Lyrebird Hill

by Anna Romer

  Dark waves of adrenaline pulsed through me, fogging my senses. Bardo might not have much time left. I was at a loss. There was a landline at Pete’s cottage, but that was a good twenty-minute hike at least. It wasn’t ideal, but it might be all I had right now.

  As I got out of the car, a prickle of awareness drew my attention to the old stable stalls.

  A man stood motionless in the shadows. He’d been watching me, and as he stepped into the muted light, he fixed me with his most seductive gaze.

  ‘Hey, babe. Going somewhere?’

  A jolt of shock. Seeing him now, knowing what he had done to Jamie, understanding the enormity of his deception, made me want to rush at him and claw away his smug smile.

  ‘No,’ I said in a ragged voice I barely recognised, ‘but you are, Bobby. You’re going to jail for what you did to my sister.’

  Rob’s smile didn’t alter, but his eyes hardened. ‘Sorry to disappoint, Ruby. But you’re the only witness. And if you’re not around to blab, then no one will be the wiser.’

  My lips parted. My heart squeezed one almighty beat, then stalled. Until that moment, I had believed that uncovering the truth about my sister’s murder would somehow heal me; but as I stood in the fading gloom of the barn – with my gaze locked on the man I had once loved, the man who had betrayed me in the most devastating way – I finally understood what he’d been trying to tell me all along.

  Leaving the past behind wasn’t merely a catchphrase that he used to sell books; it wasn’t a new age principle that he promoted to help people turn their lives around; it wasn’t even a deeply held personal belief.

  It was a warning.

  My stalled heart began to race. I wanted to take a step back, but my legs were suddenly numb, my entire body locked in place. Even my voice, when I finally found it, came haltingly.

  ‘Why are you here?’

  Rob took a step towards me, the muted light playing across his features. ‘Call it asset insurance,’ he said, pausing to glance at the wide entryway. ‘Now you know who I am, I’m not safe. I’ve got too much to lose.’

  Numbness crept through me. Memories of my sister batted my conscious mind like moths against a lit window – her head hitting the stone, her eyes losing focus; the blood in her hair, and in her mouth, staining her teeth pink. I had seen what Rob was capable of as a young man; how much more brutal might he be now, when all he valued was at stake?

  The ground beneath me swelled like a sea tide, then sank away, leaving me adrift. I clutched for something, anything, to anchor myself; my mind threw up a lifeline of anger and I grabbed it gladly.

  ‘So, what’ll you do?’ I said harshly. ‘Kill me – the way you killed my sister?’

  ‘You’ve left me no choice.’

  Barely ten paces stretched between us. I glanced to the doorway, assessing the distance. If I tried to bolt, would I make it? If I could stall him, keep him talking; if I could escape into the bush, I had a chance.

  ‘You took a risk, being with me,’ I told him, shuffling back a step. ‘You must have known that sooner or later I’d remember.’

  He was watching me attentively, as if enthralled by my trembling, by my wide-eyed stare, by the sharp scent of the nervous sweat I could feel pouring out of me.

  He licked his lips. ‘I was curious to see how long it would take. How long I could keep you in the dark.’ His jaw tightened. ‘This afternoon, when I watched you in the bath, I could see you still hadn’t recognised me, but you were close. And once you finally joined all the dots, I knew you’d run straight to the cops.’

  Despite what I now knew about him, his words dug under my defences. My logical mind judged his actions and found him abhorrent – a man who hurt others to preserve himself, perhaps even to entertain himself – but there was a small corner of my heart that was slower to make the transition from love to loathing.

  ‘It was one big lie, wasn’t it? Us, I mean. Everything you did and said for three years – all of it, lies.’

  Rob shifted and a beam of light struck his face. ‘Not everything. I enjoyed you for the most part. But then, a while back, you started getting edgy. Having nightmares again. Getting moody, restless. I knew something was brewing, that your memory was getting ready to resurface.’

  I risked another shuffling step nearer the doorway, but the light beyond the barn’s gloom seemed no closer. When I focused back on Rob, he’d grown more alert, his breath coming faster than it had a moment ago.

  ‘You had it all worked out, didn’t you?’ I said. ‘From the start, you knew who I was. You knew it would come to this.’

  He nodded. ‘It was always on the cards, Ruby. We were never forever. Eventually, something I said or did would have triggered a memory, and then the whole lot would’ve come pouring back.’

  Never forever. How had I not seen through his lies? Why had I ever believed that he genuinely cared?

  I could see him more clearly now, the ghost of the young man my sister had written about in her diary; who she had met on the riverbank, and kissed, and teased as she danced in the sun. The young man who had, in the end, left her to die on the rocks in a pool of her own blood.

  ‘Why didn’t I recognise you?’

  ‘Eighteen years is a long time,’ Rob said, running a hand over his mouth. ‘People change.’

  ‘That’s not it. You’re . . . different.’

  He stepped close, eclipsing a stream of dying sunlight. ‘Maybe it was the broken nose,’ he said simply. ‘A footy accident that scored me a metal plate. It flattens things out, changes the planes of your face . . . just enough. Besides, you only ever saw me once or twice at the river with Jamie. By the time you Cardels had moved to Lyrebird Hill, I was living in Sydney. I did my final years at boarding school, then I went to uni. My visits home were pretty infrequent. That is, until I met your sister.’

  ‘But I remember you now,’ I said, grappling to make sense of it. ‘The instant my memory returned, I knew who you were.’

  Rob palmed the back of his neck. ‘I was at the core of your amnesia. You blocked out a year of your life because of me, because of what happened that day with Jamie. For most of your life, you wanted to forget me.’

  ‘But you never forgot me.’

  He rubbed the side of his face, contemplating me with hard eyes. ‘You and your sister haunted me for years. I did everything to put that time behind me. I even changed my name. It felt good to be free of Bobby Drake. I hadn’t realised until then how much your sister’s death weighed on my conscience. I started thinking about how good it would feel to be really free. As in, free of the worry of ever being found out.’

  This took a moment to process. When understanding dawned, it bloomed in me like an ink stain, quick and dark and indelible. ‘And the only person standing in your way,’ I murmured, ‘was me.’

  Rob almost smiled, and then he blinked, a slow deliberate reflex, as if capturing my shock on an internal camera. ‘I thought you’d forgotten about Bobby Drake. Eighteen years passed, I thought I was home free. But when you rang my publicist wanting to organise a book event, I got worried. I had to meet you in the flesh, find out what you remembered.’

  ‘Is that all I was to you – damage control?’

  ‘At first, yes.’ Rob moved nearer. ‘You intrigued me. Not just your amnesia, and your terror of remembering. You reminded me of Jamie. I couldn’t resist getting close. But after a while, I fell for you . . . or rather, I fell for the vulnerable part of you.’ Rob moistened his lips with his tongue, and smiled. ‘Do you know how that feels to a man, Ruby? To know you’ve won the trust of someone so untrusting? Pure intoxication.’

  His words seeped into me like poison. I felt the slow burn of shame rise to my face, but from deeper down came a rush of white-hot anger.

  ‘Why aren’t you in jail?’ I cried. ‘Didn’t anyone think to question you after she died? How did you slip through the net?’

  ‘I was questioned. But no one knew I was her boyfriend. I came home a couple of ti
mes a month when I could get away from uni, and Jamie and I always met in secret. She said your mother was strict and would have stopped her from seeing me.’

  I glanced at the doorway. I was close enough that I might make it if I ran, but the questions were hammering at me, and I needed to know. ‘You were there the day she died. Why didn’t they suspect you?’

  A tremor went through Rob’s body, not quite a shudder. In a sudden motion, he raised his hands and clawed his fingers across his scalp.

  ‘When I left you and your sister on the riverbank, I went home and drove straight back to Sydney. Mum was away, and no one knew I’d been anywhere near Lyrebird Hill. I made sure I was seen on campus that weekend. My alibis were pretty much watertight. And anyway, because of the way your dad died, your mother was a major suspect in Jamie’s case. She stole the limelight from everyone else.’

  Despite my trembling, I couldn’t stem my anger. ‘I’m going to tell them everything. You’re finished, Rob. You’re going to jail.’

  Rob’s lips drew back, his smile was all teeth. ‘I don’t think so, babe.’

  I sensed a sudden shift between us. My heart began to jackhammer. I turned and ran, but Rob caught me from behind and swung me around to face him, then dragged me over to the wall. My spine thudded into a post, and I was momentarily winded, but I managed to thrust my knee towards his groin. He recoiled and his grip weakened. Twisting my torso, I wrenched free my arm and, making a half-fist, rammed the heel of my palm up under his chin.

  His head snapped back. He grunted, and blood bloomed on his lower lip. I tore loose and sprang away, but he seized a handful of my hair and hauled me back. This time when he drove me against the wall, my head cracked on a beam and lights exploded behind my eyes. Rob slammed me backwards again – and suddenly my heart was swelling in fear because I was there again, on the rocks with my sister and Bobby, with the river rushing by and the sun glaring through the storm clouds. But instead of Jamie’s hair and scalp matted with blood, instead of her eyes staring in that unseeing way, instead of Jamie’s face contorted in pain . . . it was mine.

  From far away, someone shouted my name. Rob heard it too, because he let out a growl and looked around.

  ‘Ruby?’ Pete called from outside. ‘Where are you?’

  Rob shoved me to the ground and whirled towards the door, grappling at the small of his back. I caught a flash of steel and, as I struggled to my feet, I registered his weapon.

  ‘Pete,’ I tried to call, but my throat was tight with fear. I dragged in a breath to try again, but Rob lurched over to me and struck me across the head with his fist. I staggered and tripped, falling against the side of the Morris.

  ‘Pete,’ I yelled. ‘He’s armed!’

  A shadow flit across the dying sunlight that was pouring its last rays through the door. A familiar silhouette appeared. He saw me, and started to run towards me. From the corner of my eye, I saw Rob raise his arms and take aim.

  There was no time to shout a warning. The crack of gunfire shattered the air, and Pete reeled sideways and slumped against the door. I threw myself across the barn, clutching for him, crying out when I saw the blood spreading across the front of his shirt, a dark saturating bloom. I gathered him to me, running my hands over him, seeking the damage, finding the slow sticky ooze of blood just below his collarbone.

  ‘Run,’ he told me, his voice harsh and full of urgency. ‘Go to my place. Take the ute.’

  ‘I’m not leaving you.’

  There was a snarl behind me. I twisted around, saw Old Boy spring at Rob and knock him sideways. Rob shot off a round and the old dog let out a harsh human-sounding howl of rage and pain, then drove his teeth into Rob’s forearm. Rob bellowed and went to his knees under the weight of the animal.

  I hauled Pete to his feet and got him through the doorway and out into the dying light. As we struggled uphill, there was another gun blast, and Pete moaned. Locking his arm around my shoulders, his hefty weight buckling me nearly double, I managed to get him across the dry expanse of open grass and away into the trees.

  The cave was dark. When we ducked into the cool space where we had, only a week ago, visited the lyrebird’s nest, Pete crumpled. I lowered him to the ground and settled him against the wall.

  He had bled a frightening amount as we fled up the hillside, and the wound in his chest was still oozing. Tearing off his shirt, I wadded it against the flow, praying we’d lost Rob on the other side of the tea-tree forest.

  Pete clutched my hand. ‘Where’s Old Boy?’ he rasped. ‘Did he make it?’

  My body trembled so hard I could barely form the words. ‘No, Pete.’

  His eyes searched mine, his face drained of colour. ‘Ah, God. Bardo?’

  ‘Rob poisoned her.’ My words caught in my throat, and I had to gulp a breath of air to loosen them. ‘She was alive half an hour ago, but I don’t know what he gave her. I’m sorry, Pete. I’m the one Rob wanted, now you’re hurt and the dogs—’

  Pete’s jaw tensed and he gripped my hand. ‘Rob? Your Rob?’ Understanding dawned in his eyes. ‘The guy in the barn . . . that was Bobby Drake.’

  I nodded. ‘It was him all along, but I’d blocked him out. Even when I had all those flashbacks, I never managed to see his face clearly. Until this afternoon. We argued, and he mentioned Jamie. It rang my alarm bells, and then everything flooded back. It was Rob on the rocks that day. He killed my sister.’

  Pete lifted a trembling hand and traced his fingers along the side of my face. ‘And now he’s come after you?’

  I nearly lost it, then. Three of the beings I loved most in the world were slipping away from me. Old Boy gone, Bardo’s system failing, and now Pete—

  Please, not him. Take anything else . . . I’ll give anything, my life. Just not him.

  ‘I’m going to your place,’ I told him. ‘I’ll call for help, then come back here. We’ll be safe in the cave while we wait. Rob won’t find us here.’

  Pete’s expression turned fierce. ‘Forget coming back. Here,’ he said, his voice ragged. He fumbled at his pocket. ‘Get my keys, will you?’

  I dug in his pocket and took out the keys. ‘I’m not going to abandon you. Not ever again. You understand?’

  He shook his head, his gaze fixed to my face. ‘Go to my place. Take the ute to Clearwater, to the general store. Call the cops from there once you’re safe.’

  A sob stuck in my throat. I had been alone all my life, but the emptiness had never ached as acutely as it did now, knowing what I stood to lose.

  Pete’s cheek was smeared red where I’d touched him with my bloody fingers. His blood was all over me; I could taste it on my lips, feel its stickiness on my skin.

  I took his face in my hands. ‘Hang on, Pete. Please hang on. Old Boy saved us. Don’t waste that.’

  He shut his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again his pupils had engulfed the blue. ‘Hey?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I love you, Roo.’ His hand shook as he reached out and cupped the side of my face. ‘Always have.’

  I crushed his fingers against my lips and kissed them hard. ‘Don’t you dare say goodbye,’ I said hotly. ‘If you freaking die on me, I swear I’ll never forgive you.’

  He drew me near, and I clutched the wild mess of his hair and pressed my face against his.

  ‘I love you, Wolf. Stay alive for me, will you?’

  As I kissed him on the mouth, I prayed it wouldn’t be for the last time. Then, getting to my feet, I stumbled from the cool shadows of the cave and into the blinding afternoon light, swiping away my tears.

  The Beast was out there, stalking me. The game was on, for real this time. And the prize was something I simply could not bear to lose.

  The sun was sinking fast. The western horizon had caught alight, fire-pink behind the blackened outline of the trees.

  I raced downhill, veering through the thick scrub towards the river, my runners thudding the ground in time to my pulse. Pete’s cottage was on the opposite
bank, hidden up among the trees, twenty minutes’ walk. I might make it in ten. I had read that gunshot wounds were best treated within an hour, but out here that time frame was impossible. Emergency services would respond immediately to my call, but there was the drive from town, then the search for our cave . . . and the risk of Rob finding us first; meanwhile Pete’s life was bleeding away.

  Ahead was the track that led down to the farmhouse, a narrow avenue cutting through the bush. As I crossed it, I glanced along its length, but there was no sign of Rob. Soon the incline became steep, and as I slowed to navigate the rocky ground, I heard a bellow from the direction of the house. Rob would be searching the grounds, perhaps already scouting the undergrowth that bordered the garden. I imagined him circling like a cat, moving in wider and wider loops until he found a footprint or a scrap of my torn T-shirt or a red droplet of Pete’s blood clinging to a leaf—

  I forced myself to move. My body trembled so hard my footing was unsure. My pulse hammered the back of my neck, and a painful sickening fear clouded my senses, dulling me when I most needed to be sharp.

  I heard Rob yell again. There was a wildness to his voice, and I imagined his face raw with anger, his eyes dark and determined. I skirted north-west, anchoring my bearings on the natural bridge of stepping stones that would take me across the river to the cottage.

  I broke through the cover of trees onto the riverbank, and stood panting in the shadows. I checked the bank in both directions, then silently picked my way down the steep verge to the water. The current rushed past here, deep green, dark with sunken logs and frothing around the partly submerged stones that formed the bridge across.

  As I leaped onto the first rock I heard the crash of branches behind me. I spun a look over my shoulder; the trees were motionless, the bushes benign in the twilight – but somewhere beyond, Rob was on my trail and fast closing ground.

  Within minutes I had traversed the stepping stones and bounded onto the far bank. From here the track that wound up to Pete’s cottage was well trodden, but I didn’t dare expose myself by running along it. Pushing through the trees was slower, but I couldn’t chance being seen. My senses had taken flight; adrenaline coursed through me, making every sound a threat. Finches called shrilly in the bushes, the song of the rapids had turned deep and full of menace. My panicked breath rasped in my throat; dots jumped across my eyes, and the pressure in the back of my skull pounded like a drumbeat.