“Uh-oh!” Owen said.
“Uh-oh what?” Heather yelled.
“I found another one of those fox-trap things at the back of the bus.”
“Don’t go near it!” Heather went over to see it. It was another vicious-looking animal trap like the one they’d nearly stepped in at the range, all red rusted teeth and black iron jaws. She was tempted to spring it with a stick but then reconsidered. If they were stuck out here another night, maybe it would catch them a sheep or a rabbit. She hadn’t seen any rabbits or sheep outside the farm, but you never knew.
She told the kids her plan and then she marked the trap with sticks with little pieces of fabric ripped from her T-shirt.
“No one’s allowed anywhere near the back of the bus!” she said, and she did a thorough scout of the hill to see if there were any more traps.
When that was done, Heather turned on the walkie-talkie again. Battery life was down to one bar.
“My name is Heather Baxter. We need the police. We are stranded on Dutch Island off the coast of Victoria…”
She repeated the message on every channel as the battery light faded.
Suddenly, on channel 2, a voice cut through the static.
“Heather, is that you?”
“It’s me. Who’s this?”
“Heather, it’s Matt. What the hell have you done?”
“What do you mean, Matt?”
“We are all sick, Heather. Diarrhea, and some people have been vomiting! Hans! My God, Heather! You poisoned the well!”
“I guess you won’t be chasing us today, then, will you?”
“You shot Blue! He was a good dog. Jesus. And the other dogs! And the bloody generator!”
“Tell you what, you just bring the ferry over and let us go back to the mainland, and your problems will be over.”
“Funny. Our problems won’t be over—you’ll go to the cops!”
“I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
“Shit, you don’t even know, do you?” Matt said.
“Know what?”
“We were trying to make a deal with bloody Tom when all hell broke loose last night.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What do you mean, what am I talking about?”
“You said you were trying to make a deal with Tom.”
“Jesus, you really don’t know, do you? Gillian’s a nurse, she…Christ Almighty. Hold on.”
Heather eyes closed. She swayed, then righted herself.
What was he…he must be…
She was cold all over. Deathly cold.
“Heather…I don’t understand this. You attacked the farm when I was trying to sort out a deal. What have you been doing?”
The voice on the radio. Holy shit. It was Tom.
42
Her old friend the crow with the yellow eye was staring at her as the world rotated back into view.
She must have fainted.
She had never fainted in her life.
Didn’t people only faint in novels with characters named Darcy and Rochester? Nobody fainted in the real world.
“Heather!”
What was happ—Oh. My. God. She picked up the walkie-talkie. “Tom? Is that you?”
“Heather?”
“I’m here.”
“I’m here too.”
“How?”
“They saved me. Gillian saved me…”
“How are you—”
“Gillian. She’s a nurse. Listen, Heather, it’s hard to talk. I think I’ve made a deal.”
“A deal? What? Tom…how can you trust them after all this?”
“We have to, Heather…only chance to get out alive…can’t talk…I’m giving the walkie-talkie back to Matt.”
“No!”
Static.
“Tom? Tom!”
“It’s Matt again. Heather, can you hear me?”
“I can hear you.”
“Tom’s in terrible shape. He can’t speak for long. He has a collapsed lung.”
“He’s alive? It’s impossible! I saw him stabbed!”
“You saw him take a knife to the side. But Gillian saved him. Every remote station in Australia has emergency medical supplies. Little Niamh found him still breathing. Gillian used to be a nurse. We patched him up as best we could. Real meatball surgery, Gillian called it. He has a collapsed lung and probably liver damage. He needs to be in a hospital, Heather. He’s in a bad way.”
Heather burst into tears. “The kids don’t know he’s alive. Let me go get them.”
“Let me talk to you first, Heather. We’ve made a deal. Despite everything you’ve done. Actually, I’ll let Tom explain,” Matt said.
More static before a weak-sounding Tom came back on. “Are the kids OK?”
“Yes.”
“Are you OK?”
“Yes, Tom, I’m fine!”
“Good…I think we have to…trust them. We can do this,” Tom said and broke off into a coughing fit.
Matt came back on. “He lost a lot of blood. He needs surgery and a blood transfusion. We need to get this done fast, Heather. You guys are going to have to come to the farm. You can go with me to a bank and we’ll get the cash, and then when we get back, we’ll let you all go. That’s the new deal. It’s sorted. Tom agreed.”
It sounded so reasonable.
But these people were crazy.
The things they’d done. Insane, horrible, terrible, sadistic things.
“You were hunting us down. You were going to kill us!” Heather said.
“We were trying to find you! Why do you think we brought in the dogs?” Matt said.
“You killed Petra!”
“No, she attacked the dogs and they started tearing her apart,” Matt said. “We tried to shoot them, and Ivan hit her in the back. Think about it, Heather. Who is the bad guy here? You came to our home. You killed Ellen. You attacked our farm. You shot our dogs. No one can find Jacko, and you’ve got his bloody rifle. You want to explain that?”
“No.”
“You’re the bad guy! We were minding our own business, living our own lives, and you came. My family has done nothing to your family. And you’ve wreaked havoc on us.”
“Jacko was going to rape me.”
“Well, Jacko’s bloody gone now, isn’t he? So, Heather, what do you think? You wanna get out of this alive?”
It sounded almost plausible. Tom had killed Ellen. She had tried to cover it up.
But that didn’t make any—no. “Hans, what you did to Hans…”
“Yeah, I know,” Matt said. “Shit. That was all crazy Jacko. Ivan and Jacko tried to get him to talk. It’s mad, I know. Look, there’s a couple of different factions here, Heather. It’s complicated. I’m trying to steer the best course for us and your family…Tom wants to talk to the children. Can you get them?”
Heather was really crying now. Owen and Olivia were sitting in the cab of the ruined bus looking at her.
“Get over here! Both of you!”
They ran over. She had to stop herself from dry-heaving. She had to keep her voice steady. “It’s your dad. He’s alive,” Heather said and handed Olivia the walkie-talkie.
The children listened while Tom spoke.
Heather walked far away from them. To give them space. This was family time. Private. It had nothing to do with her.
She sat under the shade of the farthest eucalyptus tree on a gnarled root so blackened and polished by successive waves of fire that she could almost see her reflection in it.
Last night’s rain had changed the hill.