Ahead of me, through the gap between the boulders at the entrance, a wedge-tail eagle worked a slow circle against the blue. Riding the morning thermals. Patient as my sweet Ingrid had been, before the guilt had gotten to her, that was.
“You’ll get your turn,” I muttered up to the eagle. “Just not yet.”
My voice came out rough and small in the ancient cave.
I leaned my head back against the cool rock and closed my eyes for a moment. Just a moment. Just to rest them. The pain in my kidneys was a damn fist tightening around my middle, squeezing harder with every breath, and I didn’t know how many more days my body could take it.
This body might not last another night.
It might not last ‘til sundown.
Bob better get his fucking ass here soon, so I can get this thing done while I still got the strength to pull a trigger.
The bottle tops jingled.
I snapped my eyes open.
The sharp metallic jingle inside the cave meant something had tripped the fishing line I’d strung between the mulga trees.
I went still.
Damn Panadol was still half-dissolved on my tongue. I couldn’t swallow.
The bottle tops jingled again. Just once. Then nothing.
A roo maybe. Big red could have come down from the ridge looking for shade. Or it could be a feral pig, snouting through the scrub. Bloody pigs were everywhere this year. Or a dingo. Plenty of dingoes out here, too.
Could be any of them.
Could be Bob.
I swallowed the Panadol paste and rolled onto my side. My stitched-up hand stung like a bitch as I pushed off the ground, and I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood. I used the pain to focus.
Up. Move. Now.
I scrambled across the cave floor in a half crouch, knees screaming. The empty service revolver dug into my hip, and the shotgun felt heavier than it should. I made it to the rock outcrop at the back of the cave that I’d picked out as my fallback the first night. I dropped to a knee behind it and rested my shoulder against the stone.
My breath sawed in and out of me.
Forty feet of cave stretched between me and the entrance. The drum sat right in the middle, dead ahead. Bats hung in their roost behind me, jittering and clicking as always. The duffel full of cash was against the back wall to my right, zipper open, the bricks of notes stacked inside catching what little light came in from the front.
I braced the shotgun on top of the rock, lined up on the cave mouth.
I waited.
Everything went quiet. The kind of quiet that spelled a fuck-ton of trouble was on the way.
A small sound echoed in. A boot scuffing gravel, or a stone kicked loose somewhere outside. The wrong kind of sound for a roo. Roos didn’t kick things. Pigs didn’t either.
Men did.
My damn heart drummed so hard I couldn’t hear past it. Each thump was its own roar in my ears, drowning out anything else that might’ve come through the gap between the boulders. I forced myself to breathe slow … slow … slow.
It didn’t help.
Come on, you bastard. Come on. Show your face.
If it was Bob, I had him. I’d worked this out a hundred times in the last two days. He’d come through the gap between the boulders, silhouetted against the morning light for half a second, and that half second was all I needed.
