Blood Junction (39 page)

“Do you have a stapler I can use?”

The postmistress gave India a cold look. “Sorry, no.”

Thanks a bunch
, India thought, and put the loose pages into the envelopes, asked for stamps for four of them, and went to mail them outside.
Although the temperature was in the early forties, when the first two dropped into the box she gave a violent shiver.

I can turn your stomach, your bladder and your bowel into juice.

India thought of the postmistress, her thin lips, and instinct kicked in. She mailed the other two a few blocks away. With
the last envelope in one hand, Polly’s sticky palm in the other, India headed up the main street. Once she and Polly had handed
the last envelope to Jerome she would meet up with Mikey and drive to Sydney and the
Sydney Morning Herald
’s offices. Then they’d get lost in the city until they could be guaranteed some protection.

She felt a surge of electricity go through her as she headed for Jerome’s office; a mixture of elation and fear. She had mailed
the biggest story of her life and she was in the greatest danger of her life. She’d never known how intense the sensation
of feeling alive could be until faced with the possibility of death maybe hours or minutes away.

India had just passed the Royal when the door banged and someone came out, fell into step behind her and Polly. Nerves prickling,
India pulled Polly against one of the verandah posts and waited until they’d passed. She stood there, heart hammering, studying
the street. Farther up, Jerome was walking into the police station. Three women in brightly patterned dresses stood on the
opposite corner in animated conversation. Pulling up between a Falcon ute and a Toyota Hiace was a white transit van.

Her heart gave a single giant leap.

It had a dent in its nearside wing as though it had hit a large rock.

Trying to appear calm, India hunched down, looked gravely into Polly’s face.

“I’ve something very important for you to do for me.”

Polly’s face lit up.

“I want you to take this envelope to Jerome. He’s just gone into the police station.”

Polly’s eyes were round and unblinking. “Why can’t you?”

“I’d like you to deliver it for me. Only to Jerome. Not to Stan, okay? Or Donna or Constable Crawshaw. Just Jerome. It’s got
to get to him, Polly. It’s really, really important. I’ll be counting on you, okay?”

The girl gave two uncertain nods.

“Now, can I tuck it beneath your dress? It’s so important that I don’t want anyone to see it. Only Jerome.”

Polly let her lift the dress and slide the envelope into the rear of her knickers. India pulled down her dress and smiled
in what she hoped was an encouraging manner, but she knew it was strained. “Okay, Polly. Who are you going to give the envelope
to?”

“Jerome,” she said in a small voice. “Not Stan. Not nobody.”

“That’s right.”

India pulled her against her shoulder and kissed the top of her head. She could smell the sun-warmed nutmeg of her hair.

“You’ll do good, I know,” she murmured as she rose. Her legs felt weak, like putty, but she made herself appear confident.
“You go now, Polly. Take the envelope to Jerome for me.”

Polly walked away uncertainly, looking back over her shoulder.

India turned her back on the girl and walked in the opposite direction. The white transit van had parked, but nobody was near
it. They could have climbed out while she was talking to Polly. They could be anywhere. She walked down the street, her legs
unsteady, her breathing shallow.

Where could she go that might afford some protection? She’d get fifty kilometers out of town before Knox’s henchmen caught
up with her. There was no train station in Cooinda. No planes, helicopters or hot-air balloons for hire. She could almost
feel Knox’s breath against the back of her neck as he scented her trail and tracked her down.

Involuntarily, India’s throat convulsed in a groaning whimper of fear that she would always remember. Because at that moment,
as she turned to cross the road and head for Jerome’s office, she found herself facing two men with guns in their hands. One
wore a buzz haircut, the other had short brown hair. Two guns, black, with long barrels: silencers.

D
ON’T MOVE,” BUZZ-CUT SAID
.

India’s eyes were flicking behind them, to left and right. She was in an outback town, a lonely street that held nothing but
three middle-aged women and a skinny cat slinking beneath a Falcon ute. Dust and sun and the smell of heat in her nostrils.

“Not a muscle,” he added.

“Or what? You’re going to shoot me?”

“You think you’ve got a choice here?”

“I’ll scream,” she said. “I’ll scream so loudly your eardrums will burst. They’ll explode with such pain you’ll remain blind
for a week.”

“Oooh,” Brown-haired drawled in a mock falsetto. “I
am
scared.” He turned aside contemptuously and made a gesture with his left hand that brought the white transit van to their
side.

India was watching it out of the corner of her eye. The driver jumped out, opened the rear door expectantly.

The three of them stood there silently. The two men held their guns pointed at India’s gut. She felt they’d all been fixed
in this position for an age, but she knew that it hadn’t been more than a few seconds or so.

As if in slow motion, Brown-hair reached up to India’s neck and grabbed her collar. He bunched it in his hand and twisted,
pulling her towards the van. She started to fight, her legs scrabbling in grit and gravel, but the other man grabbed her hair,
then her right arm.

Her head was jammed against a muscular armpit. Her nostrils were full of a stranger’s acrid scent. Struggling, she managed
to turn her head. She opened her mouth, brought the soft skin inside the man’s upper arm between her lips and clamped her
teeth down.

Hard. Hard.
Hard
.

Her jaws bulged with the effort, her eyes watered.

The man screamed so loudly a flock of galahs exploded from the gum tree opposite in a burst of pink and gray.

Mikey heard the man’s scream from inside the general store. He had just picked up six padded envelopes for the discs in his
back pockets and was standing in the queue to pay.

He dropped the envelopes and spun around, raced down the aisle and erupted into the street.

He saw Polly racing up the path for the police station’s door, chest out, matchstick legs pumping; two brick-shaped women
staring at the Royal, shocked, and three men having a fight … no, two men struggling with someone at the back of a transit
van.

Mikey’s eyes clicked to Polly, but she vanished inside the police station.

He sprinted for the van.

India was bucking and kicking against two men. Mikey saw her knee come up. She jabbed it hard into the first man’s groin.
She brought it back and spun and tried to jab the second man but he swung away.

The first man was bent double, his hands between his legs, groaning. India was thrashing at the air with her hands and feet.

Mikey gave a bellow of rage and charged. He seized the second man by the arm and spun him around, smashed a fist into his
nose. The man staggered and fell to his knees and Mikey kicked him in the face. The man flew backwards, clearing the ground
and smacking onto the road, blood spurting from his shattered nose. Mikey lunged for the other man, and distantly heard India
scream his name.

He was bringing back his bunched fist to smash the man’s face when he felt a thud in his right shoulder blade. He jerked sideways,
stumbling and losing his balance. For a second he thought someone had punched him from behind, and he tried to turn to fight
his attacker, but his knees began to tremble.

Dear God, no,
he thought.

The driver of the van came into view, nodded once as though satisfied. He holstered his long-barrelled pistol and helped the
second man to his feet. Blood was clotting around the man’s nose and mouth and when he said something, his front teeth moved
like loose planks in a fence.

India was suddenly in front of Mikey, holding his face in her hands. She was shouting something but he couldn’t hear her.
He seemed to have gone completely deaf.

Slowly, he felt himself topple sideways. There was a numb area in his lungs, his whole chest. He tried to raise his head from
the road, but it wouldn’t budge. He attempted to lift himself with his arms, but they lay uselessly at his sides.

“India,” he whispered.

“Mikey,” she said.

“Run.”

“Never.”

Mikey regained consciousness as they flew over Broken Hill. Rivulets of sweat ran down his face and neck. A nauseous pain
filled his veins, his whole body.

He was lying sprawled across the rear seat, his legs jammed behind the pilot’s seat. He couldn’t feel his legs. He wondered
if they were numb from the position they were in, or whether his injury was worse than he thought. Irrationally he decided:
I don’t care, because my head is in India’s lap.
He could feel one of her hands cupping the side of his face, the other brushing the hair rhythmically above his right ear
and down to his nape. It felt good. It felt so good …

A little later when he opened his eyes again it was to see India’s chalk-white face close to his, set with anxiety. He saw
his name on her lips. He turned his head to indicate he couldn’t hear above the clattering of the engine. She put her face
close to his. “God, Mikey.” Tears spilled. Angrily she wiped them away.

It took an immense effort to speak. “Sorry.”

“You idiot.” Her voice faltered. “You bloody idiot.”

“Missed the third.”

She was crying.

“Sorry,” he said again.

“Don’t,” she choked. “Don’t apologize, for God’s sake.”

“Wanted to help.”

She tried to smile. “And got yourself into a whole lot of trouble. As usual.”

“As usual.” A dark shadow nudged the corner of his mind and he closed his eyes again. Succumbed to blackness. When he awoke,
fresh cool air was on his face and he could smell dew on grass. It was night. He heard the pilot shutting down the engines.
He was lying in a field, India by his side.

“Where … discs?” he asked her.

“I’m afraid they’ve got them. I mailed four pieces to newspapers though. One’s with Jerome …”

As she talked he found it hard to concentrate. He closed his eyes. Drifted again. When he came around, he was rocking on the
floor of a covered ute. In the gloom he saw two benches fitted lengthways, two wheel wells and a spider’s web beneath the
nearest bench. Long legs were stretched on either side of him. Long and clean and brown. Once again, his head was in India’s
lap. He listened to the engine’s constant drone. Took in the steady juddering motion, the regular clicking of small stones
and rocks against the bodywork. They were on a well-maintained dirt road.

“How you doing, soldier?”

He felt her hands supporting his head while she brought her legs up beneath her, then it was resting on something solid and
soft. She knelt beside him, swaying with the motion of the ute, and quickly stripped off her T-shirt. Her breasts swelled
against her brassiere. His kind of brassiere. Cotton with lacy edges. A soft apricot color. Very feminine.