What was it with cops, always throwing curveballs?
Here he was, bracing for an elbow to the head for bush bashing his way across boundaries, trying to save Montrose’s butt with her boss—and now Finn was offering him a job?
Same bloody thing had happened with Marcus.Porter got Sarge’s wife kidnapped on his watch and had figured he’d be lucky to keep his badge.But no—he gotpromoted.
Worst nine weeks of his life.
‘I’m just saying… not everyone has your boots-on-the-ground knowledge as an outback cop.And that mutant hunting buggy of yours would be an advantage to the squad.’
Before Porter could reply, the radio crackled to life.
‘Hey, Bossman, we’ve got movement,’said Stone.‘North-east, over by that rocky hill.’
‘That’s Tilly’s Crown.’Porter pointed through the bug-splattered window.
Finn grabbed the handset.‘Copy that.On our way.’He tossed a sideways glance at Porter.‘Let’s catch the bastard.Then you can keep defending the constable over a beer and explain to me how she sunk her car.When you and I both know what a bulldust sinkhole looks like and how to avoid them.’
Thirty-seven
Finn’s troopy bounced along the rough track, its meaty tyres chewing through the bulldust, as the old girl rattled like she might shake apart.
Porter braced a hand on the dash, squinting through the bug-smeared windscreen.
‘Look—tyre marks.’He jabbed a finger towards the faint tracks veering off-road, weaving between scattered holes.‘I know they belong to that Ram.’Porter had that tyre’s tread pattern imprinted on his brain, from chasing ghosts.
Only now this ghost was real, and not too far ahead.
Dust rose behind them as Stone’s chopper swept wide across the brutal sunlight.Porter cracked the window, allowing the scents of dry grass and diesel to fill the cab, when he noticed something unusual on the land.‘Slow down.This isn’t just scrub, it looks freshly dug out.’
Finn pulled up the troopy, engine idling, as the red rocky outcrop known as Tilly’s Crown loomed ahead.
Porter scrambled out to crouch beside the nearest hole.It was wide, shallow, and messy.‘They’re empty.’
‘You reckon he’s out here digging for gold?’
Porter didn’t want to think about how Sawyer had nearly buried them alive.
But then it clicked.
The pickaxe and tin buckets he’d seen in the back of the Ram, the shovel he’d felt hit the back of his head.
‘It’s for the Deed.’Porter turned, his eyes sweeping the landscape, realising he was standing in a field of holes, all leading towards the base of the hill.
‘To what?’
‘The land deed to Dixby Downs station.Apparently, Rohan Dixby buried them somewhere…’ He peered around.‘When I was doing my research on this place, a few of the retired stockmen at the Lodge told me that Rohan had renamed that hill Tilly’s Crown.It’s where he proposed to Tilly—said he felt like a king when he took in the view from the top.’And Porter understood the value of that special place among the earth and sky.He was lucky he had a few.Amara’s mother, she chose one as her final resting place.
Porter pointed to the mound rising from the sunburnt land.‘That hill of rock is the centre of this station.And if Rohan Dixby buried the deed to Dixby Downs, this would be the place.’
Shading his hand over his eyes, he took in the hill that was nothing more than a dome of red rock that jutted out of the scrub like a jagged-edged crown.Wind-scoured and sunbaked, a scattering of spindly gums clung along its upper ridges.The rock face shimmered in the heat, its deep crevices casting shadows etched by water trails and time.At its base stood towering ghost gums—and something else, tucked in like a tick.‘There’s a caravan hidden under that tarp.’
Finn lifted his binoculars.‘Perfect for someone wanting to stay mobile if he’s been hiding from people.’
‘Rumour has it Sawyer’s on the run from people he owes money to.’
‘Must be big dollars.’
‘His mother, Tilly, said he was trying to sell the place to pay back the debt.But with the deed missing that wouldn’t be possible.’
