Kat shrunk into herself further with each question and Georgie wanted to back off. But she couldn’t. She needed the truth, a trait that had in the past caused her—and others—trouble. But it was one of those innate Taurean things that she couldn’t change, not even for Franklin’s daughter.
Eventually Kat muttered, ‘Because it’s my fault.’
Fuck this.
Franklin pulled out his phone, noted the missed call had been from Kat, then retrieved his voicemail.
‘Mind on the job.’ Boomer nudged him.
‘You a dad?’
The bloke glared, then admitted, ‘Yep.’
‘Then cut me some slack and let me pick up a message from my kid.’
Franklin saw him nod as he listened to Kat’s voice. He heard her frantic tone more than her words. He disconnected, mind churning over two things.
The kids are still missing. And Kat blames herself.
‘Look alert.’
Knuckles banged into Franklin’s shoulder. He followed Boomer’s stare through the rain-splotched glass. Two of their targets exited the house and piled into the silver BMW sedan in the driveway. The taillights bloomed, flicked once, then stayed solid as the engine fired.
The other two men remained at the table, necking stubbies, playing cards.
Franklin’s fatigue fell away. ‘Do we split up?’
Boomer put the car in gear. ‘No. Bull said stick with Gus.’ He eased away from the curb.
Franklin frowned at the beamer’s rear end 100 metres in front. He bet tracking it would be as pointless as the rest of their night, but worse: Kat would have to wait. He slipped his mobile into his pocket.
Kat babbled on about it being her fault that the Savage kids were on camp and that they went missing.
It didn’t make much sense, so Georgie said, ‘Breathe.’
Kat’s chest inflated.
‘Good. Now back up. How can it be your fault?’
‘Do you promise not to tell anyone?’ she begged.
Georgie didn’t hesitate. ‘Of course.’
Kat stared at her for a moment. ‘It’s my fault because I should’ve been behind Hannah when we all left the summerhouse, but Josh and I got…um…distracted and that must’ve been when she ran away.’
‘Distracted?’
She covered her face. ‘We kissed.’
Georgie smiled. Whenever she managed to spend time in Daylesford, it usually included a trip to the boxing studio, where she proved to Franklin she didn’t fight like a pansy any more – in fact, she gave him a run for his money. She’d seen loaded glances between Kat and Josh and wondered when one of them would make a move. She hadn’t expected it to happen on camp though.
‘Was it a good first kiss?’
‘You can’t ask me that. How embarrassing.’
‘That good, huh?’ Georgie chuckled.
Kat blushed, giggled. ‘Yeah, it was.’ She dropped her hands. ‘Dad doesn’t know about the kiss and you can’t tell him.’
Georgie nudged her. ‘Okay, if you give me details later.’ She sobered. ‘But listen, you can’t blame yourself…or Josh. Maybe your timing wasn’t ideal, but you didn’t make Hannah go anywhere. It looks like she and her brothers had planned this.’
‘You think?’ Kat screwed her nose.
‘The boys ran back to her. And no one saw them after that. So, yeah, I do.’
Her friend turned one shade healthier, until Georgie said something she wanted to take back immediately, ‘Although, maybe they didn’t plan on the weather or whatever happened next.’
Chapter 5
Hannah
They were bunched together, tucked underneath a big fern. The trunk blocked the wind, but knobbly bits dug into Hannah’s back through her saturated hoodie. She hugged her little bros close, glad for the leaves keeping off some of the rain.
Her littlest brother pressed his nose against her neck and gripped her tighter.
‘I’m hungry, Hanny.’
Cooper’s tiny, sad voice made Hannah’s chest burn. It hurt more when Riley moaned next to them. Then her own stomach growled.
She didn’t care about herself, but wished she had something to give her bros. They didn’t even have a gross half-eaten, long-forgotten biscuit stuffed into a pocket between them.
Hannah made herself sound brave. ‘I know, Coops. It’ll be okay soon.’
She wished she believed it.
Sam found Georgie and Kat in the study – she’d interrupted at a bad time by the look on their faces. ‘The sarge’s ready to continue the briefing.’
Georgie bumped Kat’s shoulder lightly and smiled, some sort of silent message. They followed her, joining the adults barring Elke in the dining room, where Lunny gave them the bad news about the local cops.
‘So, what now, Sarge?’ Sam asked.
‘It’s already gone seven, so we’d better feed the kids and get the littlies off to bed – can’t add neglect to the situation, can we? And we’ll all need to fuel-up for energy.’
It made sense, but Sam couldn’t stomach food if the kids weren’t found first.
Lunny puckered his lips, contemplating. ‘We’ll need to contact as many people as possible to enlist their help. Then, we’ll finish a sweep of the land. After that, failing good news in the meantime, we’ll start again: complete a fresh, full search.’
Georgie’s expression turned frustrated. ‘Aren’t we wasting a lot of time going over the same ground?’
‘We might have missed something,’ Lunny countered. ‘Or the kids might’ve returned. We will keep looking, asking questions, looking again, until we find them.’
Sam suggested, ‘We’d cover a second search faster if we didn’t pair up. A couple of us could do the grounds, starting with what we missed earlier, while the rest divvy up the buildings, making sure no one does the same area they did the first time.’
The sarge hesitated. ‘Yes, but…’ He gave Kat a rueful look. ‘Sorry, but we’re going to need you here.’ He lifted a hand – clearly not open to negotiation. ‘I can’t send you out searching on your own; your dad would kill me. Seb can stay with the boys, but it’s not an option to leave only Elke here with the girls.’
He didn’t have to spell it out – heavily pregnant, odd and not yet ruled out as a suspect, the housekeeper couldn’t be left alone with Nicole, Anna and Sara. Kat sighed and Lunny took that as agreement. He drew a sketch, dividing up the second search four ways, rotating their original jurisdictions.
‘Call the kids for dinner,’ he finished.
Noah and Nicole were kicking each other under the table, while Sara and Anna grumbled.
‘I want pasta.’
‘What are you, like, five?’
Georgie forked beef and tomato through her lips, wishing the kids would stop picking on each other and eat their dinner. She was struggling with taking a meal break when it meant stalling the search.
‘This is horrible.’ Anna made a face.
Sara was right, her sister was acting like she was five, not twelve.
‘No it’s not.’
‘Eat up. It’s good.’ Kat speared some beans, but she replaced her fork without eating.
Tom stuffed his mouth with meat and gagged. He bared the gums where his two front teeth were missing, then spat the half-chewed mess through the gap and pushed his plate away. Georgie had seen him manage a few mouthfuls, which was more than Kat, who leaned forward with a hand cupping her forehead.
Georgie stared at her own plate. The food was good but she didn’t have an appetite either because they were all stuck in the house together, spooked by the storm and worried sick, which wasn’t helped by Lunny asking, ‘And you’re certain – Hannah doesn’t have a mobile?’ for the third time.
Kat had said no twice before and Georgie saw her do an eye-roll behind her hand. Nobody answered the sarge. Nobody spoke at all. Seb and Josh were the only ones eating and the scratch of their cutlery across china screeched in Georgie’s ears.
Af
ter a few minutes, the camp instructor spoke through a mouthful. ‘So, who’s going to win the Grand Final on Saturday?’
Nice change of subject.
Georgie shot Seb a smile.
Josh said, ‘The Cats.’
She aimed him a frown.
‘Yeah, they’ll thrash ’em,’ Seb agreed.
She fired back, ‘No way. The Pies’ll do it.’ She hoped Collingwood would win back-to-back flags but wasn’t confident her team could outclass Geelong, who seemed to be on a biennial roll.
‘Sorry, Georgie,’ Lunny cut in. ‘I don’t like your chances.’
Although the guys were all bagging her team, the ordinary conversation notched down the throbbing in her head and it seemed to have the same effect on everyone.
‘Twenty-buck wager between us?’ Seb suggested. ‘Pick the winner and closest margin.’
‘You’re on.’ Josh nodded. ‘Cats by six goals.’
Seb said, ‘Cats by seven majors,’ as Lunny announced, ‘Cats by twenty points.’
The three men shook hands.
‘C’mon. I reckon we’ve got an even chance but if we don’t win, it won’t be a thrashing.’ Georgie tried to sound confident.
‘No way.’ Seb shook his head. ‘But we’ll take your money if you wanna bet.’
‘Pies by –’ The ringing landline cut off her words.
Everybody stilled.
Sam started out of her seat, but the housekeeper beat her to it, answering the phone in the kitchen. She burned to know the latest, but couldn’t make out what Elke said. Then Lunny drowned out even her murmur, telling the kids they could play quietly in the family room.
Finally, Elke spoke from the doorway. ‘I told Mr Belfrage about the missing children and he said he’s sorry for you all, but he thinks they’ll be home before the morning. They’ll have had enough adventure by then.’
He had to be kidding – adventure? In the next beat, Sam conceded that Belfrage might be partly on the money: the kids may have underestimated the ferocity of the conditions and gone exploring, and it was a large property – nearly five acres. But five acres wasn’t enough to get lost in. Flatten it out and thin all the trees, it’d be the size of a small paddock.
She stared into the distance, arguing with herself silently.
True, but these five hilly acres held secret gardens, an orchard, the main house and numerous outbuildings, including the caretaker’s mini-farm. There were plenty of nooks. Maybe the kids had skipped from one spot to another, always just in front of their earlier search.
In the dark, wet and foggy conditions they’d be hard to spot, so it was possible. Sam sat straighter, her skin prickling with hope before her inner voice spoke again.
Five acres isn’t enough to get lost in. But the National Park is right next door and that’s massive. And it’d be even more dangerous in the park in this raging storm with all those trees.
She plucked at her right earring, in tandem with the sarge announcing, ‘It’s time to inform Ness and Duane, and to check with local hospitals.’
They’d tailed the beamer from the surveillance address to a petrol station where the targets fuelled up, making Franklin think things were about to get interesting. But instead of hitting the highway, the sedan wound through the Ballarat suburbs, stopping regularly but nowhere to get excited about.
Now they were at the 7-Eleven at Sebastopol. Gus went inside, while his crony kept the car running, the exhaust pipe puffing out a cloud of fumes.
They were parked across the road but the dazzling white of the shop lights gave them a clear view of Gus standing in front of the fridge for about three minutes, before he pulled out a two-litre bottle of coke. He moved to the chip stand and procrastinated for another few minutes, then snagged a couple of bags, before swaggering up to the front counter.
They’d never lost sight of him in the store. He hadn’t spoken to anyone aside from the sales assistant and it seemed obvious to Franklin that he was yanking their chains.
‘He’s playing us.’
Boomer nodded. ‘Yep.’
Gus paid by card and exited. He waved in their direction, a grin slathered over his face.
Franklin shook his head. ‘He’s going to do this all night, you know. Make us follow him all over Ballarat just for the fun of it.’
‘Yep.’ Boomer turned over the engine of their unmarked, indicated, then fell in behind the beamer. ‘But Bull wants us on his tail and you’re just the newbie. A nobody. So shut up and take notes.’
Georgie’s mobile rang and she checked the screen before answering, but the number wasn’t in her contact list.
Good news or bad news? Or nothing to do with the kids?
‘Georgie Harvey.’ She held her breath.
‘George.’
One word, in a very familiar voice, addressing her by a nickname few others used, and she froze. Couldn’t speak. Instead hunched forward.
‘George. It’s AJ.’
Her eyes searched the room. She zoomed in on Kat and every one of her features that were so like her dad’s.
‘George? Can you hear me? It’s AJ. I’m –’
‘Sorry, I can’t talk now.’ She disconnected.
When Georgie’s phone went off, Sam froze, on tenterhooks until she gathered the call was unrelated, then reverted to obsessing over the sarge’s decision.
She knew Emergency Departments were a natural place to extend the hunt and she shouldn’t read anything into it. She also realised that Lunny was reluctant but mandated to advise the family.
They should’ve done it already.
But while Sam’s cop side recognised the need to tick off those items, her guilt and disappointment compounded. What had started as a small act of philanthropy for a handful of local kids was spiralling towards a public-relations nightmare for the force. And she didn’t know how she’d cope with the magnitude of their mistake.
Especially if the kids don’t come home.
She clamped a lid on her fears. Then Lunny asked for the kids’ registrations and she couldn’t remember packing them. She pictured the file sitting on her kitchen bench with a consent form for each kid and a recent photograph, imagining it still sitting there in her empty house.
Sam left the table, petrified, but not letting on. She made it to the bedroom she shared with Kat and Georgie, then her panic surfaced.
Light-headed, she dumped the contents of her bag onto the bed and rummaged through underwear, nightwear, toiletries, spare trackies and a magazine.
‘Oh God. Where is it?’
Her hands shook as she rechecked the bag. They shook harder when she found the manila folder wedged right at the bottom. Anxiety and relief collided. She’d brought the kids’ registrations but that didn’t solve their problem.
The kids are still missing.
Georgie huddled with Kat, Sam and Josh, facing Lunny as he dialled on his mobile. Seb stood back, shuffling, with his hands deep in pockets as if acutely aware of being the outsider.
Lunny listened and after a long pause, disconnected. ‘No one home. And no machine.’
Kat let out a soft gasp and Georgie patted her back, suppressing a smile when her hand connected with Josh’s from the other side. Her smile shrivelled when Kat’s muscles tightened before she shrugged them both off.
How long will it take for her to break?
Georgie knew they’d blown it with Franklin but maybe they could still find the kids without Vanessa Savage knowing they’d been gone. She tensed as Lunny ran his finger down Sam’s list, then dialled another number.
He hung up. ‘Her mobile’s switched off or out of range. No voicemail. And this isn’t news you send by SMS.’
She exhaled, hearing it echoed around the group.
‘We just gained some time before we have to worry Ness.’ Lunny pointed a long, sinewy finger at each in turn. ‘Let’s find her kids.’
Chapter 6
By 8.00pm, they’d exhausted the local hospitals, and Seb had taken Noah and
Tom off to bed. He would remain at the guesthouse on sentry duty.
Sam half-wished she could trade places with him when the girls kicked up a stink – they were older and thought they should be allowed to help with the second search. And if they joined in, Kat could too. Their arguments fell flat and they suddenly capitulated, saying they wanted to go to bed too, which made Sam suspicious.
She pulled Kat and Elke aside and whispered, ‘You’ll need to keep a close eye on them. We can’t have more missing kids.’
Kat agreed, though still grumpy at being left out. The housekeeper merely nodded and settled down on a chair in the hallway between the girls’ bedrooms, knitting a miniature striped jumper.
Lunny waved the search team over. ‘Stay in touch. Don’t take risks. Check in with me around every half-hour. Let’s go.’
Before they scattered, Sam saw her terror in their eyes. She wished she could unsee it.
Dashing to grab her mobile off the charger next to her bed, Georgie passed Nicole. The girl moved from the bathroom to her bedroom, unaware she’d allowed Georgie full view of her blotchy skin.
She gave Nicole a minute, then tapped on the door. ‘It’s Georgie. Can I come in?’
There was a reluctant, ‘Okay.’
She opened the door but didn’t step inside, propping in the threshold instead. The girl on the bed was balled-up, hugging her pyjama-clad knees into her chest, and she looked much younger than eleven.
She’s scared shitless, poor thing.
‘Do you want to sleep in Sara and Anna’s room? We can set up another bed for you.’
Nicole shook her head. ‘I’ll stay here in case Hannah wants to talk when she comes back.’
Georgie feared that wasn’t going to happen, but forced a smile. ‘Right then. Hop in bed. Get some sleep.’
Into the Fog Page 4