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2
Kings Canyon
Northern Territory
Australia
“It’s all right, sweetheart, you’re all right. You’re safe. Come on, wake up, you had a nightmare. You’re okay. I’ve got you.”
She heard his voice, a man’s voice, and he was close, too close. Terror squeezed her throat, made her heart kettledrum. The men were near, coming to kill her like they’d killed her parents. She fought like a wild thing, hitting at his arms holding her.
He held her tightly against him and continued to whisper against her cheek, his voice low and calm. Slowly she came awake, hiccuping at the knot of fear in her throat. She saw a dim face above her, a face she knew, a face she trusted. He was holding her, stroking her back as he continued to speak in his low easy voice, saying nonsense, really, reassuring her. Finally, she knew who it was.
Another nightmare.
Allison whispered, “Uncle Leo?”
“Yes, baby, I’m here. It’s all right. You’re safe. I’ve got you.”
“I’m sorry.”
Leo continued to hold her, lightly rubbed his hands up and down her back, slow and easy, like she was a wounded and terrified kangaroo joey tangled in a barbed-wire fence. “Don’t be daft. I’d have bloody nightmares, too, if I’d been through what you have. That’s right, breathe deep, that’s my girl.” He kissed her forehead. Slowly, the images from her dream blurred and faded. It was odd but sometimes in her dreams she felt the pain from the bullet wound on the side of her head, and the gash in her arm from the wood shard. She sucked in another deep breath, locked her arms around his back, and pressed her face against his chest.
The paralyzing fear wasn’t as hard to shake off this time. Even though it was pleasantly warm in the tent, she shivered and burrowed closer. She felt Uncle Leo’s steady strong heartbeat against her cheek, the warmth of his large hands stroking up and down her back. The world, her new world, wove itself together again.
The nightmares came less often now, but still, when they were on walkabout with one of their small tour groups, Uncle Leo slept in her tent, his sleeping bag close. “Do you think any of the jocks heard me scream?”
She always asked. His voice was low and gentle, his warm breath feathering the cool night air against her cheek. “No, you didn’t scream this time. Do you realize this is the first nightmare you’ve had in a week? That’s very good.”
“Then how did you know?”
He didn’t tell her whenever she tossed even once, he was wide awake. “You were moaning and thrashing around in your sleeping bag. Take some more deep breaths now, sweetheart. Here, drink some water.”
Leo handed her bottled water, watched her chug, water dripping off her chin. He remembered the first night he’d been with her, sleeping on a cot in her hospital room. He’d jerked awake when she’d screamed, grabbed for his knife that wasn’t, of course, anywhere near. He remembered how helpless he’d felt, but he’d pulled her against him then, too, hugged her and spoke nonsense until she quieted, nodding to the nurse who came silently to the doorway. Even after six months, it still ripped his heart out when she had that nightmare.
He rocked her now, feeling her finally ease. He remembered the phone call he’d gotten from the police in Porte Franklyn, Virginia, informing him his sister and her husband had been murdered, and his niece was in the hospital with a head wound. It had taken him a full day in a single-engine prop plane and a series of flights across the Pacific to reach her. He was grief-stricken, furious, demanded to know who had done such a thing, but the police had no answers. Maybe a home invasion, a robbery gone wrong, they’d said. He’d called Detective Jeter Thorpe every week at first, but after every phone call, he’d had to tell Allison there was nothing new. At least she was safe with him now, her only living family, in her new home in Australia. At first he’d been terrified he had sole responsibility for a twelve-year-old girl, but that hadn’t lasted. Now she was his.
Leo was single, loved what he called “safe” danger. He was thirty-one years old, viewed by many as a throwback to swashbuckler days. He’d become a celebrity, something that always amused and amazed him. Because he wrestled crocs? He didn’t. Because he knew how to survive in the outback? He did.
This weekend, he and Allison were leading a group of four jocks from Alabama on a challenging trek in the Northern Territory, along with only one team member, his good friend Jawli, an Aborigine. He’d established his company with Jawli six years before—Extreme Australian Adventures. They’d both survived just about everything the outback could throw at them, and Leo loved the life, loved owing nothing to anyone except his partner. But now there was his sister’s twelve-year-old daughter, who’d survived her parents’ murder, survived being shot herself. Just before he’d arrived in Porte Franklyn there’d been a second attempt on her life in the hospital, thwarted by a nurse who’d screamed until the man had raced away down the stairs. He hadn’t been found, either. It curdled Leo’s blood to think she might have been killed in her hospital bed. The police had welcomed him as a savior when he arrived. Not only was he Allison Rendahl’s uncle, he’d take her to Australia, on the other side of the planet, where she’d be safe.
Leo had brought her home to his sprawling glass house outside of Port Douglas atop a cliff overlooking the Great Barrier Reef. His niece was a silent, skinny kid, lost and grieving at first, afraid of every sound and wary of him, though she knew he was her uncle, her mother’s younger brother. He’d taken her to a place as strange to her as an alien planet. Thankfully she’d slept most of the way on the flights from Washington to Sydney and Sydney to Cairns, and when she was awake, he’d kept it simple. The seasons in Australia were opposite of those in the US; winter was summer and summer was winter. He told her kangaroos hopped around his front yard, and she had to be careful of the crocodiles. He’d cupped her face and told her Australia was so beautiful it would make her heart race. She’d whispered to him, “I read all about Botany Bay, how the English sent their prisoners there.”
Six months ago, he thought, and now it’s already January; such a short time in the scheme of things, yet she’d taken to her life with him more easily than he’d dared hope, woven her way into his life, actually, and into his heart. For the first time in his life, Leo felt fiercely protective of another person. Allison was no longer the silent little ghost with blank eyes who’d held his hand so tightly his bones hurt when there was an unexpected sound. She was wary of everyone at first, even at his house near Port Douglas. Not knowing what else to do, he’d taken her on a four-hour dawn hike around the Uluru Base Walk in the Northern Territory with a family from Norway. She was a fit, athletic kid, so he wasn’t too worried it would lay her flat, though he took more breaks than usual for her. To his great relief, she’d taken to being out there with him like a koala to eucalyptus leaves. She was enthralled to hear all about the story of the rock’s significance to the local Anangu people and how many Aussies had fought to ban climbing the rock, to preserve it and to respect the Anangu. He’d seen Allison smile then, her mother’s smile.
From that day on, she’d thrived, and he did everything in his power to see her smile again. He said quietly now, “We need to get some sleep or those college jocks might even show us up tomorrow.”
Leo kissed her forehead again, rubbed her back. He’d learned that soothed her like nothing else. She whispered against his shoulder, “I won’t let you down, Uncle Leo. I’ve looked them over, sooks the lot of them.” She’d learned quickly that Aussies said sook, not wimp. He felt her mouth curve into a grin. “We’ll leave them moaning in the dust. Did you see those dark sunnies they were wearing even after the sun went down? They looked like wankers.”
She settled against his side, breathed in his familiar scent. She trusted this man she’d met only three times in her life before he’d come to her at the hospital. Her mother had chuckled about him, called him the family “wild hair.” Her father had rolled his eyes when he showed her a postcard he’d sent of the Blue Mountains near Sydney, a place they called a bushwalker’s spiritual pilgrimage. Allison had loved the word bushwalker, it called up visions of adventure and exciting discoveries. And now she’d actually hiked there on a four-hour trail with two intrepid older couples from Maine. The first time out, she’d been exhausted, but now, after six months, that Blue Mountains hike was easy for her—a piece of piss in Aussie talk. She loved the smell of the eucalyptus trees that stretched as far as she could see, the sound of the cockatoos screeching across the valley. She couldn’t wait for another group to book a tour to the Blue Mountains.
Uncle Leo took her to other landscapes so strange, so incredibly beautiful—he’d been right to tell her they could make you cry—and so profoundly hot they’d quickly kill you if you didn’t have shelter and water. This strange and awesome world was her world now. She thought every day of her parents, but less and less of her structured life in Porte Franklyn, with its sleepovers with girlfriends talking about makeup and boys, the volleyball and basketball teams. All of that was a world away, another life, another Allison.
Tonight, she and Uncle Leo were in Watarrka National Park with four extreme adventurers—actually, four college guys who’d bragged they could hike anything, in any conditions. She knew Uncle Leo would test them to their limits. In three hours, well before dawn, she and Uncle Leo and Jawli would lead them on the demanding six-kilometer Kings Canyon Rim Walk. If that didn’t knacker the jocks, if they proved themselves up to it, Uncle Leo would add on another hike he’d mapped out himself along the starkly beautiful Larapinta Trail in the Northern Territory. When they returned to Port Douglas where they planned to scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef, Uncle Leo would take them to the Down and Out Pub and buy them some cold ones, as the Aussies called beer, and the lot of them would probably drink their brains out and get legless, another Aussie saying. And they’d salute Leo and maybe Allison, too, if she stayed long enough to drink a glass of lemonade.
She enjoyed young men, always eager to show how tough they were. She remembered the fourteen-day trek in the outback leading six English soccer players from Manchester United, their demand, made with a smirk, to see what this outback was all about. And they’d looked at the skinny now-thirteen-year-old girl and joked among themselves who would end up carrying her. She’d nearly killed herself, but she’d made it.
So many adventures, a few unpleasant if the clients were jerks, but usually they’d get into it and their excitement would crackle in the air. And now she was an accepted part of Uncle Leo’s team. If not for the nightmares, her life would be perfect.
