Legacy of Hunters Ridge

by Sarah Barrie

  She took one hesitant step, listened, waited, watched. A quiet moan came from somewhere close by.

  Cold fingers wrapped around her ankle.

  Her heart stopped. Then she stumbled backwards, screaming, ripping her leg from the grasp and taking off like a runner.

  ‘Help …’

  The soft voice had her turning. Squinting against the darkness, Ally kept backing up, even as she tried desperately to see.

  ‘Help me …’

  A woman. And desperate. Wrapping her trembling arms around herself, Ally stopped, then cautiously approached. As she got closer, she made the figure out. The woman was sprawled on the ground, her head lifted with supreme effort.

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Bella? Is that you?’ Ally rushed forwards, a new panic taking over. Her gaze was everywhere, darting in the darkness for danger as she knelt beside the injured woman. ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘I can’t walk. He hurt me, Ally, he hurt me.’

  ‘He –’ Ally put a hand on her; she felt sticky. Her clothes were shredded.

  A light went off in the house. Her stomach plummeted as nerves jerked and bounced. ‘Shh, I need you to be quiet, okay? Please. Stop – stop crying. Please. Be quiet. Oh, God, please be quiet. I need to get you away from the house. He’s in there, I can’t see.’ She tried to help Bella stand, but the woman cried out in pain, begged Ally to stop. Another light flicked off in the house, and now she couldn’t see into the laundry. They were too close. He was coming.

  ‘I’m going to have to go find Cam.’

  ‘No! No, don’t leave me, please … he’ll get me, don’t leave me here …’ Bella’s desperate sobs were gut wrenching.

  ‘Shh, please, please shh. It’ll be okay. I won’t leave you. Cam will be back any second. Any second. He’s got to have fed by now. He’s probably just filling troughs up. He’ll be here.’

  Breathe, focus, relax. Breathe, focus, relax. Bess groaned and ambled over and Luna appeared and sniffed frantically at Bella.

  ‘Get off!’ Ally whispered.

  Ally’s eyes never left the laundry door. He could be right there. Three feet away. She wouldn’t know. She couldn’t see. Bella was breathing strangely.

  The cows quietened. Did she dare call out? If he was just inside that door … But he could sneak up from behind them. There was no way of knowing. None.

  ‘Cam!’

  ‘Ally?’

  ‘Help!’

  ‘Where?’

  Please don’t be there. ‘Back door!’

  Cam must have flown from the shed because he was beside her in seconds. ‘What’s wrong? Why are you in the dark?’

  ‘It’s Bella, she’s hurt. He’s in the house. Cam, he called me on the intercom from upstairs. I’d just been up there. I –’

  ‘Okay, I’m here, it’s okay.’ He quickly checked over Bella as best he could. She was making small, nonsensical noises. ‘We need to move, we’re too exposed here.’

  ‘I know, I tried, but she’s in so much pain.’ Ally could barely talk for the chattering of her teeth and the shudders overtaking her body.

  He called Lee, hung up. ‘Lee’s going to call emergency services, then Rob and Ben. Take my keys. We’re going to go to my ute, you’re going to drive.’

  Her head was swinging from side to side. ‘I can’t –’

  ‘Ally. Ally. Yes, you can. Keep it together for me, all right?’

  Breathe, focus, relax. She nodded, jerky and fast. She took the keys, fumbled with them.

  Cam gave her arm a quick squeeze. ‘Let’s move.’

  She got to her feet clumsily. They reached the car. Somehow she drove back up the hill to Cam’s while Cam held on to Bella. Ally could hear the sounds of pain, of distress, heard Cam’s calming voice. Did Billy do this? It had to have been him. Did he want to do that to her? Her stomach twisted, she felt faint. Black spots were dancing in front of her eyes by the time she pulled up in Cam’s driveway.

  The sound of his phone jolted her back.

  ‘They’re coming,’ he told her a few seconds later. ‘I don’t want to move her again – go inside, grab a blanket.’

  Ally opened the door and the interior light illuminated Bella cradled in Cam’s arms. She’d never seen someone that badly damaged. She tried not to look. On unsteady legs, Ally hurried inside to do as he’d asked. She hoped help would arrive before Bella got any worse.

  ‘Ally, you’re going to have to stop pacing.’

  She looked at Cam and threw her arms out in frustration. ‘Why haven’t we heard anything? They said they’d call.’

  ‘And someone will. It’s a hospital, a busy one. They’re working on her.’

  ‘I should have gone with her.’

  ‘They wouldn’t have let you in the helicopter. Ben’s there. As soon as anything happens, we’ll know.’

  ‘Could you call him?’

  He sighed but nodded and tried. ‘It went to voicemail. Come on, it’s two in the morning. You need to get some sleep.’

  ‘Are the dogs okay?’

  ‘They’re fine.’ When he’d gone down with Rob and Ben to search the house, Cam had brought them back. Luna thought the new yard with its floodlights was a great adventure, Bess was anxious, unsure.

  She moved to the window and stared down into the darkness. ‘What if he’s still down there?’

  ‘We went over every inch of that house. He’s got some way of hiding, I don’t know how or where, but there’ll be more police in the morning. If there’s a single trace of him, they’ll find it.’

  ‘I’ve never seen so much blood. I thought he was going to come out and …’

  He got up, walked over and wrapped his arms around her. ‘I shouldn’t have left you for a second. If anything happened to you …’ He held her tighter, and she felt the shudder ripple through him. ‘I love you, Ally.’

  Tears welled in her eyes and the breath lodged in her throat. ‘I love you too. And sorry for crying again.’

  ‘Don’t be. It’s been an emotional few hours. We’ll get through it.’

  She nodded against his chest.

  ‘Let’s get some rest.’

  His phone rang and he answered it, then spent a few moments talking. Ally knew it had to be Ben, and waited impatiently for an update.

  ‘The cuts are mostly superficial – made to inflict pain, not to kill, though she has lost a lot of blood. Her leg is broken, the wounds are infected, but her main issue at the moment is shock, some swelling on the brain from a whack to the head, and dehydration. Looks like she’ll recover, at least physically, but it will take a while. She’s been sedated. Elaine is with her but Ben can’t talk to her yet, so he’s going to get some sleep too, head back in the morning.’

  ‘She’s been missing for three weeks. Can you imagine what she’s been through? How could someone do that to another person? All those other girls whose cars have been found … they haven’t been running away.’

  ‘Doesn’t look like it.’

  ‘Do you think that’s what Billy wants to do to me?’

  ‘It’s not going to happen. And Ally, this isn’t about you personally, any more than it was about David or Bella – or anyone else. And it’s not about the house being a good place to live or about the animals.’

  ‘Then what is it?’

  ‘I think the reason he needs you out of the way, needs this place, is because you’re on his hunting ground.’

  ‘But Bella was the last of that group of friends. If I leave, will it stop?’

  ‘No. People like that don’t stop, Ally. Not until they’re caught or killed. There are probably more victims we don’t know about. And if we don’t stop him, he’ll find even more.’

  For the first time in almost two years Ally awoke from a worse nightmare than the one that had finally stopped playing in her head. She wanted to stay in bed, to curl up and hide until someone made it all go away somehow. Bella. God. He’d cut her to pieces. A sick wave of nausea washed over her. He was comin
g after her. Breathe, breathe, breathe …

  ‘Hey.’

  She jumped so hard the bed shook and a pillow fell to the floor. Cam sat, put a coffee on the bedside table and pulled her into his arms. ‘Bad dream?’

  ‘Bad reality. I didn’t wake up to David’s face this morning – it was Bella. Have you heard anything?’

  ‘Ben’s on his way back. Bella’s too traumatised to speak to a man, so he’s put a female cop with experience in this sort of thing on it. There’s a team on their way down to your place already. Forensics are going to go over the house, another team will search the area. Shouldn’t be too hard to find something with the state she was in.’

  ‘Do I have to talk to anyone?’

  ‘Later. Everyone’s saying it was really heroic, what you did, staying with Bella with that bastard only metres away in the house.’

  ‘It wasn’t heroic. I would have left her to get you. But she said he might come back and get her, she was distraught, so I couldn’t. But I wasn’t heroic, I was petrified.’

  He pressed his lips to the top of her head and held on. ‘You didn’t run. When it counted, you dug in. You can do that. That’s in you. I knew you were strong. Now you can know it too. And you’re going to need to hold on to that, just for a bit longer, just until we get this done.’

  Cam and Lee drove down the bumpy track that was Gus’s driveway, right behind Rob’s police car.

  ‘The old bastard isn’t here today, we’ll go looking,’ Rob growled as they emerged from their vehicles.

  Rob wasn’t himself. Cam was guessing that had to do with Bella’s discovery. He could only imagine how he was feeling about that, about any flack he was going to cop over it.

  The cabin was quiet, the car was there.

  ‘Gus?’ Rob banged on the door.

  Cam walked around, headed down the side of the house. A quiet whine made him pause. He dropped to his haunches and peered under the house, where he saw Gus’s dog.

  ‘Hey, sweetie, what are you doing under there?’

  The dog shook, the tip of her tail flicked. She wasn’t moving. Cam continued to coax and croon.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Lee asked.

  ‘It’s Gus’s dog. She’s filthy and she’s not coming out.’

  Lee took out his phone and switched on the torch and turned it on the dog to get a better look. ‘Ah shit, Cam. That’s not dirt. I’ll see if I can get her out.’

  ‘Be careful.’

  As Lee crawled in, the dog growled low, began to snarl.

  ‘Okay, bad idea.’

  ‘We’ll get a rope. Toss it over her head and drag her out.’

  ‘What’ve you found?’ Rob stood over them.

  ‘The dog. It’s injured.’

  ‘Millie? Who’d hurt old Millie?’ He whistled at her, earned another growl. Rob straightened, frowned. ‘Never heard her growl before. Not once.’

  ‘Did you find Gus?’ Cam asked.

  ‘He isn’t here, but I think you should come take a look at what is.’

  Lee turned off the torch, pressed a number into his phone. ‘I’ll get Ebony down here. When she arrives, we’ll try again. Poor thing has to be looked over.’

  ‘Make sure she brings Ally, I don’t want her alone.’

  They left Millie where she was and tracked into the house.

  ‘This is Gus’s room.’ Rob led them to the doorway of a small bedroom. The double bed was roughly made, a few clothes were scattered on the floor, a couple of well-read fishing magazines sat on a wooden table by a desk lamp.

  ‘Nothing unusual.’

  ‘No, except.’ Rob turned and opened another door. ‘He’s supposed to be living alone. So whose is this?’

  Another single bed, another table, another lamp. But the bedspread was Disney themed, the magazines were storybooks. Wood shavings littered the floor and whittled figures were scattered around underfoot.

  ‘A child?’ Lee stepped in to take a better look around.

  ‘Unless Gus was whittling in here,’ Cam said, picking up a detailed horse figurine, ‘that child whittles like a pro.’

  Rob picked up some clothes. ‘Biggest kid I’ve ever come across.’

  ‘This is Billy’s room,’ Cam said. ‘And Billy has been visiting Gus since childhood. I’m guessing there’s never been enough need, or money, to change over bedding, to take away the toys. He uses this place to crash in, to hide in.’

  ‘So where the hell are they?’

  The sound of a car pulling up caught their attention. ‘That’ll be Ebony and Ally.’

  ‘Where is she?’ Ebony asked after greeting the men.

  ‘Under the house, over here.’ Cam led Ebony around and Ally followed. Cam wrapped his arms around her. ‘How are you holding up?’

  ‘Good. You didn’t find Gus?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  Ebony straightened. ‘I can’t see well enough, I’ll get under there. See if I can get a lead on her.’

  ‘Be careful, Ebs.’

  Armed with a lead, she slid under the house. The dog lunged forwards, snapping. Ebony quickly rolled back and got to her feet. ‘Right.’ After a quick dust off, she sighed.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Ally asked.

  Ebony disappeared, reappearing with what looked like a rifle. ‘Who’s the best shot, boys?’

  ‘You’re not going to shoot her?’

  ‘It’s just a tranquiliser.’ She drew up the sedative and loaded the dart. ‘Lee?’ She gave him directions as she handed the gun over.

  ‘Since when do you have a tranquiliser gun?’ Cam asked.

  ‘I inherited it with the surgery. I’ve had it in the car because it came in handy with a cranky bull a couple of weeks back. I had to get his owner to shoot it though, because I can’t. I think I should learn.’

  ‘God help us all,’ Cam muttered.

  Lee put a perfect shot into the dog’s hindquarter and a few minutes later, Millie was out on the grass. Ebony carefully examined her, wincing at the nasty wounds. ‘I’ll take her straight in to the clinic. She’s got some pretty bad lacerations, especially round the head and neck. Poor baby.’ Her face was grim. ‘Have you found Gus?’

  ‘Not yet. Why?’

  ‘Dogs usually get these kinds of injuries defending something or someone. They lunge in, get hit, jump back, go again. See the angle of these wounds? Most are on the head and neck. She wasn’t agile enough to get out of the way. Can you carry her to the car for me?’

  Cam laid the dog gently in the back. ‘Lee and I will call in at the surgery when we’re finished here, see how you’re getting on.’ He turned his attention to Ally. ‘Okay?’

  ‘Yep, I’ll go with Ebs, help if I can. See you later.’

  He watched the girls drive off and thought about what Ebony had said. He had a feeling this wasn’t going to end well.

  ‘You think something’s happened to Gus?’ Lee asked.

  ‘Yep.’

  Lee walked to the edge of the scrub. ‘If so, Billy’s deteriorating. Fast. His world’s falling down around him. This is not good news.’

  Rob rubbed a hand over his face. ‘Guess we better get some of those specialist cops out here too.’

  ‘Looks like it. In the meantime, let’s wander down the track a bit, make sure he’s not just fishing.’

  Ally did her best to help Ebony clip the hair away from Millie’s wounds, then watched as Ebony cleaned, assessed and stitched, before helping to carry the dog into one of the pens.

  ‘We’ll keep an eye on her as she wakes up, but there’s not much more I can do. I think she’ll recover all right. Cuppa?’

  ‘Sure.’

  The bell sounded and a moment later, Cam and Lee appeared. ‘How is she?’ Lee bent down and looked her over. ‘Nice work, doc.’

  ‘I think she’ll be okay.’

  ‘The police have arrived. They’re all out at your place now,’ Cam told Ally.

  ‘Any sign of Gus?’

  He shook his head. ‘We�
�ll get some guys out there. See if they find anything.’

  The idea that Gus might have ended up like Bella, like Millie, that he might be dead, had the tears she’d been holding back welling in her eyes. She swallowed hard. When she turned her face into his chest, Cam held her until she couldn’t breathe. Somehow it pulled her back together.

  ‘We need to go see Ben. He wants us all in his office.’

  Several police vehicles were parked outside the police station, and inside, both uniformed and plain-clothed police sat, talked, wandered, held hot drinks, or pored over aerial photographs, crime-scene photographs, maps, sketches, and reports.

  ‘Just like television,’ Ebony commented.

  ‘Not entirely.’ Ben appeared through the crowd, nodded in greeting. ‘Don’t expect evidence analysed, lab work done, results in, interviews completed and the crime to be solved in a sixty-minute segment. We don’t have the magic of screen writers.’

  ‘But you do have bad coffee,’ Lee said, pouring himself one.

  ‘Come into Rob’s office, it’s bigger than mine and he’s out. I can’t talk to you here.’

  They piled in and Ben closed the door. The noise level reduced several decibels.

  Cam sat. ‘Figured it out yet?’

  Ben sent him a lopsided grin. ‘My initial profile didn’t cut it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I had Billy pegged wrong.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Ally asked.

  ‘Everything about Billy’s background, his character, suggested a disorganised offender – someone with low to – let’s be generous – average intelligence. Socially inept, emotionally unstable, someone who commits volatile acts on hair triggers and therefore shouldn’t be capable of hiding evidence in what are emotionally driven offences. But that doesn’t fit. Not with the level of competency he’s shown with these abductions. I was already questioning his ability to start that fire at Ally’s, but getting all those girls out of their cars without so much as a single trace for years on end has sealed it. He’s not who I thought he was. I had to start from scratch.’

  Lee shifted uncomfortably and cleared his throat. ‘I don’t mean to be harsh, but I think it needs to be said that the … forensic analysis down here might not have been crash hot.’