Dark Country (Dungirri)

by Parry, Bronwyn

  He pushed away the other possibility that gnawed at him. Nobody had known about him going to Jeanie’s that evening except Kris. Even if the truckies had heard Jeanie mention him staying in the cabin, things had happened too quickly for the fire to be a punishment for aiding him. And it was far more logical that the drivers had been sent to eliminate the evidence. He just had to believe it.

  The late afternoon sun slanted across the road as they left Tamworth. They took back roads, not the highway, winding through the Liverpool Ranges on roads with little traffic. Nobody followed them. Most of the time, there were no vehicles at all in sight.

  Worry about Jeanie occupied Gil’s mind for the first hour or so, distracting him from thinking about Kris, behind him on the bike. But after a while, the torture ramped up again, and as the time passed and the twilight darkened to night, Kris filled his every thought, every moment of awareness. He tried to think of the reasons why him and her would be a bad idea, but his body rejected all of them. He rounded a wide bend, and she shifted slightly against him, her chest brushing his back. Two leather jackets, his and hers – Mark’s, he reminded himself – didn’t dilute the effect, or what his imagination did with it.

  He gritted his teeth and rode on, hoping for a straight road until the next town. Fifteen minutes, he figured. There’d probably be a 24-hour or at least a late-night service station there, lights and people and fuel and food, and a chance for them both to get off the bike, stretch their legs, and give his body some respite from the sensual torture.

  By the time he pulled in at the fuel bowsers, his teeth ached from clenching so long. Her hand rested on his shoulder for balance as she swung off the bike. Taking her helmet off, she stretched her neck side to side, and then gave her head a shake, waves of red hair blowing around her face, the bright lights overhead throwing glittery highlights in it. Beautiful, his brain thought.

  She unzipped the front of Mark’s too-big jacket, the leather falling back a few inches to reveal a glimpse of skin-hugging black knit. His brain stopped thinking. He hooked his helmet on the handlebar, reached for the pump, concentrated on undoing the cap on the tank, putting the nozzle in – and then kept his eyes straight ahead because that was just too damned symbolic.

  ‘Do you need coffee? Or food?’ she asked, oblivious – he hoped – of the way his thoughts were running. ‘Shall I go in and order something?’

  ‘Yeah. Something quick. And Coke. There’s still hours to go.’

  ‘We should stop somewhere, in an hour or so, get a few hours’ rest. Neither of us had much sleep last night. We can leave early in the morning, and still be in Sydney by the time the bank opens.’

  He tried to come up with good reasons for not stopping to rest, and then settled on the truth.

  ‘It’s not sleep I want, Blue.’

  Her smile bloomed, danced in her eyes, and she slid a hand under his jacket and stepped close.

  ‘Me neither.’

  Two words, one touch, and almost all his determination went out the window.

  He clung on to a last shred of restraint. ‘This is crazy, Blue.’

  She cupped a hand against his chin, no longer teasing, the caress and the expression in her eyes more intimate than any of his sexual encounters.

  ‘Is it?’ she challenged softly.

  ‘You’re a cop. I’m a …’ He left the sentence dangling, struggling to find the right descriptor for the taint of prison, for the darkness of his life.

  ‘Person,’ she supplied. ‘And last time I checked, consensual sex between two single people who like each other was not a crime, legally or morally.’ But she stepped back, took her hands away, and he wanted to grab them back. ‘You tell me if you want it, Gil.’

  In answer, he pulled her to him, kissed her hard for a long moment.

  When he let her go, she stepped back just enough to see his face, her own flushed, her breathing as fractured as his own.

  ‘So, we can find somewhere here or, if we travel for another hour to Lithgow, we can leave an hour later in the morning.’

  Here, his body thundered. Here, now. But some element of his brain squeezed a reminder in between the thunder that he hated early mornings.

  ‘Lithgow,’ he said, trying not to regret it. ‘We can make it that far.’ Maybe, he added to himself. And there had to be a few places they could pull up between here and there if they couldn’t.

  ‘I’ll go and pay for the fuel,’ she said with a grin. ‘You might want to see if there’s a condom-vending machine in the gents’.’

  He did want to. There was. By the time she came back from paying, he was beside the bike, waiting for her, watching her easy stride as she walked towards him.

  ‘Can you drive this thing?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’ He slid his hand into her hair, bent as if he was going to kiss her neck, and instead whispered into her ear, ‘Because I’m so distracted I can’t focus on the road.’

  She laughed, throaty and low, planted a quick kiss on his mouth, and swung her leg over the bike in a smooth movement that turned his blood to steam.

  By the time the lights of Lithgow were in sight, she was gripping the handlebars so tight she half-expected them to crumble any moment.

  Nothing like straddling a bike, up close to a man she found intensely attractive, to get a girl in the mood. Except she’d passed ‘in the mood’ after the first fifteen minutes. The last few hours she’d progressed through teeth-grinding frustration to incoherent silent screaming.

  The only thing that kept her halfway sane, and able to keep steering straight, was the worry about what lay beyond, in Sydney, and her fear for Gil. She didn’t want to lose him. She knew herself, and her relations with men well enough to recognise that the bone-dissolving physical desire was about way more than just sex. Yes, she had missed sex, this last couple of years, but she’d had other things on her mind. And there were few men around who could get over the whole female cop thing and who she could like enough to have a comfortable relationship with.

  Gil … well, Gil sure wasn’t comfortable. Beneath the surface, Gil was raw and wild, powerful and rare. Exhilarating and dangerous – drawing the wild part of her to him, and there’d be no half-measures for either of them.

  His hand slipped underneath her jacket, underneath her T-shirt, caressing her waist, gliding up her spine, and she had to concentrate very, very hard to keep the bike steady.

  She turned in at the first motel she saw. Decent, but not flash enough to need a credit card. Perfect for their situation. She was wired so tight she was almost surprised the metal door handle of the office didn’t give off sparks when she opened it. She’d registered, paid, and had the room key in her hand within minutes.

  ‘Room fourteen,’ she said to Gil outside. ‘At the end. I’ll meet you there.’ She needed, for just a few seconds, to walk. The space. A chance to breathe, if she could. Just like when she used to go abseiling, the few moments of stillness and quiet before the push off into thin air.

  He pulled into the parking space just ahead of her, had their bags off the bike before she’d finished unlocking the door, and followed her inside.

  The moment he closed the door, dropped the bags on the floor, they reached for each other, mouths hungry to taste, to connect, to explore, even as they shed their jackets and lifted T-shirts to find skin. She indulged herself, loving his mouth, loving the feel of firm stomach and chest and shoulders beneath her fingers, loving the heat of his hands discovering her. But hands on skin wasn’t enough. She wanted her clothes off, wanted his clothes off, craved skin against skin and losing herself in that bliss. She wanted to be herself, fully and wholly, and to peel away his reserve and find the strong, giving man beneath it.

  They broke the kiss, breaths coming hard, and she grinned at him as she pushed his T-shirt up.

  ‘Too many clothes, Gillespie.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He peeled it off, dropped it on the floor, then hooked his thumbs back under her shirt, lifti
ng it breathtakingly slowly, watching her face as he did. She raised her arms, pulled it over her head, and let it fall on top of his.

  ‘Black lace,’ he muttered, running a single finger down the edge of her bra. ‘Have you got any idea what black lace does to a man, Blue?’

  ‘I can take it off,’ she offered.

  ‘No. I will. Eventually.’

  ‘So, we’re doing slow, are we?’

  ‘Slow. Fast. Both.’

  Slow, and what his fingers were doing with it around the lace edges might have her begging, real soon now, for fast.

  She hitched her fingers into the top of his jeans, drew him closer. ‘There’s still the clothes issue.’

  His mouth – that delicious, kissable mouth – curved wickedly, and her heart did a slow-motion somersault.

  ‘Nothing wrong with this garment,’ he murmured, bending his head to her, setting his mouth to the thin lace, lips and tongue skimming, tasting and sucking through it.

  Nothing slow-motion about her heart rate, now, either. Need filled her, fractured her breathing, and she fisted her hands in his hair to hold him there.

  He moved lazily from one breast to the other, as if with no need to hurry, but his fingers quested at her jeans, unbuttoning, sliding inside, stroking and discovering and lighting wild fires in her belly.

  The muscles of his back rippled under her hands, hard and strong and beautiful to touch, and she wanted to reach more, find more of him. She kissed his forehead and he raised his head, eyes dark with desire.

  ‘I think,’ she said against his mouth, ‘that we’re getting to a fast bit now.’

  ‘Fast, hey?’

  She punctuated it with teasing kisses. ‘Jeans. Boots. Off. Fast. Now.’

  Fast worked. They both discarded jeans, boots and underwear and in moments, were together again, how she wanted it, skin to skin, without barriers. Except she’d never wanted quite this much, more than just an attractive man, this man, complex and challenging, drawing her heart as well as her desire.

  She edged him backwards to the bed, and he dropped on to it, drawing her down so that she straddled him. His hands on her shoulders, foreheads together, they both watched as she rolled the condom on him, and she could feel his pulse kick up another notch, matching her own.

  But when she would have moved, he held her still. For a long moment, they breathed together, ragged and uneven, and although her blood pounded and every skin cell registered exquisite sensation, in a strange way the pause centred her, grounded her, so that this was real, every timeless second significant and precious.

  Gil took her face in his hands, his thumbs stroking her temples with devastating delicacy.

  And into the silence, he said with simple honesty, ‘You scare the hell out of me, Kris.’

  Kris. Not ‘Blue’ or ‘Sergeant’ or any other distancing nickname, and the beautiful, soul-deep gift of his trust, moved her with its intimacy.

  She ran her fingers lightly over his lips. ‘We scare me, Gil. But I’m still not running.’

  She brushed his mouth with hers, kissed him with tenderness and need and all she wanted to give, until the heat spiralled almost beyond bearing and her body, twined with his, demanded completion. She lowered herself onto him, held the searing connection of his gaze, and made love with him, body and soul.

  Gil lay awake for a long time, Kris’s head on his shoulder, legs tangled together, his arm keeping her close as she slept.

  EIGHTEEN

  They hit the peak commuter traffic heading from the Blue Mountains in to Sydney.

  She hadn’t missed this, Kris thought. City traffic, millions of people threading their way through dense, built-up streets, packed in to suburbs and office blocks and shopping malls, open space and trees few and far between. And although she’d grown up in the city, she was no longer at home here.

  Gil rode carefully but used the relative freedom of the bike to weave between the cars when he safely could, and with no accidents or delays on the M4, they made reasonable time into Sydney. He took them through the inner south suburbs, zig-zagging through back roads, with frequent glances in the mirrors – making sure no-one followed them. He had to collect the key before they went to the bank, he’d explained earlier.

  He cruised past some old terrace houses, unrenovated and long past their best years. Kris kept an eye out, checking that everything appeared okay, and that no-one, as far as she could tell, was watching for them. Gil clearly knew the place and the area, and he turned into a lane, then back along a narrow alleyway to pull in to the small backyard of one of the houses.

  ‘It’s a hostel, for homeless men,’ he explained to Kris as they got off the bike and removed their helmets. ‘A priest called Simon Murchison has run it for years. A good bloke. The pub is a street over that-away.’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

  Two men sat out in the morning sunshine on the back steps, one of them breaking into a grin when he recognised Gil.

  ‘Hiya, Gil.’

  ‘Hiya, Phil,’ Gil said, with a rising, sing-song intonation and an answering grin, as though the rhyme was a regular greeting.

  Phil’s grin grew broader still, with the eager, child-like friendliness of intellectual disability, and Kris noticed again this gentle side of the usually taciturn Gil, not often seen.

  The other guy hardly looked at them – drugs, or alcohol, or mental illness taking its toll, she figured, like so many of the men who found their way to hostels like this.

  ‘Is Father Simon in?’ Gil asked Phil.

  ‘Yeah, Gil, he’s inside. He’s got plaster on his arm.’

  Kris didn’t like the sound of that, and neither did Gil, from the worried look he threw her as he hurried in the door. He knew his way through the house, and she followed him down a passageway and into an office – where the jeans-clad priest, his left arm in a sling and bruising on his face, sorted one-handed through papers and files strewn all over the floor. A couple of broken wooden chairs were piled in a corner and a damp, blackened patch on the carpet still gave off a smoky scent.

  Probably well into his fifties, with dark hair speckled grey, the priest greeted Gil warmly and rose, obviously with some pain, to his feet.

  ‘Excuse the mess. We had some visitors on Saturday night.’

  ‘Are you okay?’ Gil asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Despite the pain, his eyes lit with humour. ‘The intruders and I had a meaningful discussion involving some solid objects and a certain amount of yelling and thumping until some of the residents heard and came to dissuade them from staying. My arm and a chair had a close encounter, but they’re both broken cleanly.’

  Gil indicated the files and papers on the floor. ‘They were looking for something?’

  ‘So it seems.’ Simon cast a questioning glance at Kris.

  ‘This is Kris,’ Gil introduced her, making no mention of her surname or occupation. ‘She knows what’s going on.’

  The priest shook her hand firmly, with a friendly, curious smile that said he’d noticed the omission, too. But there was clearly liking and respect between the two men, and trust enough that he let the omission pass.

  He beckoned them to sit on an old leather sofa, and propped on the edge of his desk.

  ‘I left you a couple of voice mails yesterday. I presume you’ve heard about Vince Russo?’ he asked Gil.

  ‘Yes, I know. My phone’s been off the past day or so. Have you heard anything more about Vince, beyond the official line?’

  ‘Not much. Rumour has it he was shot from some distance, twice in the chest. Police searched a nearby building, apparently.’

  ‘A planned assassination, rather than an argument, then,’ Gil observed.

  Which made Kris wonder why Joe Petric hadn’t shared that piece of information – and to wonder why a priest knew more than she did.

  Simon tilted his head slightly. ‘If the rumour’s true.’

  ‘Had you seen him, lately?’

  ‘As it happens, yes. He called in a few
times a year. The last time was only a couple of weeks ago.’

  Simon knew Vince? Kris glanced between the two men, saw that this was no surprise to Gil.

  Gil stayed focused on the priest. ‘And?’

  ‘We talked a while. He made a generous donation to the hostel. Then he asked me for a favour.’ Simon looked directly at Gil, spoke candidly. ‘He gave me a document envelope, asked me to make sure you got it if anything happened to him. Suggested that I might know somewhere secure to put it. But he stressed it might be safer for you if you didn’t know of its existence until … necessary.’

  ‘So you put it in the safe deposit box.’ Gil’s voice was even, controlled.

  ‘Yes. It seemed the most sensible thing to do. He assured me that the documents couldn’t harm you.’

  Kris made the connections. Simon had the key. Simon was the person Gil had been relying on to circulate the incriminating information about Vince, if anything happened to him. Except Vince had either known that, or guessed it.

  She couldn’t quite work out the relationship between Simon and Vince, but at some level at least, the priest trusted Vince enough to accede to his wish without telling Gil.

  ‘You accepted his word?’ she asked him.

  ‘Given the nature of our conversations over the years, yes, I believed him. But I can see you find that puzzling. You know something of Vince’s reputation, then?’

  ‘A little.’ Like murder. Like drugs and extortion. Like fathering a child and allowing her to grow up abused. Not things Kris regarded as forgivable.

  Simon shifted a little on the desk, took some of the weight of his broken arm with his good hand.

  ‘There’s a lot I can’t tell you about Vince. Some things he told me in confidence, some things I truly just don’t know. But I do know that he was a complex man. He grew up in a world that you and I could probably never understand, with its own moral structure and beliefs about strength and power. It’s not the kind of world that encouraged conscience or compassion, but Vince gradually developed both. So he faced a choice: denounce what he knew, become an exile – more likely a corpse – or work from within, using his strength and power to ameliorate the excesses and slowly change his world. He chose the latter.’