‘No.I’ll drive him home.’Amara pushed up from her chair, sliding it back under the table.She tucked her ever-trusty tablet under her arm without thinking—same way she carried it every day.Turning off the coffee urn and the dining room light, she left her dirty cup on the bench in the pub’s kitchen next door, then paused at the end of the corridor that led to the front bar and the stairs.
She could skip the drama and go up those stairs to her room.
But no, dutifully, she headed for the front bar.
The music was gone and so were the customers.Most of the chairs were already on the tables, with the barmaid wiping down the bar.And her boss, Detective Sergeant Finn Wilde, was crumpled over a table, cradling a beer.Again.
‘Sir?’She tapped his shoulder of solid muscle.
Nothing.
‘Sir.’ She was tempted to flick his ear, like she used to do to another drunk in her past.Instead, she shook him harder.‘It’s time to go home, sir.’
‘Hmph.’Finn raised his heavy head.His eyes were nothing but bloodshot slits.‘Leave me alone, Constable.Can’t a man have a beer in peace?’
‘Come on, Finn.Time to go.’Samantha swapped his beer glass for a cold stubby.‘Take that for the road.’
Finn knocked back his hat to scrub nails over his short hair.‘I got money.’He dragged some bills out of his pocket, including the keys.
‘Keep your cash, Finn.’Samantha passed the car keys to Amara, the concern clear in her eyes.‘The constable will drive you home.’
‘I always do.’Amara mumbled as she took the keys.‘Come on, sir.’
It was a struggle to get him to his feet, when Finn was an easy six-two, built like a freight train, and full of muscles that were covered in some serious tattoos.Izzy always said Finn looked more like he ran a cartel than oversaw the Federal Stock Squad of misfits.
Even though Amara respected Finn, and had learned a lot from him, but lately he’d been drinking too hard.Unlike the other drunk she’d given up on, she wasn’t giving up on Finn.
‘Let’s get you to the car, sir.I’ll take you home.’This was not part of her job description, but then Finn did say in his Stock Squad there was no such thing as a job description.And this was just another day on the job.
No wonder she had no time for a horse, a husband, a home, or a life.
Two
Porter had worn out three patrol cars in his time as an outback cop.He’d come to recognise every pothole, and every scar on the local roads and hillsides left by mines, cyclones, cattle herds, and road trains that shifted across the hazy horizon like long metal pythons.
He always got stuck with the glamour gigs—chasing rogue cattle off highways, busting backpackers for dodgy camping, and confiscating enough cannabis to open a wellness retreat.
There were plenty of times he’d called tow trucks for the odd electric car, driven by even odder tourists who didn’t realise there were no power points to be found along outback roads.Or even sometimes regular cars, whose drivers didn’t realise it was a long haul either way to the nearest roadhouse—where only certain fuels were sold anyway.
However, they did offer some amusement to his day.
Like earlier, when he had to delicately explain to the tourists that you can’t scatter your grandma’s ashes over the National Park without an Aboriginal Elder’s permission.
Only to realise, shortly after he’d pulled in behind them, that all the ash billowing out their car window and hitting his cop car’s windscreen—used to be someone’s grandma!
Was he a prick for fining them for littering?Because they’d also flung the urn out their window, which now occupied his backseat.
It did top the list of weirdest cop jobs of the day, but this—now this was entertaining…
He leaned against his police ute—a twin-cab LandCruiser, caked in dust and kitted out like a ranger’s rescue rig.Bull bar, banks of spotlights on the roof and bumper, long-range antenna, and all-terrain tyres fat with red grit.No rear tray, just a purpose-built cage gleaming beneath its weatherproof shell.Parked on the edge of the pub’s car park, just in time for closing, where the stockmen were putting on a show tonight.
It was theHold-My-BeerOlympics—Elsie Creek style.
Typically, there were no rules to these stockmen games, making it pretty simple for any spectator to follow.
First, they’d need a schooner of beer.Glass only.No stubbies or cans.Which meant they probably pinched their beer glasses from the pub!
Next, they had to climb onto the roof of a bush-bashing Hilux ute without spilling a drop of said beer.
