Hearts in the Land of Ferns

by Jude Knight

  She set out a mug and then put a couple of Christmas mince pies onto a plate. They were another treat new to her, with a sweet cookie dough crust filled with a spiced fruit mix. She would tell Trevor that he didn’t need to worry about her and the baby. Once she was free to go, she’d get another job, here in New Zealand so that Old Trev and Cheryl—and Trevor, if he wanted—could come and visit. New Zealand was a beautiful country, and the people were friendly. A country town would have opportunities for a good business administrator, and would be a good place for the baby to grow up. Given the baby’s father was a New Zealander, surely they would let her stay?

  She poured the hot milk onto the cocoa and carried her impromptu feast through to the lounge. On an impulse, she put the mug and plate down, and turned on the Christmas lights on the tree to light her way back to her comfortable chair.

  Back in the chair, she sat back, cradling the mug, thinking about the day that the baby was conceived.

  She had fled Pritchard House and found a place to hide. Her Kiwi friend from college said of course she could use his beach house. He told her how to find the country road that wound around in bewildering directions until it came to rest in a small bay in the upper reaches of the Kaipara Harbour, and which tile in the garden hid the key.

  She had been in her refuge a mere twenty-four hours before Trevor found her.

  She’d barely slept, anxious to analyse the data she had stolen and write enough of a report that the authorities would look past the camouflage and see the murk beneath. She thought she had enough to get the different national police forces to co-operate, because only that would bring Bernard down. Probably not in time to save Lee. She had no doubt he would be after her by now, and that he would catch her. But if she could stay out of his reach until she’d passed on the evidence, her death would be in a good cause. Or whatever else he decided was suitable punishment for a treacherous sister, and she wasn’t going to think about that, or she’d never get this report finished.

  The back of her neck prickled, which was ridiculous. Nobody could have found her so quickly. She was letting her imagination run away with her. To prove it, she straightened her back and turned around—and let out a short scream, hastily suppressed.

  Jason Winterleaf leaned against the doorway that led to the bedroom, utterly relaxed, smiling slightly.

  “Where did you…? How did you…?”

  He lifted himself from the wall and prowled towards her, leaning over her shoulder to examine the screen of the laptop, then pulled out another kitchen chair and turned it away from her, straddling it so that he could rest his elbows on the back and tap his forefingers against his mouth.

  “You really are a very clever woman, Kirilee Pritchard,” he said.

  Lee found her voice. “What are you going to do?”

  “How long until you finish that?” He nodded towards the laptop.

  She couldn’t make sense of the question. She shook her head, and he seemed to realize that she was bewildered by his intentions, because he explained, “By now, the rest of my team will be hunting for us, and if I can find your one and only Kiwi connection and research what property he owns, they can. We have to get out of here before they arrive, but we probably have the rest of the day, at least. I’d like to be gone shortly after nightfall.”

  “I don’t understand. You’re not taking me back?”

  “I’m helping you, Kirilee.” He smiled, a wry twist of the lips. “Hard to believe, I know. But what choice do you have, after all? You are right not to trust anyone, but I’ve caught up with you and you’re not going to escape me again. So, you might as well let me save your life and help you get your evidence out.”

  He stood, one smooth movement. “I’ll put the kettle on for some tea, and I bought some take out in Paparoa. Do you like fish and chips?”

  Lee hoped he’d have better luck with the wood stove than she’d had. The cabin was off the grid, and she was already onto her second battery pack on the laptop. She went on writing the cover note to go with her report. Another half hour and she’d be done.

  She tried to ignore Jason going back and forth around the room behind her, and he did not interrupt her again, except to put a mug of tea beside her after about ten minutes, and a plate of steaming battered fish and golden French fries five minutes after that.

  She ate with her fingers, then looked around for a napkin and Jason handed her a couple of sheets of paper kitchen towel. Bake at the computer, she finished her file and saved it.

  Again, Jason’s hand came over her shoulder, this time to drop a handful of USB sticks. “I need the original with no extra files, Kirilee. We’ll want to feed it back to Bernard so he thinks he has stopped the leak. But make copies of everything onto these and add your report. I got five sticks, so that gives us five chances to get the evidence to the people who can use it.”

  She looked up to meet his dark eyes. “Who are you really? CIA?”

  “I’m Jason Winterleaf, your brother’s chief of security, and…. Something more. Let it go, Kirilee. But I’m on your side. I want what you want.”

  “I want to end Pritchard Corporation,” she said, fiercely.

  Jason just nodded. “Then make your copies, Kirilee.”

  He washed and put away the few dishes while she copied to each of the sticks, then deleted all the incriminating files from her laptop and ran a utility that overwrote the spare space on the drive and redeleted everything, so Bernard’s technicians would find it hard to work out what had been on there. By the time she was ready, the sun had set, and Jason was standing to one side of the window in the darkened bedroom, looking out at the road.

  “Too open out the front,” he told her. “Are you set?”

  Lee opened the zip pocket on the outside of her handbag and began to put the USB sticks into it. “Not there,” Jason told her. “Put anything you don’t want to be separated from into your clothing. Do you have an inside pocket in your jeans? That’d work. Give me the original and two of the copies. With a bit of luck, we’ll get them all through, but it makes sense to double our chances. In fact…” He tucked two of the sticks Lee gave him into his shirt and took the other through to the cabin’s living room. “… I’m leaving one of the USB sticks here. When the authorities retrace our steps, they will, let’s hope, find it blue-tacked behind the hanging bookshelves on the — ah — northwest wall beside the front door. Third shelf up, around ten percent of the way from the left end.”

  He suited his actions to his words, then picked up Lee’s laptop bag and her backpack. “Let’s go, Kirilee. No. Leave the lamp on. It’ll gutter when the gas runs out. If we’re being watched, I don’t want them to see anything different.”

  He went out the bedroom window first, and helped Lee down to the ground, then led the way to the back fence, keeping to the shadows, skirting open spaces.

  Beyond the fence, a path meandered along a small scrubby back lot, trending down towards the water, by making many detours to curve around sandy hillocks covered with clumps of the New Zealand native grass known as toe toe, yards tall, with their feathery plumes waving far overhead. Jason opened the gate and stood back to let Lee pass, then suddenly hurled himself at her, rolling them both through the gate as gun fire sounded, rat tat tat tat tat tat, and chips flew from the posts right where they had been. Someone shouted, “Through the back gate!” and someone else yelled, “Did you get them?”

  Jason was already up, his hand holding hers, pulling her after him down the path. The gate was out of sight within seconds, and moments later, he was pulling her down a side alley between two houses, and then over the fence into someone’s yard. The house here was shuttered and dark.

  Over another fence, and then another, and Jason stopped, pulling her into the concealing depths of one of the ubiquitous toe toe bushes, which rustled in the light breeze, covering the sound of her breathing. They could hear their pursuers, arguing voices drawing nearer. Someone ordered watchers up to the single road leaving the settlem
ent, and more down to the docks to stop that escape route. “We’ll find them if we have to go door to door.” An Australian accent. Jason’s deputy Shay, who was a nasty brute.

  Lee, wrapped in Jason’s arms, could feel a silent laugh shake him, which made no sense. The hunters passed a few meters away and then passed again. Then other voices starting shouting; Kiwi voices wanting to know what was happening, drowned out by Pritchard’s men demanding access to search. “Do as you’re told and no one will get hurt,” Shay yelled. Jason shook his head, slowly.

  The wind continued to rustle the toe toe fronds, masking Lee’s whispered, “What is funny?”

  “Someone is going to call 1-1-1,” Jason whispered back. “They’ve mucked up right and proper, making all this noise.”

  Around them the search continued; doors banging, angry shouts, crashes as weekend cottages were broken into. Then a new sound, coming from both south and north, at first distant but drawing nearer and nearer. The thunk, thunk, thunk of chopper blades, and Pritchard’s men gathering, withdrawing, fleeing for their cars.

  “The Armed Offenders Squad,” Jason murmured in her ear. “Did the stupid fools think they could wave guns around in rural New Zealand and get away with it? Come on. Let’s get out of here before the police have the place in lock down.”

  “Don’t we want the police?” Lee objected, but she followed when he led the way back to the path.

  “If I were Shay, I’d leave a couple of assassins in hiding. I want to get you to the police, but not where you’re likely to get shot.” He skulked from shadow to shadow until they reached the foreshore. The docks were around three hundred yards away, brightly lit by a hovering helicopter that had just dropped half a dozen armed men in flak vests.

  Jason pulled her into the mangroves, and she gritted her teeth at the squelching mud. Better to lose her shoes than her life. Jason was ignoring her hesitation as he searched. “Earlier, I saw a… here.” It was a rowboat.

  “Slow and quiet, out to sea, and back when things calm down a bit,” Jason suggested.

  If only it had been that easy.

  7

  Christchurch Airport’s domestic terminal was full of frustrated travellers trying to get home for Christmas. One of the three storms bearing down on New Zealand was currently making its way inland across the Southern Alps, pushing strong gusty winds ahead of it, and no planes were flying.

  His flight was delayed forty-five minutes, according to the departures board. He picked up a burger, a coffee and a newspaper; the usual extra-thick Saturday edition. He discarded the lifestyle, motor, and property supplements, and quickly scanned the remainder, ignoring the world news that he had already heard in favour of New Zealand stories to catch up on current events here at home.

  By the time he had finished, the wind had died a little, or more probably veered enough to the northwest to make it safe for the flights that were now beginning to land and take off. The overhead speakers warned of further delays while the airport cleared the backlog, and the departures board showed he would be boarding in fifty minutes. He went for a prowl around the terminal. He really should buy Kirilee a Christmas present.

  Tucked in the backpack that was his only luggage, he had a kangaroo-hide whip for Old Trev and a black pearl pendant for Cheryl. What would Kirilee like? He found a stand of greenstone jewellery in one of the airport gift shops. New Zealand Jade. Pretty things, and uniquely New Zealand. A placard at the top explained the significance of each shape. He hesitated over a modern interpretation of the traditional fish hook (strength, good luck, and safe traveling over water) and a triple twist (love, loyalty, and friendship), then almost chose a Koru (the stylized fern root representing growth, harmony, and new beginnings). But his eye kept going back to the flattened disk on a fine gold chain that symbolized continuity and choice. No beginnings, no ends; just choices, to do and achieve whatever the wearer wanted. That was the one. He paid for it and took it to the Christmas-wrap service counter.

  Go to Gate Lounge, the departures board said now, but as he hurried his steps towards security a cacophony of colours in one corner caught his eye, and he detoured to a pop-up Christmas shop, overflowing with tinsel, baubles, and artificial greenery. He had maybe ninety seconds to buy a decoration for the family tree. Something different. It might be a tall order to find something that summed up the three years since he was last in Mangatehapu for Christmas, but maybe his feelings about coming home?

  On the counter, a small silver tree was festooned with an assortment of brightly coloured anthropomorphic animals with an assortment of drinks, cheesy grins and red Christmas hats. He chose the pig: sun lounger, sun glasses, and a large beer. Yep. That was him by tomorrow, weather permitting.

  But a little over an hour later, that scenario wasn’t looking so promising. After two hair-raising attempts to land in Wellington were thwarted by gale-force gusts of wind, the plane was being diverted to Auckland.

  Within half an hour of landing in Auckland, Trevor had rented a vehicle and was on his way south. Five hours driving would bring him to the Rangitikei, and another forty-five minutes of winding roads would take him up to the farm above Mangatehapu. With luck, he’d be home before dark.

  Last time weather had disrupted his plans so thoroughly, he’d been with Kirilee in a rowboat on Kaipara Harbour, caught in a sudden squall, blown off shore and out of sight of the lights of the hunt going on in the village from which they’d escaped. He struggled to keep the boat turned into the waves while Kirilee bailed and battled through the night not to be washed ashore or out to the treacherous mouth of the harbour. Come the dawn, they found themselves on a stretch of forest-clad coast. Their phones were soaked, even if they dared use them, and Kirilee’s backpack was somewhere at the bottom of the sea.

  Half an hour’s trek brought them to a farmhouse where they were greeted by a suspicious farmer with a hunting rifle. The man apologized once they’d convinced him they were two stupid honeymooners who had barely survived an ill-considered fishing trip. “The worst of it is no one knows we were out there. We haven’t spoken to a soul for days,” Trevor told him, giving Kirilee a hug and a kiss on the forehead for verisimilitude.

  “Sorry about the gun. We’re all a bit shook up by the Armed Offenders Squad callout further up harbour,” their host explained. “People running around with semi-automatics. In New Zealand. Have you heard the like? Drugs, I imagine.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Better come in and meet the missus. We’ll get you dry and warm and see you on your way.”

  An hour later, the couple had dressed them (“it’s our clear-out for the church jumble sale, sweetie, but your need is greater”), fed them an enormous breakfast, and piled them into a ute to drive them into Wellsford, the nearest town.

  “I’ll drop you off at the police station,” their host said, “and they’ll make sure you get home.”

  But Pritchard’s men were waiting in Wellsford.

  At first light on Christmas Fair morning, Cheryl was out on the farm bike with her dogs, moving the sheep up from the paddocks that might flood if they got a big dump of rain. Old Trev walked the home field and the yard, in and out of the barn and the sheds, making sure anything loose was put away or tied down.

  Kirilee listened to the weather forecast while she made a decent breakfast so the other two would have something to eat before they left for the fair. The clouds looked ominous, but just a few weeks ago, another threatened storm had blown past them without doing any damage—or any good, either. They needed the rain. She gave an amused snort. Listen to Kirilee Pritchard, New Zealand hill country farmer!

  Down in the school hall an hour later, weather dominated the conversation, even as the committee opened the doors and began the first of the competitions. Three storms were converging. The one from the south should pass on the other side of the mountains that formed the main spine of New Zealand’s two long islands, but if it veered to the west as it crossed between the islands, it would reach the Rangitikei country late t
his evening. Another from the west, from the empty seas below Australia, would almost certainly hit them, though not for another day or so, unless it built speed. And a second followed, coming southeast across the Tasman.

  What if they all hit at once? The whole community buzzed with stories from 2004, when entire hillsides washed into valleys, the whole lower North Island closed down for days, and the floods and slips isolated Mangatehapu for six weeks.

  But worries about the weather weren’t keeping people from the fair — not even the squally showers that blew through more frequently as the morning wore on stopped the crowds.

  Lee did her stint behind the raffle table, then spent an hour at the sausage sizzle moving sausages off the barbecue onto slices of bread and adding the extras as people paid over their two-dollar coins to Cheryl. After their reliefs arrived, she made a one for her and Cheryl, both with onions, hers with mustard and Cheryl’s with tomato sauce, and they wandered over to watch Jamie spin the wheel for instant prizes. “We’ve moved the start of the nativity to one p.m.,” Jamie told Cheryl and Lee, “so you have around fifteen minutes before you’re on.”

  Them and nearly everyone who lived in the valley.

  To Lee’s delight, he grabbed Cheryl by the waist as she passed and gave her a resounding kiss. “Jamie! Behave yourself. I haven’t told Lee yet.” And when Lee demanded details, Cheryl claimed she had to be ready to go on stage. But she blushed and looked back at Jamie, then blew a kiss and threw Lee a half-defiant, half-triumphant smile.

  “About time,” Lee said, and would have given her a hug if Cheryl hadn’t moved too fast for Lee’s bulk to keep up.