Dead Heat Read online

  More out of habit than in expectation of seeing anything, she checked her side mirror. To her astonishment, she saw a white Ford sedan on the road behind her, heading straight for the creek.

  You’ve got to be kidding, she thought. They’ll never make it in that.

  Heedless of the rain, Georgia sprang out of the car and belted to the riverbank, waving her arms and shouting, “No! Go back! It’s too deep!” But it was too late. The Ford was already a third of the way across.

  When it reached the middle of the creek, the sedan paused, much like the Suzuki had. She could see the driver was turning the steering wheel and searching for some grip, but the car was already beginning to float. Slowly, the vehicle’s hood swung downriver and within five yards had jammed itself against something underwater. The engine stalled and water rushed through the open windows.

  Georgia raced to her car to look for a tow rope, but all the Suzuki had was a standard jack and spare tire. No ropes, no straps, no winch, no high-lift jack.

  She turned to see the driver, a tall guy in jeans and sweatshirt, slide quickly through the car window and drop into the creek. The water came up to his thighs. He waded around the sedan and helped his woman passenger open her door against the current and climb out. The woman had to cling on to her companion to avoid being swept away. When she glanced up, even though she was yards away, Georgia could see the relief on her face. Relief she hadn’t been swept four miles downriver and into the Coral Sea.

  It didn’t take the couple long to grab their belongings from the trunk. The man had only a small bag, one of those standard black ones that carry laptop computers, the woman a pint-size backpack and a sodden, new-looking leather fanny pack on her hips.

  Georgia slid down the bank and reached out to the woman, who put her hand in hers and let herself be hauled out of the river. Her fingers felt fragile and tiny as mouse bones in Georgia’s clasp, her body light as a child’s. She was spattered with mud and soaked to the waist, but she was grinning when Georgia swung her clear of the bank and onto firm ground. The man came up behind her.

  “You’re brilliant,” the woman said, wiping rain from her cheeks. She was Chinese, and her face had the delicate prettiness of a young girl, but Georgia reckoned she was more her own age, late twenties. “Thanks so much for helping us.”

  The man stepped forward. Water streamed from his thick black hair and down his face but he made no attempt to brush it away. “We’ve a flight to catch,” he said, voice curt. No thank-you from him or attempt at small talk. “You okay to take us to SunAir? Nulgarra’s aerodrome?”

  Oh hell, she thought, I hope they’re not on Bri’s flight or there may not be room for me. Glumly, she said, “That’s where I’m going.”

  “Thank you, God,” said the woman, looking into the sky and exhaling hard. “You’re doing great so far. Keep it up.”

  They introduced themselves. The man, Lee Denham, took the front seat while Suzie Wilson squeezed into the back. Lee must have been thirty, at most. His skin was the color of cashew nuts, and close up she was sure he was mixed-race Chinese. He had a pale scar running up through one eyebrow, another on the edge of his jaw, and she could see the puckered ridge of a larger scar running up the side of his neck into the hair behind his ear. More scars on his knuckles. Wounds like a fighting dog might have, she thought warily. Strong jaw, narrow nose, and a wide mouth she couldn’t imagine ever smiling. His features resembled a rock face. His body looked like rock too, broad shoulders and a narrow waist; the build of a triathlete.

  If Bridie had been there she’d have been matchmaking like mad, asking him what he did, how much he earned, if he wanted children, but all Georgia said was, “Where are you flying to?”

  “Cairns,” Lee said, and Georgia’s spirits sank. She just had to hope the third person who’d been booked to fly south with Bri couldn’t make it.

  “And from there?” she asked, wondering if they were on the same connecting flight to Sydney, but Lee just shrugged. Not much of a talker, old Scar Face.

  Suzie leaned between them, voice bright with curiosity. “Are you English?” she asked Georgia.

  “I’m Australian,” she said on a sigh. “Have been for twenty years.”

  “You sound English.”

  “So I’m told.” Georgia turned to Lee. “What about your car?”

  Another shrug. “It’s a rental.”

  “Do you want to borrow my mobile? Tell them what’s happened?”

  “Nope.”

  “But you can’t just leave it there.”

  He turned his head to give her a direct stare. He had eyes the color of fresh tar, glistening black, devoid of expression.

  Georgia fired up the engine. Just my luck, she thought, to rescue the least friendly man on the planet. Looking in her rearview mirror, she saw Suzie was going through the contents of her damp leather fanny pack.

  “Everything okay?” she asked her.

  “Yes,” Suzie said breathlessly, “you’ve been great and I—”

  She broke off when Lee snapped at her in what sounded like Chinese. Georgia saw Suzie blink rapidly as though she might cry.

  So much for a lighthearted journey filled with jokes about submersible cars, Georgia thought, and pulled out. Driving a little way with her left foot on the brakes to dry them out, she set a brisk pace for the aerodrome. With only two miles to go it shouldn’t take long, she thought, unless there were any trees across the road.

  “You came from Nulgarra?” she asked.

  Lee shrugged.

  “Suzie? Do you live up here, or were you just visiting?”

  In her rearview mirror she saw Suzie glance at Lee before fixing her gaze outside.

  “I was here for a funeral,” Georgia offered. If that didn’t elicit a response she might as well give up. “My grandfather died last week.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Lee.

  She might as well have told him she’d put a blue sock in her white wash and everything had come out gray for all the sympathy in his voice. Next time, she thought mutinously, I won’t stop to help you. I’ll leave you to bloody walk.

  THREE

  The one thing about having lived in a small town, where everybody knows everybody, is that no matter how long you’ve been away, nobody forgets you. Change is slow, and chances are the boy you had a crush on at school is still around, maybe taking tourists big-game fishing or reef-diving, and your best girlfriend is now his wife with three kids and a pool out the back with two utes in the driveway.

  So Georgia wasn’t surprised that Bri Hutchison was still piloting the SunAir planes, or that his wife, Becky, continued to handle the bookings and office administration and, when the sky got busy during the tourists season, the radio. Seven hundred feet from the airstrip, the SunAir office was surrounded by ginkgos, ferns, and club mosses. Built of unpainted timber, it had a tin-roofed veranda, a dirt parking lot, a single open hangar, and a patch of lawn with a brick barbecue by the edge of the forest.

  After giving her a hug, Becky said, “Sorry about Tom, love. We’ll miss the old bugger.”

  “Me too.”

  “Anyhow, looks like we’ll get you out. Some bloke ain’t turned up, so you can have his seat. Go for it, love.”

  Lugging her backpack to the Piper plane, which was parked well back from the rain-puddled runway, she stowed it inside before taking the seat behind the pilot’s. Bri greeted her briefly with a smacking kiss on the cheek, then turned back to study the map spread on his lap.

  Like Mrs. Scutchings, Bri hadn’t changed much in the ten years she’d been away. A few more wrinkles maybe, but he was just as short and square and solid as brick, and still missing his left upper incisor, where the boom of his yacht had hit him all those years ago, when he’d been teaching her and Dawn to sail. Georgia had been eleven and unself-conscious enough to ask why he didn’t get a false tooth, to which he’d replied, “You think I ought?”

  She’d put her head on one side. “Not unless you min
d looking like a pirate.”

  “Nope.”

  She had always had a soft spot for Bri. They’d first met in her second term at school, when he’d been dropping off his nephew. She and Dawn had arrived at the school gates, miserably soaked through after a rainstorm. They had forgotten to bring an umbrella, and their satchels and schoolbooks were sodden.

  “You walk to school every day?” Bri had asked, frowning.

  Dawn and Georgia nodded.

  “On your own?”

  The sisters nodded again.

  “What about your grandfather?”

  “He’s helping at the bait shop,” said Dawn. “They open at—”

  “Eight,” said Bri. “Yeah. I know.”

  He had chewed his lower lip, then said, “How about if I pick you up each morning? You’re at the commune, right? It’ll be no trouble for me, so long as your mum won’t mind, and I’ll make the airfield in time for the first trips. Joey here could do with the company.”

  Joey didn’t say anything, but the sisters knew he was appalled. His peers in town had been locked in battle with the children from the commune since anyone could remember, and now Joey was going to have to share a car with the enemy! All term Dawn and Georgia teased him mercilessly from the back of Bri’s ute, which culminated in Joey leading the townies down the lumpy dirt track into the heart of the commune and its timber cabins and chicken yards and pelting them with mud, destroying their treehouse, and finally dragging the commune kids into the stream and dunking them.

  A week later Georgia led an ambush with Dawn and six others, throwing sticky balls of flour mixed with water at the townies, who were on their way to a party. The townies’ parents had gone berserk, calling Georgia an uncontrollable little savage, but her mother had never been great on discipline and merely said in that calm tone of hers, “Playing is healthy behavior for children. You’d rather they sat indoors watching TV?”

  Georgia had been delighted that the enmity between townies and commune kids had deepened to another level. She loved the freedom of the commune and she had loved fighting for it. The day it closed, three days after her seventeenth birthday, sold to a guy from Brisbane who wanted to develop it into a rainforest health center, was the day her childhood ended.

  Bri turned around in the pilot’s seat and looked at her critically. “Don’t they feed you in the big city?”

  “They feed me just fine, Bri.”

  “You’re too bloody skinny,” he grumbled. Then, “Getting married soon?”

  “Bri, get serious, will you? We’ve got better things to do than sit and talk about my private life. Like getting me to Cairns for a connecting flight.”

  “Are you?”

  She made an exaggerated groaning sound and banged her head in the palm of her hand in a parody of agony. “Even my mother doesn’t give me such a hard time.”

  “Yeah, well.” Bri grinned and shook his head, chuckling. “Someone’s got to, young lady, or you’ll run wild the rest of your life.”

  “I don’t run wild! I’m very responsible, I’ll have you know. I’ve a full-time job with a very reputable publishing company and a rented house in a very nice part of the city. I have a company car and an expense account.” Her chin lifted. “I’ve even been offered a promotion. National marketing manager. What do you think of that, then?”

  He snorted. “Full-time nothing. It’s not for you, all that soft city stuff. You need something to get your teeth stuck into. Something you’re proud of, that you care about and want to fight for. Like the commune.”

  Momentarily she was shocked into silence, then she said, voice small, “I tried.”

  She could feel Lee’s and Suzie’s gazes on her, but she ignored them.

  “You did good,” said Bri, voice softening. “Your mum too. You both did real good, but it wasn’t to be, was it?”

  “No.”

  Bri reached a hand around the back of his seat and waggled his stubby fingers at her. She gripped his hand briefly. He squeezed back, giving their clasped hands a little shake like he used to, and she could feel the back of her throat close with tears.

  “You find something worth fighting for, you call me.” He dropped his hand and peered at her over his shoulder. “I’d like to sling a handful of flour patties at some blokes, believe me.”

  While Bri radioed Becky at Control, she leaned across to Suzie and murmured, “Sorry about that, but we haven’t seen each other in a while.”

  “I think it’s nice,” she said. “Especially now I know you are the Georgia.”

  “What do you mean, the?”

  As Suzie’s face softened into a smile, Georgia realized she’d done the woman a disservice. She wasn’t pretty. She was stunning. Glossy, shoulder-length blue-black hair, slanting almond eyes below fine arched wings of eyebrows, a perfectly formed tiny nose, and a heart-shaped mouth. Her cheekbones could have cut Parmesan.

  “I’ve been flying with Bri the past few years,” Suzie said. “Cairns, some days all the way to Brizzy. Long flights, just me and him for hours. I know all about Joey and your battles. Bri never quite knew who to root for, you know. He was torn between family loyalty to his nephew, and admiration for your indomitability.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Georgia ruefully. “I got pasted regularly.”

  Suzie was laughing. “So I gather.”

  Georgia sensed Lee watching them from the copilot’s seat, but before she could say a word, Bri was offering a headset to Lee. “You fly?”

  “Yup.”

  “Wow. Two pilots,” Georgia remarked. “Does this mean we get in-flight service?”

  Lee leaned around to give her one of his scary stares, but she refused to back down. The more unfriendly he was, the more he got under her skin and the more she wanted to irritate him. She took a good long look at his watch, a Tag Heuer chronograph with a copper dial and fine-brushed steel bracelet, and was reminded of her ex-boyfriend, Charlie, hankering after a Tag just like it in David Jones’s window. Even if she took the promotion she’d never be able to afford a watch like that. She knew it was worth over four thousand bucks.

  From the look on Lee’s face, suspicious, guarded, she reckoned he was daring her to remark on it.

  “Nice watch,” she said cheerfully. “Can I get one like that duty free?”

  “I doubt your annual expense account would stretch that far,” he responded coolly.

  Incensed, she was going to tell him about her upcoming Easter bonus, but Bri interrupted, wanting to know what airplanes Lee had flown—pilot bonding, she supposed—and then he started the engine. No chance of sensible talk through the clattering roar that followed. As Bri ran through the pre-takeoff checklist he tapped each instrument with a forefinger, and Georgia settled back, putting Lee’s unfriendliness aside and hoping the flight wouldn’t be too bumpy.

  Through the window she could see Evie’s little Suzuki, slumped beneath a dripping African oil palm. She wondered what Evie would say about the fresh dent in her car. She must ring her as soon as she arrived home in Sydney and offer to pay for the damage. Not that Evie would take her money. Local etiquette dictated that if a neighbor or mate was in need, you loaned your chainsaw or mower, your boat, your car, no worries about insurance or getting paid back if you destroyed their property. In fact, all the better if you wrecked what you’d been loaned; it made a good tale to tell down the pub, and you owed them. Big-time.

  Finally, Bri taxied the little airplane to the far end of the puddle-dotted dirt runway. Way in the distance Georgia saw a tall figure standing on the SunAir office steps, looking their way. For some reason he looked familiar, but she couldn’t think why. Probably another local she’d known as a kid.

  “All buckled up?” Bri asked.

  Nobody said anything, so Georgia said dutifully, “All buckled up.”

  The engine note rose as Bri pushed the throttle forward a fraction, then again, and they were buzzing and bouncing and shaking and rattling along the runway. A strip of rub
ber from the window seal wriggled loose and fell onto Georgia’s lap. She tried to push it back into place but it fell off again, so she gave up and put it in the seat pocket, hopping the airplane would stay together for the rough ride south.

  As they swooped into the sky, a vision of the dead cassowary filled her mind, the vivid blue of his face spattered by grit from the road, the sturdy legs and great spread toes with their elongated spikes upturned and lifeless, his rudimentary wings of glossy hairlike feathers, reduced to a few long, bare quills, marred and smeared with mud.

  If her mother had been there, they would never have flown. She would have taken the death of the great bird as an omen, a sinister and fateful promise.

  The cassowary is, after all, flightless.

  FOUR

  Georgia was staring at Lee’s tattoo when the Piper’s engine gave a splutter, but she didn’t take any notice. Bri’s aircraft always spluttered.

  They had been flying about half an hour when Lee took off his sweatshirt, revealing a tight-fitting gray T-shirt with the sleeves stripped off. Smooth-skinned and muscular as he was, the tattoo suited him. A blue Chinese dragon twisted up his biceps, wings unfurled, its tongue forked with flames. It reminded her that she had wanted a tattoo, just after her first organized raid on the townies. Her mother had given her permission to have a tattoo of a rose or a heart, but flatly refused the request for a snake entwined around a dagger.

  Miles away, still staring at the snarling dragon, she barely looked up when Lee leaned forward and tapped a dial, checking with Bri. “Fuel pressure,” he said.

  “Switch fuel tanks,” Bri said on a half-yawn. “That’ll sort it.”

  Turning her gaze outside, Georgia could see a river snaking through the carpet of trees, winding east for the Coral Sea, and guessed it might be the Bloomfield. Apparently there was an exquisite luxury hotel nestled in there somewhere, with lagoon pools and swim-up bars, and she peered down, wishing she’d come to Queensland for a pampering holiday with massages and five-star service rather than Tom’s funeral.