“Surfing.”
“Where you headed?”
“Home. Lionheart.”
“Relax. You’re not in trouble. Hands behind your ears. You know the drill.” The cop patted her down. At six-two, she was taller than both officers. “Lift your shirt.”
She lifted her leather jacket and men’s XL tee, revealing washboard abs and tattoos that she knew they wouldn’t like. Cops hated slurs against prison guards.
“Turn slowly.”
She glanced over her shoulder.
He frowned, looking unimpressed by the “SAVE A NAIL, HAMMER A SCREW” tattoo on her lower back.
Shit… I should have that removed…
The cops stepped away to consult. When they returned, the Collins one stuck his thumbs in his belt. “Is there someone you can call to come get your bike?”
“Mate,” she said. “Can I pay a fine or something? What the hell?”
“Relax, we just have to ask you questions and this is not a safe place to do it. We’re not messing with you. We’re not charging you with nothing.”
She looked at the sky and bit her lip. A flock of Sulfur-crested cockatoos flew over. She refused to glance down into the backseat of the squad car.Don’t do this to me, mate. Give me a ticket, but don’t take me in.If they put her in a box again, she’d have a panic attack. Sweat dripping down her lower back tickled.
The officer walked away, lifting a cell phone to his ear. He didn’t use the police radio. When he returned, he jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Get out of here, Madonna. Vamoose.”
She walked back to her bike, slid a long leg over it and turned on the engine.
“Stay out of trouble.”
Mute, she put her helmet on, skin crawling.
She couldn’t bring herself to thank them. She waited for a break in the cars before pulling out into traffic. In a side mirror she watched the patrol car pull out behind her and trail her from a distance.
She watched the speedometer.
After the patrol car disappeared, she felt a burning stab in the back of her neck—a knot in the muscles, her body holding onto stress. As predicted, she had sweat through her shirt. At the sign for Gordonvale she made an impulse decision and turned. A quickie on the way home would loosen her up.
On a shady residential street in Gordonvale lined with jacarandas she slowed before turning left into the open garage of a run-down white Queenslander with the world’s tiniest greenhouse in the garden. She parked her bike and took off her helmet.
She had outrun the storm for now.
Ronnie tied her hair up in a messy topknot, then tapped a knuckle against the side door.
Her ex answered in beach clothes. Maude looked like a model, bangs framing green eyes, and subtle make-up that had probably taken an hour to put on. Maude rolled her eyes when she saw her.
Ronnie pressed her finger to her lips, glancing behind her past the pile of tiny pink sandals into the house where cartoons played. She stole a quick glimpse of the back of the nine-year-old girl’s head. It wasn’t much, but it was proof of life. The hot poker touched her between the shoulder-blades again. She swallowed.
Ronnie’s ex sighed, stepped down into the garage and locked the door so they wouldn’t be interrupted.
Maude was also heavily tattooed, but that was where all similarities ended. The pale woman ran manicured nails through heat-straightened auburn hair, fluffed it, releasing the familiar scent of expensive perfume, then managed to look down at Ronnie despite being a foot shorter. Maude reached up to press a soft palm against Ronnie’s T-shirt over her sports bra, fisted the cotton and pushed her against the garage wall.
Ronnie picked up the smaller woman, carrying her to the hood of Maude’s candy-colored Chevy truck.
Around Maude, Ronnie became fourteen again, hyped up on first-job money, cheap booze, and joyrides in the back of awful men’s cars. She always felt gross afterwards. Her footy teammates called it ‘the putangover.’
Mountain air became colder as she rode the retro black Kawasaki up the Gillies Range Road higher in elevation through eucalyptus mountains. A sign, WELCOME TO THE ATHERTON TABLELANDS, preceded green hills. Ronnie leaned into a bend in the road and then straightened. Queensland’s Wet Tropics contained several wildly different climates between the coast and the Outback.
