Hope Echoes

by Shannon Curtis

  Oh. My. Gawd. They’d done it. Heat rushed to her cheeks. She and Mac had made … trouble.

  Her smile broadened into a grin. Mac was very good at making trouble. She sobered. But now what? Would he regret it? Did she regret it? She thought about it for a moment. Nope. She glanced up at the living-room window. The sky was lightening. As much as she wanted to stay here with Mac, she had some chores to do.

  Slowly, gently, she slid out from underneath him, gathered her clothes, and tiptoed from the room, wincing. She was feeling muscles she hadn’t used for a very long time. After a quick shower she hustled out to the dogs and fed them, then hurried across to the pen where Mary, their milking cow, spent the nights. As she sat down on the overturned milk crate, she tried to focus on what she was doing, and what she needed to do that day.

  With the reassuring sound of the milk hitting the pail, Jac found herself thinking about the gloriously muscled hunk asleep on her living-room couch. Last night had been … wow. Rough and tumble, sweet and tender… her cheeks heated again when she thought about what they’d done.

  She couldn’t remember having that kind of experience before. Hell, she wasn’t a virgin, but … with Mac it had been different. Fun, but also … she frowned. Meaningful. Emotional.

  And she wanted to do it again. She wanted to do it tonight, and every night into the foreseeable future. She even wanted to do it in the day.

  Her frown deepened. They were supposed to keep things friendly. No emotional entanglements. She’d told him as much.

  But how many friends did she ever spend the night with, making love?

  Zero.

  Mac was special. Sure, annoying. Frustrating. Irritating. But … special. Her stomach pitched, like she was on a roller coaster at the Royal Easter Show. Did she really think she could sleep with Mac Hudson and go back to pre-shagged-Mac life? She put her hand up to Mary’s flank as the cow shifted.

  God, what the hell had she done? What happened now? Mac would leave, and could go shag any other woman he so desired. Her mouth dropped open. What if he went and shagged Brenda Durrant? How would she feel about that?

  She’d feel like her heart was ripped out of her chest.

  ‘Fudgerooney,’ Jac breathed. She swallowed. She loved Mac Hudson. She hit her forehead with the base of her palm and swore. Mary shifted, and Jac automatically reached out to stroke the cow’s flank. ‘It’s all right, Mary. I’m just realising what an enormous twit I am.’

  She patted the cow as she rose. Well, she couldn’t say anything to Mac, not after what they’d said last night, not after what they’d done last night… You can’t make love to a guy and then tell him you love him. That would just completely ruin the buzz. She swallowed as she lifted the milk pail and trudged back across the yard. She’d told Mac they were just going to be friends. He wasn’t ready for anything more serious. That much had been obvious from their discussion last night. Bed buddies, maybe. A relationship beyond that? Noooope.

  She hesitated at the back door. Maybe, in time, that would change? Hope soared in her chest. Maybe, if she just kept things calm and casual, he’d come around. Maybe fall in love with her right back. She closed her eyes briefly. God, she hoped so.

  She walked into the back hall and through to the kitchen, then almost dropped the pail. Mac stood at the bench, sipping coffee from a mug. His hair was tousled, his shirt was open, his chest—Jac swallowed as she stared at his glorious chest. She felt like she’d just walked into a domestic sex fantasy.

  Mac smiled when he saw her, his lips curving in a hot, provocative smile, his green eyes flashing with wicked mischief, and he sauntered over to her, placing the mug on the table as he passed. Her mouth went dry, watching that muscular body come closer.

  ‘Morning,’ he murmured, taking the pail from her and putting it on the bench, then leaning forward to kiss her, his hands cupping her face.

  Oh, God, it was happening again. Heat, fire, want, desire, a mind-stealing need that took over her. She raised her arms around his neck, opening her mouth to her kiss. This was the Best. Morning. Ever.

  He kissed her languorously, as though he had all the time in the world to explore her mouth. He eventually drew back, and kissed her lightly on the tip of her nose. ‘I have to go into the station,’ he said softly, ‘but I want you to take it easy. Be safe.’

  A warmth spread through her at his concern, his protectiveness, and she smiled up at him. ‘I love you,’ she said softly.

  Uh-oh. Her eyes widened. Had she—? Did she—?

  He stilled. Blinked.

  ‘Uh,’ she uttered, scrambling for something to say. ‘I mean—’

  ‘Thank you…?’ he said tentatively.

  Jacinta blinked. Er… ‘You’re welcome,’ she responded automatically. What? She blinked. You’re welcome? Thank you?

  Mac stared at her for a moment, his face blank, then he jerked his thumb over his shoulder. ‘I should get going,’ he muttered.

  Jacinta clasped her hands in front of her. ‘Yeah, I have to … do something.’ She half-turned, her mind blank.

  Mac leaned forward, drew back, then pressed a quick kiss to her cheek. ‘I’ll call you.’

  He walked out of the kitchen, his open shirt billowing behind him. Jacinta turned around and gently hit the wall with her forehead.

  I love you. What was she, some kind of idiot? What happened to letting things play out, and keeping that little nugget of humiliation to herself?

  And who the hell says thank you to a declaration of love?

  Mac gripped the steering wheel and tried to shake it as he drove along the highway.

  Thank you? She’d said I love you, and he’d said thank you?

  ‘You stupid, stinking, bloody idiot!’ He thumped the wheel. Bloody hell. He’d frozen. No, he’d choked. He’d felt the words bubbling up inside him, and he’d choked. He’d never said them to a woman before. Never.

  He was such. An. Idiot.

  Last night had been … too much. He’d been more honest, more open with Jacinta the night before than he’d ever been with a woman. He’d made love to her, and it had been, well, pretty fantastic, actually. He’d even snuggled with her. Usually he was up and out the door before the woman woke up, but Jac had beat him to it. And when she’d walked in, all rosy-cheeked and walking sunlight, he’d wanted to hold her close, cherish her.

  And then she’d said she loved him.

  He shook his head. He’d handled that badly. He’d handled it monstrously bad. Sure, she’d surprised him. Hell, she’d shocked him, but … she loved him. Despite his annoyance at himself, a little kernel of warmth flared. Jac Buchanan loved him.

  Gawd, what was he going to do now?

  He pulled into the police station parking lot, and walked into the office. Julie blinked when she passed him in the hall, but he kept walking. He entered his office, and Brent Pocock looked up. The detective’s eyebrows rose as Mac walked over to the cupboard in the corner and pulled a fresh shirt off a hanger. He quickly changed shirts.

  ‘Did you—’

  ‘Don’t ask,’ Mac muttered. He didn’t want to talk about it. Couldn’t talk about it. Didn’t want to admit how monumentally he’d screwed up. On so many levels.

  Brent nodded. ‘Okay. Uh, I got some intel this morning about Toohey.’

  ‘Yeah? What?’

  ‘Well, word on the street is he’s got a big deal going down. He’s been in talks with the leader of the Coffin Dodgers motorcycle club up in Surfers Paradise.’

  Mac buttoned up his shirt. ‘Okay. And?’

  ‘Well, Toohey seems to have left Sydney, and they think he’s meeting the guy up near the border for an exchange.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. But it’s not drugs.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Guns.’

  Mac frowned. ‘Huh.’

  Jac placed her rifle behind the seat in her ute, and turned to face Scott. ‘I want you to go back out to the cows. We’ll need to dispose of them. I’ll b
e by in a couple of hours to give you a hand.’

  ‘What are you going to do? Maybe we should stick together?’ Scott said, squinting against the morning sun.

  No. No more being or not being with anyone. ‘It’s fine, Scott. I’m just going over to just beyond the west paddock to scout out a potential site for some solar panels, and I’d rather do it on my own.’

  Because right now she didn’t want to be around a man, talk to a man—and definitely not talk about the non-relationship she and the man were in. She whistled, and Ray came running around the side of the house, leaping onto the back of the ute. She closed the tailgate with a little more force than usual.

  ‘Why don’t we leave that for another time? Your old man doesn’t seem sold on it—’

  She stared at him coolly. Oh, that was right. Scott had said something to her dad. ‘We disagree at the moment. Isn’t the first time, won’t be the last, but we generally work out a compromise. See you later,’ she added, to prevent further conversation.

  She wanted some time to herself, some time to think. Some time to wallow in her abject humiliation over confessing a love that didn’t seem to be returned.

  Scott nodded. ‘West paddock, huh?’

  She nodded as she climbed into the cab and started the car. ‘Yep.’

  She put the car into gear and drove off, bouncing along the track. A brief glimpse into her rear-vision mirror saw Scott driving his own vehicle off in the direction of Duck’s Gully.

  She turned her focus back to the track. Her knuckles whitened on the wheel. She’d ruined everything. She’d made something that was supposed to be fun and casual way too serious and heavy. She shook her head. She knew Mac felt something for her, but he’d been hesitant to commit to anything. Had she just been fooling herself into thinking she could handle a no-strings-style relationship? She sighed. She wanted more than just one night of sex with Mac. She wanted the conversations. She wanted his time. She wanted … something he wasn’t ready to give her.

  ‘You are an idiot,’ she muttered to herself, eyeing the landscape. She realised she was driving past the spot where she’d been attacked the other night. She brought the vehicle to a stop, and frowned. She twisted in her seat. The gate they’d used was back that way, and Brandy was off this way… she eyed the area. But this guy hadn’t been headed for Brandy. Or if he had, he was taking the scenic route.

  ‘So where were you going?’ she wondered aloud. She sat forward in her seat, scanning the ridge in the distance. If you kept driving in this direction, you’d eventually hit the base of Echo Ridge. There was nothing out there except… her eyes widened.

  ‘The caves.’

  She put the truck into gear and changed direction. There was a cave system within the ridgeline. They eventually linked up with the springs that gave the town its name. But the caves out this way were rarely visited. Mainly because it was a bit of a slog to get there, and there were much better caves, some with thermal springs, closer to town.

  It took her over half an hour to get there. The track was almost non-existent, with plenty of grassy shrub to drive through. If she got up to twenty kilometres an hour, it was a good stretch.

  She slowly drove up a ridge, and braked, her blood running cold.

  A white four-wheel drive was parked a little way away from the cave.

  Mac leaned back in his chair and looked over at Brent. Hayden had come in and identified Toohey as the man he’d seen at the Silverwater Correctional Complex. Since then, they’d spent hours poring over phone and financial records, and still nothing. ‘So nobody’s seen Toohey for five days?’

  Brent shook his head. ‘Nope. Our man on the inside said Toohey received a call and chucked a tantrum that would make my two-year-old nephew look like an altar boy.’

  ‘He heard about Brandy,’ Mac surmised. He frowned as he calculated the timeline. ‘Like, straight away,’ he murmured.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Five days. That’s the very day we found Brandy.’ He started flicking through the phone records, scanning the dates. He’d requested the phone records, but they only went up to the day before the discovery. Jacinta had given the phone company permission to hand over all of the data, as she had done with the banks—it had been faster than waiting for a warrant, and she’d wanted to clear Bulls’ Run of any suspicion. Whatever he’d asked for, she’d made it available.

  He reached for his phone, and after several long minutes was able to speak to the person he’d been dealing with at the phone company, and requested all records between then and the day the meth lab at Brandy had been discovered. He hung up and looked at his watch.

  ‘I caught her on her lunch break, so she’s going to go pull the records now and email them.’

  Brent’s eyebrows rose. ‘Wow. That’s really fast.’

  Mac shrugged. ‘We got lucky.’

  Brent smiled and waggled his eyebrows. ‘Again.’

  Mac shifted in his seat. He didn’t want to talk about the other time he’d gotten ‘lucky’ today. Didn’t want to think about it—but it was on constant repeat in his mind.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he muttered.

  Brent sniggered. ‘You don’t have to, it’s written all over your face.’ He indicated the records they were sifting through. ‘I have to say, she’s very cooperative.’

  Mac nodded. She was also a whole lot of trouble. An email notification popped up on his screen, and he clicked on it. The phone company data.

  ‘I’m thinking of grabbing a bite to eat. Wanna come with?’ Brent asked.

  Mac nodded. ‘Sure, I’ll just—’ He frowned at the records as someone knocked on the door. Brent rose to answer as Mac leaned forward on his desk. He knew Jac’s number off by heart, and could see the entries of the calls he’d made from her phone. There were no calls on the landline, and there were two more satellite phones linked to the account. One of them had made a call during the afternoon—when Tom, Scott and Marion had been informed of the discovery, and en route to being interviewed.

  ‘What’s Toohey’s number again?’

  ‘It ends with two-zero-four-one.’

  ‘Son of a bitch.’ Mac rose from his desk and picked up his keys. ‘I know who called Toohey.’ He glanced at the door. Ben was there, and as his colleague opened his mouth to speak, he was shoved aside, and Hayden Terrance stuck his head in.

  ‘I was on my way back in from picking up a second-hand industrial oven at Dubbo, and I reckon I saw that guy, Toohey. He was driving in the opposite direction, and it was only for a brief moment, but I’m pretty sure that was the same guy I saw at Silverwater,’ Hayden said, his face grim.

  ‘Where did you see him?’ Mac asked as he brushed past him on his way out of the office.

  ‘Out on the Mitchell Highway,’ Hayden replied, falling into step behind him.

  Mac started to jog. Bulls’ Run was off the Mitchell Highway.

  Jacinta crept up to the back of the vehicle, trying to keep below the line of the tailgate. She held Calamity Jane in her hand, and she gripped it tightly as she paused, crouching, behind the car.

  She glanced down at the track. Three centre lines, the middle one with a zigzag. She swallowed, her heart thudding in her chest. She peered around the corner of the car to the side mirror. She couldn’t see anyone in the driver’s seat. She skirted along the side of the vehicle, keeping low, until she reached the driver’s door, and slowly rose to peer inside. The vehicle was empty.

  She glanced toward the cave. She couldn’t see inside, it was so dark. She didn’t know where anyone was, or how many of them there were. She pulled out the screwdriver she’d removed from her tool box and slid into her boot, and stabbed the front tyre. She smiled grimly when she heard the faint hiss of air escaping. Try driving away now, you bastard.

  She scurried in a wide curve toward the mouth of the cave, putting her back up against the rock wall. She listened. A cockatoo flew overhead, and she could hear the faint rustle of wind through the clumps of grass
, the soft whine of a mosquito, but other than that, nothing.

  She peered around the lip of the cave. It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the dim interior. It was empty, but at the back she could see the flutter of light. A tunnel.

  The light was getting fainter and fainter. Whoever was carrying it was walking deeper into the ridge. Was this yet another drug lab? She couldn’t believe it. She pulled the satellite phone out of her back pocket, and dialled Mac’s number. She didn’t hesitate as she started to back away from the cave, her eyes trained on the entrance.

  It took a few rings, but Mac answered the call.

  ‘Jac! You need to—’

  ‘They’re here,’ she said quietly, firmly into phone.

  ‘What? Who?’

  ‘The white—’

  A hand snaked around her mouth, cutting off her words as her wrist was grasped so tightly she had to drop the phone. Eyes widening, she tried to swing the butt of her rifle around, but whoever grabbed her let go of her wrist and caught the gun. She could hear Mac’s voice, tinny and indistinct, calling from the phone she’d dropped to the ground.

  She raised her foot and brought it down in a fierce stomp, catching her assailant on his foot. She heard a harsh curse word, felt the grip tighten on her mouth. She launched herself backward, barrelling into the hard body behind her, tumbling them both to the ground.

  The grip on her face lessened, and she dug her elbows in fierce jabs, until the grip relaxed enough for her to break free and rise to her feet.

  ‘The caves, Mac,’ she screamed. ‘The—oof.’

  Her ankle was grabbed, and she hit the dirt on her stomach. She twisted, kicking at the guy who was now trying to claw his way up her legs. Her eyes widened. He had a tattoo of a spider across one side of his bald skull and face. She tried to wriggle away, and managed to kick him in the cheek.

  ‘You bitch,’ he roared.

  She rolled, her arms spread to try and give her traction to crawl away. Her hand touched the barrel of her rifle and she rolled again, swinging it with force against his face. His head whipped back, and his grip relaxed as he fell off her, dazed.