Does she know about the money and where it came from, or who owned it?
Was she involved with Frank and Bob and whatever mess they were in?
Christ! The Sapphire I’d known wouldn’t jaywalk, let alone get tangled up in whatever Frank and Bob were neck-deep in.
But people change. God knows I have.
I pushed open the back-screen door and marched across the yard, where the air was hot, the space wide open, and it didn’t smell like anyone I’d spent over ten years trying to forget.
She was here to ask questions, and if there was one thing I remembered about Sapphire Delaney, it was that she was relentless. Once she locked onto something, she didn’t give up until she fired every shot.
With the number of secrets the Branson family was sitting on, that was a problem.
I stood in the yard with the sun hammering down and the heat pressing in from every direction.
This was going to be hell.
She was hell.
Sapphire Delaney. The woman I’d been trying to forget for too damn long.
Chapter 3
Frank
* * *
The Camry’s headlights swept the garage wall as I pulled in. I killed the lights and the engine, dropping myself into darkness. The overhead bulb had blown years ago, back when my brother Willy had still been alive. He’d nagged me to change the damn thing, whining about how dark it was in that stupid little garage. I’d told him to fix it his damn self. Good thing he hadn’t. Much safer this way.
I sat for a moment with the engine ticking down, watching the rearview mirror. The backstreet was empty and quiet, except for that bloody mutt up the road that barked all damn day. I should’ve picked up some rat poison while I was at the shops. That dog was going to be the death of me.
Nah. Probably not. I thought I’d be dead by now. Turns out I’m tougher than I gave myself credit for, though the pain roiling in my belly was testing the fuck outta me.
I got out of the car, moved to the rear, and hauled down the tilt door. Damn thing screeched louder than the bats that swarmed the southern swamp back at Koolaroo every summer. I dragged the door the last foot, dropped the latch, and stood with my back against the warm tin in the pitch dark, listening.
My heart was going like it had at my first rodeo. My bladder was worse. If I didn’t get to the dunny in the next two minutes, I was going to piss myself. Or shit myself. Probably both. I was sixty-three years old, and I couldn’t hold it like I had on all them cattle musters.
I shook away that line of thinking. Last thing I needed was to think about the good ol’ times.
I grabbed the grocery bags from the back seat, lined them up at the side door, and stopped to listen again, but heard nothing but my own heartbeat and the wind moving through the lemon tree and the frangipani. Leaves shifted. Grass swayed. That stupid clothes hoist turned around and made that squeak that pissed me off as much as that damn dog.
Other than that, everything was still.
It took six trips across the yard and up the rickety back steps to get everything inside.
I’d bought more than I’d planned at the grocery store. But I’d been living on tinned soup and stale bread for weeks, and I couldn’t take any more of that crap. I’d bought eight loaves of bread, six packs of sausages, and tins of soup, but ones different from the last time. I’d also bought bulk dunny paper and a pile of other stuff I hadn’t known I wanted until I’d seen it. Best of all, I’d bought four bottles of rum.
Once everything was inside Willy’s house, I shook four Panadol into my palm and knocked them back dry. My hand trembled. Fucking cancer was pressing on something in my guts that was making my eyes water. And that was saying something. I’d had my share of injuries in my life. I had scars all over my body to prove it, too. But this pain was going to be the death of me. Literally.
I knew what it was. I’d googled it, which had probably been a mistake. The cancer and all this pain were gonna get worse.
I’d been throwing back four Panadol at a go for weeks now, but it barely took the edge off. However, going to a doctor was out of the question, and a hospital wasn’t an option either. Bob Ackerman would have eyes on both. Hell, Bob would have eyes everywhere by now. Going out today had been a risk I shouldn’t have taken.
But I needed rum. And sausages. And dunny paper.
I grabbed the thirty-pack of dunny rolls and made it to the toilet with about two seconds to spare.
When I came back to the kitchen, I was sweating, and my legs felt like wet rope, but the worst was over. I turned on the TV. NCIS was on again. I’d never seen the show before I came here. Couldn’t decide if I liked it or not. But it was better than the crap on the other channels. Who the hell watched Farmer Wants a Wife? What a load of bullshit. Farmers don’t want wives. They want rain, sunshine, and good breeding stock. No wife was ever gonna beat that.
