Ducks. They’d fashioned ducks in the desert. He shook his head in stunned amazement.
He’d imagined them sitting bereft on the platform until it was cool enough to try and walk to the house.
He’d imagined wrong.
Jenna wasn’t a lady who’d take kindly to the label bereft, he thought. She was some woman!
Stop thinking of Jenna, he told himself, and suddenly the voice inside his head was harsh. Get on with what needs to be done.
But harsh command or not, he turned from the ducks with reluctance.
Who else would sit in the dust and make ducks?
Ridiculous.
Their gear was right where they’d left it, a mute testament to their desperation in leaving the train. There was one designer suitcase-that was what he’d expected-a gorgeous affair in pink leather with Karli’s name embossed on the side.
The other suitcase, however, had him intrigued all over again. The ancient box of a thing looked as if it was barely holding together.
So this was why Jenna had reacted with grim humour when he’d suggested she had designer baggage. He loaded the cases into the truck and drove back to the house, trying to figure things out.
Jenna was Nicole Razor’s daughter. Charles Svenson was her father. He’d heard of Nicole and of Charles.
Until her death Nicole had been depicted in the media as a wasted, ageing rock star. The tabloids said she spent half of her life out of it on drugs.
Charles Svenson had the same high media profile, but as far as Riley knew the man was still healthy, wealthy and in the public eye. He’d been an incredibly successful Formula One driver.
Once, a long time ago, Riley’s father had taken a small Riley to a Grand Prix race. Charles Svenson had stood on the winner’s podium, and Riley’s father had grimaced in disgust. ‘I can’t applaud him,’ he’d told his son. ‘Svenson’s a fine driver but his morals would put a sewer rat to shame.’
The eight-year-old Riley had been shocked. Riley’s father hadn’t spoken ill of anyone unless really pushed, so for him that had been quite an indictment. His comment had stuck. As a small boy, Riley had plastered his room with posters of Formula One drivers, but from that moment Charles Svenson had been conspicuous by his absence.
Jenna was his daughter.
It had been a long time since Svenson had driven a racing car, Riley thought grimly, but his reputation was still of a womaniser living on the edge of a corrupt world. He couldn’t imagine what it must be like to be his child. In truth, Nicole and Charles created a combination of parenthood that no one would want.
But at least Jenna should have money. It was inconceivable that she didn’t.
She’d be another Lisa, he told himself as he hauled their suitcases into the house, but then he looked again at the battered suitcase, and he thought of the twiggy little ducks and felt that same tug of doubt. Then he reached the veranda and looked down at Jenna’s face as she slept-and the tug grew stronger.
Jenna was cuddling her little sister. Karli was curled against her and Jenna’s grip was protective even in sleep. She looked almost fierce.
Maybe if he’d met the unspeakable Brian, he’d feel like that too.
But he wouldn’t meet Karli’s father. Why would he? He had nothing to do with this pair. On Monday they’d be on the train and out of here.
Still unsettled, he went back to the kitchen, foraged around until he found a few cans of orange juice that he’d vaguely remembered Maggie lecturing him about, then took a can and two glasses back to the bedroom. He stared at the sleeping woman and child for a moment longer.
This was useless. He was getting involved.
He didn’t get involved.
Get out of here, he told himself. Now.
And he turned and went before he could talk himself out of it.
Jenna woke to silence.
She opened her eyes and surveyed the world with caution. The searing heat of the day hadn’t yet blasted in, but it was well after sunrise. Jenna could see for miles, the land to the horizon stark and arid in the morning light.
The wind had dropped. The dust clouds of yesterday were no longer sweeping the paddocks. She closed her eyes with relief, wiggling her toes against the clean linen and thinking of what could have happened if Riley hadn’t been here.
He had been here. The nightmare hadn’t happened.
‘Are you awake yet, Jenna?’
She turned and her sister’s small face was right against hers. Karli was cuddling in, enjoying the warmth and comfort of her newly acquired big sister. It had taken Jenna months to get the little girl to trust her but now, as far as Karli was concerned, Jenna could do no wrong.
‘I’m awake, sweetie. Hush. You’ll wake Mr Jackson.’
‘He’s gone.’
Gone. She stared over her little sister’s head.
The bed at the far end of the veranda was empty.
‘His truck drove away,’ Karli said, and Jenna frowned.
‘When?’
‘Just then. He drove away and then he came back, but he’s gone again now. I pretended to be asleep. He put something beside our bed and then he stood and looked at us, but he didn’t say anything.’
For heaven’s sake. How deeply had she been sleeping?
She pushed her sheet aside and rose, but with care. Whether or not Riley was gone, she wasn’t taking chances. She checked the buttons on her makeshift nightshirt-and then examined the evidence.
Riley’s bed was made. His work clothes, which had been strewn on the chair beside his bed the previous night, were gone as well.
On the floor beside their own bed, Jenna saw two suitcases. Sitting on top were two glasses and a can of orange juice.
‘Hey, he’s brought us our clothes,’ she told Karli, and it was strange how different she suddenly felt. It was a small gesture, she thought, driving across to the siding to fetch their gear and then bringing them orange juice, but it felt…great. It felt as if he cared.
Having someone care was a sensation Jenna hadn’t felt for a long time. If ever. She stared down at the suitcases and felt the beginnings of a lump form in her throat.
‘Orange juice,’ Karli said and hopped out of bed. ‘Cool. I didn’t know it came in cans.’
Jenna found herself smiling. ‘I bet that was Maggie’s idea as well,’ she said as Karli lifted the can and inspected it from all angles.
‘Who’s Maggie?’
‘I have no idea,’ Jenna said. ‘But I think she’s a friend.’
But Karli had lost interest. ‘He’s really gone.’ She pulled the ring top and poured two glasses of orange juice with meticulous care. ‘I’ll pour and you choose.’
Jenna watched, chose, and then they sat on the bed and drank their orange juice, two co-conspirators in some exciting plan. That was what it felt like, Jenna thought. For the first time since she’d left England she felt a tiny frisson of excitement. Anticipation even. This was an adventure.
And Riley had brought them orange juice.
Riley had nothing to do with it, she told herself crossly. It was just the combination of events and the lessening of anxiety. This was the Australian Outback. They were safe. In three days they’d get on the train and they’d never see anything like this ever again-so they might as well enjoy themselves.
Their mother was dead.
The thought flashed home with a sickening jolt and she felt a stab of remorse. She was feeling happy-light-and Nicole was dead.
She could hardly feel sorrow, though. Karli had reacted to the news with shock and with fear, but it was because of the way Brian had thrown it at her. And it had been only eight months since Nicole had sent Karli away. Karli still had some concept of Nicole as a mother, even though all the mothering had been done by the hired help. So Karli had been upset.
But for Jenna… Well, she’d been sent away at the same age as Karli. There’d been fleeting sightings when Nicole had been in England, but for Jenna they’d usually been unsettling, even fr
ightening times. They’d been times when the school had been closed for holidays and she’d been thrust, unwanted, into a paparazzi-filled lifestyle where her mother had been sometimes gushing, sometimes vicious, but mostly totally unaware of her daughter at all.
So, no, she didn’t feel sorrow for Nicole. She felt nothing.
Except freedom. And it was a freedom, she told herself. Nicole was no longer around to utter sweeping edicts such as, ‘Karli is not to leave the school.’ Brian didn’t care about Karli. So maybe now Karli had a chance of being happy.
She grinned at the little girl. Karli looked over her glass of juice, and her eyes were huge.
‘Is this an adventure?’ she asked, echoing Jenna’s thoughts, and Jenna grinned some more.
‘I guess it is.’ There was an ancient dresser at the end of the bed, with a cracked mirror above. She stared at their reflection, a rumpled little girl and a woman in an oversized man’s shirt. Her reflection startled her. Her nose and arms were bright pink-waiting until late to make yesterday’s trek hadn’t been enough to protect her English complexion from the harsh Australian sun. Her burnt-red shoulder-length curls were sticking up every which way after going to sleep with them wet. And Karli matched.
She giggled.
‘Look at us,’ she told Karli.
‘I’m Rudolph,’ Karli decided, and giggled in return.
‘So you are, Rudolph Red Nose. Two matching red-nosed tourists, stranded in the middle of the Australian Outback. How much of an adventure is that?’
Karli put her finger on her nose and squashed it, considering. ‘Where do you think Mr Jackson’s gone?’
‘Maybe he’s started work. He said something about unblocking water pipes for his cattle. Let’s go see if he left any clues. Our red noses can lead the way.’
Karli giggled again, a wonderful sound.
They made their way through the house, holding hands like a treasure hunt. Or hide and seek. The thought that Riley might be just around the corner was…intriguing.
He wasn’t just around the corner. The house was deserted and on the kitchen table was a note.
I have work to do on the outer edges of the property so I won’t be back until tomorrow night. Make yourselves at home. Eat as many of Maggie’s fancy vegetables as you like. If you’re bored maybe you could do something about the dust. The house could use a good spring-clean.
The note was held down by a can of beans.
‘What does it say?’ Karli asked, and Jenna read it to her, trying to swallow a stupid and unbidden surge of disappointment. This was good, wasn’t it? She didn’t want the man here, unsettling her. She thought back to how she’d felt the night before when he’d lifted her into his arms and she knew she should be thankful that Riley was gone.
The man was dangerous.
‘So what will we do?’ Karli asked, and to Jenna’s astonishment she heard her own disappointment echoed in Karli’s voice. What was it with the man?
She gave herself a fast mental swipe and gathered her wits.
‘First,’ she told Karli, ‘I’m going to introduce you to an amazing wash house. It’s really fun. And then…’ She squared her shoulders. She had no doubt that the note had been written in jest, but it was a challenge for all that. She stared around her.
‘Then we’re going to do some housekeeping,’ she told Karli. ‘You and I will teach Riley Jackson that women aren’t as useless as he thinks we are. We can fix this place right up.’
Karli stared around her. ‘You mean we’re going to clean?’
‘Yep.’
Karli looked exceedingly doubtful. ‘This house is really, really dirty.’
‘If it wasn’t dirty, then it wouldn’t need cleaning,’ Jenna told her. ‘And it wouldn’t be fun. You know the maids in the hotels Nicole stays…stayed in?’
Karli didn’t even hear the catch. ‘Yes.’ She screwed up her nose, remembering. ‘Some of them were nice.’
‘But they never looked like they were having fun, did they?’
‘No.’
‘That’s because hotel rooms are cleaned every single day,’ Jenna told her. ‘They never get a chance to get dirty. Whereas this place has had a chance to get really, really dirty. So we can definitely have fun.’
‘Can we?’
‘Sure we can,’ Jenna said, looking round her again and trying not to falter. If she sat here for two days and thought about her future-about all the difficulties she was facing as soon as she got back to the outside world-then she’d go nuts. The only way to cope was to stay busy.
‘I’m good at dusting,’ Karli said, though her tone said she wasn’t quite sure.
‘Me too,’ Jenna said, and caught Karli up in a bear hug. ‘That makes two of us who are excellent dusters, so it’s just as well there’s lots and lots of dust. Let’s start now.’
He didn’t want to be out here.
Why would he? It was searingly hot work, made only bearable by the queues of fragile cattle who were lined up at the troughs waiting patiently for water to start flowing again. A couple of the lines had been blocked for too long and the sights there were heartbreaking. But he’d come in time to save most of these half-dead cattle. He cleared the lines, greased machinery that hadn’t seen oil for years, started the water flowing and then stood back. The gentle crossbred Brahman cattle, known locally as Droughtmasters, then took turn to put their noses into the precious water, as if they had all the time in the world to wait and this weren’t a drink that their lives depended on.
Mostly the lines weren’t completely blocked, which was why so many of the cattle had survived for so long. But many of the troughs themselves were silted up and the cattle had been licking water off a base of sand.
‘I know,’ he told them as they watched him work with a patience that astounded him. ‘It’s bloody criminal. It’s not my fault, guys. Now I own the place things will be different. I promise.’
They couldn’t understand-how could they? But they watched him with eyes that had him almost swearing that they did.
The urge to leave them and go back to the house with his intriguing visitors had to be put to one side.
He worked on. It was hot, lonely, back-breaking work and he worked until the light went completely. Then he slept under the stars, tossing a swag onto the sand and collapsing onto it. He woke at dawn and his first thought was how the girls had got on back at the house.
It was no business of his.
But it niggled him. He didn’t like the thought that they were alone. If one of them were to get ill…
He couldn’t do anything about it, he told himself savagely. There was only one radio and he needed it. To be out here without a radio was suicidal.
But if he worked through today, then the urgent outer bores would be okay. Tomorrow and the next day he could work nearer the house. In truth, if he worked as hard today as he had yesterday then the cattle’s urgent needs would be assuaged and he’d have time to draw breath.
He rolled over and flicked on the radio. There wasn’t anything like cheerful tunes on any channel out here. It was for emergency contact only. But he hopped around the channels and found a signal from Finya Downs. His nearest neighbour, Bill Holmes, was trying to get in touch. He tuned in, and Bill came on air straight away.
Bill was over seventy. He and his wife, Dot, had a homestead a hundred miles to the north. They kept themselves absolutely to themselves and Riley frowned as he tuned in. There’d have to be an urgent need for Bill to try and reach him.
‘Hey, Jackson.’ Bill was a man of few words and he didn’t waste them now. ‘I saw you pick up stuff from the train on Thursday and guessed you might still be there. You found any stray passengers?’
That was to the point. Riley thought about it. ‘I might have,’ he said cautiously, and Bill’s voice cracked into laughter.
‘Right. You’re a man after me own heart. Don’t let anything on until you know what I’m on about. But you’ve got the girl and the kiddy safe?’
‘They’d be bloody lucky, eh?’
‘How do you know about them?’
‘Doug Stanley of the Territory police’s been on the wire. Doug doesn’t know there’s anyone at your place, of course, so I’m the nearest he could think of to contact. Seems someone on the train saw a woman and a guy fighting, the guy yelling at a kid, and the woman getting upset. They’re thinking the woman and the kid got off the train at the siding too late for the train staff to notice. But some old duck on the train noticed-Enid O’Connell. She used to be a chief magistrate. She kicked up a fuss and finally the conductor contacted the police. So Doug radioed me. I told Doug I was at the siding picking up supplies and no one got off. Or no one that I saw. But most of us left before the train pulled out. Your place is the only place within walking distance. If you hadn’t seen them, then they’re talking of starting a search.’
‘I’ve got ’em.’
‘Thank God for that, then,’ Bill said bluntly. ‘Otherwise they’d have stayed on the siding all yesterday and they’d have cooked. If you weren’t there, the missus said I had to drive back over to the siding and check.’
‘They’re safe. They’ll get back on the train on Monday.’
‘You’ll let the coppers know?’
‘I’ll do that straight away.’
Bill hesitated.
‘Seems they’re some bloody rock star’s kids,’ he said, reluctantly as if he was being prompted from behind. ‘Nicole someone’s the mother, and my missus says she’s loopy. Drugs and some such. Anyway she’s dead of an overdose and Doug says it’s all over the papers.’
Riley winced at that. ‘I’d imagine it might be.’
‘Doug’s saying it’s gonna be a big beat up. Dead rock star’s daughters missing in the desert.’
‘Mmm.’
‘There’ll be a fuss when they get on the train.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Anyway…’ Bill cleared his throat. ‘No business of mine. You tell the cops they’re okay and I’ll reassure the missus. It’ll keep everyone off our backs.’
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