‘Jack?’ she said softly.
‘Plenty of people take their coffee with milk and one,’ he said, handing her the mug.
‘Of course.’ The light died in her eyes.
Jack grimaced. He knew what she’d been thinking, and she wasn’t far wrong. He didn’t want her to know how much that night had meant to him. Not now, not ever.
As she ate, he took the opportunity to check her out. The shoestring straps of her simple summer top revealed the curve of her collarbone, the swell of her breasts. She wore little make-up, but with her complexion she could get away with that.
Catching Mike’s attention, he nodded at the door. The cook got the message and slipped out of the room.
‘I suppose you’ll be ready to head off soon?’ he said.
Her head jerked up. ‘I thought Wayne said the flight’s not till eleven?’
‘That’s right. I don’t mean to rush you.’ He wondered what was the best approach to take. ‘You and Nick got on well yesterday, didn’t you?’
She tilted her head, a slight frown wrinkling her forehead. ‘He’s a charming little boy, Jack. He’s a credit to you.’
‘It’s a pity we don’t know who led him away from the showground.’
‘What do you mean? I thought he wandered off by himself?’
He braced himself. That was exactly what had happened, in his view. But it suited him for Katrina to think otherwise.
‘Detective Fisher’s not convinced,’ he said truthfully. ‘In fact, he wondered if you’d have a word to Nick about what happened before you go. But it’d be best to take your time. To get to know him a little first, so as not to scare him. Which might mean delaying your flight till this afternoon. I know it’s a lot to ask, but I’d really appreciate it.’
Several emotions flittered across her face. Annoyance, alarm, resentment. ‘Why me? He hardly knows me.’
‘If I talk to him about it, he might think he’s in trouble,’ he improvised. ‘Fisher would be even more intimidating. But there’s no reason for Nick to feel threatened by you. Can you talk to him for me, Katrina? See what you can find out?’
She met his gaze head on. ‘Will you answer something for me?’
‘Of course.’
‘Yesterday you looked like you could barely stand the sight of me. Now, you want me to spend time talking to your son. What’s changed, Jack?’
Unease slid down his spine. How could he explain in a way that would make sense to her? He didn’t want to lie. He’d done too much of that over the years. To himself, mostly. But there was too much at stake to be totally honest with her now.
‘I was out of my mind with worry about Nick yesterday, Katrina. It was a shock seeing you, too, after all this time. It’s not much of an excuse, but…’
‘And now?’ He could tell she didn’t fully believe him.
‘He likes you. I reckon you might just get him to tell you what happened at the showground. I couldn’t get much sense out of him yesterday.’
‘You really think he’ll open up to me?’
‘I hope so. If not, maybe you could…I don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘Get a sense of what happened to him.’
‘You mean, use my psychic powers?’ she said slowly. ‘The ones you don’t believe in?’
‘I’ll level with you, Katrina,’ he said. ‘I’m a sceptic. When I first heard that someone was claiming they’d had a vision about Nick, I thought it was all…well, bullshit. But I was desperate enough to accept all the help I could get.’
‘Go on.’
‘I can’t pretend to be a convert. But I’m prepared to accept you might have some kind of intuition that others don’t have. Whatever gift you have, I’d really appreciate you helping me out. For Nick’s sake.’
She looked away, her intense expression fading.
‘Of course, Jack. I’ll do whatever I can.’
Chapter 8
Katrina limped out of the kitchen onto the veranda and breathed in the cool morning air. Unlike the previous day, the weather promised to be mild. To the back of the property, the silver leaves of snow gums glinted in the morning sun. Below, the river snaked its way through sun-browned paddocks.
Beautiful. Peaceful. But she felt anything but serene.
Breathing deep, she tried to calm her racing heart. What had she done?
At this very minute she could’ve been driving off to catch her flight, headed for home. Instead, here she was, promising to do something she was mad to contemplate, let alone attempt. It was one thing to dream of a lost boy and try to find him. But to promise to deliberately use her psychic powers now, when Nick was safe? What else would it bring with it? More visions? Loss of control?
She wanted to stop the visions, not encourage them.
The memory of what had happened during her pregnancy, that total loss of control, still haunted her. For that reason, she had never tried to bring on her visions deliberately. Yet here she was, agreeing to summon her powers as if the dangers were negligible.
Maybe if she were honest with Jack, told him the real cost of her hospitalisation, he’d know he was asking too much of her. But the thought of telling him it was her fault their baby had died — that if only she’d been stronger, she would never have gone on that medication — made her feel sick.
A black cockatoo swooped across her vision and landed on the telephone cable above. It swung there, the yellow markings a vivid splash of colour against the spreading black tail feathers. It cocked its head, seeming to look at her, as if waiting for her to make a decision.
She didn’t want to tell Jack the whole truth, but she couldn’t let Nick down, either, in case he was still in some kind of danger. She would talk to the boy and see if she could get a sense of anything. Perhaps things would be different now? Maybe she could be strong enough to be in command of her psychic gift, without endangering herself or others? Surely she would be kept safe if she only used her powers to help someone else?
* * *
‘You’re still here!’ Nick was sitting up in bed when Katrina followed Jack into the bedroom. The child looked paler, less fevered than the day before, but his eyes were still bright. In the morning light, the room didn’t look so vast and threatening.
‘Katrina has decided to spend the morning with us, Nick,’ Jack said, placing a breakfast tray on his son’s lap. ‘We can even take her down to the stables and show her the brumby stallion, if I think you’re up to it.’
‘I’m up to it, Daddy. Look.’ He spread his arms out wide and puffed out his chest.
Jack raised an eyebrow. ‘Eat up your breakfast and we’ll see.’
Despite the boy’s enthusiasm, Katrina wasn’t so sure he was fully recovered from his ordeal. She couldn’t get the picture out of her mind of him hanging on to the side of the shaft, about to fall. He couldn’t have bounced back so quickly, could he? That was discounting whatever might have happened before, when he was at the showground. She hoped the detective was wrong. She couldn’t bear to think of anyone wanting to harm him in any way.
Jack retreated to the fish tank that stood against one wall, complete with bizarre-looking fish and lurid painted coral. As he shook feed into the tank, her heartbeat quickened. He didn’t expect her to start interrogating his son with him standing there watching, did he? Instinctively, she knew that wouldn’t work. She needed to gain the boy’s trust. And if she was going to open up to her powers, she herself would need to feel safe. There was no way she felt safe around Jack Fairley. Still, she would do what she could.
Resting her cane against the bookshelf, she sat on the chair beside the boy’s bed.
‘Is your ankle better now?’ Nick asked, looking up from his breakfast.
‘Almost,’ she said.
‘Wait till you see my dad with the brumby, Katina,’ he said, cutting a pancake. ‘He’s the best. You have to make them think you’re wild like the mountains, don’t you, Daddy? Then you can get them eating out of your hand.’
Katrina glanced back at J
ack. Was that how he thought of himself? Wild, like the mountains? For a moment, she saw the justness of the image. His fair hair like the snow-capped alpine hills, his green eyes like a frozen mountain stream. Yet she had seen him with a lot more fire than ice. A lot more…
‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ Jack said.
‘That’s what you do,’ the boy insisted. ‘I’ve seen you.’
‘Maybe,’ his father said, hooking his thumbs in his hip pockets.
Her gaze drifted down to the taut fabric of his jeans, the creases at his thighs which suggested his undeniable masculinity. She blinked and looked away, her cheeks heating. She had to get a grip. She was meant to be helping his son.
‘Daddy doesn’t like people to know he talks to animals, Katina,’ Nick confided.
‘Is that so?’ She repressed a smile.
‘But just because you don’t say the words out loud doesn’t mean you don’t say them, does it?’ he said, his manner matter-of-fact.
She struggled to make sense of the boy’s circuitous logic.
Nick was very different from his father, and not just in looks. The child had far more imagination.
She let him finish his mouthful before speaking again.
‘It must’ve been exciting watching the rodeo at the showground the other day, Nick,’ she said. ‘Did you talk to anyone special while you were there?’
‘No.’ The boy looked down at his plate.
Instinctively she knew he wasn’t telling the truth.
She willed him to look at her. A light pierced her eyes, blinding her. Without warning, she was bombarded with a vision so strong it made the fine hair on her neck and arms stand on end. The image of an old, grey-bearded man with a beautiful, kind face. The impression was so startlingly vivid it took her breath away.
What was more, she recognised the man. She had seen him in her visions, years ago, when she was pregnant, and before that even, when she was a child. But this wasn’t a dream. This man was real. She was sure of it.
Nick’s voice broke through to her.
‘I talked to the koala,’ he was saying. ‘Except it wasn’t really a koala, ’cause it was taller than me and it had white fur, and koalas aren’t really white, are they, Katina?’
‘No…’ Katrina struggled to get her breath, still reeling from her vision. ‘I…I don’t think so.’
Jack stepped forward, his hand landing lightly on her shoulder. ‘Are you okay?’
She shrank from his touch. She felt too raw, too vulnerable, as if her sensitivity to the world had suddenly been magnified a thousandfold. Each sound, each touch, seemed like an assault on her senses, overloading her. She had to get away, take a break, pull herself together.
‘Maybe we should let Nick finish his breakfast?’ She lurched off the chair, grabbed the cane and headed for the door, hearing Jack’s voice sounding unnaturally loud behind her.
‘Finish up, tiger. Then we can take Katrina down to the stables. What do you reckon?’
‘Okay.’
In the corridor, she leaned against the wall, her heart racing, her skin clammy with sweat.
Jack appeared. ‘What is it, Katrina? What’s wrong?’
His eyes reflected a well of concern. She blinked. For a moment, she imagined letting herself fall into that well, believing everything would be okay. She shook her head, dispelling the image. She had to hold herself together. She couldn’t fall apart. Not here.
‘Is there somewhere we can talk?’ she asked.
Frowning, he said, ‘My office.’
At the base of the staircase, he led her away from the kitchen and the guest quarters, along a narrow hallway that ran beside an inner courtyard where the morning sun warmed terracotta pots of lavender. They passed one room, where she could hear his personal assistant, Sandra, talking on the phone, and entered a smaller room. Jack’s office, she assumed.
When he closed the door behind them, she sank into one of the bone leather armchairs. Again, her senses overwhelmed her. She took in everything at once: the cluttered desk, the mahogany filing cabinet, the colourful woven rug on the floor. Bookshelves cluttered with quarter-horse magazines and company prospectuses. Oil paintings of bush scenes on the walls. In the distance, she could hear someone vacuuming, a talkback radio — perhaps Mike in the kitchen. When she breathed in, the smell of leather, polish and lavender from the pots outside the window made her feel faint.
Jack took a few restless steps in front of the empty fireplace, his fist curling at his side.
‘Tell me,’ he urged. ‘What happened up there?’
She rubbed her forehead, trying to draw back into herself. She had known the danger. She had known when she agreed to help Jack by using her psychic powers that she was opening herself to forces beyond her control. But it was different this time. She felt more in command. This time she hadn’t lost contact with reality. She had simply seen more intensely. She’d seen the old man.
‘When I was talking to Nick, I saw someone, Jack. An old man. Brown eyes, broad face, high forehead. A bushy grey beard.’ Without closing her eyes, she could still see the face. She’d never forgotten it, or the intense sense of well-being, of safety, she’d felt whenever it appeared. But why had she seen it again now?
He crossed to the desk, picked up his mobile phone and flicked it on.
‘Was this him?’ he asked, showing her the screen. ‘The old bloke in the background?’
She looked at the picture, blinking, hardly able to take it in. It was him! The very same man. Except in the picture he looked dirty and unkempt, dressed in a huge trench coat, his eyes bleary, his wrinkled trousers showing bare feet beneath. Hardly recognisable as the beautiful, kind man of her vision. Yet he was real.
‘Who is he, Jack?’ She looked up, her heart thumping.
‘Someone I can’t believe would mean anyone any harm.’
* * *
Jack stared down at Katrina. Her face looked pale, her dark eyes troubled.
Everything in his belief system rebelled against taking this psychic thing of hers seriously.
Yet surely it couldn’t be a coincidence? How else could she have described Murray Tom so accurately? He still refused to believe the old man had anything to do with Nick’s disappearance. No way could a blind man have taken his son from the showground without being observed. The mystery was how Katrina had described him so accurately, and why. What did Murray Tom have to do with anything?
‘Who is he?’ she repeated.
‘His name’s Murray Tom. He lives in a squat by the lake. Years ago he used to work for my father.’
She stared at the photo, her expression faraway. ‘He always seems so kind.’ Her words echoed with a resonance somewhere deep inside him.
‘Always? I thought you only saw him just now?’
‘I…I did.’ She looked up and then away again quickly. ‘And I don’t think he means your son any harm. But what’s wrong with him? He looks like a derelict.’
‘He’s no derelict, Katrina.’ He swallowed. ‘He got injured trying to save my mother from a brumby. She fell into a corral and died on the way to hospital.’ Telling her was more difficult than he expected. His chest felt brick-hard, as if concrete had lodged itself under his ribcage. Yet it was so long ago. ‘While he was trying to save her, Murray Tom was kicked in the face by the brumby and it damaged his eyes. Over the years he’s become virtually blind.’
‘How awful! For you all.’ She looked at the photo. ‘When was this taken?’
‘The day of the show. One of the local mums passed it on to Detective Fisher. He suspects Tom might’ve had something to do with Nick’s disappearance. You can understand why I find that hard to believe.’
Her brows drew together. ‘Could you ask Nick whether Murray Tom had anything to do with what happened?’
‘I could. But I don’t want to.’
‘Why?’
‘Nick trusts Murray Tom, just as I do. I won’t do anything to undermine that trust. Not without kn
owing more than I do now.’
‘I doubt I’d want to talk about it, either, if he were my son.’
Jack reeled back, her words punching him in the gut. Guilt knotted inside him. He hated not telling her the truth about Nick. She was bound to resent him for it when she found out. But that was a risk he had to take, for now. Meanwhile, she’d given him the perfect pretext to keep her there.
‘Maybe you could ask Nick about Murray Tom?’ he said.
Her face clouded with alarm, her dark eyes imploring. ‘I’m psychic, Jack, not a psychologist.’
‘I’m not asking you to do anything you didn’t do before. Just talk to him. See if he opens up. If not, no harm done.’
She seemed to wrestle with something. Looking away, she stared blankly at a point in space. When her eyes refocussed, her expression was tinged with sadness.
‘Okay, but I can’t promise any results.’
He breathed out. ‘Thanks, Katrina. Let’s meet outside by the side gate in half an hour. I’ll go get Nick ready. I promised him we’d show you the stables.’
* * *
Katrina returned to the guest room. Sunshine flooded through the window, making the antique furniture gleam. The place looked more beautiful than ever. But it was definitely time to leave.
She made her bed and packed her suitcase, zipped it up and sat it by the door. She was determined to catch that afternoon flight. As soon as they came back from the stables, she’d jump in the car and go. No more promises, no more delays. She shouldn’t have let Jack talk her into staying this long.
But somehow she knew her intentions were hollow.
Unease crept over her. Something would happen to stop her leaving, she felt sure. It was almost as if the house itself conspired for her to stay. As if some power bound her — a power weaving not only around her, but also around Jack and his son.
She stepped to the window. Outside, Mike was trundling a bright red wheelbarrow over a narrow brick path that bordered an overgrown vegetable garden. A magpie lark flitted down from a nearby gum tree and stabbed its beak into a patch of upturned earth. The entire garden seemed to pulsate with life, as if even the invisible sap rising in the stalks gave it a new vibrancy and colour. A breath of wind stirred, bringing with it the scent of honeysuckle.
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