Devil's Lair

by Sarah Barrie

  ‘Ned’s developed a bit of a thing for Callie. He was pestering her for a dinner, which whittled down to a drink, so we crashed the party.’

  ‘You did? Smooth. Which reminds me. Did I see you gardening earlier?’

  He had a pretty good idea where this was going and bit back the groan, then tried for casual. ‘Yeah. So?’

  Indy’s expression was pure innocence. ‘Just asking. Callie’s doing a good job.’

  ‘You’ve met her?’

  ‘This morning.’ Then she smiled again as though enjoying some private thought. ‘You surprise me sometimes. I get a good vibe from her, but, you know. Just be careful. Until we get to know her a bit better.’

  He frowned at that. ‘I’m helping plant a few trees. I think my chances of survival are pretty good.’

  ‘That’s the spirit.’ Her phone rang, so she pulled it out. ‘I’ll see you in there.’

  Damn it, he was missing something—something Indy thought he must already know. Which meant Tess knew. He’d have to tackle her about it.

  Kaicey had joined the others in the bar. He sat back down, ignoring the scowl Ned sent him.

  ‘All these irregular days off haven’t been properly logged,’ Kaicey was saying to Ned. ‘We’ll have to get it straightened out.’

  ‘Going out to help Dad until tomorrow arvo. We could discuss it tomorrow night—I’ll be back for dinner. Catch me then if you want.’

  ‘If that’ll get it done. Does seven-thirty suit?’

  ‘It does. Right then,’ Ned said with another unfriendly look for Connor. ‘Got things to do. Evening, all.’

  ‘Is Ned giving you a hard time over the roster?’ Connor asked Kaicey.

  Kaicey rolled her eyes. ‘I only want him to tell me when he’s taken time off. Anyone would think I was asking him to cut off a limb.’

  ‘It’s just that he probably can’t remember,’ Connor said. ‘Don’t stress too much. He’s never baulked at putting in the overtime when needed.’

  ‘You’re the boss.’

  ‘Indy’s here,’ Connor told Logan. ‘She’s on the phone outside.’

  Logan drained his beer. ‘Better go find her. Before I do … ah … you got anything to tell me?’

  ‘Us,’ Tess said.

  Was he going to cop this from all sides? Really? ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You seem to be spending a lot of time in the garden,’ Logan said.

  For the first time since Bailey’s discovery, Connor saw humour in his brother’s expression, so he kept the annoyance out of his own. ‘It’s not so bad. Gardening I mean.’

  ‘Great. About time you … developed a new interest. I’ll say this for you, you know how to pick ’em. I’ll see you later.’ Logan grinned again and wandered away.

  Connor sighed. He wasn’t worried about the unwarranted hassling over Callie—he wouldn’t have expected anything less and denying it would undoubtedly make it worse. But what the heck was going on?

  ‘Indy and Logan seem to know something about Callie that I don’t,’ he said to Tess.

  Tess looked genuinely surprised as she put her drink down. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, they both made strange comments.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I mean—I thought you’d figured it out.’

  ‘Figured what out?’

  There was a thoughtful pause that had his stomach in knots.

  ‘Callie. She’s Caroline Johnson. Remember? Paisley said she’d brought a friend down to help with her father’s garden and I said I was going to go and say hi …’

  ‘Callie is Caroline Johnson?’ Surprise came first, then he felt like an idiot. ‘Yes. Damn it. I wasn’t paying enough attention. You told Indy.’

  ‘Thought I should mention it. I guess she said something to Logan if he knows too.’

  ‘But you didn’t feel the need to tell me?’

  ‘The way you’ve been eyeing her off, I thought you knew, were wondering about her, possibly even questioning my decision to bring her here.’

  ‘I wasn’t eyeing her off,’ he objected.

  ‘Oh, please. You’ve been existing like something out of The Walking Dead since Jules put a hole in you. Then Callie turns up and you’re a different person. You suddenly like gardening? At times I was surprised you didn’t chop your toes off with the shovel, the amount of attention you were paying.’

  ‘I’m going to leave that alone because you’re being ridiculous.’

  ‘You offered to play boyfriend. I can’t even get you to talk to my friends generally.’

  ‘Because you’re always trying to set me up. You’re hopeless.’

  ‘Hopeful,’ Tess corrected unapologetically. ‘And on that note, you don’t have a problem with Callie now, do you?’

  He really wasn’t sure. It was a bit of a shock but now he knew, a lot more of the conversation she’d had with him made sense. Especially the part about the dead husband. ‘I don’t think I have a problem with it. I haven’t had a chance to get my head around it yet. She doesn’t look like what I remember, but then I only saw her for a couple of seconds on the television.’

  ‘She’s going to get her landscape business up and running again properly. I wanted to talk to her about doing the rest of the gardens.’

  ‘The rest of the gardens are already lovely.’

  ‘But they could do with a tidy here, a prune there, maybe some new underplanting, mulching—the sprinkler systems on the new gardens are going to be great. We could get her to put more of those in.’

  ‘That could take weeks.’

  ‘Yeah. And?’

  And he decided he liked the idea of Callie being around for a while. ‘Sure, if she likes.’

  Tess’s grin was huge. ‘Good. I’ll bring it up with her.’

  He sat finishing his drink long after Tess had left. So they had it in their heads that he had a thing for Callie. Did he? Maybe. But he certainly hadn’t made any sort of decision to do something about it. She was undeniably attractive, and now that he knew who she was, he had a moment thinking about all that gorgeous hair she’d hacked off. Shame. He could admit he enjoyed the challenge of trying to pry smiles out of her, and those eyes that could spit fire as easily as they could serenely damn you to hell still held that initial captivation factor, but it didn’t mean he was going to jump into asking her out. He wondered if maybe he could test out the idea of doing something about it …

  He shook his head. Callie was playing it cautious and cool, uncomfortable with the smallest amount of male interest. After what she’d been through, he completely understood. He finished his beer and got to his feet. Logan was right—he sure knew how to pick them.

  * * *

  Callie winced. She’d stiffened up a bit, was tired and a little sore. She hadn’t done much of anything for more than a year, then between Cliff’s garden and the Calico Mountain job, her muscles were complaining about the sudden onset of hard labour. A hot shower would go a long way to fixing that. She grabbed a clean towel and headed for the bathroom, flicking on the light switch. The fluorescent flickered, then sprang to life. She was halfway through her shower when the light went off.

  ‘Shit,’ she murmured. She dragged her towel around her and could see just enough from the firelight in the lounge room to find her way back to the bedroom and locate her phone. She switched on the torch app, got dressed then, because lights were blazing from the main house, went outside to check the cottage’s fuse box. It was freezing, and the wind had snuck in after dark, biting at her exposed face and arms. The main power switch had shut off, so she flicked it back on. The lights kicked to life. With a breath of relief, she went back in.

  The power didn’t go off again until she’d heated up Cliff’s dinner. She ignored the dip in her stomach, ignored the little image she had in her mind of someone out there turning it off on purpose to lure her back outside. It took a bit of courage to retrace her steps into the darkness to the fuse box and flick the switch.

  She plated up dinner as fast
as she could, praying for the power to stay on. Then she took it over to Cliff’s, shivering on the doorstep while she mentioned the power situation. He wasn’t keen on her calling an electrician; Ned could do it.

  Reluctant to ask Ned, Callie pushed—she was happy to pay for a professional. Playing around with electricity was dangerous.

  But Cliff was adamant.

  Giving in, she made the freezing dash back to the cottage and because it was there, she took more firewood inside with her. If the lights were going to stuff around, keeping the fire going would warm and light the room. She loaded up the dying fire and once it was roaring, spent several more seconds swearing in her head, then picked up the phone.

  ‘Change your mind about dinner?’ Ned asked in greeting.

  ‘Ah, no. Actually, I’m having a few problems with the lights.’

  ‘Raining out there?’

  ‘I’m not sure if it’s rain or ice to be honest but something’s coming down.’

  ‘It’s the wires getting wet then. It happens,’ Ned said. ‘Didn’t Paisley tell you?’

  ‘She mentioned water was getting in, that you’d been working on it, but not that the electricity was playing up. She must have forgotten.’

  ‘I can’t get in the roof tonight, but I’ll come over if you like—keep you company.’

  ‘No. Thanks. I’d be happy to call an electrician. Cliff said I should talk to you first.’

  ‘Nah, I’ll do it. Just have to wait a bit.’

  She didn’t want to wait. She didn’t want Ned to fix it. ‘I don’t expect you to,’ she said. ‘I’ll pay someone to come out.’

  ‘Whole place needs rewiring. No pro is going to do a fix-up job,’ he told her. ‘I’ll get up there just as soon as it’s safe.’

  Because she could see the conversation going around in circles forever, she gave in and got off the phone and decided she really wouldn’t mind an early night. After reading for a while she lay in bed, listening to the night. A wail that sounded like wind joined the rain, a long, pitiful cry that became more guttural as it progressed. Just another unusual noise. Nothing to worry about. An owl or something. It was followed by an unearthly screech that just about catapulted her from the bed. She caught herself, and snuggled deeper into the blankets, burrowing her head into the pillow. Whatever it was, she was safe. Nothing could get into the cottage.

  But she lay awake, watching and listening for a long time before finally dropping off to sleep.

  CHAPTER

  16

  ‘Nothing,’ Logan said over the phone. ‘Not one bit of evidence Indy could use to track down the bastard that did that to Bailey. Apparently looking for a hair or traces of blood or skin on a horse isn’t easy.’

  ‘I can’t imagine it would be,’ Connor said.

  ‘I honestly don’t have the first idea who would do something like that. Indy’s already run checks on the guests, checked the stables’ security footage—there’s nothing there. The guy that asked after the group approached Harvey in the yards, so we didn’t get anything on him. She even got more footage from Tess from around the rest of the guesthouse but there’s nothing there either.’

  ‘Don’t forget how good your wife is. Indy will turn up something.’ Connor believed it.

  ‘She won’t give up, I know that. And she did say she was looking into a similar case to see if there were any ties. But without any evidence … I hate this. I hate that someone might get away with it. I’m going to up security, keep the horses in the closest paddocks for a while so I can keep a better eye on them. Poor old Bailey would have walked up for a pat. I can’t risk anything like that happening again.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Logan.’ The idea that the program Connor had been so keen to run might have brought this on them completely gutted him.

  ‘Not your fault.’

  Maybe not, but it sure as hell felt like it. Connor hung up and got up from his desk to look out the window. Indy would figure this out. She’d figured out the truth about Jules before anyone who supposedly knew her had been able to, even though he hadn’t been able to believe it. He wasn’t ready to give up yet. Logan saying that Indy was looking for ties to another case made him think of what Callie went through. Her husband had performed some sort of sick ritual on his victim, hadn’t he? There didn’t seem to be any shortage of fucked-up bastards in the world.

  He watched Callie arriving. She’d run into Tess, and they were having a conversation that was ending in laughter. Tess waved and continued out, while Callie came in. It was lunchtime, he realised. He was due for a break himself.

  He hit the dining room about the same time as Callie did. He loaded his plate and found a seat, intending on letting her get food and walk past to the staff room. Then he noticed shadows under her eyes and that some of the spring had disappeared from her step. He felt a sliver of worry creep in. Was she ill, or maybe tired? Without really meaning to, he caught her eye, so he gestured her over.

  ‘Want to be uncool and eat with the management?’

  She stopped and smirked. ‘Sure, Connor, I’ll pretend to like you for a pay cheque.’

  He found himself smiling. ‘Keep up the flattery, you’ll get a raise.’

  ‘I’m not really a bat-my-eyelashes type,’ she replied. But she sat opposite him.

  ‘You’re tired though. What’s up?’

  She played with her food, obviously debating whether or not to share. ‘You’re going to think this is nuts,’ she said.

  ‘But?’

  ‘But I heard noises last night … one was like a woman moaning.’

  He couldn’t help but chuckle. ‘You think some kids are sneaking out there to—you know.’

  ‘No,’ she said with a laugh. ‘It was a sad, painful sound. Kind of. Then there was another one. It was like … a growl from hell.’

  ‘Could’ve been devils.’

  Her fork clanged on her plate as she dropped her hand. ‘Oh, thanks, that’s what I need to hear.’

  A stray wisp of hair slipped across her face. He almost reached out to tuck it back. Annoyed with himself, he dropped his hand to the table.

  ‘Tassie devils. I wouldn’t think you’d get them out there very often but they can sound downright terrifying when they carry on.’

  Her face cleared. ‘Oh, right. Jonah said something about them.’

  ‘Jonah?’ He felt an unexpected jolt of jealousy, berated himself.

  ‘Local boy. He walks his dog along the river.’

  ‘Admirer?’

  She pulled a face. ‘He’d be lucky to be pushing ten.’

  ‘He’s probably still got eyes in his head.’

  She fumbled over that a bit, then shrugged. ‘Why, thank you. Anyway, I’m just not used to being out there, I guess.’

  ‘You’re locking up at night?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You know Indy’s with the police? If you’re genuinely worried, you should talk to her.’

  ‘I’m not. Besides, Cliff doesn’t seem bothered by anything.’

  ‘How’s he going?’

  She took a sip of water before answering. ‘He seems okay.’

  ‘It’s nice of you to take care of his meals. He must be grateful.’

  The frown fell away as her eyes lit with amusement. ‘I’m sure he is—in his own way. He’s not very chatty.’

  ‘Did you know he used to come out here shearing with a mob of other men? Mum and Dad had merino sheep for a while.’

  ‘Paisley mentioned something about that.’

  ‘I was only young, but I remember he was a nice guy—wasn’t above talking to the kids. He could turn his hand to anything, got on well with Dad. That’s how Ned came to work for us. Ned wasn’t ever much good at school, so he was following Cliff around from job to job from pretty early on. When Cliff and his wife broke up and Cliff was struggling to get Ned into some sort of regular work, he asked Dad. Ned’s been here ever since.’

  ‘Worked out well then.’

  ‘I know Cliff
was grateful for that.’

  Callie stopped eating. ‘Cliff doesn’t seem to have any friends—no one visits except the community nurse, and he doesn’t go out. It’s sad.’

  ‘Happens too easily to older people. Ned goes out there a lot, keeps an eye on things. Speaking of … Ned,’ he said when Ned turned up at their table.

  ‘Boss,’ Ned said. He turned his attention to Callie, smiled. ‘I was just wondering if you need more firewood?’

  ‘Um—I was thinking I should buy some, get a large stack of it delivered.’

  He frowned. ‘Don’t need to do that. I don’t mind chopping you up the odd bit. Plenty around. Gotta do it for Dad anyway.’

  ‘I appreciate that,’ she said kindly, ‘but I know how busy you are.’

  ‘Not too busy,’ Ned said with a glance at Connor. ‘Gotta keep warm out there. I’ll do some tomorrow. The lights behaving?’

  ‘They were fine this morning.’

  He nodded at his boots. ‘Only happens occasionally. Got a bit of a date organised tonight, but I’ll try and check in more often, make sure you’re okay. Oh, and Adelaide should be back tomorrow,’ he continued when Callie opened her mouth—to object, Connor guessed. ‘If you see anyone up at the house, it’ll just be her.’

  ‘Thanks for letting me know. I met her last week. She’s lovely.’

  ‘You’re welcome, Callie,’ he said warmly. ‘Leave you to it then.’ His eyes went stony. ‘Boss.’

  ‘I think he’s staking a claim,’ Connor said when Ned walked off.

  ‘He did say he had a date though,’ she said with relief. ‘That’s good, right?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Connor wasn’t so sure. He knew Ned was sitting down with Kaicey over dinner to sort out the roster. It wasn’t quite a lie, but it wasn’t truthful either. And on that note, he reminded himself Callie hadn’t admitted to him who she was, what had happened. That wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t truthful either. She was working for him, so he could argue she should have disclosed the information, but more than that, he wanted her to trust him. ‘Tess said she asked you to the dinner for Bob’s send-off next week. Should be a good night. The restaurant is something special.’