by Annie Seaton
‘Sure am.’ He glanced down at his cards, lifted his chin and held her gaze. ‘I’ll raise you.’
From that point, the poker game became a battle between the two of them. Connor ignored her cursing as the tension grew but he figured she was probably doing it to distract him from his game. He stayed calm and cool. When she reached for the cigar that Rocky offered, she let her gaze swivel around to his and raised her eyebrows.
‘I thought there was a no smoking rule in here,’ he said sardonically.
‘But I’m not smoking,’ came the quick reply. ‘Just holding a lucky cigar.’
But not so lucky for Ms Dru Porter tonight.
Connor had played cards with the best, and he knew he was the master of the poker face. He gathered his winnings a few hours later, as Cardella and Dru walked across the room, deep in conversation. A brief nod was all he’d got from her in the way of goodnight, but the three men had been gleeful that someone had brought the queen of the poker game down.
‘Consider yourself the newest member of the Matsu Mine poker club. Paulie can piss off.’ Liam punched him on the top of his arm.
As he pushed his chair in, Dru looked back and held his gaze.
Chapter 7
Even though it was much later than she’d planned to get back to her room, Dru wanted to call Megan and tell her she’d let her know as soon as she made her mind up. Mobile phone service in the isolated Matsu Ranges was excellent even though they were over two hundred kilometres from the nearest town—one of the perks of being a mining centre. She glanced at the time; there was about half an hour before her shift started. She had to change into her jeans and a long-sleeved work shirt, slip on her hi-vis vest, braid her hair and pull on her socks and steel-capped boots.
She dialled Megan’s number and closed her eyes as she waited for her friend to pick up. It would be early evening in Dubai, and Megan and Sam would be getting ready to go out for pre-dinner drinks as they did every night after work. Dru had been uncomfortable in that world from the outset. Living the high life in a luxury block with the other expat professionals had never sat comfortably with her. It was a long way from the mango farm in the Northern Territory where she’d grown up.
Working in Dubai had been surreal, almost like living in a bubble. But it had been a false picture; the city of perfection, blemish-free, with its massive shopping malls, indoor ski slopes and the constant round of socialising had made it easy to overlook a lot of things.
Dru shook her head and ignored the strange feeling in her fingers. Despite the cool air pumping from the air conditioning, sweat still trickled down her neck as the call went to voicemail. It was going to be hot out in the desert tonight.
‘Hey, Megsy, it’s me. I’m off to work now. I’ll talk to you over the weekend.’ A sense of relief flooded through her; she could put off her decision about going to the wedding for a while longer.
After braiding her hair, Dru sat on the step and pulled on her workboots, and then let out a groan of frustration as she looked over at the car park. Liam’s ute was behind hers and he had parked her in. She knew it was his because the M decal on the back of the tailgate had come off. Liam thought it was hilarious that his ute read ATSU. Liam and Paul had been fooling around during one poker game making silly phrases from the acronym. In hindsight, they’d probably been drinking that night too. They’d almost fallen off their chairs as they’d giggled like a couple of teenage girls.
‘This mine is an “absolute total screw up”,’ Liam had said.
‘Nah.’ Paul had barely been able to get the words out between howls of laughter. ‘We work in “a total shit unit”.’
‘I can do better than that,’ Liam had snorted. ‘Forget the diamonds. We’re “all towing shit uphill”, mate.’
Later the same night Paul had had a go at her about having her personal car taking up a car space in the car park. Tempers always frayed towards the end of the two week roster.
Dru glanced down at her watch. There was still time to catch one of the staff buses that ran over to the mine site each shift. She slipped off her room key and buttoned it into her top pocket before throwing her car keys back inside and closing the door quietly behind her. The last thing you wanted when you were lying on the hard ground of the desert was to roll over on a bunch of keys. She’d had those bruises before.
She couldn’t help the grin at that thought. Mr Workplace Safety probably had a rule about keys in your pocket. Jennifer had said there was to be a blitz on work safety over the next month, and he looked like just the type who would enjoy enforcing every regulation. A looker, but obviously a total jerk.
And he’d beaten her at poker too. Although her mind hadn’t been on the game tonight, he’d still been good. His face and body language had been totally unreadable, but despite that she got the feeling he’d judged her and she’d been found wanting. And she’d played up to it with the language and the cigar. At least it had taken her thoughts away from Dubai for a while.
The walk to the bus stop would normally clear her head and get her focused on the night’s work. But tonight, no matter how much she tried, that sardonic grin stayed with her. When she’d pushed her chair back and stood beside the table after the game, he’d risen automatically and fleeting surprise had run through her.
He had manners.
The bus was almost full when it stopped at the street at the end of her unit block and she stepped up and nodded to the driver before settling into the last vacant seat behind him. She pulled her ear buds from her shirt pocket and slipped them in, leaning back on the headrest for the short trip to the processing plant where she would sign on for her shift.
She managed to avoid any long conversations as she signed on, grabbed the keys to one of the plant utes and walked across to the car park. A few minutes later Dru was alone in the clear and silent night.
The moon was rising over the Matsu Range to the east as she parked the vehicle at the top of the last hill, and she caught her breath as the fat yellow orb cleared the top of the low mountain. Creamy moonlight spilled over the expanse of desert below her and peace stole through her as she stepped from the vehicle. The silence was so complete she could hear the soft night wind puffing across the desert and the occasional rustle of the leaves as it picked up the heat from the ground. She stood still, letting her gaze wander over the flat earth that surrounded the tailings dam to the southwest. The slight wind had kicked up a few waves and the water shimmered silver as the moonlight bounced off it. Tonight she planned on systematically working through the termite mounds in a grid from the edge of the road to the dam to see if they had been repopulated since the mining activity had ceased in this section of the mine two years ago. As it was the switchover day, she’d rostered herself on alone, but that suited her well tonight.
Dru turned back to the ute, the stony ground crunching beneath her feet as she walked to the flat tray at the back and opened the tool box. Retrieving a small shovel, she lined up half a dozen empty glass vials for the soil samples in a small wooden carry box. As she walked down the hill and paced out the hundred metres to the first mound, she focused on the haphazard line of dark structures between her and the dam. Twenty-six mounds to sample should just about take the whole shift.
Just as she reached the waist-height mound, a shower of small rocks skittered down the hill behind her and she turned. Holding the wooden handle, she scanned the brightly lit terrain for the animal that had disturbed the silence, ready to record the sighting in her log.
This job was great; it was so different to working in the huge team she’d been with on Bluewater Island. There was a big difference between restoring an ancient desert landscape and working on a reclaimed island in a huge, overdeveloped, bustling and wealthy modern city. In Dubai, the ever-present noise of construction machinery on the island had necessitated the wearing of earmuffs. Here in the desert it was quiet and peaceful, and working alone in the moonlight was soothing. She had plenty to do each shift, there was no time to
dwell on the past and that suited her just fine.
Dru looked around again but there was nothing moving. She was careful out here, day and night, knowing how termite mounds could also be home to snakes and goannas as the mounds were often the only reliable ecosystem present in this arid desert. She put down the shovel and reached into the deep pocket of her work trousers and pulled on a pair of thick work gloves. No point getting bitten, and if that workplace safety guy wanted to check on her, she’d be kitted out as per the safety regulations.
Lifting the shovel, she turned back to the termite mound and gasped as a dark figure loomed in front of her.
*
Even though it provided for every need a worker could possibly have, the mini-city of Matsu was still a sterile artificial environment. Connor was glad to head out of the air-conditioned mess once the card game had finished. It had been most informative observing the staff he was interested in, but he’d found it hard to be sociable. It was the first time he’d found himself in a social situation in many months.
This job was going to be very different from chasing the drug runners he’d exposed over the past few years. He still wasn’t exactly sure why he’d taken this case on. Maybe he was finally letting go of the past and his crusade to make up for what had happened. Maybe he was tired and just needed a break from the constant danger.
He had lots to think over after seeing the three suspects, and he’d already planned his internet search strategy to drill into their pasts—and their current activities. If people realised how transparent their lives were these days they’d give up their phones and never log on to a computer. Or maybe that was just his jaded viewpoint; it seemed to be that most people took pride in sharing the minutiae of their boring daily lives on social media.
Through a couple of hackers he knew from his time in the Australian Federal Police, he had access to more databases than the normal Google search would retrieve. Maybe not ethical—or legal—but he didn’t care. Connor’s belief in ethical and legal practices had gone to shit a few years back—along with his career—and whatever it took now to get a job done, he’d do it. Deeper access to banking data was beyond him, but his mate and former colleague Greg didn’t mind doing him a favour every so often, and he’d called with his list of requests for each name before he’d come on site.
One of the things Connor was keen to do was to follow up Dru’s travel arrangements. As the conversations had washed around him during the game, he had gleaned little nuggets of interest.
‘Good drive in last trip, Dru?’ Carruthers had asked halfway through the game as Connor had dealt the cards. ‘I’m going out that way tomorrow.’
‘Yeah. The creeks are still dry, so it’s easy getting across.’
‘Yeah, me mate’s working over at Smokey Creek and he said the roads were much better now. You should be able to get out through the wet this year. I hear they’ve built up a few of those low bridges over the winter.’
Dru had caught Connor’s glance and made a noncommittal noise in response to Carruthers’ comments. She’d looked back down at the cards in her hand.
Robinson had mentioned that Cardella drove on and off the site—apparently his home settlement was only a few kilometres away. Connor had assumed that Dru came in by air from Perth with the rest of the fly-in, fly-out workforce.
Make no assumptions; first rule of the game. His interest in her was stacking up but he wouldn’t jump to any conclusions based on personality. No matter what his gut reaction had been.
After Dru had left, Cardella had returned to the mess, where Connor had stayed back after the game on the pretext of making another coffee. It was an opportunity to talk to the other guys. The look on their faces was priceless when they realised he was going to hang around, but there was no sign of the hipflasks he’d seen earlier when he’d left the table briefly to grab a Coke from the fridge.
‘Great job tonight,’ Liam said.
Connor raised his eyebrows. ‘How’s that?’
‘Taking on the ice queen.’ Liam’s voice was harder than it had been when Dru was at the table. ‘The bitch needed taking down a peg or two.’
Before Connor could comment, Rocky stepped over and grabbed Liam’s shirt. ‘Watch your mouth, boy.’
Liam shrugged him off with a jerk of his shoulder and stuck his face up against Rocky’s. ‘What? You getting a bit are you, old man?’
Connor grabbed Carruthers’ shoulder and pulled him back. ‘Settle down.’
Carruthers glared at Connor with a dark look on his face. ‘Well, she did need taking down. Cocky, sullen bitch. Aw, fuck this. I’m going to bed.’
Now Connor walked slowly back to his own apartment deep in thought.
Interesting. Carruthers had a temper and Cardella had come straight in to defend Dru. There was a relationship of sorts there; he’d noticed that they were very comfortable with each other during the game. More so than he would expect work colleagues to be.
After throwing his keys and wallet onto the table near the door, Connor walked into the tiny bathroom and filled his hands with cold water. He sluiced his face and hair.
Christ it’s hot in these tin boxes.
He changed into dark pants and T-shirt before picking up his keys and heading out to the car park at the end of the row of dongas.
He’d accessed the rosters online and knew that Dru was working over near the tailings dam this shift. He drove out of the staff car park and along the road to the eastern side of the mine with his headlights on low beam, passing a couple of other vehicles and two trucks as he headed past the processing plant. He had an explanation ready if anyone pulled him up tonight, along with the security tag that Hennessey had left for him with Jennifer. In his ‘safety’ role, Connor had free access to the whole plant with the exception of the diamond recovery room.
It was the first time he’d driven further than the administration and security buildings and Connor let out a low whistle as the scale of the mine became apparent. It had looked big from the air, but on the ground it was much larger than he’d realised. He passed a small power station, and a fuel depot with three large fuel tanks. The size of the site would make checking for any holes in security difficult.
He followed the road until he reached a Y intersection and slowed the car. The sealed road appeared to wind around the fence on the southern perimeter of the site and a wide gravel road to the right led up a steep hill. A huge dump truck was parked at the top. Connor turned the ute to the right and the engine revved as he accelerated up the hill. There was one vehicle parked beneath a security light over on the eastern edge of the cliff. He slowed the car to a crawl and killed the lights, then turned behind the truck and parked his ute on the other side away from the lit area. He climbed out of the car and checked that his vehicle was hidden from the road. The truck was huge, with six massive tyres. Each one had to be at least twice his height.
Satisfied that he was well hidden, he reached into the car for his night binoculars and small torch. He put the torch in his pocket; there was enough moonlight to see where he was going. Hopefully his dark clothes would hide him from any curious eyes.
Despite being after midnight it was still bloody hot outside and there was an eerie light bathing the desert landscape. The muted roar from the processing plant a few hundred metres away reminded him of a science fiction movie setting.
He stared down to the base of the hill. He could see Dru moving around, her bright vest glowing in the moonlight. He shook his head; she was alone. That was a red flag. It wasn’t safe for anyone—male or female—to be working on their own in the desert at night. In his role as safety officer it would be within his brief for him to bring that up. She did the rosters—he’d already looked at that—but he’d assumed she’d have at least one offsider out here with her at night.
Maybe she worked alone because it gave her the opportunity to look for rogue diamonds? Stupid . . . or very clever. It was the closest point to the tailings dam where John Robinson had told h
im it was possible for diamonds to wash down from the open pit. Hard to believe a multimillion dollar facility was built to mine the gems and you could wander around and be lucky enough to pick one up off the ground.
But not six.
A large sign to his right along the top of the northern face of the cliff flashed in the light of the rising moon and Connor walked over to the fence. As he read the notice, he realised this was the tourist lookout over the open cut pit. Below and above him, the bright moonlight highlighted the edges of the horizontal tiers that had been cut into the face of the mountain. According to the sign, the pit was over two kilometres long and a kilometre wide, and covered over three hundred hectares. As his eyes became more accustomed to the darkness, he leaned over and looked down the terraces below him. The pit stretched along the edge of the mountain into dark shadows. From his memory of the map, the tailings dam was down the other slope at the southern end of this hill. He shook his head slowly. Securing this site would be a nightmare.
Over the hum of the processing plant up the hill, the engine of another vehicle revved at the bottom of the road. Connor stepped back into the shadow of the truck and lifted the night binoculars to his eyes. So far there’d been no sign of anyone else, and he’d assumed that one of the utes parked over by the fence had been driven up there by Dru. The bright lights of the vehicle lit up the truck and he pressed himself against the tyre and they flicked past him as the ute parked at the top of the road.
He stayed still and held his breath as he waited for the car door to open. Finally the door closed quietly and footsteps crunched on the gravel, heading away from him.
He stepped around the front of the truck, taking care to tread lightly and not make any noise. There was no one in sight. Connor crept forward, keeping along the northern side of the hill along the fence line until he reached the southern escarpment.