I scrambled to my feet and wiped my muddy hands down my trousers. Then I paused and sniffed the air. No, not mud. “Oh my God!” I lifted my hands to my face and gagged. “Jesus Christ.” I reeled at the rank stench. It was definitely shit of some description. I searched the ground for my flashlight, shook it a few times, and then took a closer look at my surroundings.
The Rover hadn’t ploughed into a tree or a bush at all. It had spun down the bank, across a gravel driveway that led to a large agricultural machinery shed secured with padlocked double doors, and into a fucking mountain of manure. One ofthreemountains of manure, to be exact, each the size of an average car. I ran the flashlight over my filthy hands and groaned, “You have got to be fucking kidding me.” I glanced woefully at the thunderous sky, blinking against the spotty rain. “You figured I needed this too, huh? Very fucking funny.”
I walked to the closest patch of grass and cleaned my hands as best I could, then aimed a kick at the back door of the Rover and yipped with pain when the shudder ran through my aching chest. I glared daggers at the car, flipped my collar up in a vain attempt to stop the rain trickling down my neck, and contemplated the vehicle’s damage.
Well, shit.
It was a lot worse than I’d imagined. The sputtering yellow light revealed the front half of the Rover buried too deep in the manure to simply push out. Even if I had been able to move it, the rear panel on the driver’s side was staved in, leaving the tyre at an odd angle and useless to drive. If the tree had connected with the driver’s door instead, I wasn’t sure I’d be standing there at all. The realisation sent a cold chill through my body. Onething was certain: I wouldn’t be driving the damn thing out of there anytime soon.
Which still left the question of the dog. With wet socks sucking to my feet inside my shoes, my trousers heavy with muck, and still a little jittery on my feet, I shrugged into my equally filthy coat and wandered cautiously back to where I’d last spotted the animal. I scoured the vegetation at the side of the road but found nothing except a narrow muddy walking path leading deep into the forest. There were no paw prints that I could see, but that didn’t mean much in the weather, and it was still the most likely route the animal had taken to escape or lick its wounds.
Thunder rang in the distance, out toward the Cook Strait, and I hoped that signalled the worst of the rain had passed. Not that you’d know it based on the irritating showers of water that landed on my head from the tree canopy above. Thank God it was spring and I wasn’t completely freezing my arse off as well. Small mercies, I supposed.
The flashlight sputtered, then winked off and I whacked it against my thigh. It flicked on and off and on again, and I aimed the weak light up the narrow trail. Nothing but trees and bush and thin tendrils of mist snaking in and around the tree trunks like ghostly fingers.
I gave a heavy sigh and glanced back toward my car. It was a dry place to wait for a tow truck, if nothing else. I’d tried to find the dog, right? No point in getting myself into a worse state by chasing it into the forest.
That decided, I was making my way back to the Rover when two spots of gold flashed further up the path. There and gone in an instant. Just like eyes. A possum, most likely. But what if it wasn’t? The dog. It could be the dog.
Or a possum, idiot.
Jesus Christ.
I screwed my eyes shut and dragged a wet hand down my face, forgetting about the whole residual manure situation. “Fuck!” I lifted my shirt to wipe the worst of it off my face and figured I didn’t want to look in a mirror anytime soon. If Judd had seen me, he’d have laughed his arse off. I didn’t do dirt. Hell, I could barely empty the coffee grounds from my espresso machine without needing a shower. Not that I gave a fuck about what Judd thought anymore. It wasn’t like I’d loved him... or anything... right?
I swallowed hard and lifted my face to the rain, tasting salt on my lips. I wasn’t crying because that would be too fucking ridiculous. Judd Havers didn’t deserve my tears, and he sure as shit didn’t deserve my affection.
I gave an angry shake of my head and returned to weighing my options. Following an unknown trail into an unknown forest, in the dark, on a stormy night, was a plotline straight out of a cheap horror movie.No.The sensible thing would be to stay with the car and call a damn tow truck. I could catch a lift back into town with them, or I could call a taxi and deal with everything tomorrow. Even better.
I glanced between my dead car and the path leading into the forest, considered that very sensible option for all of five seconds, then decided,fuck it. If there was ever a day to consign common sense to the trash, I was living through said day with fucking bells on.
I was also clearly losing my mind.
If I got captured by a serial killer and locked up as his personal sex toy in some underground bunker for ten years, so be it. It seemed a much better option than going home and explaining to my mother that her perpetually disappointing son had lost his best friend, his boyfriend, his estranged father’s car, and his company, all in one day. Somehow, in my mother’s eyes,it would inevitably turn out to be my fault. I could just imagine her response.
But why would Judd do something like that? He obviously loves you. Do you think he was maybe looking for something?
A heart? A conscience? A bigger dick? Any sense of a moral compass? All of those worked for me.
It’s just such a shame,she’d no doubt continue.You and Phillip work so well together. You’ve known each other since you were kids. Whatever will you do without him?
I’m the creative brain of the company, Mum. Phillip is simply the pretty face who sells what I design.
Maybe. But you’re not good with people, Thad. You never have been. You’re too... reserved. Phillip is such a social animal. I think you’re making a mistake. Maybe you should just forgive and move on.
It played out in my head, word for word. So yeah, all in all, the serial-killer option had a lot going for it.
I fished the car keys from my pocket and tried to lock the Rover without success. The doors had been wrenched out of plumb, and the mechanism refused to cooperate. The day wasn’t done with me yet. But if I was going to abandon the ungrateful machine, I was damn well taking my briefcase with me. It held a potential future that I might well need since the old one wasn’t looking too hot anymore.
I returned to the car and grabbed the case from the passenger footwell. I ditched the tie and rolled my muddy suit trousers up to my knees. Then, with my briefcase tucked under my arm and the flashlight illuminating the path ahead, I headed into the forest, calling for the dog, pretty sure I looked as ludicrous as I felt.
Like I could give a rat’s arse.
Ten minutes later, with nothing to show for my efforts except a couple of uncertain glimpses of... something, eyes maybe, or aflash of white in the distance, and I was done playing rescuer. My trousers clung to my legs, my chest ached from the seatbelt and airbag combo, the leather of my expensive briefcase was sodden to its frame, and I suddenly found I could, actually, give a fair bit more than a rat’s arse to be sitting in front of a warm fire with a long gin and a rerun ofGame of Thronesseason three on the telly. The red-wedding scene seemed particularly apt for my current emotional state.
Stepping off the muddy path, I set my briefcase on a rotten stump and sat on top. I killed the flashlight to conserve its batteries and let my eyes adjust to the evening gloom, made even darker by the rain clouds hovering above. The surrounding bush looked exactly the same as all the other bush I’d passed through up until this point—grey and empty and wet.
I couldn’t have said which direction the road lay anymore; the trail had looped and turned so many times that I’d lost my bearings. My stomach growled loudly into the dark, which was another thing. I was so fucking starving I could eat my hand, or maybe that dog if I ever bloody found it.
