by Margaret Way
Nicole, like the rest of them, was a good shot; her grandfather had taught her how to handle herself around firearms. The Outback wasn’t the city. Danger from feral animals was a fact of life. So was the danger presented by a trespasser, a man on the run, perhaps. Most dangerous of all were cattle “duffers”—cattle thieves—a constant threat to the industry.
“I don’t know that I want you here, Nic,” Drake said, eyes narrowing at her. She was busy tying a sapphire-blue bandanna around her throat, tucking it into her cotton shirt.
“Well, I’m coming. I’m experienced. Don’t worry. I’ll keep out of the way. You men can do the shooting. I’ll stick to my camera. I’m squeamish about killing a living thing. Even a dingo or a rogue camel.”
“Then keep behind the rest of the party and the line of fire. I’ll be watching out for you.”
“I feel safe.” She meant it. With him along—
“All set?” Joel rode up to them, apparently eager to be off on the hunt. “Watch yourself, Nikki,” he cautioned her, casting her an intent look she couldn’t define. “It’s been a long time since you’ve been involved in anything like this.”
“I’ve never been involved in a boar hunt,” she reminded him. “Chasing brumbies is more my style.”
“A long time since you’ve done that, as well,” Joel pointed out.
“Relax, Joel. I’ll keep an eye on her,” Drake promised. “I’m surprised your father decided to join us. He didn’t seem at all keen last night.”
“He needs the fresh air,” Joel answered, looking as though he’d undergone a transformation, more focused than Nicole had seen him in days. “Dad’s stuck too much behind a desk.”
“You could’ve fooled me,” she murmured sweetly.
“Well, he’s a damn good shot,” Joel answered with a wry smile. “He’s a better shot than me.”
“I didn’t even know he could handle a gun,” Nicole said, looking her surprise.
“You’ve been out of things for quite a while, Nikki. Dad’s a dark horse. I said he was a good shot. I didn’t say he was a sportsman. Stay well behind the guns where Drake and I can see you.”
“Right, Sarge!” She gave him a mischievous salute.
Alan sat his bay gelding twenty feet away, talking to Judah, who was carrying a beautifully decorated spear, the traditional Aboriginal way of hunting wild boar. All of them were dressed in everyday bush gear, but Alan was straight out of a magazine: checked sports jacket—much, much too hot—moleskins, glossy boots, a bandanna tucked into his cream shirt. The only thing he was wearing in common with the rest was a cream akubra, but with a very fancy crocodile-skin band. Both sides were rolled up, a rakish style that offered less protection for his face and neck. Alan had retained his good English skin. Nicole thought he’d be very pink by the end of the day.
He saw Nicole looking at him and rode toward her, a smile on his unreadable face. “Take care now, young lady,” he advised.
“Why, Alan, how considerate you are!”
“Always the smart answer!” He shook a playful finger at her. “Keep away from the guns. Do you have one, by the way?”
“I do.” Nicole gestured to her side. “Only for my protection, but I do know how to use it. Granddad made sure of that.”
“Absolutely!” Alan said in his strangely jarring plummy voice. “Sir Giles was very thorough. I’m quite looking forward to feeling the wind on my face. I was going to let this chase go by, but Joel persuaded me. Take care now, my dear. You’re very precious to us.” He gave her another of his enigmatic smiles, touching the sleek flank of his gelding, oddly enough called Shotgun.
They were under way!
Forty minutes later they were still in hot pursuit. The boar wasn’t in his usual haunt, in the lignum swamps, but there were birds everywhere. Eden’s swamps in the Wet were vast breeding grounds for nomadic waterbirds, ibis, shags, spoonbills, herons, egrets, water hens, whistling tree ducks. The torrential storm had overnight filled the creeks and swamps, and the birds, sensing it with their fantastic antennae, had arrived in big colonies.
The members of the party were fairly scattered by the time they came on at least two dozen pigs, sows, young ones, piglets, mostly black or gray-black. No sign of the big powerfully built boar. As soon as the pigs heard the riders, they bunched up and made a run for it, plunging without hesitation into the water and swimming furiously farther down the swamp. Exhaustion would soon overcome them. Their swimming was only good over short distances, but then, the hunters were really only after the boar.
When they finally sighted the animal, it was deep in the lignum thickets, wallowing in swampy mud. Nicole felt her stomach lurch. The creature looked mad. As it lumbered onto its short legs, exposing its full power, she could see how huge and ferocious it was. It had to weigh at least four hundred pounds. From its lower jaw, two powerful tusks protruded, tusks that had landed their stockman in Koomera Bush Hospital.
“Back! Get back!” Drake shouted to her, unable to disguise the flash of excitement in his face.
Men! Nicole thought. They just loved excitement and danger. She needed no second warning. Drake and the others charged ahead, the horses’ hooves sending up spouts of murky water and thick splodges of mud. Suddenly the huge brute, instead of running, decided to charge. The taste of human blood must have made it frantic to have it again.
One of the party prematurely pulled the trigger and missed, or maybe the bullet ricocheted off the animal’s thick mud-coated bristles, tough as armor. Birds, shrieking their outrage, burst into the sky, a teeming cloud overhead.
“Leave it. I’ll take it!” Drake called, his voice loud and authoritative over the screaming birds.
Dread and excitement had sharpened all her senses. Despite the confusion and cacophony of sound, she heard with absolute clarity the metallic click of a rifle safety catch.
Behind her? To the side? Panic ripped through her like an electric shock. Every sense of self-protection screamed she was in danger. She spun her head, anticipating a shot. A shot that had only one purpose. To kill her. She had moved right into the trap.
“Drake!” She screamed his name at the top of her lungs, not knowing he had dropped the boar with one clean shot to the brain. She heaved herself desperately out of the saddle, lunging with a loud splash into the churning waters of the swamp. The shot that was intended for her sliced directly over her horse’s head, causing it to bolt. Had she not flung herself well away, the mare’s flying hooves undoubtedly would have killed her. She thrashed in the water, kicking herself farther into the swamp. She was covered in mud and slime, aquatic vegetation. The stench filled her nostrils.
Up ahead, the men exploded into action, two of them giving chase to the terrified mare, another, stunned by what was happening, holding a bleeding arm that had apparently been grazed by the bullet intended for her.
Oh God, oh God… She turned her head with the most profound sense of fatalism, not all that surprised to see her assassin raise his gun to his shoulder. No doubt at all of his intentions. That was death in his eyes.
It was almost time. No one could alter the course of fate. He was taking aim at her, mouth set in the most determined line. All he wanted now was to wipe her from the face of the earth. What had caused such hatred? He looked deadly. Incredibly sinister. The blond hair, the cold pale eyes. His real self revealed. No pretense. No sweet poison.
This was it. No life hereafter. No Drake, no children, no Eden. She had found herself too late. She was to die just like her mother. At the same hands. She knew that now. At this point, the moment of death, she was utterly alone. She could feel herself bleach white as if she were already dead, the blood pooling in her limbs.
She didn’t flinch or look away. Maybe courage counted for something. Let him kill her in cold blood. Let him kill her with her eyes trained on him. Even now she felt a strange compassion. She wondered how Drake would take her death. How many years he would have without her. She kept the image of him firmly in her
mind. Something to hang on to.
As she awaited her fate, an eternity when it was mere seconds, another shot erupted before her assassin had time to pull the trigger. She watched as he screamed in agony or frustration, pitching forward into the vine-tangled thicket, clearly snarling the single word: “Bitch!”
“Hold on, Nic. I’m coming for you.”
She didn’t register Drake striding through the muddied waters like a colossus berating himself aloud for not being prepared for the danger. She was disbelieving still. Part of her knew she was saved; part of her was waiting for her assassin to rise back up and finish the job. Everything seemed unearthly quiet, though in truth it was pandemonium. She remained right where she was, half-submerged in the water, going into shock.
DRAKE REACHED HER, sweeping her up into his arms. “Hold on, my love.” At her extreme pallor, the dazed look in her eyes, he thought his heart would break.
He made for the bank. Once there, a rock underfoot caused him to stumble, but he righted himself almost immediately, hearing Judah shout a frenzied warning to him.
He saw the dark shape emerge from the screen of trees. The man was upright, blood gushing profusely from his gut, but still holding the rifle. The face was vicious. Merciless. Beyond reason.
Incredible! He was still alive. The devil looked after his own.
Drake did the only thing he could do, he leaped to one side, energized by fear and an impotent rage. As he went down painfully, Nicole still in his arms, he saw a tribal spear heading like a missile straight for the enemy. Unerringly it found its target, sinking into the man’s neck, cutting off all possibility of future breath.
Drake didn’t think he would witness anything so miraculous again.
NICOLE SAW, too, easily now, the inevitability of it all. In retrospect, her inability to see what was happening stunned her. Drake had warned her. Her father. Dot. Shelley Logan. Even Siggy had warned her in her own way. For herself, it was a case of deliberate blindness. She had to feel responsibility, even if it was against all logic.
Joel had been deeply flawed. Increasingly unable to handle anger, anxiety or conflict. He had made of her a fantasy, instead of a real woman. He had believed from childhood she was the only one to love and understand him. But she had defected. She had destroyed a relationship that had lasted all their lives. The bond Joel thought unbreakable had been severed with one stroke. She had fallen in love with Drake McClelland. From then on, Joel’s conditional love had turned to manic hate. He had simply reached a point where he could no longer cope with the hatreds and jealousies that consumed him. In his own deeply troubled mind, he must have thought he had the right to kill her just as he doubtless caused her mother’s and David McClelland’s fatal accident. Whether Joel would have died from Drake’s bullet, or Judah’s spear had completed the execution, she had no idea. They would know soon enough. Joel’s body would be brought home. Probably an autopsy would be performed. She didn’t know. Nor did she care. She was numb to the bone.
THE FAMILY SAT in the living room at Eden homestead, steeling themselves for the sound of a helicopter, signaling the arrival of the police from Koomera Crossing. All of them, with the exception of Drake and Heath, were in a state of shock. Heath who, instead of showing even a semblance of grief, looked revitalized, his black eyes glowing, his body held erect. Being thought somehow guilty of his wife’s tragic death had torn him apart. It had enslaved him to public opinion. Now he would be totally exonerated. It didn’t seem possible Joel had tried to kill Nicole, the cousin he adored. But God was still in his heaven. It wouldn’t be so bad to meet him now. Joel was dead. His beautiful daughter lived, even if his wife had not.
Siggy, who’d raced onto the veranda in the grip of a dreadful premonition when the shooting party returned, had made only one despairing cry—a sound of utter desolation. Now, eyes closed, she sat in her chair, struggling to keep herself under control. She’d lived with such terrible suspicions about her son for so long now that his attempt to kill Nicole and his subsequent death weren’t as massively shocking as they might have been. She knew in her heart of hearts that Joel was capable of anything. Years ago she’d seen him seethe with hatred for her sister, Corrinne, who wanted to send him away. It was clear to her now that he’d killed Corrinne and David McClelland, and probably that nice psychiatrist Dr. Rosendahl, who must have come to understand Joel too well and had been about to blow the whistle on him. Why hadn’t she seen the extreme danger to her niece with Drake McClelland on the scene?
She glanced at her husband. Alan’s chest was heaving, and tears ran unattended down his cheeks. Did he feel a tremendous loss? Joel was his son, after all. She supposed that somewhere beneath Alan’s theatrical veneer was a man capable of loving his son, if not his wife.
So Callista McClelland had been right all along, she thought. A Cavanagh had caused the death of her beloved brother. But much of Callista’s life had been wasted blaming the wrong Cavanagh.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
JOEL WAS LAID TO REST on Eden station in a small private ceremony. Afterward the Cavanaghs and the McClellands had returned to their respective homes, still trying to come to terms with the tragedy of the present and the tragedy of the past.
Nicole, as in all times of deep stress, turned to her painting. Alone, locked away at Eden in a frenzy of activity, she made inspired use of her suffering and irrational sense of guilt, covering canvas after canvas with powerful images that not only called up the truth about the past and the present, but also soon began to reveal signs of hope and signs of healing. Her most recent work, a large desert landscape, held the promise of heart-stopping beauty. She had laid down the stormy, lurid palette that had predominated so far, turning to softer yet vibrant colors, the colors of the living desert. The time was at hand when Nicole Cavanagh was ready to lay her ghosts to rest.
SIGGY AND ALAN, separate individuals and never true partners, finding themselves confronted by accumulated guilts and griefs, agreed they could no longer carry on the pretense of their marriage. Both wanted to lead different lives, although Alan being Alan was not prepared to lose the lifestyle he had become accustomed to during his marriage. He demanded a settlement. A very large settlement. In that, he’d underestimated Nicole as head of the family, and head of the family trust. When Siggy approached her with Alan’s demands, Nicole called him into the study to discuss the matter.
Twenty-five minutes later Alan emerged frowning and spluttering, threatening to take the matter to court. It never happened. Whatever Nicole said to him—neither of them divulged exactly what—Alan finally accepted a sum fair enough in the circumstances but modest compared to his outrageous initial demands.
“Which just goes to show how tough my girl can be!” was Heath’s dry comment.
Very strangely, considering how frighteningly ill he’d been when he arrived on Eden, Heath was responding remarkably well to the treatment regime prescribed by Dr. Sarah McQueen. Heath, who’d always had an eye for beautiful women, had taken to the doctor at his very first visit, in no time seeing beyond her obvious attractions to what a fine doctor she was. The clearing up of his wife’s death seemed to have drained a lot of the toxins from his bloodstream. Physically and psychologically he was a different man.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Heath,” Siggy often told him now, at peace in his company. After Alan had left Eden with his settlement, as much a stranger as the day he set foot on the station, Louise, Siggy and Heath began to realize how easily they rubbed along.
There were no secrets now. No dreadful inner conflicts. No blotting out things that should never have been ignored. Jacob Rosendahl’s widow, Sonya, had been required by the police to release Joel’s file. The police examined it thoroughly. It seemed that in their sessions, seven in all, Joel had never identified himself to Rosendahl as the person who had caused Corrinne Cavanagh’s vehicle to go over the escarpment. The gifted psychiatrist, however, had his methods of getting Joel to talk about the tragic event in su
ch a way his probing would eventually have led him to the truth. But with no actual proof beyond circumstantial evidence, the police could not be sure that Joel had committed the hit-and-run. The file would have to remain open.
THE TOWN OF Koomera Crossing came to the conclusion that the death of Joel Holt had been a disaster waiting to happen. For years Joel had given the impression he was the king of the castle, a man who would always have his way. The theory was—no one knew who had started it—that Joel had succumbed to a dangerous mental illness, a mix of paranoia and rage, after his grandfather left Eden to his cousin, Nicole, and not to him. Joel had always appeared maladjusted—no one would easily forget his violent behavior at Mick Donovan’s—so it was a simple matter to deduce Joel couldn’t abide a woman taking precedence over him. If a few people in town had other theories, they kept them to themselves.
The Tyson-Logan wedding went ahead, if not according to plan. Because of the shocking developments on Eden station, the best man and maid of honor decided to dissociate themselves from that happy event, marred only by their absence. So ecstatic were the bridal couple, so high was the emotion, everyone managed to have a wonderful day. The unanimous decision was to leave recent events separate from the bridal festivities. Bride and groom promised at some future date they would make it up to their friends, who had stood aside rather than cast the faintest shadow on the bride and groom’s perfect day.
ON KOOLTAR STATION Drake found himself profoundly lonely even as he accepted Nicole’s need for this very private time to herself. No matter Joel’s failings, more terrible than anyone had ever suspected, Nicole and Joel had been raised as siblings. No matter what horrible deeds Joel had done, Nicole, Drake knew, still retained a spot for him in her heart. Joel’s obsession with her had led to his death. Drake had to face the fact that he’d played a major role in Joel’s demise, even if it had been Judah’s spear that had finished him off and even if Joel had to die to save Nicole’s life. Killing a fellow human being was abhorrent under any circumstances, and Drake actually welcomed the time to come to terms with it.