by Helene Young
He squinted across the valley, measuring the distance between the two houses. If he could see them, they could see him. He pulled his binoculars out of their case and homed in on his neighbour’s place. The trees had been cleared up to a couple of hundred metres out. One lonely, imposing gum had survived the chainsaws, holding its crown high above the landscape. The gardens surrounding the house looked cared for, although lightly planted.
The striped pattern on the lawn opposite was familiar. Must be the neighbour who was mowing Jerry’s block as well. He stopped himself. Technically it wasn’t Jerry’s place any more, but the fading name on the letterbox would stay.
He pulled the house keys from his pocket. They were worn smooth and felt as though they still held some warmth from their former owner. The wind lifted a pile of leaves under one corner of the house. For a moment Ryan thought he heard a ragged sigh. He whipped around, automatically fingering the cold metal tucked into his waistband. Nothing moved. It took a moment for his muscles to relax again.
‘Christ, mate,’ he chided himself, ‘you’re losing it. Too jumpy.’ Maybe the bloody shrink was right. The thought of Leila, the youthful police psychologist, brought a wolfish edge to his smile. ‘Lamb to the slaughter,’ he’d told Crusoe. ‘Do you think lovely Leila really understands that undercover cops lie for survival? If the crims can’t tell fact from fiction, how the hell is she supposed to know if I’m telling her the truth?
His partner, Craig ‘Crusoe’ Robinson, had just shaken his head as Ryan headed off for his psych assessment. Ultimately the sweet-faced babe had seen things his way and returned him to active duty. Although she’d managed to sneak in the caveat that he should be removed from undercover ops before the end of the year.
He turned a lazy circle, scanning the trees and sheds on the property.
Silent.
Empty.
Alone.
Dust drifted from his steps as he ambled across to the house, putting thoughts of Sydney and his last assignment behind him. This was his here and now. No one but his boss knew he was here. Yet.
He stopped at the bottom step, ran a hand over the railing. Jerry’s father had built this house with his own hands for his bride. The railings were still held in place by the same wire nails. The family had raised eight boys here.
Funny that Jerry had gone the other way and never even married. Ryan could relate. Hell of a lot easier that way. If a man travelled light, he couldn’t be tied down.
And, a darker corner of his mind acknowledged, if a man had no family, then no one could exact revenge on them for the sins of their father. He didn’t bother trying to push that thought away. It kept him strong. It kept him vigilant. Just because he was out of Sydney, working something low-key, didn’t mean that danger and violence wouldn’t follow him north. The Nemesis bikies and their drug lord partners had long reaches, even from behind bars.
The stairs creaked as he took them two at a time. He scraped his nails over the smooth beard on his chin then slotted the key in the lock and turned it. As the door swung open he felt the musty air escape around him with a rush. The hallway was dark, the ceilings high. He hesitated in the light before he stepped over the threshold and back into his childhood.
He hadn’t counted on the memories being this strong, and he gave himself a mental shake. First things first. A shave, a beer and a shower, in that order.
He took his time shaving the beard off. It always stung when he hadn’t used a razor in a while. He looked ten years younger with it gone. The silver patch in his hair was the only sign that he was now midway between thirty and forty. The beer was cool on his lips as he took another long pull.
With the towel slung around his hips he could see the U-shaped scar on his triceps. He tightened his left hand into a fist involuntarily. The tendons still weren’t as strong as they had been before a machete sliced into his arm. He’d been attacked onboard a ship involved in a smuggling operation. That had been the beginning of the downhill slide in the last case. It had ended with a bullet creasing his skull shortly after Jack Coglan was shot dead.
The shrink would be alarmed to know he’d contemplated suicide. He’d never do it, but he’d run the numbers just the same. Another form of risk assessment. Before Nemesis he’d have dismissed that approach as a coward’s way, but after Jack’s death it had come to seem a valid way to go if the circumstances required it. That was as close as he came to acknowledging that the last operation had left him vulnerable.
Leila had insisted he needed to accept he’d been traumatised, dismember the experience and then put it back together with a realistic, positive angle. He was polite enough not to laugh. The way he saw it, spending two years of his life undercover with Nemesis had meant he’d blurred the edges of his mind, his identity, his reality. There was no way to undo some of the things he’d done.
Sure, he’d busted the whole gang wide open, along with its links to an international crime syndicate. Yes, they’d cleaned out a corrupt cell of New South Wales police drug squad, but it didn’t change the fact he did not like the person he’d become. Lying was second nature now. Cold, ruthless, calculating.
He swallowed the rest of the beer and stepped into the shower. Water helped in a ritualistic cleansing way, but it didn’t last. Today would be no different.
He’d become Bradley Ryan, Ryan to his mates, a fireman from Sydney looking to get over a broken marriage by hanging out in North Queensland. Tomorrow a new operation to catch an arsonist would take its first tentative steps. Get it right and he might stop tragedy on the Tablelands.
Get those early steps wrong?
Then he might die. Somehow that wasn’t such an uncomfortable thought.
Chapter 9
‘SORRY I’m late,’ Kaitlyn said, hurrying into the Border Watch briefing room in Cairns. Her bag hit the floor next to one of the computer consoles. ‘I got a flat tyre five minutes from home.’
‘You should have flagged down a truck,’ her colleague Lauren said with a toss of her blond hair as she stacked flight plans, weather forecasts and paperwork into a pile. ‘I would have. A girl could break nails changing a tyre.’
‘Then I’d still be standing on the side of the road, Lauren. I don’t have your star power. Anyway, a guy did eventually stop and help out. Better late than never, I guess.’
‘It’s no problem,’ Lauren replied before amending it with an apologetic shrug. ‘Not with me, anyway, but the boss is back from Canberra and wants to see you.’
‘Really?’ Kaitlyn finished entering her sign-on details into the computer. ‘What’s Tony doing here on a Saturday?’
‘Don’t know. Unhappy home life?’
‘He’s annoyed?’
‘Well.’ Lauren leant back in the black office chair, stretching her hands above her head. ‘Let’s just say he wasn’t happy, but the man never is. You ask me, he doesn’t get enough sex, so women are on his hit list. You, me and Morgan are his personal crosses to bear. Don’t let it get to you. Just smile that enigmatic little number you do and he’ll forget what it is he wants you for.’
Kaitlyn managed a laugh. ‘Lauren, you do rabbit on.’
‘I know. Cal keeps telling me that too.’
Kaitlyn headed for the corridor, still smiling. She knew what the young captain was doing and appreciated it. Unfortunately her apprehension hadn’t diminished by the time she walked through the largely deserted offices and rapped on Tony’s door.
He pulled his glasses off and rested them on the folder in the middle of the giant blotter that filled his desk. The downlights reflected off his almost bald head. Some men looked sexy as hell without hair. Tony wasn’t one of them.
While waiting for him to speak Kaitlyn couldn’t stop her gaze going to the photo behind him of an F-111, afterburner blazing like a comet as it arrowed into a black sky. Maybe it was hard for a retired RAAF top gun to find himself heading up a base of surveillance pilots flying turbo-prop aircraft. Maybe that’s why he was such an uptight, authorita
rian jerk most days. Then again, maybe Lauren was right. Tony’s wife never looked happy either.
‘Kaitlyn, I understand you called in a bushfire at the end of your last shift.’
She relaxed a touch. So that’s what this was about. She’d checked with the boys from the Oakey Creek RFB. It seemed a containment burn had gone the wrong way, lit by someone from one of the other brigades. Dimbulah, Wondecla and Oakey Creek all helped out if required. They’d said someone had misjudged it. Kaitlyn didn’t quite see it like that, but she wasn’t going to argue with the guys on the ground. She filled the silence now.
‘Yes, I did. We were in a holding pattern and I could see a fire-fighting team in a danger zone. I was going to talk to you about it during the week. I didn’t expect to find you here on a weekend.’
He nodded and his flinty grey eyes met hers. ‘You were out of line doing that, but you may well have saved lives.’ His gaze was unwavering. ‘Because of that we’ve had a request for assistance from the government. I need some input from you before we decide how to approach it.’
That would have cost him dearly, asking for help. She bit her tongue as he continued. ‘The fire authorities believe there’s at least one arsonist operating on the Atherton Tablelands.’
There it was: the truth she’d already suspected. The frisson of alarm rippled through her, heated her skin.
‘I see.’ And she did, but she didn’t want to be in this position. It had taken a huge toll on her, using the FLIR the other day. But refusing to help wasn’t an option.
‘Someone mentioned you were there in the Canberra fires. I looked up your record. You flew many of the missions with our crews.’
Swallowing, she forced her voice to work. ‘I did.’
‘Great. You’re the only one left with any experience of this. The pilots have all left for airline jobs. When you finish this mission you’ll be on office duties for a week so we can put together a case plan for the operation. It will need costings, crewing numbers and training requirements.’
‘I didn’t work for Border Watch then. I was with the Federal Police.’ She didn’t want this, didn’t want the burden, but even as she protested she knew she’d have to go through it again. ‘I was only helping to interpret the FLIR images.’
‘I know that. It says here you were seconded from the AFP because of your skills as an identity specialist.’
‘They thought I was good at reading faces, body language.’ The words croaked in her throat and he peered over his silver frames at her. She swallowed and continued. ‘No one had used the airborne technology like that before. It was experimental. I was only one member of the team. I didn’t do it alone.’
‘They caught two of the perpetrators because of you.’
She could only nod mutely. Only two. The final one was never caught.
Clearly, her record didn’t show any of her personal tragedy, and Tony wasn’t the kind of manager to engage his staff in small talk. He didn’t care if they had a life outside of work. He mightn’t even care that she’d lost her husband and father in those fires, along with her house, her peace of mind and nearly her sanity.
‘Right. Good. Next week you’ll be working with me to come up with a proposal. You can go now.’
He was scribbling notes on his blotter and for an instant she wanted to rage at him, pound her fists on the desk, make him see her as a person. But she knew that would be futile. It wasn’t his way, nor did she want or need his sympathy.
She would find the strength to discuss that Canberra operation. Yes, they could have done things better, quicker. They may have saved more lives. She’d learnt so many lessons, but the most powerful one was to stop the fire before it spread. Catching the arsonist was vital too, but fight the fire first.
Kaitlyn walked through to the quiet of the briefing room, the walls papered in maps showing the extent of their watch area. Its familiarity steadied her, eased the uneven thud of her heart and the thrumming in her temples. She could feel the blood in her cheeks returning to normal. She knew firsthand the anguish, the suffering that fires caused, especially those deliberately lit. Healing took years. Only the scars on the outside showed.
It wasn’t possible to be the same person. Everything changed. Everything had to be rebuilt, not just the houses. She wouldn’t be here in North Queensland if it weren’t for Gary, the mission commander on that horrific day. Gary had tracked her down after the inquest. Suggested a fresh start would help and nudged her in the direction of Border Watch. Told her she had skills that could help save lives, keep people safe. It was what she needed to hear at the time. She owed him a great deal.
The new start, new job and new house had made it possible to go on living.
And now she needed to use the aircraft and her skills to hunt an arsonist again. She had no choice.
But this time she’d find the arsonist before he killed someone.
Chapter 10
THE school children were as rowdy as ever as they jostled each other getting onto the bus. The older ones took over the back row. The pecking order flowed from there to the nerdy ones at the front.
‘Belts on,’ Speedy yelled as the door hissed closed. ‘No exceptions, missy.’ He glared at the teenager with wild bleached hair in the back row who poked her tongue out him, the silver stud in the middle of it adding to his annoyance. ‘Get off if you don’t like it,’ he called, buckles clinking against seats as the children around him did as directed. He opened the back door. ‘Off?’
‘All right, all right,’ the teenager snarled back at him, clicking her seatbelt into the keeper.
He knew she’d undo it as soon as she thought he wasn’t looking, but he’d done his best to keep them safe. It made him sick to think there were drivers who didn’t bother. You take on this job then you do it right. Kids had no idea about safety.
The bright red hair of the young lad in the middle of the bus caught his attention. Daniel Scott. He’d told Speedy his mum’s birthday was coming up soon. Dan’s mother was a good-looking woman who always had a friendly word for Speedy. He knew there was no Mr Scott.
One of the advantages about being a driver, everyone looked right through you. You were invisible, part of the furniture. It was why Speedy had taken the job. He could go places no one else could. He learnt things from listening to the conversations around him. He knew stuff because no one looked twice at him.
It made him feel safe, made him feel a part of something. He could still remember the slick sweat of relief when his blue card, the state government permit allowing him to work with children, came through without incident. You knew your identity was clean when it got through that test.
The first drop-off was a good fifteen-minute journey and he drove sedately. Speedy. That’s what everyone called him. It used to be Blue, but his red hair had paled to brown and silver long before he moved here. Now they called him Speedy because he never drove fast. Not the school bus, not the rural fire truck, not his ute. Speedy suited him just fine. Even his orange firefighter overalls and pale blue bus-driver shirt were embroidered with Speedy.
Forty minutes later, he arrived at the top of Happy Jack Road. The bus was empty but for Dan. He hesitated for a split second.
‘I’ll drop you to the gate, mate,’ he said over his shoulder. Dan had moved to the seat behind the driver.
‘Thanks, Speedy,’ he mumbled, looking embarrassed.
‘I won’t tell if you don’t, eh?’
‘All right.’ The kid looked down at his Nintendo, his hair flopping over his forehead.
‘Your mum home?’
‘Nah, just Nana. Mum’s away at work.’
‘Right. When’s she back?’
‘Why?’ There was suspicion in Dan’s bright eyes and the angle of his head.
‘Just asking.’
‘Oh. Day after tomorrow.’ Dan bent forwards again and Speedy squinted ahead as a vehicle came around the corner. He edged the bus over towards the verge, but the driver of the oncoming car flashed h
is lights and pulled onto the hard shoulder to let the bus through. Speedy raised a hand in thank you as he eased past. The other driver raised two fingers off the steering wheel.
Speedy didn’t recognise him. Out-of-towner. ‘Know him?’ he asked the boy.
Dan shook his head. ‘Nah, I think he’s looking at Jerry’s place. Saw him yesterday and the day before. He waved.’
‘Is that right? You don’t go talking to strangers.’ There was no question in his words. ‘You be careful. You hear me?’
He realised he was being overly concerned, but he couldn’t stop himself. Dan looked down again, but not before Speedy had seen the frown on his face. Speedy knew all about dangers that this boy couldn’t even dream of. He pulled to a stop in Dan’s driveway and waited for the boy to unload his bag. The bus vibrated as it sat idle, rattling the loose change in Speedy’s pocket. Before he could stop it, he remembered his stepfather jiggling his pockets as he stood at the bedroom door. The briefest flash of memory before he caught it and slammed it away.
‘See you tomorrow, Speedy,’ Dan called, retrieving his bike from the bike cage and bumping it down the stairs.
‘Sure thing,’ he muttered. He closed the door and threw the bus into reverse, manoeuvring it through a three-point turn. ‘Sure thing.’
Whoever the guy was in the flash four-wheel drive, at least he understood country protocols. But who the hell would want to live in old Jerry’s place? It was a dump. It had to be over a hundred years old. Even the water tanks looked ancient. He’d ask around tonight at the pub. Small town, someone would know what the go was.