“Yeah. Thanks, Rose.”
She turned and walked back up the track, unhurried, as though police officers turning up before breakfast was a daily event at Koolaroo.
I turned back to the mare, and she stomped her foot again.
“How about Comet? Huh? Cause you’re a ball of fire and your color matches.”
She snorted.
“Yep. I agree. Comet it is.”
With one eye still on me, she trotted to the trough, and as she drank in long, slow pulls, her ears relaxed for the first time all morning. I leaned on the rail, watching her, and tried not to let the tension coiling in my gut ruin the best part of my day.
The last thing I needed was a cop sniffing around the property, not with Frank gone and me and my siblings still trying to untangle all the bullshit he’d left behind.
It had been weeks since the old man had ridden out on that horse of his and hadn’t returned. Weeks of questions I was beginning to wonder if we actually wanted answers to. Like that skeleton in the cave with the crack in its skull. Xavier had told us how the poor pilot had died, thanks to his mother’s shocking confession, but Frank had been the bastard who’d left that body to rot out there in the middle of nowhere. I’d give anything to find out why he’d done that.
Cruel son of a bitch.
That poor bloke’s family must’ve gone nuts not knowing what happened to him. Just like we had when Mom had vanished.
Dad had probably had a hand in that, too.
If I ever found out he’d hurt Mom, I’d fucking kill him. If he wasn’t already dead.
Taking my time, I checked that Comet had enough feed, then picked up the lead rope I’d left coiled by the gate and hung it properly. Small, deliberate, unhurried actions. Not because I was organized—hell, my place in the loft above the barn was a masterpiece in organized chaos—but because making a cop wait was one of the few pleasures available to me at six in the morning.
I swung up onto Meteor and kept him at a walk, moving back toward the homestead and taking the long way around. I was trying to get my head straight before whatever was waiting for me up there.
During the ten-minute ride, the sky shifted from blood orange to pale gold. The spinifex along the track caught the first light, turning everything copper and amber. Koolaroo looked good at this hour.
I ran through the possibilities of why that cop would show up now, and especially this early. If they’d come from Winton Police Station, then they must’ve got on the road at four a.m. And that was weird. Or extreme dedication.
I frowned. Rose said a police officer was waiting. She didn’t say it was Bob Ackerman. That was weird, too. Bob was the only cop who came all the way out here. After Bob’s last visit, and how freaked he’d been when he saw the state of the eastern outstation, we’d all expected him to come tearing back here with a posse of cops to search the property. But we’d heard nothing from him since he’d left.
So, if it were another cop waiting for me in the homestead, that would be much worse than Bob.
They could be following up on Bruce Henderson’s ute. Cassidy had done a number on the vehicle, and Bruce wasn’t the type to let things go. Or it could be about the fire those bastard Henderson brothers had lit that nearly killed Cassidy and Xavier. Those idiots were always giving the cops something to do.
It could be about Frank. It could be about the millions of dollars we’d found in the eastern outstation and moved to another secret hiding place.
I really hoped it wasn’t that. I’d want my brothers and Cassidy beside me when that line of questioning came up.
By the time I reached the homestead yard, I’d already decided how this was going to go down. I’d be polite enough that Cassidy would be impressed if she heard about it, and short enough that the cop got the message.
I tethered Meteor to the railing and tossed him some hay. Then I scraped my boots on the step, pulled open the screen door, and walked through the dining room toward the kitchen.
The air was filled with the delicious smells of fresh coffee, toast, and a buttery sweetness from something that Bella had probably just pulled from the oven. We were lucky to have her here. Declan was even luckier. He hadn’t stopped grinning since she’d moved into his place permanently.
The police officer was sitting at the kitchen bench, and this was no bloke.
My breath caught as she turned.
The air left the room. Or maybe it left me. I couldn’t tell which.
Sapphire Delaney.
Fire.
