I flew over the address once at altitude, picked a paddock half a kilometer south, and brought the chopper down into the dry grass behind a stand of wattle trees covered in yellow flowers. I killed the engine, and as the rotors wound down, the country went quiet around us.
We climbed out into the heat. It was late afternoon and still thirty-eight degrees, the kind of dry heat that pushed the breath back into your lungs before you could properly take one.
Sapphire took off at a jog along the fence line. I fell in beside her.
We ran through the dry grass, past a crusted dam that hadn’t held water in months, and past a rusted-out tractor somebody had abandoned mid-paddock. The town was quiet around us. No cars on the back streets. No kids. No dogs. Just the distant hum of a generator somewhere and the sound of our boots in the dry grass.
We came up on the back of the property through a vacant block somebody had been using as a dumping ground. An old fridge on its side. A couch with the stuffing oozing out. A stack of crates crumbling slowly back to the earth.
“Stay back,” Sapphire said, not breaking stride.
“Like hell.”
She slowed and glared at me. Then she picked up speed again.
She didn’t argue. Not the way she had an hour ago on that creek bank. Maybe she’d figured out I wasn’t going to back down. Or maybe she’d decided having someone at her back wasn’t the worst idea when we didn’t know what we were heading into.
Either way, she let me keep up and didn’t say another word about it.
We came up to the back fence made of old timber palings, half of them leaning or missing, easy to see through. The yard on the other side was small and unremarkable. A lemon tree in the right corner hadn’t been trimmed in years. A frangipani on the left was still dropping flowers onto the dead grass beneath it. A Hills hoist stood in the middle of the yard, empty, one arm bent at an angle like something had hit it.
The house sat on timber stumps the way old Queensland houses did, too low to stand comfortably under. The underneath was enclosed with vertical palings weathered to gray, many of them missing like the fence. A narrow door was set into them fronting a tiny room. Laundry or storage. The kind of space that collected decades of crap.
Weathered timber stairs climbed to the back landing. No verandah. Just a small platform at the top where the screen and back door hung half open, wide enough that I could see the fridge through it. To the left, a window looked into the kitchen, with a row of old timber cupboards along the back wall. No light was on in there, but dim light came from somewhere deeper inside the house.
Sapphire pulled her service weapon from the small of her back, checked the chamber, and eyeballed me. “Stay here.”
“Like hell.”
She growled at me, then crouched low and moved along the inside of the fence toward the lemon tree, stopping where the palings were gone. She slipped through into the yard, and I followed her. We crouched behind the lemon tree and peered up at the house.
“Shit.” Sapphire’s breath caught.
Mine did, too.
Two bodies were on the kitchen floor.
One was hog-tied, rope around his wrists and ankles, another length running up to his neck.
The other body was on its side. Even from our limited view, I could see a large knife buried in his ribs with the wooden handle sticking out.
Was one of them Frank? Or had Frank killed them?
Sapphire gripped my forearm hard. She shook her head once, her eyes fierce.
I shook my head right back.
She mouthed, “Kayden.”
I leaned into her ear. “I’m coming with you. Not negotiable.”
She held my gaze for one long beat, then she turned back to the house.
A man stepped into view inside the kitchen, and she gasped.
My blood went cold.
Bob.
