Dead Heat (43 page)

Cruising for the northwest side of Nulgarra, she reached across and pressed on the radio, expecting a hail of modern rock
or news, only to be met with a small click, then the smooth husky tones of a woman singing a cross of jazz and country and
pop. Melodious, warm as honey, the woman’s voice sounded like the rainforest might sing. Sultry, melting, full of darkness
and seductive promise.

It was a CD, she realized. Lee’s. Hot air tugging her hair, she didn’t pop the CD to see who was singing. She simply drove
his car, leather hugging her body, and listened to the words.

Feeling tired

In the sunset

The long day is over . . .

But you’ll be on my mind

Forever.

Jesus. Had he left the CD ready to play on purpose? Was this his way of saying good-bye?

If it was, it sucked.

Midafternoon and she was pulling Lee’s Mitsubishi into the Lotus Healing Center’s parking lot and looking around, praying
she wouldn’t bump into Yumuru. She felt ashamed for stealing his syringe, and even more ashamed that she was still checking
up on him.

Trotting quickly up the steps, she peered cautiously into reception. No Yumuru. Great.

“Is Tilly still around?” she asked the receptionist.

“She goes home tomorrow, but right now she’s in the communal living room. She’ll be glad to see you. It’ll give her a break.”

Georgia walked along the corridor with its tatami mats to find Tilly right where the receptionist said she’d be, tapping on
a keyboard in front of a laptop computer. When she entered, Tilly glanced over her shoulder and said, “Hi, Georgia.”

“Hi.”

“What’s another word for pain?” she asked, turning back to her gleaming blue screen. “I’ve already used agony, torment, suffering,
and ache.”

“Um . . . torture?”

“Ooh, yes. That’ll do nicely.”

“What are you doing?”

“Writing an article about my experience. I’m getting five hundred bucks.” She sounded proud.

“Well done, you.”

“Take a pew.” Tilly waved a hand at the sofa beneath a tall window, which overlooked the fig tree being strangled by a vine,
tapped seven letters on the keyboard, and swung around.

In fourteen days, Tilly was a changed woman. From an exhausted skeleton reeking of dead flesh, she had full color in her skin
and her hair was freshly washed, luxuriant and flowing around her shoulders. Energy sparkled in her eyes.

“I’m going home tomorrow,” she said.

“That is seriously great.”

“The kids are holding a party. Big banner and all. Seafood barbie, lots of beer and cake. Even my in-laws are going to be
there, all the way from Dismal Creek. Can’t wait, but.”

“I’m glad for you.” Georgia’s tone was sincere. “Really I am.”

“So what’re you doing here? Checking up on my progress?”

“Yes. I guess so.”

Tilly was grinning, almost wriggling in her chair, like a kid who couldn’t suppress a secret. She said, “You swiped ’Muru’s
syringe, didn’t you?”

Pause. Beat.

“Yes,” Georgia admitted.

“What’d you find?” She was almost bubbling with glee.

“Vitamins.”

“Yeah. Vitamins.” Tilly looked smug.

“But he has been using an antibiotic on you,” Georgia said.

The smug look vanished. “You saying he didn’t heal me?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, you’re wrong.” Her jaw was stuck out aggressively.

Georgia had just decided to tackle her head-on, when her mobile rang. “Sorry,” she said.

Tilly shrugged, turning back to her computer like a sulky child.

“Hello?”

“Pete here. Pete York. Returning your call.”

“Thanks. Thanks a lot.” Georgia got to her feet and walked to the far end of the living area, looked through the window at
a vista with no laundry strung between the palms, no chicken sheds or flowering plants, no guitars strumming out of key or
people chattering. Just five-star pristine rainforest all the way. “Look, it’s about the day Bri Hutchison’s plane crashed.”
She quickly filled the pilot in that she’d been on the aircraft, and was looking to find the saboteur.

“Yeah. I’ve heard the rumors. Poor old Becks has been doing her nut. It’s bloody awful. Anything I can do to help?”

“I just wanted to know about a passenger on your flight. A Marc Wheeler. Whether you knew him or not.”

“Nope. Didn’t know none of them.”

“Um . . . I’m sorry if this sounds like a strange question, but what did Marc Wheeler look like?”

“God. Don’t know about that. I take people all over, all the time.”

She gave him a few seconds, then said, “Bri crashed that day. Surely you must recall—”

“Suit. He had a suit on. I remember it seemed odd, given his hair. Ponytail and a suit. Seemed odd to me.”

Small jump of her nerves.

“Did he wear glasses?”

“Couldn’t say.”

“What about his hands? It may sound weird, but hands are amazingly identifiable—”

“Hey, you’re right.” Pete sounded surprised. “He had glasses. Wanted to wear a headset and was fiddling about, trying to make
them comfortable. Complained it wasn’t like it used to be in the army or something. Like we fly crap in comparison.”

“Was he white?” she asked.

“What?”

“Was he
white
?”

“Er . . . Well, sort of. Bit of mixture, I’d say. Not that I’ve anything against mixtures, if you know what I mean. I love
my Thai takeout as much as the next bloke.”

Mixed-race. Ponytail. Glasses. Ex-army.

Yumuru.

Trembling a little, she finished the call. Tilly, she saw, had abandoned all pretense of working at her computer and was watching
her closely.

“What the hell was all that about?” Tilly asked.

Pushing her mobile into her pocket, Georgia walked across the room, stood over Tilly, and looked down.

“That was a man who gave me definitive evidence that Yumuru flew into the aerodrome just before Suzie, Bri, Lee, and I flew
out. Yumuru’s also known as Marc Wheeler. And funnily enough, Suzie used to own a successful company called Quantum Research,
but now that she’s dead, Marc Wheeler does. My bet is Yumuru killed Suzie to keep the antibiotic to himself.”

Tilly’s jaw dropped. “You
what
?”

“And you’re his alibi for the second of March, when we crashed. But Yumuru wasn’t here at all, was he? He was at the aerodrome,
sabotaging my aircraft.”

“No way! He was here! I swear!” Tilly exclaimed, but Georgia could see the tiny pearls of sweat forming on her forehead.

“Not according to an employee at the aerodrome who
saw
him.” Patting her bag, she added, “And when Chris Cheung from Canberra gets here, he’ll be organizing some arrests. Chris
is like a pit bull. He won’t even hesitate.”

“Chris Cheung?” Tilly was shifting in her seat, squirming in distress. “Who the hell’s he?”

Ignoring her question, Georgia said, “You’d better do some serious thinking, Tilly. About what’ll happen if you lie in court,
and get found out. Which you will. You really want to be taken to jail and away from your kids?”

Georgia walked to the door, leaving Tilly sitting there aghast, her mouth open.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Georgia said, tone hard, “to see if you change your story.”

Georgia swung out of the healing center parking lot, foot hard on the gas. Yumuru. It was Yumuru. It had to be. Peter York
had all but told her he’d seen Yumuru with his head beneath the Piper’s engine cowling with a bolt cutter, slicing the wire-lock
to let the Piper’s fuel jettison silently into the rainforest below.

She was barreling down the drive so fast that she had to jam on the brakes when a car swept from the opposite direction. There
was a band of blue lights across its roof, the number twenty-two sprayed on its hood. Shit, a cop car was just what she didn’t
need to meet as she sped along a private driveway.

Heaving the Mitsubishi aside, she heard the clatter of branches against the car’s flank, felt it judder as the tires bounced
over edges of tree roots, and as the police car drove past, she looked around, hand raised to apologize, but it was already
gone, just a small cloud of dust trailing in the sun to tell where it had been. Men with a mission, cops. Unless they were
bored, that is. Then they’d give you hell for even thinking about running a red light, even if it was three o’clock in the
morning with no traffic about.

Pushing the cop car out of her mind, she pressed on, turning left out of the healing center’s gates and powering north. She
had a lot to think and talk about, and she was heading to the right place for both—the Cape Archer National Park.

I
’d never have thought it of him. He was Suzie’s mate. Her
mate.
” Dutch was shaking his big battered head, baffled. “You don’t do that stuff to a mate.”

She took a long pull of her ice-cold beer. “Well, he did. He was at the airfield. And he owns Quantum Research now Suzie’s
dead. He’ll make a packet out of the antibiotic.”

Dutch swung his head to the river. Looked past his aluminum boat swaying in the shallows and at the shroud of rainforest rasping
with insects beneath the late-afternoon sky. “Bloody money,” he said. “It always gets to folks in the end.”

Heaving himself upright, he tipped his head back and swallowed the remainder of his beer. He gave a small belch, then muttered,
“Sorry.”

Georgia gave an acknowledging nod. She knew all too well how fizzy the beer was, especially when cold and emptied into a warm,
empty stomach.

“You’re up for barra?” he asked, plopping his empty beer bottle on the veranda.

“You bet.”

“Give me an hour. I’ll have a whopper by then. Guaranteed.”

She raised her beer in a salute as he went, broad legs bowed, shoulders sloping sharply from his neck like a boxer, big bare
feet making hardly any sound as he walked for his boat. He pushed the boat out and hopped aboard, then pulled the engine cord.
The angry choking cut through the silence, nothing like
Songtao
’s deep, powerful, smooth roar. It was like comparing a knat with a speeding falcon.

A sudden image of a hawk in the sky, looking out for her . . . No hawk here, she told herself, trying to ignore the feeling
of regret. It’s long gone now, heading for warmer, more welcome winds.

Dutch sped the boat west and upriver, sitting in the stern, legs spread, hand sure on the tiller, his fishing gear stowed
by his feet, along with his shotgun and his umbrella for stroking crocs’ eyes shut. He’d told her he fished for barramundi
with a fly, but she wasn’t sure she believed him. She could imagine him simply chucking a hand grenade in the river and grabbing
whatever came to the surface. But what the hell, if he returned with a fresh barramundi, she wasn’t going to be picky. Her
lunch with Daniel felt like days ago. What she needed was a pile of vegetables. The last time she’d eaten anything green was
. . . Her mind jumped back in time to the small pile of salad on the edge of her paper plate at Tom’s wake. She hadn’t felt
like eating then. She remembered shoveling her meal into the garbage can out the back, looking over her shoulder in case anyone
noticed.

No veggies for fourteen days. No wonder she felt tired. A mozzie droned past her ear and she suddenly saw a monster one on
her ankle, almost swelling as it sucked hard on her blood. The one square inch of skin she hadn’t drenched in Deet and the
bastard had found it. She bent forward to slap the mozzie dead against her skin and at the same time—

Crack!

She didn’t even hesitate. One second she was sitting on the steps of Dutch’s veranda, the next she was sprawled in dirt, clawing
her way beneath the house, between the pilings, scrambling for cover. She’d been shot at! Jesus! Not again.

Crack!

A thunk of wood behind her. Near her feet. She burrowed deeper, heading for the center of the house, using her elbows and
knees, desperate for cover. The taste of earth was in her mouth, stale mulchy air in her lungs, and her breath was loud in
her ears as she scrabbled, trying to get away, waiting for the next crack of gunfire.

Eventually she became aware of the silence and paused to listen. Couldn’t hear anything above the beating of her heart, her
ragged gasps. She took a deep breath into her belly and let it go. Took another breath, concentrating on filling her belly,
let that one go. Felt her breathing steady, her heartbeat slow.

She crouched under the house, unmoving, alert.

No sound reached her. Nothing.

Her mind raced over the past few hours. Who knew she’d be here with Dutch? What she’d said to India, Daniel, Becky, and Tilly.
Yumuru, she thought. Yumuru’s talked to Tilly. He knows I’m onto him. He wants to silence me before I get Chris Cheung up
here. He’s taking one hell of a chance that I haven’t already rung.

A small sound behind her. Low down. At her level. Like a mole, unable to see but aware of danger, she began to shuffle away
from the sound. Then she heard the tiniest of clicks. A wet, metallic click she knew all too well.

Georgia bolted for the other side of the house. Head down, mouth in gravel, knees and legs swimming, pumping for the other
side, waiting for the bullet in her thighs, her shins, her back, her spine . . .

CRACK!

Her whole body jerked at the sound, loud in the confined space—
he hasn’t hit me, he hasn’t hit me
—and she was still swarming under Dutch’s house, elbows and feet digging hard and propelling her forward, and the next instant
she was bursting outside, warm fresh air against her face, the darkness of the rainforest beckoning. Sweet darkness, a blanket
to hide behind. No thought of snakes or spiders or crocs, just belting for the forest and away from a white-hot bullet that
would blow her apart.

Tearing across the small expanse of clearing surrounding Dutch’s house, she raced into the forest. Crashing and stumbling
against a tree, swinging around it, grazing her palm, uncaring. Branches scouring her face, grabbing her clothes. Creepers
curling around her feet and she’s trying not to yelp—they feel like human hands pulling her down—and she’s yanking herself
free and trying to run through the rainforest, but it’s like running through a dense hedge of gorse, thorns pulling at her,
holding her back, but she keeps running, forcing her way through a dark maze of forest and she can’t hear anything but the
sound of leaves and branches crackling and breaking around her, and her breathing . . . panting desperately like a deer on
the run . . .