by Sarah Barrie
‘Are they always like this?’ Lee asked, astounded.
‘Pretty much,’ Ally said, chewing nervously on her bottom lip.
Lee caught Ben’s attention. ‘Give me your card. We’ll be in touch.’
‘Soon,’ Ben said, before climbing back into his car.
Cam escorted Mia inside. Ally and Lee followed.
‘You should probably calm down,’ Cam said to Mia as he let her go.
Mia pulled away. ‘The man is a haemorrhoid.’
‘No, he’s not,’ Lee said.
‘Oh? Then tell me – what exactly is a haemorrhoid?’
‘A pain in the – okay, look.’ Lee laughed reluctantly and changed tack. ‘You can’t assault a police officer.’
‘Wrong again. I already have. It’s the only satisfying moment I’ve ever had in his presence. I can very definitely assault him again.’
‘She did,’ Ally said. ‘He was hassling me and she slapped him. That was the five hundred dollars she mentioned.’
‘The fine was worth it.’
Cam raked a hand over his face and exchanged glances with Lee. Ally wasn’t sure a hint of amusement didn’t pass between them, but then it was gone. ‘That’s a really stupid thing to do. You could go to jail.’
Mia’s eyes flashed. ‘Ally’s suffered full-blown panic attacks because of his interrogations. There’s no consequence for him, is there?’
Ally sat down, rubbing her scarred palm. ‘He’s so sure I did it, he almost had me believing it. But I would never do that. I would have been shocked to find David with another woman, but I certainly wouldn’t have been upset or angry enough to murder everything I loved. It’s not in me to do that. I’m not a murderer.’
‘Of course you’re not!’ Mia snapped. ‘You see what he does to her? Isn’t there anything we can do about this guy?’
‘Maybe Lee can buy him a drink. They’re friends,’ Ally said.
Mia looked appalled. ‘I knew there had to be something wrong with you. You seemed too perfect.’
‘I worked with him on a couple of joint cases back in homicide in the city. That’s it. So no, not friends, but I do know him well enough to be worried about why he’s here.’
Ally’s head snapped up. ‘So one word from him and you think I did it?’
‘Ally, I don’t even know what you’re supposed to have done.’
‘He thinks I caused the fire that killed my husband.’
Lee rubbed a hand along the back of his neck. ‘Oh, that’s bad. But … are you sure? This is Ben Bowden we’re talking about. If he really believed you were responsible, you’d already be in prison. Something must be bothering him about the case, though, and whatever it is, he’ll get to the truth. He never loses a case. You’re better off working with him than fighting him.’
‘We know the truth!’ Mia said.
Cam just lifted his brow. ‘You’re going to have to talk to him, Ally, find out what this is about.’
‘We know what it will be about,’ Mia all but spat. ‘What it’s always about. Putting Ally into a panic attack in an attempt to make her admit to something she didn’t do!’
Ally was shaking her head. ‘I can’t do that again. What if I did hire you?’ she asked Cam. ‘Could you find out what he wants? Could you talk to him for me?’
Cam sat beside her, pulled her in. ‘I’ll come with you. How’s that?’
The phone rang, so Ally got up and answered it. When she returned things looked slightly calmer between Lee and Mia.
‘That was Colin Breton.’
‘And?’
‘Apparently Lucy’s pretty upset about losing her pony. He wants to bring her out to see him.’
‘She’ll barely recognise him after all our hard work,’ Mia said with an attempt at a smile.
‘They’ll be here in a few minutes. I might head out there.’
She needed to get out of there, to breathe. Once again, Ben had turned up and caused conflict. She didn’t understand how Lee could be the man’s friend any more than Mia could. What if he turned Cam against her? Why couldn’t Ben just leave her alone?
Colin’s car pulled up and Lucy leapt from the rear door, her fluro-pink cast glowing as she ran across to Ally and gave her an enthusiastic one-armed hug.
‘Hi Alissa. Can I see him?’
Ally smiled and nodded. ‘He’s right over there.’ She pointed to the yard and Lucy sped across, calling out to him. The pony trotted over to the fence.
‘How’s he going?’ Colin asked.
‘I haven’t done much with him yet, but he’s sweet, he wants to behave.’
‘I knew she loved him, but I didn’t realise how much.’
‘Are you going to let her try again?’
‘I’ve already given Coco to you.’
Ally smiled and shook her head. ‘I don’t want Coco, Colin. I just didn’t want you shooting him and regretting it later.’
He looked uncomfortable. ‘Carla says you’re some big-shot rider. That you really know your stuff.’
She smiled slightly.
‘You really think she’ll ever be able to ride him safely?’
‘I can’t promise that, but I think it’s worth a go.’
‘It’s very nice of you. I brought some feed. We had it leftover, thought you could use it. I could bring some over whenever I bring Lucy, make sure you don’t run out.’
‘That’d be good. Thanks.’
‘I’ll have to pay you something for all this, and if it comes to it, she’ll need lessons. I’m not flush for cash but I need her to be safe.’
‘We’ll work something out.’
‘Dad, look! He’s got a rug on and he’s tidied up all pretty and he missed me.’
Giving Ally a grateful look, Colin walked over to join his daughter.
Ally went back inside to see if Mia had cooled down. She really needed to get through to her about Ben – she wasn’t sure Mia would get away with a simple fine if she hit him again. Cam’s warning echoed in her head. It didn’t bear thinking about. She couldn’t help but wonder why Ben had been so patient with her up until this point.
Perhaps there was something on Mia’s record that had given him an insight into why she handled herself the way she did. If it was all still there, she guessed he must have seen it. Had it made a difference? She wouldn’t expect that from Ben Bowden but … maybe.
‘Alissa, Cam, take a seat.’
Alissa sat in a chair across a table from Ben in a makeshift office at the police station.
‘Thanks for coming so quickly,’ Ben continued, before making himself comfortable. He studied Alissa for a moment before turning to Cam. ‘How much do you know?’
‘About the fire? All of it.’
‘Then Alissa will have told you that she walked in just prior to the incident, can’t remember much of what happened but believes she knocked over a large candle in the office and that it started the fire. My issue with that story is that the evidence points strongly to the fire being started upstairs. Even though there were tealight candles on the stairs, Alissa herself admitted they were all but out and unlikely to have gotten out of control.’
‘So you prefer to believe she lit it on purpose.’
‘Based on the fire’s point of origin and Alissa’s own timeline of events, the rate of escalation of the fire suggests a deliberate fuel source was much more likely.’ He paused for a moment, his eyes on Ally. ‘But no, Alissa. I don’t think you started the fire. In fact I know you didn’t. That’s what I need to talk to you about.’
‘Lee said you mustn’t really believe it – or I’d already be in jail.’
Ben shrugged. ‘It didn’t add up. Did you turn up completely unprepared, get that kind of a shock, singlehandedly take on your husband and another woman, physically incapacitate them, pull a couple of large cans of fuel out of your pockets and set the place alight?
‘You’d just gotten off a plane. There wasn’t a single call to or from anyone on your phone, except for a text
that told – warned, if you like – your husband you were going to try to get home. You don’t do that if you want to catch someone out. And your favourite horse was in there. You’d turned down six figures for it. You’d literally almost killed yourself trying to get in to save the horses. You can’t fake a state of mind that has you going to those lengths. So I had doubts, lots of them, but, Alissa, I have to be thorough. I have to get to the bottom of it. Which is what I’ve been doing.’
‘So was it deliberate?’ Cam asked.
‘Yes. And whoever is responsible has ties to this town. More importantly, it appears Alissa was supposed to be one of the victims.’ He sent Ally a wry grin. ‘David’s affair saved your life. I believe the arsonist thought Ellie was you.’
Ally’s chair scraped as she abruptly stood up. ‘I’m sorry, I just need to –’ She raced outside, took a few long, deep breaths and fought back the sudden dizziness and tightness in her chest.
Cam followed her. ‘Ally, are you okay? I know it’s a shock. Come back in, sit down. I’ll get you a glass of water.’
‘I don’t need a glass of water! Did you hear what he said?’
‘Yeah, I heard. And I need to hear the rest – so do you.’ He put an arm around her. ‘You okay to keep going?’
Ally nodded, though she wasn’t sure, and went with Cam back into the room.
‘There’s a local hunt group. They have a forum,’ Ben said.
‘Martin Sullivan’s?’
‘Right.’ He spread some photographs of men’s faces on the desk in front of her. ‘This is everyone in the local hunt group. Do you recognise any of these men?’
‘I know Martin … and I’ve seen this one, and this one around town.’ She pointed. ‘This guy was one of the ones Ebony bailed up on the street after the wallaby was shot.’
‘Just before the fire, there were a few macho comments thrown around regarding David. For example, one mentioned that if David was going to fuck around with his girlfriend, he might fuck around with his life.’
‘You obviously chased that up?’ Cam said.
‘Chased them all up. They don’t use their real names in the forum, so when I came out here, initially, I had a chat to Sullivan. He wasn’t incredibly forthcoming but we still tracked them all down. No one involved in those conversations was out of town that night. Still, I’ve been keeping an eye on the forum and nothing’s come up since then, until a few days ago when some comments started coming through about Ally and Mia, and an incident with Sullivan on the street. Someone mentioned Sullivan’s shorts, then someone else commented that if the job had been done properly, Ally wouldn’t have been around to cause them grief. There was a reply that the person responsible should shut the fuck up unless they wanted a match up their own arse.’
‘You said you knew who they were.’
‘I do. Mostly. But we weren’t able to track the ISP addresses of these two, and we don’t have their real names. I have tech still working on it.’
‘Fuck, Ben, these guys are walking around on the street with Ally.’
Ben nodded. ‘You need to take some precautions,’ he told Ally, ‘while I figure this out.’
‘We already have been,’ Cam said. ‘With those girls going missing, we’re all on alert.’
‘You think I’m in danger?’ Ally asked.
‘I don’t want to scare you, but it’s a possibility. If this guy has an ego, and he’s copping shit about all this, he might just decide to finish the job to save face.’
‘Oh God.’
‘Then you need to find him before he has the chance,’ Cam said.
‘I can stay a few days, set up an office at the local station. I’ll talk to Sullivan again, but I don’t hold out much hope on that front. But while you’re here, I think you should tell me more about these missing girls.’
‘What did he have to say?’ Mia demanded when Cam and Ally walked through the front door.
Cam massaged his aching temples and resigned himself to going through it all again for Mia’s benefit. ‘First, he’s not out to lock Ally up.’
‘Then what is it?’
‘I didn’t start the fire,’ Ally told her, dropping into a chair.
‘Well, of course you didn’t! We knew that –’
‘But someone else did. On purpose.’
‘What? Why?’
When Ally just put her head in her hands, Cam took over. ‘To get back at David for cheating with one of their girlfriends. Detective Bowden thinks that killing Ellie was an accident. That perhaps Ally was the other target.’
Mia processed that, stood and turned on her heel.
‘Mia.’ Ally wearily looked up at Cam. ‘Can you go talk to her? She’s always the strong one, but when she walks out, it’s not good.’
‘All right. Are you okay?’
She shrugged. ‘I think I’ll put the kettle on.’
Reluctantly, Cam left Ally alone. It took him a while to find Mia – she was sitting under a large tree just beyond the line of sight from the house. She didn’t look impressed when he approached. He gathered she hadn’t wanted to be found.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Of course I am. It’s Ally you should be worried about.’ The thickness of her voice told him just how upset she was.
‘You think I can’t worry about you too?’
‘She can’t deal with anything else, she won’t survive it.’
‘She’ll be fine, Mia, we’ll make sure of it.’
‘You don’t know what she’s been through already. It was horrific. She almost died. Twice. Because she tried to get in, the whole place was coming down and she was holding onto a superheated padlock and refusing to let go. Her hair was on fire, and she was clawing at the doors. Have you ever seen someone literally lifted off their feet in an explosion? I have, and it was Ally. I thought she was dead.’
‘Mia, have you spoken to anyone about all this? I don’t think it was only Ally who was traumatised.’
She shook her head. ‘When she woke up, those damn flashbacks would get her. Anything could trigger one. And then there was Ben. The damn pig-headed heartless bastard just kept at her and at her, trying to get her to admit she’d done it. That she’d lit the fire on purpose out of spite because she’d found David in there with another woman. Losing her horses nearly killed her and then she had to deal with him. Her doctor kept telling him how important it was not to pressure her into talking – that it could make things worse. But he wouldn’t quit.
‘The therapy, physical and emotional, has been huge. She’s come a long way but she still blames herself, and maybe you’ve changed that, but she could still go backwards. I can’t let that happen. I don’t want him hassling her again.’
‘It was Ben who found out this new information, Mia, by doing his job. I’m not excusing what happened in the hospital, but he needs to be here and he needs to get whoever did this off the street and make them pay. I know he’s going to find the son of a bitch – Lee and I are going to help him. So you need to back off. I know it’s not easy, but you’re going to have to let him work.’
‘Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure he’ll catch him?’
‘If anyone can, he will.’
She dropped her gaze and toyed with the grass at her feet. He could almost hear her internal argument. Eventually she looked up at him. ‘All right. All right, I’ll back off if Dr Jackson agrees. He’ll usually fit her in if something’s going on. I’d like to call him, see if she can come back with me tomorrow and see him before Ben starts questioning her again.’
‘Of course.’
‘And she needs to keep working with the horses. It’s helping. There’s something I want to talk to you about …’
CHAPTER
19
‘All right, give me a second!’
Because it was pointless arguing with Mia, Ally had made that appointment with Dr Jackson. She’d been squeezed in straight away, so she’d packed up Luna – at Mia’s insistence – and followed Mia back in
to the city. Then she’d stayed a couple of days because Mia had thought the break would do her good. And she had to admit that perhaps it had.
But as she turned off the engine and stared up at the ramshackle old house, she was surprised at just how much she’d missed the place. Apparently so had Luna, who was whining and jumping at the car door, scratching the upholstery, eager to get out. Ally opened the door and the pup scrambled over her lap, shooting off towards the front veranda, where Bess was standing and wagging her tail.
Ally recovered her bag from the boot, all set to follow when her eyes caught sight of something behind the shed. A new fence? She frowned, hearing voices.
Curious, she dropped her bag and crossed the grass. When she rounded the shed what she saw stopped her in her tracks: Cam and Lee were putting the finishing touches on a newly built round yard. They must have worked like maniacs to get this done in a couple of days. They certainly looked like they had – both men were hot and sweaty and absolutely filthy. She melted.
‘What have you done?’
‘Hi.’ Cam dropped his tools and approached her, dragging her in for a quick, hungry kiss. ‘You said you needed somewhere safe to train. Mia gave us the dimensions.’
‘She tried to con us into a full-sized arena too,’ Lee added, wiping his brow as he joined them, leaning against the new fence. ‘But even legends such as us can only accomplish so much in a couple of days.’
‘You built me a round yard.’
Cam nodded and, snatching a water bottle, took a long drink. ‘Only things you have to wait on are rubber for the lining and the surface material Mia said you’d want put on the ground. They can’t be delivered till early in the week.’
‘You built me a round yard.’
‘Yeah. We established that.’ Cam was grinning at her. ‘You like it?’
Because her nerves were bouncing, Ally’s hand went to her stomach.
Lee looked from Ally to Cam and back. ‘Well, shit, Ally, you can always grow flowers in it or something.’
She held up her index finger while she processed it all. ‘One minute, just one …’ This was real. She was going to teach again, train that pony. She closed her eyes.