‘Do you think they’ll come back?’ Allie asked.
Frank had wondered the same thing. After hours hiding indoors, to be so exposed felt stupid at best, deadly at worst. But at least they would be able to see anyone approaching. Besides, morning was close, and it would bring the highway back to life. Police would be called out to this lonely stretch of road. Bodies everywhere, a house and a service station destroyed, the skeletons of cars littering the highway like roadkill.
‘What are you going to tell the police?’ Allie asked.
‘Everything,’ Frank said. ‘Whether they’ll believe us is another story, but it’s not like many other explanations would make a tonne of sense.’
‘What about . . .’ She nodded over her shoulder, towards the dark figure in the dam.
Frank looked back at Maggie. It was a fair question, and it had only one fair answer. Maggie had saved their lives. She had protected Allie and, Frank knew full well, there was no way he would have knowingly gone along with her plan had she not forced them to escape through the cellar.
‘My guess?’ Frank said. ‘She’ll disappear into the morning before we can do anything about it. We were so dazed from everything that happened, we didn’t even realise she was gone until she was.’
Allie looked back in the direction of the road. Her brow furrowed.
With some difficulty, Frank stood. ‘It was him or Maggie. All night, it was them or us.’ He trailed off. Then he took Allie by the shoulder and turned her to face him. ‘I don’t ever want you to feel bad about what you did. If you do, if you need someone to talk to, then that’s okay. But you did nothing wrong. You were so, so brave. There’s no guilt in defending yourself.’
There were tears in Allie’s eyes. ‘When we heard the gunshots, I hid under the bed. I didn’t come and find you.’
Frank considered her. ‘You want to know why I stopped hunting?’
Allie looked confused.
Frank pushed on. ‘I shot a deer. It didn’t die, straight away. I found it. Just stupid and hurt and with no idea of why this had been done to it. I didn’t need to kill it to eat or anything. It was just minding its own business and I attacked it because that was what the hunt was about, it was just what I did. I realised I couldn’t be that person anymore. So I tried to walk away from it. My mates at the time, the guys I went hunting with, they didn’t take too kindly to that. So they turned on me. Chased me through the bush with guns. I don’t think they meant to actually hurt me, but . . .’
‘Holy shit,’ Allie said.
‘Yeah. Anyway. That night I hid in a hollow beneath an old gum, shaking and crying. I was so scared. It wasn’t how I’d ever thought I’d act in that kind of a situation. But that’s what I did. You can’t be brave until you’ve been scared, Allie. You did nothing wrong. At all. And I’m proud of you.’
Allie smiled. It was small, uncertain. But it was there.
He heard movement behind them. They both turned.
Soaking wet, hair plastered to her pale, tired face, Maggie stood there, still wearing Kate’s bloodstained clothes. She looked up at the lightening sky.
‘The police will be here soon,’ Frank said.
‘I’d better move,’ Maggie said.
‘Will you be okay?’ Allie asked.
Maggie looked at her, considering the question. ‘We’re alive. That’s more than I could have hoped for in the past couple of days, right?’
A bird cried out, from somewhere up in the giant gum.
Together they walked over to the station wagon. Frank opened the driver’s door for Maggie. Her backpack was still on the floor beneath the passenger seat. The shotgun, retrieved from the grass, sat on the passenger seat where Allie had placed it.
Maggie didn’t move to get in. She looked back towards the tree and the dam, towards where Trent’s body lay.
Allie stepped forwards and hugged her. Maggie looked surprised. Her body tensed. Then, slowly, she hugged Allie back.
Frank couldn’t help the flicker of curiosity. There were so many questions he wanted to ask this girl, so many things that still didn’t make sense. But he knew better.
Maggie looked at Frank. ‘You going to be okay?’
Frank nodded. For a moment, nobody spoke.
‘Who were they?’ Maggie said. ‘The two who died?’
‘A young couple. Just travellers.’ He exhaled. ‘But they stepped up.’
Maggie’s jaw clenched, just slightly.
She got into the car. Frank and Allie moved clear. She looked out at them again. For a second, it looked as though she wanted to say something. Then she started the engine and pulled away, as Frank and Allie stood together in the grass and watched until the car vanished and they were alone.
Early dawn had turned the landscape ghostly, light creeping up the still grass and the thick trunk of the old tree, gleaming off the dam beneath a grey sky inching nearer to dull yellow. The colours were faint and fleeting and Frank didn’t think he’d ever seen anything so beautiful. He put his good arm around Allie and pulled her close, leaning on her just slightly. She felt strong. Stable. His granddaughter. He had already said it, but it occurred to him that he had never been proud of anything the way he was proud of her right then.
‘So,’ Allie said, as the tips of the grass started to shine gold. ‘What now?’
‘Now,’ Frank said, ‘I have to work out what the fuck I’m going to tell your father.’
Maggie kept her eyes forwards. She was aware of the growing light and the first creep of sunrise over the long grass. She had to be gone but she didn’t go any faster than she needed to. She would draw the attention of anyone who looked inside her car, so she wouldn’t give them reason to. Just a driver like any other.
She checked the rear-view mirror and as she did, saw something out of the corner of her eye, some kind of movement. She considered just driving on.
She pulled the car over to the side of the road and sat, eyes on the steering wheel. She picked up the gun. Her finger tapped the wheel. She reached for the keys. Her hand hovered, then she killed the ignition. She stepped out of the car. The grass here reached her knees. All was still in the predawn silence. She walked into it. Her leg still hurt, would for a while, but she ignored that. She moved through the long grass, towards the lone figure who slowly traipsed away from the direction of the roadhouse. Maggie walked until she was right behind her.
The woman stopped. For a moment she didn’t look like she was going to turn. Maggie kept her hand firm on the gun but didn’t raise it.
The woman turned. Rhonda and Maggie surveyed each other for several seconds.
‘What happened?’ Rhonda asked.
‘Trent’s dead. Most of them are.’
Rhonda nodded, as if it was to be expected. ‘Where does that leave me?’
For several seconds, the only sound was the wind.
‘I didn’t get what I came for,’ Maggie said.
Rhonda looked away.
‘You called her a lady from Melbourne. Except I never mentioned Melbourne.’
‘Guess you didn’t,’ Rhonda said, without inflection.
‘Did they kill her?’
Rhonda looked at the glow of red over the expanse of grass. ‘Would you believe me if I said I don’t know?’
Maggie didn’t reply. She waited.
Rhonda took a pack of cigarettes from her pocket. She offered one to Maggie. Maggie didn’t move. Rhonda shrugged and lit one. She looked back at the sunrise. ‘It goes one of two ways,’ she said, ‘when anyone finds us. They run, they get hunted. They stay, they’re one of us.’ She took a long drag. ‘Most run. Blokes like Kev, Reg, they counted on that. But every now and then, someone turns up who likes the hunt. Or they’re running from something worse.’ She looked at Maggie. ‘Back then it was Kev who did the luring. You wouldn’t think it, but he was a looker. A charmer, too. He got me that way. Your mum, I dunno. One day she was just there. I was the last person before her who’d decided to stay. When I saw y
ou, it was like her, all over again. Spitting image.’ Another long drag. Her hand was shaking. ‘Maybe it was because just about no-one else had come from outside, but we were close, for a while there. We spoke about stuff. Where we’d come from. What we’d left. It was easy for me. I had nothing else. But she was . . . What’s the word? Not regretful. Sad. She didn’t like what we did, but she’d left something bad. For better or worse, she felt safe with us. She’d run away from a husband who beat the shit out of her, but that wasn’t the whole story, I reckon.’ She lowered the cigarette. ‘You want the nice version or the truth?’
‘The truth.’ Maggie felt like a current was running through her, steady and quiet and ready to erupt into something deadly.
‘She’d never wanted you.’ Another drag. ‘But you happened, and then she was stuck. Maybe she loved you, I dunno. But she couldn’t take you with her. She was young. It was tough enough for her to try to get out by herself, let alone with a kid. But that don’t make what she did any less selfish. She left you with him.’
‘Yeah,’ said Maggie flatly.
Rhonda looked at Maggie. ‘Was it as bad as she said?’
‘Worse.’
The words hung in the warming air. There was no wind, no shifting grass, no crying birds. Just the truth. Her father, so loved and respected by his friends and colleagues, the hero cop until he got home and the bottles were opened. Her mother, bloodied and bruised night after night until she was gone and it was Maggie’s turn. Then the foster homes and all the lost years until she finally went home. The moment she had looked him in the eyes at the top of that staircase and pushed. The moment any last chance for a normal life had finally fallen away and she’d taken to the road in search of something even she didn’t think she’d find.
‘He was a cop?’ Rhonda said.
Maggie nodded.
‘Kev caught wind of someone sniffing around, showing a photo of your mum at the pubs along the road. She joked about it; the next day she was gone.’
‘Did my father . . .’ Maggie wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence.
‘Find us?’ Rhonda dropped her cigarette and stepped on it. ‘He came back to you, didn’t he?’
An alternative history flashed through Maggie’s mind, so sweet it hurt.
‘Anyway, it was a big deal at the time,’ Rhonda said. ‘Which is why I don’t think they got her; everyone wondered if she was gonna go to the police or something, bring the law down on us. Never happened. She’d never go to the cops.’
‘Do you know where she went?’
Rhonda shook her head. ‘She talked about wanting to go to Queensland. But that was almost twenty years ago. For all I know, Kev caught up to her and never told us.’
Maggie looked towards the sun. The last of the darkness was gone, overtaken by pale blue and splashes of flaming orange.
‘Will you try to find her?’ Rhonda asked.
Maggie looked down at the gun tight in her hand.
‘You going to kill me?’ Rhonda sounded tired. Resigned. ‘Fair enough if you do. We wronged you. I know that.’
Maggie said nothing.
‘Go on then.’ There was no waver in Rhonda’s voice.
Maggie turned and walked away. She half-expected a rustle of grass and a plunging knife. It never came. She kept walking until she reached the road and the station wagon. She glanced back.
The reds and pinks of fiery sunrise bathed the grass. There was no sign of Rhonda.
EPILOGUE
The sun beat down on the highway as the lone car drove.
Behind the wheel, Maggie kept her eyes forwards. The clear blue sky, the burning glare, the distant horizon. The future, whatever it would hold. She didn’t look over her shoulder or in the rear-view mirror.
She drove fast, coming right up to the edge of the limit. The landscape, dry, arid and expansive, raced past on either side. She saw it out of the corner of her eye, but she ignored it, just as she did the pain in her leg and the pounding of her heart. She drove as the sun set and sank, until the pale blue of the sky became splashed with blood again and the land around her appeared like it was on fire.
She didn’t look in the rear-view mirror.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I’m deeply terrified that I’m going to miss somebody important here, so let me start off by saying that this book never could have happened without the combined efforts and support of so, so many people, all of whom I’m grateful to.
But a few names do stand out, so let me give them their well-deserved dues. HarperCollins Head of Fiction Catherine Milne, for immediately understanding what I was trying to do here and seeing in Maggie exactly what I saw but was struggling to articulate. Your notes and encouragement transformed this book from a slice of gritty pulp into, well, still a slice of gritty pulp, but one with real substance to it.
To Kimberley Allsopp and Alice Wood for making me feel so looked-after during the development process. You were always willing to answer any question I had about what publishing a book on this scale actually looked like and to make sure that I was on top of things as best I could be. I couldn’t have asked for safer hands than yours. To Scott Forbes and Emma Rafferty for your insightful and thorough editorial and Samantha Sainsbury for your meticulous proofreading. So much of how The Hunted ended up is thanks to the amazing work you did to ensure that what went out into the world was as strong as it could possibly be.
On that, I want to name every single person working for HarperCollins Australia but in the interests of keeping this concise, let me state my immense gratitude to all of you for believing in this book and helping bring it to such vivid life.
Of course, The Hunted never would have got into the hands of the wonderful Harper team if it wasn’t for the tireless advocacy of the world’s greatest literary agent, Curtis Brown’s Tara Wynne, whose support and belief were invaluable to me. Tara’s honesty, reassurance and dedication guided me through an at times daunting process and with level-headed calm she always made the whole thing seem just a little more possible than the mad pipe dream I was sure it had to be. To Caitlan Cooper-Trent, your early notes were spot on and helped me catch sight of the story I’d been looking for all along. Thank you both. I’m still catching up with the reality of an agency like Curtis Brown taking me on, let alone everything that’s come since. To Jerry Kalajian, who got The Hunted across some of the biggest desks in Hollywood and in the process got a lot of ears pricking up in a way that seemed too insane to be true, thank you for taking a chance on me and for your patience with a fledgling writer stumbling into a bigger world than he ever could have expected to find himself in.
It’s not news to say that writing can be a solitary endeavour, and for a long time it’s hard to get anyone to take you seriously. I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of people in my life who have believed in me from day one and ensured I never totally felt like the idiot that I at least occasionally have been. To the team at my theatre company, Bitten By Productions – Justin Anderson, Alicia Beckhurst, Ashley Tardy and Kashmir Sinnamon – you guys have always had my back and helped the dream of being a working writer seem a little less than unattainable. To Dan Nixon, for introducing me to Tara and always advocating for me even when I didn’t feel I deserved it. To Kath Atkins, Bonnie McRae, Damian Robb and everyone at Melbourne Young Writer’s Studio, you guys had to put up with a lot of excited babbling as this process unfolded, but put up with it you did and you ensured that I always had the support of a community of brilliant writers cheering me on. To Greg Caine, Tim Hankin, Kate Murfett, Jesse Farrell, Karl Sarsfield, John Erasmus and any and everyone who gave me feedback on the early stages of this story, thanks for being The Hunted’s first audience. To April Newton, for years ago getting it in your head that I was worth taking a chance on and publishing my first YA books. Without the Boone Shepard series, there’s no Maggie and no The Hunted.
Closer to home, now. My parents, Kim and Christian Bergmoser, who worked so hard to send me to school in Melbourne and ensur
e that a kid from the country got the most amazing opportunities. You never wrote me off when I said I wanted to be a writer; on the contrary, you did everything in your power to encourage me and help turn fantasy into reality. I hope you know how thankful I am, now and always. And to Molly McPhie – what do I even say? You’ve been there every step of Maggie’s journey, indulged my stupid whims and somehow tolerated my childish creative sulks. Why you put up with me, I’ll never know, but, damn, I’m glad that you do.
CHAPTER ONE
Maggie sensed danger the moment the man walked through the door. Standing behind the dimly lit bar, polishing a pint glass, she glanced up and felt the slightest warning prickle across the back of her neck. It wasn’t that he looked especially threatening: middle aged in a dark blue suit without a tie and hair slicked back in an apparent attempt to hide how little of it there was. Maggie saw plenty of guys like him come through here every night. No, the danger lay in the way he held himself. He stood in the doorway, hands on hips, wide-set eyes lazily scanning the bar, a thick lipped smile suggesting people should know who he was and be scared.
Maggie wasn’t about to please him on either of those fronts. But she did watch as he swaggered in, running a finger along one of the empty tables and inspecting it for dust as though he was a manager. He glanced at the four other customers, tucked away in shadowy booths, talking quietly over beers, whatever they were saying obscured by low lights and the crawl of mournful country music. The bar wasn’t a happening place. It was precisely the reason Maggie liked it.
The man took his time, moving with relaxed calm until he reached the bar. He placed both hands on it and turned his smile to Maggie.
She kept polishing the glass.
‘Scotch.’ He pointed one ringed finger to the top shelf behind the bar. ‘The single malt. Two cubes of ice, thanks.’
‘No worries,’ Maggie said. ‘That’ll be eighteen dollars.’
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