by Sarah Barrie
Removing the drawer was awkward, noisy. After every clunk she stopped, checking for the hum of the shower. When the drawer was finally free she dived in through the space and rifled through files, finding only paperwork. The folders scraped loudly as she slipped her hands underneath them, worrying at any moment Dale would be in the doorway. Then her fingers brushed something cold and hard.
She lifted it out. A thumb drive.
Confused, she flicked open her laptop, inserted the drive and waited impatiently for the system to boot up. While it worked at preparing itself, she slid the drawers back together, relieved when she found it easier than getting them apart.
‘Come on …’ she muttered to the laptop as the file folder popped up on screen. She hovered the mouse over the folder to open it. Then she heard the water shut off with a clank.
‘Shit. Shit. Shit.’ She clicked anyway, too close to give up. Thumbnail images appeared.
She sank like a stone to the chair. Stared.
What was this? What the hell was this? She clicked on the first photo to enlarge it, pressed her eyes tightly closed then opened them. A chill that froze her like ice washed over her and pierced the fog of her clouded mind. It was the woman—Lisa. At least, she was pretty sure it was her. She was dead, staked to the earth, arms and legs outstretched. A red circle surrounded her, candles posted around it. Her clothes, her body, were ripped to shreds. Everything was damaged. Everything was broken. Somewhere under the tangle of hair that covered her face, Callie got the impression of wide, staring eyes, a mouth open in a scream.
‘No.’ It came out as a whimper. This was too much to take in. How could she possibly process this? She dragged her eyes from the image and stared, unseeing, out the window as her mind raced for an acceptable explanation. Maybe Dale had gone back to see Lisa a second time and found her like that. Callie nodded in desperation. He would have called the police—could have been there all night trying to help, to find out what had happened. Yes, that was sure to be it. He’d explain. He wouldn’t want to, but he would. He must be upset, exhausted. He’d need time to gather his thoughts before talking to her. That would be the reason for the downstairs shower.
Callie got her feet under her and walked unsteadily to the kitchen. Because she was bone-deep cold, she tossed another log on the dying fire. The table still held her wineglass, a plate and the remaining half of a bottle of chardonnay, sitting by a fruit bowl. She should tidy them up. She realised her legs were shaking, so she leant on the chair.
Her husband was not a murderer, she told herself again. She would know. He was a kind, generally considerate, brilliant man. What had been done to that woman would challenge the limits of a crazed psychopath. And why the photos? And the thumb drive? If he’d done it, taken pictures, why take the time to store them on a drive? She had this all wrong. She had to have it all wrong.
‘You’re up.’
Dale’s voice startled her. He stood behind her, a towel around his waist. Scratches marred his cheek and a garbage bag was clutched in his hand. He walked past her to the fire, and tossed the bag in. The plastic shrivelled and, with a whoosh, the material within ignited.
‘I didn’t think you’d be cooking yet,’ he said with a smile marred by tension. ‘Early breakfast orders?’
‘What?’ She dragged her eyes away from the fire with difficulty. ‘Where have you been? What happened last night?’
He joined her at the table and placed his hands on her shoulders, a kiss on her forehead. ‘Sorry if I worried you. You knew I was working late. I fell asleep at the winery.’
‘But—your face. And the—’
‘And the what?’ Dale’s expression changed from calm and apologetic to intense, his eyes looking straight into hers. It stopped her in her tracks.
He turned to fill the coffee cups. ‘I woke up about an hour ago, went to call you and realised I didn’t have my phone. I’d been out to the new estate yesterday and decided I should check I hadn’t left it on the machinery parked out there for the paddock development. On the way back, a damn roo jumped out in front of the car. It was still alive so I tried to help it but it attacked me trying to get away. Scratched my face. Made a hell of a mess of my clothes.’
A kangaroo? She studied the marks on his face, tried to believe an animal could have put them there. The image of Lisa on the ground wedged itself firmly in Callie’s mind. It had been too dark to make out anything around the woman, but there was grass and dirt. Lots of it. Much like where they’d dug up the far paddock to plant out the new rows of vines. Callie swallowed the bile rising in her throat as every reassuring excuse she’d come up with faded.
He’s killed her, her mind screamed. Oh, God, no, he can’t have killed her!
She pasted on a weak smile. ‘That’s all good then.’
‘You sure you’re all right, Callie? You look a little pale.’
‘Fine.’
‘Good. I need to get dressed.’ He stepped back, and his smile was there but it lacked warmth. ‘Could you rustle me up some toast?’
‘Sure.’
With trembling hands she took out the bread and made herself throw him a quick smile as he left the room. She needed to find the explanation that fit. Any explanation that fit other than the one she couldn’t, wouldn’t, consider. Dale was not a murderer. The photos would make sense. Somehow.
Her laptop. She envisaged it sitting open on the desk. If he—Damn it. She needed to move. She raced into the office, slipped the thumb drive into her pocket.
‘Callie?’
She spun around to see Dale staring at her darkly, blocking the doorway. She tried for a smile, but noticed he wasn’t staring at her. He was staring at the image still open on her computer.
‘You saw that and didn’t tell me?’ he said, his voice quiet. ‘What were you going to do?’ he asked, his eyes finally moving to meet hers. ‘Dob me in?’
Her head shook vigorously. ‘No! Dale, of course not, just—tell me you didn’t have anything to do with this!’
He swore and snatched the computer. ‘I didn’t want it to turn out like this. I’m sorry. No one can know about this, Callie.’
What did that mean? Her heart gave one large thud and then seemed to stop altogether. She couldn’t breathe for the tight band of worry clenching at her chest. Did she know this man at all? She ducked around him and ran through the door.
He lunged, got a hand on her.
‘Let me go!’ she screamed.
‘Let me explain!’
A bright shock of rage slipped past the fear. She pointed at the laptop in his hand. ‘There’s no way to make that better!’
With a growl, he dragged her with him to the kitchen, then pitched the laptop into the fire to join the clothing. It smashed and began to melt.
‘Callie!’ Paisley thumped on one of the twin glass kitchen doors, eyes wide. ‘Callie? Are you okay?’
‘No!’ She used the distraction to rip her arm from Dale’s grasp and dodge past him. He lunged again, got a hand on her robe and dragged her back. She grabbed the table, couldn’t hold on but pulled the tablecloth off. The glass, bottle, plate and fruit bowl all shattered on the floor. ‘Let me go!’
‘Don’t go out there!’ The words ended on a violent curse as Dale slipped.
Paisley was still desperately pounding on the glass. Callie needed to get to that door, flip the lock. She felt Dale’s hand around her ankle as she leapt, then the pain of slamming onto the floor as he pulled her foot out from under her. Her hand landed on the broken wineglass and she grabbed it despite its jagged edges and kicked free, lashed out with the glass as he roughly dragged her back. Felt the jarring of it as it lodged in his cheek.
Callie stared, horrified. The shattering of the door as Paisley lobbed something through barely even registered. Dale got up, staggered, reaching for her, then slipped again. This time when he went down, his head cracked with a sickening thud against the bench. He didn’t move, didn’t get back up. She wondered why she couldn’t see,
and didn’t realise she was sobbing.
Paisley rushed in, got hold of Callie when she would have collapsed.
‘Callie, are you okay? Are you hurt? What happened? I can’t believe what I just saw.’
‘That woman was dead. And he wouldn’t deny it was him. He just said no one could know.’
‘What?’
‘That woman! She’s dead. Murdered. And he was scratched and he burned his clothes and there were pictures …’
‘Okay, okay.’ Paisley dragged her to a chair and clasped her fingers in her hair. ‘We need to call the police.’ She pulled her phone from her pocket, then stared past Callie back out the door. ‘Callie! Do you have anything to tie him up with?’
‘Tie him up?’
‘Until the police arrive. Do you have anything?’
‘Maybe in the garage.’
‘Go and look!’ Paisley’s shocked eyes moved back to Dale. ‘Go and look.’
Callie got up, then doubled over with nausea at the sight of blood spreading on the floor around her husband. ‘What if he doesn’t wake up?’
‘Seriously, Callie? What if he does? Go out to the garage, get some tape or cable ties or something. Now! Not that way!’ Paisley ordered when Callie somehow moved her legs and would have left through the kitchen. ‘Go through the back. I’m calling for help,’ then into the phone she said, ‘Yes, I need an ambulance and the police …’
Callie ran blindly outside, barely noticing the rain that had started to fall, swiping uselessly at her face, eyes stinging while she fought for every breath she dragged into her lungs. She scanned the garage shelves, knocked most of their contents to the ground as, hand trembling, she struggled to find what she needed. Then she found three cable ties in an almost empty pack. They would do. Still fighting hysteria, she made her legs take her back inside.
The first thing she noticed was Dale wasn’t moving. Paisley was bent over him, every muscle taut.
‘He doesn’t look right.’
The expression on Paisley’s face as she dropped back from Dale to sit on the floor all but answered the question Callie was too afraid to ask. The breath clogged in her throat again, dissolving the strength in her legs. She dropped down beside her friend, drew her knees up to her chin and tried to breathe.
‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’
The soft words were barely discernible even to herself over the monotonous drumming of rain on the kitchen roof. The scene became dreamlike. The horror of the previous few minutes was incongruous with the tidy, brightly lit space, the comforting fire burning in the hearth and the lingering scent of coffee.
She glanced sideways when her friend took a while to answer.
Paisley raked her fingers through her long, blonde hair. ‘Looks like.’ Then, with a heavy sigh: ‘Hell.’
A hysterical laugh broke from Callie’s throat, loud and sharp in the quiet space. ‘I just accused him of being a murderer. Then I did this. I’m as bad as he is.’
‘Was.’
‘What?’
‘As bad as he was. Except you’re not.’
Callie clamped one shaking hand in the other. The fire snapped, shooting out another spurt of brightly dancing lights as the laptop continued to dissolve.
The damn laptop. She should have shut it down. Shut it down, or run away. Not this. Anything but this.
‘It doesn’t matter. This isn’t real. I’ll wake up in a couple of hours and he’ll be alive. Right beside me.’
Her stomach threatened to turn inside out as reality crept in on a wave of revulsion. Without really wanting to, she looked at her husband’s prone figure. He’d fallen in an awkward, unnatural position, almost like he was running, horizontally, but his head was backwards, in a The Exorcist kind of way. And the back of that head was dented, bloody. The wineglass stem buried in his cheek glinted under the kitchen light. The pool of blood had stopped a centimetre or so from where she sat hugging her knees next to her best friend, on the polished floorboards.
‘It can’t be real,’ she repeated, just a whisper, and began to rock.
Outside, the wailing of a siren was faint but the flashing red and blue lights cut through the wall of falling water. ‘So … you should probably tell me the whole story pretty quick,’ Paisley suggested. ‘So I can back you up.’
‘Back me up?’
Paisley stood, and with one last, horrified look at Dale’s body, moved to the door. ‘Cops are going to want to know why he’s dead.’
‘Oh, God.’ As the shaking became tremors that rocked her whole body, Callie’s head fell onto her knees. ‘Because I killed him. I killed my husband.’
CHAPTER
3
Central Highlands, Tasmania, 2019
‘There!’
Connor spun his horse around, his gaze following the line of Logan’s outstretched arm towards a copse of thick scrub, which moved as one cow swivelled and pushed against another. More strays. Connor’s legs squeezed against his horse’s sides and the eager gelding bounded forward, up the slope of the culvert.
‘Careful,’ Logan warned, manoeuvring his horse down the slippery, leaf-littered terrain towards them. ‘That’s pretty uneven ground.’ But as Logan’s horse hit firmer ground it too fought for its head, sensing the chase.
‘If we can spook them out of that rut, we won’t have to go in after them and risk the horses,’ Connor said.
‘Risk the horses?’ Tess scoffed from behind him. ‘If cattle can get in there, Flash can.’ To prove her point, she ducked in front, cutting him off, her mount popping over a fallen tree and diving into the cows’ cover. The cattle bounded out, scattering around the riders and regrouping to head down the trail at a trot. Within seconds, as though resigned to the trek before them, they dropped back to a steady walk, forming a line to follow the easiest route down the mountain.
‘Show off,’ Connor said.
‘Chicken,’ Tess called back.
One of the cows moved off the track, deciding to make a break for it. Connor bumped into it, his horse pushing it round before chasing it back to the small group.
‘Not bad!’ Logan called out. ‘For a chicken. Tend to forget you’ve got it in you. You spend too much time behind a desk these days.’
Connor silently agreed, but there was nothing that could be done about it if the guesthouse was going to keep running. ‘Someone’s got to do the real work!’ he shot back.
The view across the mountains to the home paddocks below made him smile. He loved it out here. To his mind, there was nowhere more beautiful than Tasmania’s wilderness. He could have ambled back, savouring the sights, breathing them in, but his stockmen Mick and Ned had turned up with a couple more stragglers, and his horse was jogging. The morning had been an easy one and the energetic animal underneath him had his own blood pumping. ‘Hey, Tess, you reckon you could get this mob down with Ned and Mick?’ he called.
Tess’s ‘pfft’ was accompanied by a roll of her eyes. ‘Without them. In my sleep. Why?’
Connor sent Logan a grin. ‘Beat you back to the yards.’
Logan picked up the reins and nodded. ‘Cross country or trail?’
‘Give me a break.’
‘Beat you both!’
Tess’s horse bounded between them, their sister perfectly balanced over her mount as the striking sabino mare bolted off the track and disappeared into the bush. He’d known there was no way she’d settle for wandering back with the stockmen; she was one of the best damn riders he’d ever seen—and competitive as hell.
He laughed. ‘Cheat!’ His horse danced on the spot, eager to follow, and his legs barely brushed the gelding’s sides before it shot forwards after her, Logan’s horse at their heels. They navigated logs and dips, skirted the steeper country and felt the splash of freezing water kicked up by Tess’s mount in front of them as they hit the bottom of one slope, raced through the shallow creek and up the other side. The ride was exhilarating and the smile on Connor’s face was wide even as, true to her word, Tess beat
them both. He and Logan did what they could to give her a hard time, because that’s what brothers were supposed to do when they’re beaten by their little sister, but she gave back as good as she got and as they walked the horses the rest of the way to the yards to allow them to cool down, it occurred to Connor that that was the most fun he’d had in a long time.
‘Are we sorting the cattle as soon as the stragglers get back?’ Tess asked Logan.
‘No, Connor and I want to use them with the new rehab group tomorrow.’
‘Sounds good to me.’
‘It’ll work out well,’ Connor said.
He gave his mount a pat and was thinking of heading back to the stables when Tess said, ‘I forgot that was starting. I was going to ask you to take five tourists out on the kayaks tomorrow at 11. I’m taking the shuttle run out to Cradle Mountain.’
He thought about that. ‘I’ll get Kaicey to do it.’
‘That’s what you always say when something comes up,’ Tess said. ‘You know we pay her to be our receptionist, right?’
Logan moved his horse up beside Connor’s. ‘You know, if you paid Kaicey a bit more you could change her job title to, I don’t know—assistant-everything-we-can’t-fit-in, since you won’t get an actual assistant because you seem to enjoy being tied to your desk every day.’
Not this again, Connor groaned silently. ‘Most of the year, I’m fine.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Logan jumped from his horse and tossed the reins over a railing. ‘Except you’re not fine and this is the quiet part of the year. It’s been more than a year since Dad died, and Rosie’s taken off with Nat for who knows how long. They both used to do a lot more around here than we realised. You’re working long hours. Why not take some of the pressure off?’
‘I’ll think about it,’ he said. ‘But changing things when they’re just starting to do well seems like tempting fate.’
Logan chuckled. ‘And taking on a new group of young crims isn’t doing that?’
Connor had wondered the same thing the first time they’d run the program as part of a plan Corrective Services was utilising to reduce the rates of reoffenders, providing them with opportunities for rehabilitation, personal development and community engagement. His sister-in-law Indy had pitched the idea to him, and it had worked out so well. ‘I hope not. Last year it made a difference, you know that,’ Connor said. Then, spotting the others coming in the gate, he called, ‘Hey, Ned! Push them into the far yard with the rest of the herd. We’ll sort them later.’