“Georgie! Are you all right? What’s going on?” Karen demanded.
“Can you get the police to radio me?” she asked.
A minute later Nhiari came through. “What’s happened?”
“Matt and I are safe. You need to get here.”
“Is it like yesterday?”
It took a second for Matt to understand, but Georgie answered. “Not as many.”
Of course, if Stonefish was monitoring the radios they didn’t want to give away too much information.
“We’ll be right there.”
“Can you let Darcy know?”
“Will do.”
Matt wasn’t willing to lock away the rifle yet. Stonefish might have people other than Lee monitoring the situation, particularly if they thought Lee was no longer loyal. After Georgie hung up the radio, he pulled her around the car, out of sight of the ranges, then held her. “I almost lost you. You shouldn’t have come.”
She snorted against his chest. “Of course I was coming. You wouldn’t have left me if the situation had been reversed.”
“That’s different.” She’d put her life in danger for him. His life was already hers.
“No, it’s not.” She kissed him. “I love you. I wasn’t letting Stonefish kill someone else I love.”
How had he ever deserved her? How had he kept himself in denial for so many years? “I love you, but don’t you ever put your life in danger for me again.”
She laughed. “Then don’t be in danger ever again. I’ll always come to your rescue.”
She had that stubborn look he knew so well. He sighed. “I’ll try.”
“How did it happen?”
Matt scowled. He’d been stupid, lulled by the thought of children in need. “He was on the side of the road with the bonnet popped and waved me down. The car had kids’ bikes on the back, but the head I saw in the backseat as I pulled up was a dummy.”
“So you stopped to help someone in need. That’s very heroic.”
“Except that it led to this.”
He wanted time to process everything, particularly what Lee had said, but right now he just wanted to be as close as possible to Georgie. “We’ll say I shot Clark.”
Georgie pushed him away. “No, we won’t. It makes far more sense that I did.”
“Georgie, I can’t let you be arrested for this.”
She rolled her eyes. “Then how did you get the gun from me?”
He bit his lip trying to figure it out.
“See, it doesn’t make sense. Plus you know indigenous people get harsher sentences. I won’t risk that.”
His gut clenched. He still didn’t like it. “We could say you sneaked around behind me and gave me the gun.”
“Neither Dot nor Nhiari would believe it, particularly if they notice the spider’s web.”
“We could tell the truth.”
