by Jennie Jones
Jack didn’t flinch under Luke’s dogged glare; then he couldn’t help himself and cracked a smile. Luke was more than smart and he was fishing. That’s why he’d taken the conversation to a personal level. He thought he’d get more info out of Jack that way. Sneaky bastard—although it was exactly what Jack would have done.
‘Does she know I’m here?’ he asked.
‘You’re changing the subject.’
‘You changed it first.’ Luke knew some of the reasons about why he was here, undercover, but Jack didn’t want to go into too much more about the case. ‘Does Jax know I’m here?’ he asked again.
Luke studied him for a second, a discerning look in his eye. Then he relaxed and took Jack’s question on board. ‘Rachel and Jax are BFFs,’ he said wryly. ‘What do you think?’
‘Well I’m your BFF, aren’t I? Just tell me straight. How did she take it?’
Luke threw him a look of despair. ‘Guys don’t have BFFs. Guys have mates who drink beer and swear a lot.’
‘When did you last get through a six-pack in one session?’
Luke grimaced, and Jack felt a sudden sympathy for him.
The trouble with being a cop was that you never had a day off. Even on your rostered days off you were still duty bound to uphold a lawful presence, which meant opting for a mid-strength beer if you happened to take your wife or girlfriend to the local pub. Not to mention possibly having to step in—armed or not—if something happened. As a detective on high-level cases and often undercover he’d mostly been armed 24/7. Part of the job. But if he was off duty as OIC of the cop shop, he wouldn’t have his gun.
‘Will Jax know why you’re really here?’ Luke asked.
Jack shoved his hands into his buff-coloured cotton trouser pockets. It would be weird tomorrow, shoving his hands into thick cotton police pants. ‘Does Rachel know why I’m really here?’
‘No.’
He hadn’t expected Luke to tell his new lady anything that was classified information, but husbands and wives talked—or boyfriend–girlfriend as it currently was for Luke and Rachel—and he had to check. He didn’t want Jax discovering why he was really here any more than he wanted the assumed felons he was here to keep an eye on knowing why he was really here. Not that he knew exactly who they were yet but he had his suspicions about one man.
‘So what story are you going to make up for Jax for being in Mt Maria?’ Luke asked.
Jack found a smile at Luke’s ability to persist in his interrogation while seemingly not doing so. ‘The truth. Eventually.’
Luke paused. ‘Which is?’
He wasn’t sharing any intel on that until he’d figured it out for himself. If what he thought was right, it was a miracle. Something he’d never expected. But there were a lot of things to think about, to suss out, to decide upon and discuss—if she ever talked to him again. And he was getting away with himself here, thinking about an outcome when it might be obvious from the first meeting with Isabelle Jaxine Brown that what was going on in his head—he refused to let his heart rule anything—was no miracle but merely an observable fact. Facts he could deal with. Uncertainty pissed him off. Still, no pain no gain. ‘I’ve tried calling her but she’s not answering.’
‘Jax hates mobiles. Remember? She’s always letting it run out of charge or leaving it at home.’
‘Her name’s Isabelle. We can’t be Jack and Jax. She told me we’d sound like a nursery rhyme.’ She was right. It sounded dumb. ‘From now on we’re calling her Isabelle.’
‘You can but try,’ Luke answered drily as he lifted the corner of his mouth in a triumphant grin. ‘So you’ve taken this gig because you’re after her,’ he said. ‘Are you in love or something?’
Jack pulled a hand out of his trouser pocket and scratched his head. ‘She’s mad at me,’ he said as evenly as he could, and without answering Luke’s question. ‘I want to explain.’
‘Explain what?’
‘Stuff. I have to win her round a bit.’
‘You mean a lot. What happened that time in Kalgirri?’
It was Luke who’d introduced them a year ago, and Jack had been taken from the first glance. Graceful, lithe, yet softened luxuriously in all her womanly places, the sight of her had been like a blow to his head. It was all that stuff he had to give consideration to. The miracle stuff. He was sure it hadn’t happened to any Maxwell male. Not that he knew any of them … although he was reasonably sure he had his biological father’s name because his mother used to mention Uncle Jack Maxwell, always with tears in her eyes. Not that her eyes weren’t usually dewy. Drugs did that. He was pretty sure that ‘uncle’ was his father. He didn’t know him and didn’t want to know anything about him; never had. The bastard was probably dead anyway, like his mother.
‘Why is there a bull in lockup?’ he asked.
‘We’ll discuss the bull later. You’re not going to tell her you’re undercover?’
‘No.’
‘You’re prepared to lie?’
‘It’s the job, isn’t it?’
Luke assessed him.
‘She won’t guess I’m here on a case. I’m a good liar,’ Jack said in an offhand manner. But this was the trouble—he was a good liar and he had to let Jax know the truth. Not about the case he was on here in Mt Maria, but about the time they’d first met nearly a year ago and he’d taken her out to dinner and had left her just before dessert. If she’d let him get close enough to do the explaining. She hadn’t when he’d been in town for a few days three months ago helping Luke with Rachel’s case.
Maybe getting back into uniform would help create a new man—or the old one, whoever that had been. It seemed like forever since he’d been allowed to be himself.
‘You mess up anything in my town, Jack, I will hunt you down and kill you.’
Jack looked up from beneath his frown. ‘You can but try.’
‘You’re not even qualified to supervise my role while I’m away.’
‘I was a uniform for almost as long as you were,’ he said, irritation getting the better of his normally decent humour.
‘Yeah,’ Luke answered. ‘Now you’re going to be acting senior sergeant and acting OIC of my station.’
‘Get off my back. It’s mostly paperwork anyway.’ He’d done enough paperwork recently to have decimated an entire forest.
‘How’d you do on your psyche test?’
Jack lifted his chin. ‘How’d you think?’
‘Just stay off our Twitter account.’
‘What the hell’s that got to do with my psyche test for living and working in a remote community?’
‘Everything. Things are quiet at the moment. I don’t want you getting bored.’
‘I thought you said I’d be neck-deep in paperwork.’
‘I’ve given the Twitter account to Donna. You’re not even getting the password.’
‘You’re beginning to piss me off.’
‘Good. That’ll keep you on your toes.’
That rankled. ‘I’ve been policing for over sixteen years. I was in uniform for nearly four of those years. I’ve worked closely with uniforms any number of times. I don’t take the piss. I work well with people.’ He made a point of doing so. There was personal pride attached to it.
‘But you’ve worked with them as a detective. Out here we’re not that fond of detectives. They come in and take over after we’ve done the legwork.’
‘Thought you said that out here you see it all through? And don’t forget that up until a couple of years ago, you were a detective.’
‘Don’t be facetious. It won’t work around here. Which brings me to the question of Jimmy,’ Luke pronounced, pulling his shoulders back.
Jack furrowed his brow. ‘What about him?’ Jimmy was the Customer Service Officer, although you had to make sure you approached him politely in order to get info out of him—like, is the coffee on? Or can I please have that paperwork I asked you for yesterday?
‘He’s not happy that you’re takin
g over my role while I’m away.’
‘What’s it got to do with him?’
‘I told you—out here things work differently. You have to get along with people yet remain in control and officially aloof.’ Luke picked up a folder and threw it at Jack. ‘Read through that. There are two guys from the mine site you’re interested in who are under curfew.’
Jack opened the folder and flicked through the paperwork, making a mental note of the names of the guys and planting the images of their ID photos in his mind as he read the document. They’d been pulled over with a stack of iPads, iPhones, laptops and TVs stashed in the boot of their car, along with odd items like rope and canvas sheeting. There’d been no reported burglaries from the Mt Maria district and they’d told the cops the gear was their own, but Luke had put them under curfew while they made further investigations. The two men were employed at the Lizard Claws mine site Jack was here to keep an eye on, and the Kalgirri op was about to take this case off Mt Maria’s Police Department, which Jack was going to have to explain away somehow.
‘We also get a fair number of callouts from the community reporting anti-social behaviour,’ Luke said. ‘Usually just the teenagers kicking back at boredom. But as you know, we’ve got a few ornery souls living in and around town and they sometimes create more trouble than the kids. Oh, and next week you’ll be handing out Stellar Awards at the primary school.’
‘Stellar Awards for what?’
‘Good behaviour. Getting ten out of ten in a maths exam. Being kind to the elderly. What did you think it means?’
‘I’m just asking. I haven’t been in a school since we uncovered that mutilated body in western Sydney seven years back.’
‘We’ve had no murders out here for the three years I’ve been here, Jack. That’s the way I want it to stay.’
‘I give you my word I won’t kill anyone.’
Luke sighed, looking more like that anxious father with only one kid than before. ‘Jack, you may think this is a quiet place, but you need to know about everything that is going on—in the shire, the youth centre, the sports club, at the school. We look after our kids out here.’
Jack closed the folder on the two guys who were on curfew and threw it on the desk. Working out here would certainly be a change from the usual … ‘You know something, Weston, you’re no fun since you got hitched.’
He saw a fleeting smile on his friend’s face before he turned it into a scowl. ‘Semi-hitched. We’re not married.’ Then the atmosphere got a lot more serious. ‘All right then,’ Luke said. ‘Fill me in on this undercover charade you’ve got yourself into.’
Jack paused. ‘You know I can’t say more than I already have.’
‘So it’s definitely drugs, like I was told.’
‘What else would it be?’ Drugs. Yes, they suspected there was something big going on in or around the Lizard Claws mine site forty-seven kilometres north-east of Mt Maria, given the sudden splash of cash around Kalgirri from a few of the mine-site workers who flew in and out.
Crime in WA was up by seven per cent from the previous year. The drug trade was responsible for this hike. Burglaries, break-ins, whatever it took to get money, to get drugs, to get high, then do it all over again. One of the problems was the soft border of the state. Drugs were coming in from the northern coastline and then being sent out via various routes.
‘Whatever this op is,’ Luke said, studying him intently, ‘have you got your side of it under control?’
‘Your town’s safe with me.’
‘It better be.’
Sergeant Will Bennett popped his head around the door. ‘Can I have a quick word, Luke?’
Jack folded his arms across his chest and took his focus to the window. What the hell was a bull doing in Mt Maria, let alone the lockup exercise yard?
Luke headed out of the office and pulled the door to a near close, but Jack could still hear them.
‘There’s got to be some reason Jack’s been called in,’ Will Bennett said. ‘I don’t want a repeat performance.’
Jack understood what he was saying. During the nightmare Rachel had been through three months back, it had been Jack who’d officially coerced Luke into keeping a watch on her and Luke hadn’t liked it. He’d had to keep all intel to himself. He hadn’t even been able to tell Will what was going on. He’d blamed Jack at the time, although they’d been good friends for many years and had got over it—sort of. But Jack knew that if everything had gone wrong while Rachel tried to defend herself from the horrors of her past all on her own, and she’d been hurt—or killed—Luke would never have forgiven him. She hadn’t known the police were even involved, or looking for her so they could get information about a man she’d once had an association with. Jack wouldn’t have forgiven himself either, which is why he’d gone behind the back of that operation to ensure nobody got hurt.
‘There’ll be no repeat performance,’ Luke advised Will in a placatory tone. ‘I’ve given him a grilling.’
Jack heard the smile in his tone and grimaced.
‘But is he capable?’ Will asked.
Is he capable?
Luke laughed. ‘I trust him with my life, Will. I trust him with the town but don’t tell him I said that. Not so sure about the paperwork,’ he added. ‘You might want to keep an eye on that.’
Jack bristled. He knew everything there was to know about paperwork and filing since he’d supposedly stuffed up a job over east a year ago and been relegated to a desk job in Kalgirri—that’s how he’d first met Jax. He’d been shifted from ops in Sydney to general desk duty in the back of beyond. Although the girlfriend of an offender on the case he’d been taken off in Sydney had followed him and that had been dicey—not to mention life-threatening. Talk about that supposed stuff-up hadn’t settled as quickly as Jack would have liked. It would be years before he didn’t cop any more jocular grief about arresting the chief whip and his wife for DUI. But it had been arranged—he’d had no alternative but to do as ordered. Cops’ lives had depended on it.
‘Well, if you’re sure,’ Will said, sounding about ten per cent more at ease.
Jack took a few seconds to get his mind in tune with what he’d just heard. Not having Will Bennett on his side was a major problem and Jack was going to have to win him over. Not that they didn’t usually get along—Will was a great cop and a good guy—but by rights Will should be acting up as senior sergeant with Luke away, and Jack wasn’t able to advise Will why he was here. The undercover stint was just that—one hundred per cent undercover. Except for Luke knowing. But they’d needed to tell him some of the truth of the situation otherwise Luke would have kicked up a fuss about bringing in an ex-detective to play supervisor while he was away.
The town being quiet at the moment helped Jack with his role, and if they only had general policing to deal with—and the occasional bull—and not too much nonsense with the guys from the many mines in the area and one of only two pubs within a 300-kilometre radius, then maybe he’d find a way to win all these cops over. How, he currently had no idea. Not that he should be worrying about it; he was going to be in charge. It was just easier if everyone got along nicely.
‘What’s the situation with the bull?’ he asked, nodding at the barred window when Luke came back into the office.
Luke glanced at the window. ‘The Agatha Girls caught it.’
‘Caught it?’ Jack said, askance. A bull weighing in at around a thousand kilos, and a trio of busybody retirees had caught it?
‘Poor bloody thing was drugged,’ Luke said. ‘Could hardly walk. We’re trying to figure out why. The vet’s been on video cam and he’s making a trip up here, but the bull’s coming good, as far as we can tell.’
‘Christ. And the ladies?’ Jack had met the Agatha Girls, as they’d been known since they once produced Agatha Christie plays at the Lavender Blue amateur dramatic society. To call them pensioner sleuths might not be an exaggeration. They’d recently turned their enthusiasm to the annual Tidy Town compe
tition, which Mt Maria still hadn’t won. They were also reigning committee members of the old mine museum.
‘They were coming out of the youth centre after a meeting about reopening the museum,’ Luke said, ‘and met up with Tonto out there who was staggering around by the town hall.’
‘And where’s the Lone Ranger?’
Luke produced a grin. ‘Number 12 Samson Street. Remember that address—you might need to keep an eye on her.’
Jack met his friend’s grin. Amelia Arnold. Head Agatha Girl. Used to carry a carjack handle in her handbag—although Jack still didn’t know why. ‘Is she armed these days?’
‘No reason to believe so, but she had a break-in at her place a few nights back. Shed was ransacked, some equipment taken, and set on fire. We haven’t yet found out who did it, but we will.’
‘Where the hell did Tonto come from in the first place?’
‘Will’s working on it. As soon as it can be moved, Jax has offered to keep it at her place.’
Her place? The woman he was fixated on was going to move Tonto? ‘I don’t think so,’ he said purposefully, already having visions of her being gored.
‘Talking of Jax …’ Luke trailed off but he didn’t take his eyes off Jack.
For some reason, Jack’s gut instinct prickled.
‘There’s something you need to know.’
His pulse beat a little faster. ‘Trouble?’
‘She’s got a daughter,’ Luke said. ‘The kid’s here. In town. Arrived tonight.’ He paused. ‘She’s going to be living with her.’
Jax had a child? That was shock enough to have him slide off the edge of the desk. But a kid was fine. He didn’t have a problem with that apart from the complete surprise of it. What was currently spinning through his mind like a lit pinwheel sparking at a fireworks display was—where’s Daddy?
Three
Jax shoved her feet into her pink Wellingtons, turned back the sleeves of her pink-and-white checked flannel shirt, still not feeling in the pink after a restless night. Maybe she ought to get rid of all the blush-coloured clothing. Maybe she was too old for it now.
She pulled a face. At thirty? If she wanted to wear a pink tutu now or when she was ninety, she damn well would.