‘Okay,’ said Everett through the increasingly scratchy reception. ‘If you can get to Paris, try to buy some time until we arrive.’
‘I will,’ Taylor said and hung up.
Everything appeared so different at night, the pathway’s portal both compelling and fear-provoking at the same time. Down that path lay so many possibilities. But he could only focus on one: Stop her. Erin’s words again echoed in the rain’s white noise: she lies. He had promised Maggie he wouldn’t take any risks, wouldn’t jeopardise what they had together: Perhaps the ranger lies too.
‘There’s no other way,’ he whispered, hoping it was true.
He reached across to the open glove compartment and fumbled in the dark for the flashlight he had seen there earlier. It worked. Not the strongest light, but better than stumbling through the wind-thrashed woods in the dark. He sighed as he took Everett’s Glock from the passenger’s seat. I’ll do what I have to. Those words bore the weight of the Glock itself. Taylor had had plenty of rifle experience with the annual deer culls back home, but a handgun was something altogether different. They were designed for one thing: to kill another human. He checked that the safety was on and tucked the gun behind his belt. The rain began again, light at first, but swelling to drenching in a matter of seconds, beating on the roof and flooding the dashboard through the shattered windscreen.
Heather’s blood had seeped from the driver’s seat into his clothes. Taylor felt his pants peel away from the leather as he left the car, and was glad to have the rain to wash him clean. He had left Heather’s body back at the crash scene with the dynamite crate; had peeled the phone detonator from her arm and removed the battery. He thought of her lying there in the rain, and how he had covered her with the raincoat. I’m so, so sorry, Heather. His heart felt heavy, like it was full of stones.
The flashlight’s beam was yellow and dim, but strong enough to make out Paris’s calling card scratched into the motorcycle’s tank. Taylor’s fingertips brushed the symbol as he passed. The wind whipped branches across his face as he entered the track, the path ascending to an open knoll where he could see the weir spanning the river. It had become a churning torrent, the water surging over the wall just inches beneath the catwalk. The river had burst the banks and swollen over the picnic grounds, swirling around the derelict pump house. Taylor extinguished the flashlight, paused – blinking – until his night vision improved, then made out the dark figure midway across the wall’s platform.
Paris.
The weight of the Glock in his belt now matched the weight of the decision he might be forced to make. What value is to be placed on one human life against the loss of many? He shifted the weapon slightly, but what he really wanted to do was throw it into the river. How is such a bloodied ledger balanced? Taylor had one chance to make this right, without the loss of another life, and it had to be through the power of words, not the power of the gun. At the very least, that had to be his first choice.
He cried out her name, but doubted she could hear him, so he switched on the flashlight and waved it in a wide arch. Paris paused, tilting her head inquisitively. She raised her left arm high and shone her own light directly at the object taped to her wrist. The conditions made it impossible to see it closely, but Taylor had no doubt that the object was the phone-detonator.
‘I’m coming down!’ he cried, again competing with the cacophony from the flooded river and driving rain.
Paris fixed her beam on him as he descended the trail, and Taylor had never felt more vulnerable in his life. Too, he couldn’t shake the empathy he felt for her; after all, Paris was the product of Dench’s depravity and, as Heather had reminded him, she was as much a victim as any of those men in the Royal’s cooler. But still, the things she had done to them, to Sister Moore, could not be ignored.
The trail disappeared into the overflow of brown water, almost knee deep until Taylor reached the weir’s catwalk and climbed the few steps above the waterline. Paris stood firm in the centre, lowered the flashlight and beckoned him forward. Taylor used the handrail to guide himself to her, and saw each cluster of TNT taped at intervals along the top rail, junction points leading below the waterline; no doubt pressing against the wall itself. This is gonna blow the whole fucking wall, not just a narrow breach. They were tethered by wax-coated detonation wicks. He’d had exposure to explosives as a ranger – mostly for use in controlled avalanches when snow built too heavily above vulnerable roadways in the park. The first explosion would charge the line to the next, continuing the process until each cluster had exploded in succession.
Paris’s features were hidden in the shadow of her raincoat hood. She slipped it back and exposed her face. Her expression was sombre, and he felt there was a little more of Jaimie staring back at him. Any hint of mischief in her eyes had gone, replaced with sadness.
‘The fact you’re here means something terrible has happened to Heather,’ she said pensively.
Taylor struggled for words. In the end, he settled for, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Was it quick?’
He nodded.
‘She was the only one in this … place … who understood my pain.’
‘I liked Heather,’ Taylor said.
Paris narrowed her stare. ‘But not enough to spare her.’
‘It was an accident.’
‘You need to go, Taylor,’ she said. ‘It’s not safe here.’
He stepped forwards. ‘I can’t let you do this.’
She smiled, and tilted her head like a curious cat. Paris is back. She gestured to the Glock’s handle protruding from his belt. ‘Are you going to shoot me, Taylor?’
The ranger’s hand fell across the handle, but he knew the truth, as she did. ‘We both know I can’t do that,’ he said.
She reached forwards to stroke his cheek tenderly. ‘I wish I was more like you, Taylor. I really do.’ Her hand lingered there for a moment before it fell to her side. ‘But I’m not, and you can’t stop this now.’
‘I have to try.’
‘Then you’re a dead man.’ She turned her back to him.
You should make her choose. It was as if Erin was standing right beside him; so much so, he glanced to his side. But he felt the words, rather than heard them.
‘Paris,’ he called.
She stopped, turned slowly. ‘Please don’t do this, Taylor.’
Taylor slipped the Glock from his belt and laid it at his feet. He gambled that the bond between him and Jaimie worked both ways – even if just a little. Paris shook her head as he pulled the knife from his pocket and sliced the tape clasping the dynamite to the railing.
‘Don’t,’ she said with a steely resolve.
Taylor held the cluster of TNT to his chest. ‘Your call,’ he said. ‘If you destroy the weir, you kill me too, and I don’t believe you want that.’ He saw her eyes become moon-round, but not with the rage he had expected. It was with fear, and it seemed foreign to her. ‘You have to choose, Paris.’
She raised her left arm and paused her finger over the call button on the phone. ‘Maybe I choose that we go together.’
Taylor saw the lights first – it took a moment for him to realise what they were. It began with one small red dot trembling over Paris’s heart. Then there was another, and another, until six of them danced across her chest. ‘Paris, it’s over,’ he said.
She followed his gaze, looking down at the fireflies on her chest; then up at the source of the laser sights on the knoll above the dam, their beams visible through the sheets of rain. ‘Oh, look,’ she said. ‘We have company.’
‘Please,’ Taylor said. ‘Let me help you through this.’
She stepped forwards and, to Taylor’s surprise, cupped his face, raised herself and kissed his lips. Is she saying goodbye? ‘You already have helped me,’ she said. Paris reached for the knife in his hand. It was a gentle move. He let her take it, watched as she cut the phone from her wrist. ‘Here,’ she said and handed it to him.
‘Thank you,�
�� he said.
She smiled. ‘Like it or not, Taylor, as with this place, we are forever bound.’
What happened next was too quick for him to intervene. Paris clambered to the railing, poised like the Hoodoo, and turned to him with the agility and grace of a seasoned circus performer.
‘Goodbye, Taylor,’ she said, her arms outstretched at her sides as she let herself plunge backwards into the maelstrom. Not once did she blink, not once did her eyes leave his, until the churning waters engulfed her.
31
Sunshine. It touched Taylor’s face like a promise. The new day had ended the nightmare and begun a new chapter in the life of Devlins Reach – of Taylor too. He couldn’t say if the Reach was worth saving, but it hadn’t been his or Paris’s decision to make. Its history was a dark one, which could never be changed, but where there is life, there is hope. And he hoped that this place of secrets and tragedies, now exposed, could one day find its way back into the light.
Taylor stood on the knoll above the river, took a moment to scan the wilderness that surrounded him and chose to see the beauty there. The weather had all but cleared, with just a scattering of spent clouds in a blue sky. Bird songs had replaced the screaming winds, and warm sunshine had replaced the rains, but the storm’s presence was evident in the bloated river and the casting of fallen trees and debris along its swollen banks.
The tactical response team had been stood down, and were milling along the weir’s perimeter, helmets cradled casually under their arms and balaclavas peeled off to reveal the exhausted, unshaven faces beneath. The PolAir chopper hovered several metres above the water downriver – a host of cops, both uniformed and plain-clothes, trailing the banks in search of Paris’s body.
How quickly things can change, he thought, thankful for the tempest’s passing, and realising the storm that had struck the Reach was as much Paris as it was the elements themselves. He turned his face skyward, closed his eyes and let the sun burn away the cold that had leached into his flesh. Or maybe the cold was just a response to all that had happened here. Not just to him, but to those two little girls so long ago. It made him wonder if he might be able to keep his promise to Maggie after all.
He noticed Everett walking towards him from the weir, his body wilting with fatigue, feet barely leaving the ground with each step. Taylor knew how he felt. The detective’s attention was focused on something in his hand. It was only when he stood in front of Taylor that the ranger could make out what Everett was carrying. It was Archie’s watch. The detective looked up, a smile breaking through his weariness.
‘The damnedest thing,’ he said, holding it up to his ear briefly. ‘Archie’s watch … It’s working again.’
‘Maybe the old boy is telling you something.’
Everett watched the slender second hand ticking like a heartbeat across the numbers, his thumb stroking the glass with affection. ‘And what do you think that might be?’
‘Oh, that’s between you and Archie,’ Taylor said. He was glad for Everett. Glad he had got through this whole thing okay and glad he was alive, but he also understood the regret he must be feeling at having lost Paris.
Everett slipped the timepiece into his pocket as he turned to look at the crews searching the riverbanks. ‘No one could have survived that,’ he said in a morose tone.
Taylor stared past Everett at the churning waters that took Paris. The river seemed hungry and unforgiving. Yet, he wondered, Could she have survived? A fairy wren flittered down from a tree to perch in the low brush by the path. It reminded Taylor of his first day with Jaimie at the boat site, and he gave a small smile. If only they could speak, she’d said, making him aware of the legion of silent witnesses the wilderness contained. The wren flew away, joining its blue-plumed mate as they glided low over the waters.
Taylor stared into the russet deluge. The image of Paris plunging into the churning river was something he would have with him always. We are forever bound, she had told him.
About that, the Hoodoo did not lie.
EPILOGUE
It was as if winter had arrived while they slept, the first sprinkling of snow having fallen in the mountains and hinterland overnight. Cheyenne Bridge lay well below the snowline, but when the winds blew down from the Victorian Alps, they delivered frost to the Lakes District. Maggie pulled Erin’s beanie down over her ears as they walked towards the supermarket.
The automatic doors opened to a wall of warm air and muzak, a familiar sign – Welcome to Greenways – arching over the entrance.
‘Grab a trolley, sweetheart,’ Maggie said as she unzipped her jacket. ‘One with a good set of wheels, okay?’
Erin plucked the nearest cart from a line of parked trolleys. She was in luck; no cockeyed wheels. Maggie smiled, nodding her approval as she unfurled her shopping list for tonight’s dinner; let Erin push the trolley. Taylor had spent the past forty-eight hours in the park supervising road maintenance with nothing but canned food and instant coffee. Tonight she would make him a spicy chicken risotto, and an apple pie for dessert. She missed him, feeling glad life had settled down since the Devlins Reach investigation. She made a mental note: red wine.
She followed her daughter down the first aisle, taking the same methodical route they always had since Greenways had opened two months ago. A long street-front window ran above the magazine racks. Erin stopped, and Maggie nearly ran into her. ‘Look,’ said Erin, pointing to the mountains. ‘I can see the snow.’
Maggie commandeered the trolley, and pushed it to the canned-fruit shelves opposite. ‘Daddy is working up there now with Uncle Brian. I hope he packed his gloves.’
Erin faked a shiver, accompanied by a ‘Bhrrrrrrrr …’
Maggie smiled as she playfully pinched Erin’s chin. ‘Can you run down to the dairy aisle and get us a carton of milk, sweetheart?’
‘Uh-huh,’ she said and skipped away, narrowly missing a redheaded woman’s trolley as it rounded the corner.
Maggie began humming to the muzak rendition of ‘Norwegian Wood’ as she picked a can of stewed apples from the shelf and turned it around to read the sugar content on the label. ‘Damn!’ she muttered, reaching for her glasses at the end of a neck lanyard. Could they make the writing any smaller? No sooner had she focused on the label than she felt the corner of a trolley bury itself in her thigh, and she dropped the can.
‘Oh shit!’ An unfamiliar voice – a woman’s. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Maggie looked up to see the redheaded woman wrestling with her cart.
‘I swear they make these damned things wonky on purpose.’ The woman squatted to pick up the can of apples, and handed it to Maggie. ‘Dented,’ she said. ‘You might want to pick another one.’
‘Thanks,’ Maggie said, rubbing her thigh. She found she was fixated on the woman’s face.
Her hair was a rich burgundy, in thick, luxurious waves that cascaded over her shoulders; olive skin framed her coffee-brown eyes above a row of faded freckles that bridged her nose. She gestured to the can of apples, eyes narrowing as her lips turned up in a smile. ‘A friend of mine has a recipe for apple and rhubarb pie that is to die for,’ she said. ‘I could give it to you, if you’d like.’ She shrugged. ‘To make up for running into you.’
Maggie couldn’t say why, but an uneasiness crept over her and she suddenly wanted Erin close. ‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘No harm done.’ That was when she heard something break on the floor.
Her daughter was standing in the middle of the aisle, eyes wide, mouth open, staring up at the redheaded woman. A split carton of milk was pooling at her feet.
‘Oh, my,’ said the woman. ‘Seems we’re all a little clumsy today.’ She turned to Erin, pressing her finger to her lips in a gesture of silence; then she walked away, but not without a final roguish glance over her shoulder. There was an air of mischief in her expression, a sense of something shared with Erin.
Maggie sprang to her daughter’s side and drew her close. ‘Do you know that woman, sweetheart?’
Erin nodded silently, then buried her face in her mother’s jacket. Maggie didn’t want to press the point, not yet; though her mind was racing, her daughter’s safety was foremost. Then she noticed the woman’s trolley had been left behind. There was nothing but a cake in it: chocolate mud in a clear container, the label on the top. But something wasn’t right – the sticker-seal was broken and the lid was sitting loosely. Maggie lifted it carefully, a bone-deep chill engulfing her body when she saw the symbol fingered in the icing …
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I believe most writers mould their characters and events from their own life experiences, or at the very least possess ambitions of wanting to experience them. Taylor Bridges came into my life many years ago. He was just a concept then, a whisper to my creative self that I suspected could one day become a louder voice in the literary world.
At first, Taylor was just an ordinary man, forever changed when plunged into an extraordinary world of accidental tragedies that would define him. He shared my love for family, devotion to work and a deep connection to the Australian wilderness. Like me, Taylor has developed over time, and like me, he often pauses to stare into the shadows of that wilderness we call life, searching for a hint of meaning; of what is to come. As the writer (his creator, if I may be so bold), I know what’s coming for Taylor (mostly), and it pains me to keep it from him, for I realise the way ahead will be a challenging road for both of us.
‘Do you want to tell me where we’re going?’ he asks in a whisper when he thinks my guard is down.
‘Not yet,’ I tell him as kindly as I can. ‘But I promise you this, Taylor, you will not go there alone.’
*
They say it takes a village to raise a child, so welcome to the hamlet of Pantera. No book is written alone, so my thanks – as always – goes to the Pantera publishing team. To Alison, John, Jenny and Martin Green, for continuing to believe in my work. To know these people as both publishers and friends is a true joy. To my publisher, Lex Hirst, for her vision and prudent guidance along the way, and for her ability to surround herself with such a wonderfully creative team of professionals.
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