Rosalie. You know what to do?’

  ‘I know what to do,’ she said, looking more like Jaydah than he’d ever seen Rosalie look.

  ‘You drive out of here, all the way back. You go nice and slow through the sand, okay? Don’t rush.’ He patted the steering wheel. ‘She won’t let you down. You’re in four-wheel-drive and this car will get you out. Don’t panic. Don’t rush. When you get out, I want you to go to Chalk ‘n’ Cheese café and find Taylor if she’s there, or Ella, and tell them to call the police so they know everything you just told me. Can you do that, Rosalie?’

  ‘I can,’ she said, lifting her hips and bumping her bottom across the console and into the driver’s seat he’d just vacated.

  ‘Then go! Good luck.’

  ‘You have good luck too, Brix. Find my daughters.’

  He grabbed his pack and stuffed his arms through the straps, hauling it onto his back. Then he tapped the roof. ‘Go! Go!’

  * * *

  Jaydah waited in the shelter of the trees, scanning the creek. Two sets of footprints vanished at the water but she couldn’t see any sign or splash of swimmers so she studied the cliff, looking for something that wasn’t a tree branch or a patch of withered moss or a darker layer of rock.

  There was a flash of orange as Jaz climbed out through a vertical crack where two of the biggest boulders clashed.

  Where was the monster?

  Jaydah’s eyes narrowed. There he was, the arsehole, about five metres higher than her sister, looking down. Whip-thin, weathered, mean and standing so still he might have been wrought from the granite slab.

  ‘The rock hurts my feet,’ Jaz complained, her voice carrying clearly as she shouted up at their dad. ‘Can we stop soon? I’m hungry.’

  ‘Shoulda kept ya shoes on, Jaz. Come on. Stop being a baby. You think the great explorers stopped exploring because they got sore feet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then quit whinging and climb.’

  Stay calm. Keep calm, Jaydah told herself. But her heart raced from more than the exertion of her run here.

  She could enter the water here and swim across and climb up or she could cross further up where the creek narrowed.

  They’d see her, and she didn’t know what her father might do when he knew she was there. Would it make him do whatever he’d planned to do to Jaz faster?

  Her father could push Jaz off that cliff as easy as he’d skim a rock, and unlike the rock he wouldn’t wait around to see if she bounced.

  CHAPTER

  34

  Brix’s footsteps changed to a hollowed-out pound. He must have run at least a kilometre from where he’d left Rosalie. He must be almost there.

  Jees, he hoped he was nearly there. His heart was trying to sledgehammer its way out of his chest.

  Gradually the trees cleared and Brix slowed, panting but not daring to stop.

  The track flattened out to a horizontal chunk of mottled grey rock, scratched through and riven by abseiling anchor points and hooks, and then even those vanished. The cliff disappeared into thin air.

  A sign on a post warned visitors to keep away from the edge and to supervise children. Another sign advised not to throw rocks from the top; yet another advised abseilers to ensure they carried all their own safety gear, equipment and water, and a final sign warned that abseilers used the cliffs at their own risk.

  He stepped around the signs and around the relative safety of a rusted guard rail, and inched forward towards the vast cold air of nothing.

  Cutters Creek wound its path south through the national park. A wilderness of heritage-listed karri and tingle trees grew increasingly thick and tall as they tramped towards the Denmark and Walpole coasts. Somewhere out there was the new Chalk Hill Bridge Road. Somewhere out there, Pickles had his ski park.

  The space opened before him, wind swirled up out of nowhere and Brix took an involuntary step back as his pulse rammed adrenalin through his veins.

  He took a better grip on the straps of his backpack and tried to settle his nerves.

  You’re not afraid of heights, you idiot. Think of it like being up the catwalk. Think of it like being in the winery, standing on steel.

  Except there were no handrails here. No non-slip stairs.

  Nothing, except the rope he carried.

  Then a woman’s shout from below drove all fear from his brain and Brix strode forward.

  * * *

  ‘Hey!’ Jaydah shouted. ‘Dad? Jazzy? Hey there!’ She put her hands to her mouth and hollered through them, as if she could create her own loudspeaker to carry the words across the water. The movement pulled her shoulder blades tight, jostling the first of the kali sticks she’d secured under her sports bra and shirt. The straight pole of it filled the crease of her spine.

  The figures on the opposite cliff stilled.

  ‘Jaydah!’ Jaz yelled, and she saw the flash of teeth in her sister’s face. ‘Jaydah, look at me. I’m over here. I’m adventuring.’

  ‘You be careful adventuring. Don’t slip. Take your time.’

  ‘I will.’

  Jaz was frighteningly high on the cliff face and climbing higher. Her fat
her stood on a bulbous ledge above Jaz, as if he was on the giant’s nose and she was about to step up over a mole on its top lip. Way above them Cutters Cliffs made a great bald slab of forbidding giant forehead.

  ‘Well, look who’s here,’ he said, and his hands moved slowly, deliberately, to his belt and his belt buckle. His thumbs hooked into the belt loops at his hips. ‘Late again, girl.’

  The shock of revulsion almost brought Jaydah to her knees.

  ‘You want to play adventurers too?’ He issued the challenge on a drawl. He might have been asking her to join in on a game of Snap.

  ‘Will you wait for me?’

  ‘We’ll wait. Won’t we, Dad?’ Jaz said. ‘I’m hungry. Is there anything to eat?’

  He opened his hands. ‘Do I look like I got a sandwich on me? No, there’s nothing to eat.’

  ‘But I’m hungry!’

  ‘Do you good not to eat so much. You all got fat while you been away from home. Jaydah looks fat too. You all got fat and lazy without me.’

  Jaydah bit her lip. Please, Jaz, don’t tell him about—

  ‘Jaydah’s not fat. She’s having a baby,’ Jaz said importantly.

  ‘Is she now?’

  She could feel his snake eyes crawling all over her, measuring her with new interest.

  ‘She is. She said I could have a baby too but I have to find a man who loves me, but now I don’t think I will have a baby because they poo all the time. Don’t put your feet down, Jaydah. The sand is icky. Do we have something to eat, Dad? I’m hungry.’

  ‘Did you leave your brain down there with your towel, Spazzy Jazzy? Is that why you’re stupid? You left your brain behind? Did you pack it in one of those boxes at the fi-iine wii-nnnery?’

  ‘It’s not fair that I left my brain behind. I didn’t ask to be stupid. It wasn’t my choice to be stupid.’

  ‘You got the shit job making boxes, Jazzy. That’s a job for stupid people.’

  ‘I like my job. I don’t like how the cardboard cuts my fingers. That’s not fair.’

  ‘They got ya doin’ a shit job.’

  Jaydah studied the water and let them bicker. She stepped onto the first of the smallish domed rocks bordering the swimming hole. It took a bit to balance and she let her body adjust. The kali stick she’d tucked down the leg of her pants felt stiff and awkward, and she hoped the monster was too far away to see.

  ‘You won’t need that stick you got shoved down ya pants either. We ain’t doing any practice up here,’ her dad jeered, pleased to have caught her out.

  Carefully, slowly, Jaydah tossed the stick onto the sand of the small beach. The bamboo shone a smooth golden brown in the sun. Above her on the cliff, her father’s smile ticked higher.

  ‘Good girl, Jaydah,’ he said. ‘You leave that there. You won’t need it where you’re going.’

  You stay pleased with yourself, Dad.

  Stay so pleased with yourself you don’t notice the other stick.

  * * *

  Jaydah stood on the rocks on the opposite side of Cutters Creek and if she saw him she gave Brix no sign. The entire conversation with her dad had carried clearly to him. He’d just watched her throw her kali stick on the sand.

  He undid his runners, took them off and pulled on a pair of hiking boots from his pack, lacing them before shoving his hands into the heavy-duty gloves he’d grabbed from the shed.

  Near Brix’s feet, U-shaped anchor points for abseilers had been driven into the rocks. Around those the stone was scratched and worn from clips and chains.

  Abseilers had trusted those anchor points for years. Now he was about to tie one end of his rope to that anchor point and trust it with his life and Jaydah’s life, and Jaz’s, because he had no doubt—no doubt—that Keith had lured them out here to hurt them both.

  Keith had nothing left to lose. He must have known that when he broke the restraining order and drove out to the farmhouse. He must have known that when he’d tied Rosalie up and kidnapped Jaz.

  For half his life Brix had been hamstrung when it came to Keith Tully. First he’d been too young, just a kid. Then when he finally found out what a monster the man was, JT had forbidden him to act in case it made everything worse.

  Half his life he’d been stuck in quicksand.

  Now he could move.

  He pushed the rope through the anchor point, tied it off and tugged at the knot to satisfy himself it was strong. Then he tied another lump of a knot at the very end.

  He took hold of the rope and approached the cliff.

  Jaydah’s dad stood about ten metres below him and off to the right of the sheer abseiling stretch, on a fat ledge. There were anchor points on that ledge too for those who wanted to abseil from lower down. They glinted in the sun, winking at him.

  ‘My feet hurt,’ Jaz complained, wincing. She stopped to sit on a rock several metres lower than Keith’s ledge and turned up her heel. ‘I’m bleeding!’

  ‘Quit sooking, Snazzy Jazzy. One minute you’re complaining about the slimy sand. Next minute you’re bitching about the rocks. Ya shoulda left ya shoes on like I did.’

  ‘You said we were going swimming. You can’t swim in shoes. Erik doesn’t wear shoes when he swims.’

  ‘Who’s Erik when he’s at home?’

  ‘I don’t know where his home is,’ Jaz said.

  ‘I mean who’s Erik?’ Keith snapped.

  ‘He has one arm and the other is a baby arm with a baby hand.’

  ‘There’s no such thing as a man with a baby arm, Spazzy Jazzy.’

  ‘There is. I saw him. He taught me backstroke. Ow, my foot hurts.’ Jaz rubbed near the cut.

  Below them, small and brave on the other side of the creek, Jaydah picked a path across the rocks.

  ‘What’s wrong with ya, Jaydah? You look like you’ve got a broom handle stuck up ya bum! Hurry up. We ain’t waiting here all day, are we, Jaz?’

  ‘My foot hurts,’ Jaz said again.

  ‘Ah, ya big fat sook. Come up here with me so I can take a look at it.’

  Jaz squinted up at her father and wailed again. ‘It’s too high. I want to go down.’

  ‘Bugger me. How bloody hard is it, and cover ya mouth if ya gonna cry so I don’t hafta see those ugly teeth.’ Keith put his hand on the ledge and scrambled down, dislodging a shower of rocks that hissed and spat onto Jaz’s platform and made her squeal as they rained down.

  Brix took his chance, hoping the noise of those falling rocks would cover the sound as he dropped the coil of trailing rope over the cliff.

  ‘Dad!’ Jaydah shouted from the rocks across the creek. ‘I’m coming. Don’t hurt her.’

  Jaydah dove from the rocks and her body made a streamlined streak as the brown-green water enveloped her.

  Brix picked up the rope and forced himself to let the slack glide through his gloves as he stepped towards the edge. The closer he got to the drop, the more he had to will his fingers loose so the rope would pay through. Hauling in a breath, he lowered himself feet first into a narrow crevice and wedged there till his toes found a foothold, then he gripped the rope in his hands, hugged it between and around his legs, and edged out of the crack until his hands, shoulders and the rope took his weight.

  * * *

  Jaydah stroked across Cutters Creek, trying not to kick so hard that she’d dislodge the kali stick in the back of her shirt.

  Somehow, she had to climb without her father seeing the weapon. She’d have to trust in the vertical drop, the cliffs, the rocks and the angle of the sun, and hope Jaz could distract him. More variables than she liked, but she had no other choice.

  She swam out of the sunshine into the shade of the cliff and took a moment to find her route before she climbed out. She wasn’t going to pick a path up like her father and Jaz had done. It would take too long.

  She had to go for the jugular, take the straightest path she could. If she did that, and if he stayed directly above her, the rocks would be her shield.

  She pushed herself up and
out on black, slippery rock, and readjusted the stick through her shirt and sports bra. The top of it stuck out behind her neck. Her hair would have to hide it.

  Jaydah found a toehold and pressed up, finding cracks with her fingers and gaining momentum as she set her left foot against a protrusion that gave her a leg-up. For the next few minutes that was all she could do, grip, pull, climb, breathe, press herself into the granite and try to save energy for the fight.

  ‘What was that?’

  She froze. Her father’s voice was definitely nearer. She’d climbed faster than she’d thought.

  Then she heard the siren. Faint, but definite and the monster exploded. ‘You had to call the pol-ice, dintcha? Ya had to call them.’

  The wail grew, echoing between rock and sky and water.

  Jaydah drove herself higher, hand over hand, pushing and pulling and dislodging cascades of smaller rocks that spun to the water below.

  ‘Come on, Jazzy. Are you ready to jump?’

  ‘No! Dad, wait. I’m almost there,’ Jaydah lifted her head and shouted higher.

  ‘I don’t want to adventure anymore,’ Jaz grumbled. ‘My foot hurts. I’m hungry.’

  ‘Get up, Lazy Jazzy. Come on. This is what we climbed all the way up here for, so we could jump off.’

  ‘Leave her alone, Dad,’ Jaydah yelled, always climbing.

  The sirens screamed. Jaydah risked a peek over her shoulder. Blue and red lights flashed through the bush.

  Her muscles demanded rest, but she was almost there. She couldn’t stop. She jammed her foot into a crack, put both palms flat on the rock ledge above her and hauled herself higher, landing on the shelf on her tummy and wriggling like a seal, ignoring the scratch across her skin as she gained her feet.