‘Coming from you, that’s rich.And we don’t have time to spend debating this.’She patted Porter’s pockets and dug out her car keys.
‘Can you drive in a ballgown?’
She took off her heels and sprinted for her car.‘Watch me.’
Twenty-seven
‘We’re about to head out of range, Montrose,’ Porter warned, checking his phone.‘We have no satphone or radio in this car, and if we go any further, we’ll have no backup.’
With the racket back at the ball, he doubted his boss had even heard the phone ring.All Porter could do was leave a message about the general area they were headed.He’d just managed to fire off a backup text to both Craig and Stone to find Brodie at the ball for more information, before he lost signal.
‘I’m not letting that Ram out of my sight.’Amara gripped the steering wheel with sheer determination.
Not that he had much faith in the car to begin with.Her Land Rover had speed along the blacktop, sure.But out here, the bitumen never lasted long, not when most roads were dirt tracks carved by cattle, road trains, and severe weather conditions.
He wasn’t against women drivers—hell, Amara handled herself fine—it was the ageing city-slicker vehicle he didn’t trust.Too low to the ground, too pretty to get dirty.
The hum of asphalt faded beneath the tyres, replaced by the crunch and scatter of dirt.Amara’s car dipped slightly as the bitumen ended, its suspension shuddering at the sudden change in terrain.
Porter had to hand it to her, Amara was prepared for that slight skid from bitumen to dirt that had many drivers, not used to the terrain, lose control.
Now, the once-smooth purr of the engine buzzed with a low, gritty growl, as tyres flicked pebbles into the wheel wells with a hollowtickticktick.
Inside the cabin, every bump rattled louder, like it’d shake the life out of its bones.Along with the faint clatter of something loose in the glove box, it marked their shift from town to bush.
Sadly, they were now following a dust trail, with no chance of getting close enough to the Ram ahead—not even for a number plate reading—now hidden behind a churning wall of thick dust, catching the Land Rover’s high beams and throwing the light back at them.
Amara squinted through the windscreen, the visibility almost zero.It was like driving into a sandstorm at night.
‘Slow down, Montrose.’
‘I know what I’m doing.’She didn’t look away, but her knuckles were white from her grip on the steering wheel.
‘You don’t know this road.Especially at night.’
Thankfully, it got through to her and she eased off.
‘We should wait—’
‘You chase after people in the dark all the time.’
‘In a police vehicle that’s built for this terrain—with a satphone, a tracker, a long-range radio—and armed to the teeth.Unless you’ve got a pistol tucked under that ballgown, Montrose, we’re unprepared and unarmed.’The windscreen was smeared with a red haze, and her simple factory-installed headlights were useless against the dust, like a candle in a tornado.
Worse, she had no bull bar.
He gripped the doorhandle tighter as the car jolted across the corrugations, while he kept watch for livestock or wallabies that might wander onto the road—like they normally did at night.
‘Are you pulling rank on me?’
‘I will, if I have to.’It was the first time, too.And it felt like swallowing barbed wire.‘Just think about what you’re doing, Montrose.’
They were chasing an unknown vehicle into cattle country, in the dark, with no comms, in a car better suited for school drop-offs than deep bush pursuit.
Then came the rollingthump thump thump—the familiar clatter of a cattle grid.The jolt rocked the Land Rover, rattling through Porter’s spine like a loose fence post.
‘Your suspension’s shot,’ he muttered, eyeing the dash as if it might fall off, too.
‘It’s old.Not shot,’ Amara fired back.
