Two Man Station

by Lisa Henry

  Riptide Publishing

  PO Box 1537

  Burnsville, NC 28714

  www.riptidepublishing.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All person(s) depicted on the cover are model(s) used for illustrative purposes only.

  Two Man Station

  Copyright © 2018 by Lisa Henry

  Cover art: Natasha Snow, natashasnowdesigns.com

  Editors: Rachel Haimowitz, Carole-ann Galloway

  Layout: L.C. Chase, lcchase.com/design.htm

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Riptide Publishing at the mailing address above, at Riptidepublishing.com, or at marketing@riptidepublishing.com.

  ISBN: 978-1-62649-710-8

  First edition

  January, 2018

  Also available in paperback:

  ISBN: 978-1-62649-711-5

  ABOUT THE EBOOK YOU HAVE PURCHASED:

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  Gio Valeri is a big-city police officer who’s been transferred to the small outback town of Richmond with his professional reputation in tatters. His transfer is a punishment, and Gio just wants to keep his head down and survive the next two years. No more mistakes. No more complications.

  Except Gio isn’t counting on Jason Quinn.

  Jason Quinn, officer in charge of Richmond Station, is a single dad struggling with balancing the demands of shift work with the challenges of raising his son. The last thing he needs is a new senior constable with a history of destroying other people’s careers. But, like it or not, Jason has to work with Gio.

  In a remote two-man station hours away from the next town, Gio and Jason have to learn to trust and rely on each another. Close quarters and a growing attraction mean that the lines between professional and personal are blurring. And even in Richmond, being a copper can be dangerous enough without risking their hearts as well.

  To the real-life Andrea.

  For her friendship, and her inspiration . . . and for her rum.

  Bingo!

  People who truly live in the outback listen to it. What they hear I do not know . . . What the country says is beyond words.

  — Ian Parkes, “A Youth Not Wasted”

  About Two Man Station

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Dear Reader

  Acknowledgements

  Also by Lisa Henry

  About the Author

  More like this

  The dusty ribbon of the Flinders Highway stretched west from the Coast, frayed edges crumbling into the red dirt that clumped in the wheel arches of Gio’s Mazda 3, and packed hard as clay into the tread of the tyres. The drive from the Gold Coast took two days. Gio had started out on Monday, and overnighted in a cheap hotel in Emerald, sharing the shower stall with a dead cockroach before falling asleep with the TV blaring. Tuesday had been more of the same: another ten hour stretch behind the wheel, the dull ache of homesickness tugging at him with every kilometre that clicked over on the odo.

  Gio stopped every hour or so to stretch, to pace for a while, to break the hypnotic power of the never-ending highway. He’d never seen country like this before. Never been this far west. Slow, lazy flies buzzed around him, drowsy with heat.

  The drive was red dirt, chips in the windscreen that caught the blazing sunlight, and mirages that shimmered on the dips in the road. The car shuddered whenever a road train roared past in the other lane.

  Gio reached his destination just after four on Tuesday afternoon.

  At the edge of Richmond, the road branched. The highway continued left, bypassing the centre of town. The road curved right and swelled into a main street. Gio drove past a bank, a supermarket, two pubs, and the RSL. There wasn’t a single building over two storeys high, as though the weight of the endless blue sky had squashed everything flat. No clusters of steel and glass towers, their floor-to-ceiling windows facing the beach and reflecting the thin stretch of sand and the breakers that rolled in endlessly from the ocean. This—the dust, the heat, the small town, and the empty sky—was a different planet.

  Gio turned left at the tiny hospital, following a sign, and found the police station a block back from the main road. A riotous crimson bougainvillea bush half obscured the sign out front of the low-set cement building.

  Gio pulled over and turned the ignition off. He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel, drawing a deep breath as the heat bled into the car. He’d been running from his nerves since leaving the Gold Coast, and now that he’d finally stopped, they’d caught up with him.

  He could still remember his first day in the job. Four years ago now, Southport station. It was a big station, always busy no matter the time of day or night. Gio had been so nervous he hadn’t trusted himself to eat breakfast before starting his shift. Better getting light-headed than throwing up, right? Caffeine and adrenaline had carried him through to lunch.

  Gio was nauseated now as well, his stomach roiling. He sat for a moment longer, until the heat became unbearable, and then opened the car door to let the breeze in. His hand shook as he unclipped his seat belt, and he drew another deep breath of hot dry air before getting out of the car. The sun burned his shadow onto the cracked cement path as he walked towards the front entrance of the station. The doors rolled wide when he reached them, and a chill blast of air-conditioning ushered him inside.

  The small foyer was empty. There was nobody behind the counter. The grill was pulled down.

  Gio pressed the buzzer and heard it sound somewhere out the back. Moments later, the door behind the counter opened, and a woman appeared. She was short, round, and middle-aged, and she wore her grey hair in a pixie cut.

  She peered at Gio over the half-moon glasses perched on her nose. “Can I help you?”

  “Hi.” He slid his badge under the grill. “Gio Valeri.”

  The woman’s expression faltered for a moment. The smile that followed seemed forced. “
I’ll get Sergeant Quinn.”

  “Thank you.” Gio pulled his badge back and shoved it into his pocket again. He studied the posters on the noticeboard. Domestic Violence. Child Safety. Drugs. The usual stuff.

  “Jason?” the woman called as she headed into the back rooms of the station. “The new guy’s here.”

  The door behind the counter snicked closed, muffling any response.

  The new guy.

  Gio had no doubt that his reputation had preceded him here. And he didn’t kid himself that it was a good thing. He fixed his gaze on the curling edges of a Police Recruiting poster, and on a thin crack in the paint job on the wall underneath it.

  The new guy.

  It wasn’t the worst thing she could have called him.

  Gio had told himself all the way from the Gold Coast that he was a good copper, and that none of the shit that had happened on the Coast mattered out here. Which was total bullshit, just like Gio’s reputation.

  Gio straightened up when he heard the click of a lock disengaging. A moment later the door to the foyer swung open and the sergeant stepped through. Gio moved forward and stuck his hand out, his heartbeat quickening.

  Sergeant Quinn had a firm handshake. “Giovanni?”

  “Gio,” Gio corrected.

  “Jason,” Sergeant Quinn said. He was in his mid to late thirties, maybe. He was an inch or so taller than Gio, and in good shape. Tanned too. The faint lines at the corners of his blue-grey eyes deepened when he smiled. He had light-brown hair, the tips sun-bleached. He was younger than Gio had expected. Hotter too, but Gio was careful not to let his appreciation of that particular trait show in his expression as he shook the sergeant’s hand. The sergeant gestured at the middle-aged woman. “And this is Sandra.”

  Gio looked past him to where the woman stood in the doorway. She twisted her chequered lanyard around her finger. Her ID card jiggled against her bosom.

  “Come on through,” Sergeant Quinn said. “I’ll give you a tour of the place.”

  There wasn’t much to the Richmond Police Station. A holding cell, a narrow storeroom, and an even narrower armoury. The small dayroom contained two desks. One was empty and, presumably, Gio’s. The other one was occupied by a kid wearing a faded maroon Richmond State School polo shirt, with his homework spread out around him. The kid was skinny, like a half-grown pup. He couldn’t have been more than nine or ten.

  “Finished your homework, mate?” Sergeant Quinn asked him.

  The kid smiled at him around the pencil shoved in his mouth. He had tousled light-brown hair, eyes the colour of storm clouds, and a spray of freckles across his nose. A mini version of Sergeant Quinn. “Yep!”

  “Sure you have,” the sergeant said wryly, like a man who’d heard that lie a million times before. He glanced back at Gio. “This is my son, Taylor. Taylor, this is Gio, Dan’s replacement.”

  “Hi,” Gio said.

  Taylor’s smile grew into a wide grin. He ducked his head and the pencil dropped out of his mouth. It rolled off the desk and onto the floor, and Taylor scrambled to retrieve it.

  The tour continued.

  “My office,” Sergeant Quinn said, gesturing to a door. “And the kitchen and showers and toilet are down the hall.” He dug into the pocket of his blue cargo pants and pulled out a clump of keys. He flipped through them. “Station, armoury, cell, property room, your locker, the safe, and . . .” He turned the last one over. “Your house.”

  He dropped the keys into Gio’s palm.

  Gio closed his fingers around them tightly. The teeth dug into his flesh. He cleared his throat to find his voice. “Thanks, Sarge.”

  His house.

  Shit.

  He really was stuck here, wasn’t he?

  The highset house sat on a quarter-acre block behind the station. It was built on an elevated slab that made Gio wonder if flooding was a concern. Sergeant Quinn’s house shared the block. There was no fence between the houses, just an expanse of scrubby grass that seemed to blaze like fire as the sun went down.

  The house smelled musty. Gio opened the windows and turned on the ceiling fans. His furniture wasn’t due to arrive until tomorrow, but he’d planned for that. He unrolled his air mattress out on the lounge room floor, and walked through the house again, opening and closing the cabinets and cupboards.

  The three-bedroom house had been built for a family, not for a single guy. Gio didn’t have enough furniture to fill this many rooms. It wouldn’t feel like home here.

  There were cleaning products under the kitchen sink that the last resident hadn’t bothered to pack. Half a bottle of detergent. A pack of green scourers. Insect spray. A can of silver polish. Who the fuck had silver these days? And who the fuck polished it? Gio took the can out and set it on the bench beside the sink to remind him to throw it out as soon as he bought garbage bags.

  His phone buzzed in the pocket of his jeans, and he dug it out. The number was blocked. Gio didn’t answer it. Probably just a telemarketer, but he didn’t feel like pushing his luck right now. He ignored the way his heartbeat picked up. Just a telemarketer. No need to answer and find out it wasn’t. Gio had driven two days to get to Richmond. He wanted to believe, for as long as he could, that all the shit on the Gold Coast hadn’t followed him.

  Gio shoved his phone back into his pocket.

  Jesus. What the hell was he even doing here? This wasn’t his house. This wasn’t his life. There was nothing here that resembled the future Gio had so carefully planned. He curled his fingers around the edge of the bench. Stared at the instructions on the back of the can of silver polish, as though he might find all the answers there. He’d searched in stranger places, hadn’t he? Put his faith in dumber things. And look where it had got him. Still, he was somewhat unsurprised when the secrets of the universe failed to reveal themselves via a can of Silvo.

  He smiled wryly.

  Okay, so he was tired, and he was miserable, and he was homesick, but at least he wasn’t totally crazy, right? That seemed like something worth holding on to.

  He took his phone out of his pocket and unlocked the screen. He scrolled through his contacts. Hundreds of names there, and the only reason Gio hadn’t deleted most of them was that he wanted some warning if any of them called him. He wanted to see a name instead of a random string of numbers. He wondered if any of them was the blocked number.

  Probably just a telemarketer.

  He should phone Sophie. Let her know he’d got here safely. Except a text would work as well, and that way he wouldn’t get pulled into another argument about how selfish he was. It was Gio’s fault they argued. He hadn’t told her everything. He couldn’t bring himself to admit to her that the transfer had been pretty much forced on him. He’d never told her how bad things had gotten. The late-night phone calls where nobody had spoken. The slashed tyres and keyed panels on his car. The can of dog food left on his desk. The threats. It had seemed somehow easier to pretend that moving to Richmond had been his own idea, and to bear Sophie’s anger rather than tell her the truth and admit that he was scared, or to make her scared too. He needed some corner of his life that was still untouched by this shit-storm, and he wanted to keep his big sister in that corner too. He didn’t want her to see how screwed up everything was now. How screwed up he was.

  He texted. Here safe. Call you in a few days.

  It wasn’t enough, probably. It’d piss her off more than total radio silence, absolutely. Gio was used to being the bad guy though.

  Fuck, he was tired.

  He set his phone down on the countertop and twisted the tap on. A blast of hot water hit the bottom of the sink. It took a minute for it to run first lukewarm, and then cool. Gio splashed some over his face and wiped his face on his shirt.

  Footsteps clomped up the back steps, and a moment later the handle on the security screen rattled. “Hello?”

  Gio crossed to the door.

  Taylor’s face was smooshed against the screen. “Your door’s locked.”

&nb
sp; “Yep,” Gio agreed.

  Taylor rattled the handle again. “Dad says he’s taking us to the pub for tea.”

  Gio unlocked the door.

  Taylor wrenched it open. “Do you want to come? I’m supposed to ask, not just tell you. In case you’re tired.”

  Gio figured he was hungrier than he was tired. He pocketed his phone. “Yeah,” he said. “That sounds good.”

  They ate in the restaurant attached to the front bar of the Royal Hotel. Occasional bursts of loud laughter drowned out the tinny electronic music of the pub’s row of three poker machines. The pub did cheap, good food. Chicken schnitzel, chips, and salad for fourteen bucks, and it was better than anything Gio could have cooked up for himself.

  Sergeant Quinn ordered them both a beer. A light.

  Taylor got a Coke.

  Sergeant Quinn went through the roster with Gio. There were only so many hours in a day that two blokes could fill. They wouldn’t cross paths much between Sunday and Wednesday. One of them would work the day shift while the other was on a day off. From Thursday through until Saturday they worked overlapping shifts, trying to cover the afternoon until past midnight when it was more likely they’d have to deal with disturbances and domestics.

  “Anything that crops up when you’re rostered alone that you need backup for, you call me out,” Sergeant Quinn said. “And I’ll do the same to you. It’s not like the city. This is a two-man station. If things turn to shit, it’s just us. Even coming lights and sirens, the nearest backup is about two hours away. Longer than that if they’re on the other side of their division.”

  “Yeah,” Gio said. “That’s gonna take some getting my head around.”

  The sergeant’s mouth quirked at that, and Gio could hear the unspoken judgement: city boy.

  Evidently, so could Taylor. The kid dragged a chip through a puddle of tomato sauce, and regarded his dad with a grin.

  “It’s a different style of policing out here,” Sergeant Quinn told Gio. “Has to be.”

  Gio nodded. “It’s, ah, it’s a lot to learn.”

  He felt like a first-year constable again, earnest and respectful. Like he was performing a cheap pantomime, when he knew exactly what Sergeant Jason Quinn thought of him. Jesus. The assistant commissioner and the HSO had called Richmond a fresh start, but Gio knew what it really was: “Get that fucking dog out of my sight.” Which had been a real kick in the guts especially coming from Jonesy, the boss who’d handpicked him for the team only eight months before. Richmond wasn’t a fresh start. Richmond was punishment. Banishment. Richmond was seventeen hundred kilometres from the life Gio had built for himself on the Gold Coast. Seventeen hundred kilometres from civilisation. And Gio was stuck here for two years.