Dead Heat (44 page)

Georgia paused in the gloom of the rainforest, trying to steady herself, hear if anything was behind her.

Silence.

Cautiously she crept forward to a mangrove tree with a solid girth, at least two yards in diameter. Walking around the tree,
she studied its branches. There was one angling her way, a big, heavy slab of wood, and, looking up, she saw another sturdy
branch, higher, where no one would look. She hoped.

Easy, she thought. I’ll just climb up there, be out of the way and safe until Dutch returns. No problem.

Ten minutes later—she knew how long it took thanks to Lee’s swanky Tag Heuer—she was still struggling to get up the tree.
Easy to look at a couple of branches and think you can climb the thing, she thought, but in real life, it just wasn’t the
same, dammit.

She was barely two yards from the ground, hands clutching bark, her knees clamped to the tree trunk, when she heard the small
snap of a twig breaking nearby. Instantly, she stilled.

Rustle of what sounded like a soft leather belt being dragged against leaves.

She reckoned it was a goanna, a big lizard tracking through the forest, but couldn’t be sure, so she waited. Listened to insects
humming, frogs croaking. The sound of leather on leaves stopping and starting.

Definitely a lizard, she thought, and gripped the upper branch in both hands and half swung, half heaved herself up there,
throwing her right leg over pitted wood, feeling the bare skin of her inner thigh catch against the rough bark and trying
to stifle her whimpers and groans as she rescraped her thigh and opened its grazes from piling out of the cop shop after Lee.

Another heave and she was nearly there, but not quite. In the balance, so to speak, she was hanging from one knee and one
arm, just as she was when Jon rocketed through the gate of Quantum Research on his superbike.

The faint buzz of an engine reached her.

She paused, listening.

The buzz grew louder, and she recognized the angry clatter of Dutch’s outboard motor approaching.

Crack! Crack!

Georgia bolted upright, her body catapulting straight onto the branch. Next second she was balancing on top of it, arms reaching
up for the next branch, and she was scrambling onto the next, hauling herself arm over leg up the tree, with no thought of
how she’d get down. She had no urge but to climb, to get out of sight.

Huddled high in the tree, knees clamping each side of a branch, she leaned back against the trunk, sweating, her heart knocking.
No sound of an outboard motor. No more shots. Just a rainforest shocked into silence.

What had happened?

Must keep absolutely still, she told herself. For as long as it takes. Think tree. Think branch. You are a leaf. You are part
of the rainforest. Part of nature. You don’t breathe. You don’t think. You are a part of this tree. He’ll never see you.

A
fter a few minutes she had calmed and became aware that the sounds of the rainforest had returned. Insects resumed their humming
and birds were calling as they flew from branch to branch.

Through the trees she could just make out the gleam of the river sliding east. She thought she’d run dead straight into the
forest but she’d obviously made a loop because she was remarkably near the water.

Oh God. Her mind suddenly kicked into action. The shots fired had been from a pistol, not Dutch’s shotgun. Had Yumuru shot
Dutch? Yumuru wouldn’t want any witnesses. Nobody knew what she’d found out today, except Tilly, who was on Yumuru’s side.
Sweet Jesus. Without herself or Dutch, who would now call Chris Cheung? She’d have to pray that if she vanished into thin
air, Daniel would push aside his doubts about the aircraft’s sabotage and continue the investigation.

She could see the headline already:
BOATING ACCIDENT KILLS TWO. BODIES FOUND DISMEMBERED BY CROCODILES.

Leaning her head against the trunk of the tree, she gazed at a wispy beard of lichen on the branch above. She knew Yumuru
wouldn’t leave until she was dead.

Georgia knew she was in trouble when the sun began to sink. Aside from an awkward moment when she’d had to pee—first time
for everything, she told herself—she had been on her branch for two hours and she was aching and itchy and stinking with sweat
and Deet, and nothing, absolutely nothing since she’d heard the pistol shots had distracted her, aside from a turquoise butterfly
the size of a saucer fluttering past.

Brilliant, just brilliant. Running into the rainforest seemed like a great idea, and it was, for a complete idiot. It would
be night in under an hour, and it would be so black she wouldn’t be able to see her hand in front of her face, not unless
there was a full moon, which there wasn’t; it had been waning when she blasted out of Nulgarra on
Songtao.
So now what? Was she going to sit in this horrendously uncomfortable tree all night? She’d fall asleep and then fall out
of the damn thing, and straight into the jaws of a goddamn crocodile . . .

What else, then? Climb down now at dusk, just the time of day when the crocs come alive, when their blood has been warmed
by the day’s heat and they’re in hunting mode? And what about Yumuru? Where was he? Army-trained, special jungle forces for
all she knew, he could be tracking her panic-stricken route through the forest. Waiting for her anywhere.

Georgia shuffled her lower back against the trunk of the tree. I shall stay where I am, she decided, until dawn. I have no
intention of getting eaten by a croc at prime time. I’ll wait until daybreak, when a croc’s blood is cold and they’re reluctant
to move, then I’ll slip through the forest to Lee’s car, and drive until I get to Sydney. There I’ll be safe and I can ring
Chris Cheung and he’ll sort everything out, and then I can forget all about this nightmare. It’ll take some time, but eventually
it’ll fade, like the intensity of a riveting film. And as it fades, I’ll be getting on with my life.

Excellent, she thought, straightening her spine and hearing it click. The day after tomorrow I’ll take Annie to the Sydney
café overlooking the Opera House and Circular Quay, and order a bottle of their most expensive champagne.

She felt better having made a decision, and she picked at the black fungi trailing like veins up the tree trunk, trying to
distract herself from her discomfort. Impossible. Trees were incredibly uncomfortable. She had to keep shifting to prevent
each limb from going numb, and she seemed to have pins and needles in some part of her body all the time. It was excruciating.

She wished she had Lee’s mobile with her. Then she could phone for help. But since it was in her handbag on Dutch’s veranda
it may as well have been in Mozambique. She watched the sun slip to the edge of her world, and then the night creatures burst
into life. There was a massive exodus of flying foxes from their camps, heading toward their nocturnal feeding grounds. The
noise they made was incredible. You’d think bats would be silent, but not these guys. Their continual high-pitched screeching
set her teeth on edge until the last one had vanished upriver.

Small bats, no bigger than her hand, flicked along the riverbank and across the sky. Mosquitoes whined. Crickets chirruped.
She could hear a cacophony of other sounds, cackles and whirrings and clickings, but she didn’t know what creatures made them.
A frog of some sort was making a deep-throated
gullop gullop
and another was responding with a
cahboom cahboom.

My God, it was dark. She could make out the river, a smudged gray ribbon, but not much else. Black stretched all around.

She closed her eyes before she could panic. You’re just in a tree, is all. You’re in a tree, and you’re nice and high so old
Nail-tooth can’t reach you should he mooch on by and see you up there and make a lunge for a fancy snack so cling on here—

A branch snapped.

Georgia jerked upright, eyes wide, hoping they’d see something, anything that wasn’t black . . .

The faintest rustle from below. To her right, she reckoned, but she couldn’t be certain.

She tilted her head, angling her ear to where she thought the sound had been, concentrated every effort on identifying it.
A croc? A possum?

Leaning forward, she clamped her arms and legs around the branch of the tree and stared down, but all she could see was black
. . .

Another rustle.

“I can smell you, Georgia,” said a man’s voice. “I can smell your Deet.”

H
er blood froze. “You should have gone home, Georgia. Gone back to Sydney. You’re so stubborn.”

Tiny crackle of leaves being crunched underfoot.

“You shouldn’t be here. You should be with your booksellers. Not meddling like some private investigator.”

She hugged the tree, her arms and legs wrapped tight around her branch, brain jammed in shock.

“I didn’t
know
you were on board the plane, okay? I thought I was doing the world a favor, getting rid of Ronnie Chen and Lee and a woman
I thought was a female hood. I’d heard Lee was in the area somewhere, and there he was at the aerodrome, being offered to
me on a plate.”

She pressed her cheek against unforgiving bark, filled with a sense of horror. Disbelief.

Daniel.

“I didn’t know Lee was undercover. I thought he’d killed Lucy, can you understand? Killed his own partner.
My wife.
”

Sweet Jesus. Sergeant Tatts was Daniel’s wife, Lucy? Sergeant Lucy Tatts, dark-skinned, dark-haired, a police sergeant off-duty
and laughing carefree in the sun with her daughter on her husband’s shoulders, her arms around his waist. Sergeant Lucy Tatts.

“How was I supposed to know it was the chief who’d betrayed Lucy when Lee went down for it? Jesus, Georgia, can’t you see
it was all a terrible mistake?”

No, no, she thought. What about an innocent man? You were so obsessed with plunging your avenging Scorpio tail deep into your
prey that
you didn’t think about Bri
.

“I saw Tilly this afternoon. She told me everything. That you’re getting Chris Cheung to start an investigation. Good job
he was out of the office when you rang. He doesn’t even know you exist, thank God.”

Sound of brushing leaves. His voice coming nearer.

“Christ. Chris bloody Cheung, of all people. He’ll have me behind bars within
seconds
.”

She hugged the tree, loving the tree, filled with sick dread. It was like she’d been wearing a blindfold all this time and
it had suddenly been whipped away.

Would you like a lift to Cairns? We could have dinner . . .

I’ll contact the AAI, then I’ll take you to dinner and give you a full report. How about the Pier?

When are you going home?

When do you leave for Sydney?

I think you should go home. Take a break.

Daniel had been trying to get her away from Nulgarra from the start. He’d seen straight through her all along, her attraction
for him, and he’d tried to bribe her with free rides, dinner, concern for her health. She wondered if he’d purposely misdirected
the search for her life raft. A scattering of images streamed across her vision. Her reaching for him when
Songtao
exploded, but he was already ahead of her and racing for the portside deck. Her standing in front of him, arms hanging as
she wept after he’d picked her up from Margaret’s. He’d never touched her, she realized. She doubted he’d ever had any feelings
for her. He was still in love with his wife.

“You know I can’t go to jail.” His tone was reasonable, calm. “I can’t leave Tabby to the Social Services, shoved from foster
home to foster home, living with strangers. You can understand that, can’t you?”

It was then that she comprehended the danger she was in. Tabby. He’d already killed for his daughter when Amy Robins got shot
in the head on the way to court. There was no way Daniel would let her live. Not when Lee was on the other side of the world,
gone for good, and she was the only person left with the guts to testify.

“Look, all I want is for us to come to some agreement.”

What, she thought, like poor old Rog? Living every day in fear of being murdered should he say a word?

“Just come out and swear you won’t tell a soul, or call Chris Cheung. Go back to Sydney and forget all this.”

Fat chance, she thought. You know I’m like a dog with a bone. You don’t trust me an inch, and you know it.

“Dutch has agreed not to say anything. He’s waiting for you at the house. He caught that barramundi he promised you.”

You’re lying. You’ve shot him. You’ve killed Dutch.

“Please, Georgia.” Another rustling sound. “I won’t hurt you. I swear.”

He was so
close
!

“Ah, there you are. I can see you hiding there. You must be exhausted. Come on out and I’ll drive you back. I’ve been worried
sick about you.”

Can’t see me, impossible, too dark, too dark, black black black.

“Come on, Georgia. Let’s go home.”

Tree, my friend, hard bark against my cheek like stubble, and you’re my friend, my tree.

“Georgia. You’re scared, but there’s no need to be.”

Rough bark absorbing tears. Tears of fright. Of death.

“I don’t
want
you to be scared. Please, trust me on this.”

Another rustle and the dry snap of a twig.

“Why would I hurt you, of all people?” His voice had moved. It had moved
away
.

She felt a rush of adrenaline.
He hadn’t seen her.
He’d smelled the Deet, that was all. He didn’t know if she was in a tree, on the ground, or behind a bush, or he’d have come
for her. He could have switched on a flashlight and found her in seconds, but he knew her well and wasn’t going to risk exposing
himself to her in case she was armed.

“You thought you were safe hiding here, didn’t you, Georgia?” His voice had lost its cajoling tone and turned hard as he moved
nearer again. She kept her eyes tight shut in case he saw them glisten in the dark.