Down Among the Dead Men (Entangled Ignite) (5 page)

“We’ve been to play group,” a chubby woman behind Ginny said, smiling broadly. Her arms were full of toys and her white hair was coming loose from a clip. “You must be Caitlyn. I’m Rose, and I’ve heard all about you.”

“Oh.” She glanced at Dale, but he gave a slight shake of his head.

“Not from me,” he said as he bent to pick up his daughter.

“No, Dale hasn’t told me a thing, but I hear around town that you’re writing a book.”

“Oh, yes. I’m not writing it yet, though. I’m doing research.”

“I’d love to have a chat with you. I’ve always fancied writing a book myself. Will you drop round for a coffee when you have time for a break?”

“That would be nice. Thank you.”

“Lovely. I’d better take these inside before I drop them.” She nodded at the toys. “See you later.”

Dale moved aside so she could enter with her load. He put Ginny down to run after her grandmother.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “Don’t feel obliged to come round.”

“No, it’s fine. Your mum seems nice.”

“She is, but will you be able to maintain the author act?”

She grimaced. “That I don’t know, but I’ll have to try, won’t I? Well, thanks for your time.”

“No problem. I’ll be in touch.”

After the cool of Dale’s house, getting into the Valiant was like being blasted by a hairdryer. She wound down the window and swore she’d never take air conditioning for granted again.

Back at the service station, with a lineup of customers waiting for fuel, she had no choice but to pitch in and start serving. She dealt swiftly with the first two and waved them off before turning to the third. His car was too new to be a local’s. Not a luxury vehicle but not the usual mode of transport around the opal fields, either. Nor was the driver the usual, with his casual but expensive clothes, neat blond hair, and very fair skin.

“Hi,” she said, smiling. “How are you?”

“Great.” He smiled back and hooked the nozzle into the tank. “Are all the locals as friendly as you?”

“I’m not really a local.”

“Oh? So, what are you doing here?”

“Having a holiday.” She removed the nozzle from the tank and fitted it back into its place on the pump.

He pulled a face. “Funny sort of a holiday.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a long story.”

A truck pulled up behind his car and she waved at the elderly miner at the wheel to let him know he’d been seen. The city guy handed her a credit card and she led him into the office to do the transaction.

“What are my chances of finding somewhere to sleep in town?” he asked as she followed him back outside.

“Good, I think. The pub should be able to accommodate you.”

“The pub it is, then.” He opened the door of his car and smiled at her across the roof. “Perhaps you’d join me there for a drink sometime? Moral support for a fellow outsider? Nothing heavy. I’m not hitting on you or anything.”

“How long will you be staying?”

“I’m not sure yet. Depends on how much I find to do.”

“You won’t be here long, then,” she said, keeping a straight face.

He nodded. “That figures. I’m Steve. And you are?”

“Busy.” She jerked her head at the waiting truck.

“Point taken. I might be back to hear your long story when I run short of entertainment,” he said, swinging himself into the driver’s seat and taking off in a cloud of dust.

“Flash fucker,” the old miner growled.

“Yeah,” she said and went to fill the truck.

When the miner left, she yawned and ambled toward the workshop. Max’s customer was easing his vehicle out of the workshop. She waited while Max spoke to him through the driver’s window and waved him off.

“Who was the guy in the Mazda?” Max stepped back into the shade of the workshop.

Caitlyn joined her. “Says he’s a tourist.”

“You don’t believe him?”

“I don’t know. He doesn’t seem the type to want to rough it on holiday, but what do I know? Besides, what else could he be?”

“I reckon turning the air conditioning down would be rough enough for him.”

“What about your customer? Why did he wait around for so long? Was he being difficult?”

“Tommy Hanna? Nah, he likes to help. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he tries hard, so I give him a discount.”

“You won’t get rich that way.” She smiled to show that she wasn’t being critical. “Well, I’m going to make lunch now. You coming in?”

“You bet. I could eat the arse out of a low-flying duck.”

“Max, you hang around with old men too much,” Caitlyn said, shaking her head.

She made toasted ham and cheese sandwiches while Max scrubbed oil off her hands. She’d just placed a filled plate in front of Max when she heard the sound of crunching gravel and the slam of a car door. Max grabbed a sandwich and took an enormous bite.

“Don’t worry, I’ll go.”

Max mumbled something around a mouthful of food. Grinning at her sister, Caitlyn went.

She met Dale heading toward the house. His limp was more pronounced today, she noticed, and frowning, she wondered about it, what had happened to cause it. Despite it, though, he radiated a vitality that caught her attention. “Hello, I didn’t expect to see you so soon.”

He pulled up next to her and said in a low voice, “I’ve been thinking.”

“Come into the office,” she said. “Max is eating lunch in the house.” She led him inside and sat in the chair behind the desk. “Okay, what have you got?”

He leaned against the opposite wall. “We should be logical about this,” he said. “Start with the most straightforward option and work our way up from there, if necessary.”

“Right.”

“And the most straightforward explanation for Wally’s disappearance is that he’s had an accident in an out of the way place and hasn’t been found.”

“If that’s the case he’ll be dead, won’t he? Lying out in the sun without water…”

“We don’t know that. He could be alive, but trapped. He could have had water with him. But yes, it’s a possibility that he was killed in the accident or has died since then.”

She frowned. “I can’t search the whole area.”

“No. But we should start looking at his claim. He might have been working it when something went wrong.”

“At night?”

“There’s the possibility he’d struck opal himself and chose to work at night to avoid anyone finding out about it.”

Seemed unlikely to her, but what did she know about opal miners, let alone her father? “Anyway, what’s this about
we
? I appreciate your advice, but I can’t ask you to get involved.”

He shrugged. “I’m involved now whether you like it or not.”

She liked it. She suspected she’d be a lot more successful with Dale on her side, but more than that, she couldn’t deny a spark of excitement at the thought of spending time with him. She wouldn’t let the spark get out of hand, though—she couldn’t afford to. “Are you sure? I mean, you could walk away and forget about all of this.”

“So could you.”

“No, I couldn’t. It would mean letting Max down. Not to mention my mother.”

He shifted his position against the wall. “I’ve known Max a lot longer than you have.”

“But she’s my sister.” She hesitated, noticing that he seemed to be favoring his leg. “Why don’t you sit down if your leg hurts?”

His lips thinned for a moment. “It’s fine. Look, I’m involved, so let’s just get on with the business of trying to find Wally together. Agreed?”

She nodded. “Agreed.”

Despite his closed expression she sensed his vulnerability where his leg was concerned and made a mental note not to bring it up again unless he did so first.

Chapter Five

The next morning, Dale collected her so early the sun wasn’t up.

“Morning,” he said as she climbed into the passenger seat.

“Is it?” She leveled an unimpressed look at him. “Is it, really?”

“Hmm, someone’s not a morning person, I see.”

“I haven’t had breakfast.” He was lucky she liked him. If she didn’t, she would have refused outright to leave the house. But she did like him, enough to give up her morning coffee, and that was saying a lot. “Where are we going?”

“To the opal fields.”

“In the dark?”

“It will be light by the time we get there.”

“And what are we going to do?”

“Check out Wally’s claim.”

Her stomach gave a nervous flutter. They might find him there—which was the whole point of the exercise, of course, but if they did, what would happen next?

“You’ve found out where it is?”

“Yes, and it’s a shaft.”

“Meaning?”

“A lot of mining hereabouts is done by open-cut excavation. Less common are the shafts, the large boreholes, and the small tunnels, but there are still plenty of them around. There are plenty of ways to have an accident while working down a shaft, or he might have lost his bearings and fallen. It happens.”

“But how will we know? If he’s unconscious down there, he won’t answer when we call down to him, will he?”

“No. We’ll have to go down. I’m hoping he’s got ladders set up. I’ve got a winch on the front of the truck, but ladders would be safer.”

She stared as the horror of what he was suggesting turned her empty stomach. “Is now a good time to mention that I suffer from claustrophobia?”

“You’re kidding.” He glanced at her face. “You’re not kidding, are you?”

“Nope.”

“Okay. It looks like I’ll be going down alone, then. You’ll stay up top and be my spotter.”

“What’s that?”

He smiled. “A lookout.”

“Oh. I can do that. Are you sure you’ll be all right to climb down, though? What about your leg?” She winced. She’d only decided the day before not to mention his leg and already she’d broken her own rule.

He shook his head. “It’s fine.”

The impatience in his tone shut her up. She turned to gaze out the window. He was right about the sun rising, and in the eerie half light, the opal fields looked like a filmmaker’s interpretation of a hostile environment on another planet. She couldn’t drive the Valiant out here, because any vehicle less than a 4x4 wouldn’t cope with the very rough dirt and gravel track. The truck listed to the side, and she gripped her seat as Dale brought the truck out of the rut and onto flatter ground. She was beginning to think that a tank might have been more appropriate transport. She peered along a side track that disappeared into the dust. “I’m glad I didn’t come out here on my own. It would be easy to get lost.”

“Very easy.” Dale frowned as he focused on the road ahead.

Caitlyn could see why he didn’t need the distraction of her chattering to him. With the pinky red tinge that the rising sun cast over the ground, she could almost imagine it was smoldering—very appropriate, now that she knew the locals called opals “the fire of the desert.”

Dale parked the vehicle on the main track and looked across at her. His face creased into a sudden smile. “Ready to walk the last bit?”

She might have grumbled about the early start, but it was sensible, she knew. It might be cool now, but once the sun rose in the sky the temperature would soar. It could reach a blistering 48 degrees Celsius or nearly 120 degrees Fahrenheit by the middle of the day, and there was no way she’d want to be walking in that heat.

She nodded and opened her door. They walked the last couple of hundred meters, until they were surrounded by mounds of waste material from the mines called mullock heaps. Dale pointed and said, “We’re on his claim now, and there’s the shaft.”

An old door covered the opening, and she wouldn’t have known it existed if he hadn’t told her.

He opened an old-fashioned canvas bag he carried messenger-style. Taking out a bottle of water, he handed it to her.

“Thanks.” She took a drink and held it out to him.

“Keep it. I have another one. I brought that bottle for you.”

She couldn’t remember when someone—make that a man—had been so considerate of her. His thoughtfulness gave her a warm glow.

He lifted the door and put it down a little way from the shaft opening, then turned around and stepped cautiously onto the metal ladder that protruded from the edge of the hole. He hesitated and gave her a serious look. “Be careful while I’m gone. Watch where you put your feet, and don’t walk backward. That’s the best way to fall down an uncovered shaft.”

“Don’t worry, I’m staying right here.”

He climbed down and disappeared from sight, swallowed by the darkness below. She looked around for somewhere to sit, glad now that they’d left so early—it meant they should be finished before the sun rose higher and seared everything in sight. For now the heat was relatively pleasant.

In the near distance she spotted some noodlers—people who poked around in the sandy rubble for opals that had been missed—hunched over mullock heaps. How could they do that for hours on end? They must be mad. Mad or desperate. She yawned and half sat, half leaned against a mullock heap from where she could watch the shaft opening, fidgeting until she’d created a reasonably comfortable perch in the dust and stones.

Sometime later, she woke from the doze she’d fallen into and jumped to her feet, wide awake and conscious that anything could have happened and she would have been no help at all. Some lookout she was.

The noodlers she’d seen earlier were gone. She scanned the area, wondering why everyone had disappeared, and then saw something on the horizon she couldn’t quite believe. Instead of the clear blue-sky backdrop to the desert landscape, a looming red-brown wall towered above the ground. She blinked. It looked more like the product of computer graphics from a science fiction movie than anything real. But it was real, and it was moving toward her—fast.

A dust storm. It couldn’t be anything else.

She ran to the shaft yelling Dale’s name, kneeled near the edge, and shouted again. How much longer would he be down there? And what was he doing? It couldn’t take so long to look around. Had something happened to him?

The harsh daylight dimmed as the wind howled in her ears. She looked up and fine sand hit her face. She ran in the direction of Dale’s vehicle. Before she could reach it, a rushing wall of sand knocked her off her feet. She rolled onto her stomach and lay still, hoping it would blow over the top of her. Stinging grains of grit blasted her bare arms and legs. It was too much—she couldn’t stand it any longer, she had to try to make it to the vehicle. Eyes shut tight, she rose and stuck out her hands, lurching forward like a zombie.

Fine gritty stuff squeezed between her eyelids, plugged her nostrils, and forced its way between her pursed lips. Accepting that she didn’t have a chance of making it to the truck, she came to a standstill. But then someone grabbed her shoulders and propelled her forward, the pressure of the dust-laden wind heavy against her chest.

She couldn’t see Dale, but knew it was him. When his hands left her shoulders she grabbed for him, panicked that he would leave her. Her hands hit the hard body of the truck. He pushed her head down and gripped her arm, guiding her through the open door. She ducked, feeling in front of her with her hands as she clambered clumsily onto the seat.

As soon as she made it inside, the door slammed shut behind her. Moments later, Dale climbed into the other side, accompanied by a gust of wind and dust. When his door closed, she slitted her eyes open and tried to focus on him. She opened her mouth to speak, but could only cough.

“You shouldn’t have walked off,” Dale said furiously. “You could have fallen down a shaft.” His voice was rough with anxiety. “You could have been killed.”

She tried to argue, but spluttered on the quantity of Simpson Desert still in her mouth. Besides, he was spot on. She’d had no idea where she was going.

“You should have climbed down the ladder. You would have been all right down there,” he said in a softer tone.

“Depends on your definition of all right,” she said, spitting sand into a tissue she’d found in her pocket. “Nothing would make me go underground. I’d rather die.” She shuddered.

“Really? Your claustrophobia is that bad?”

She looked down and scrunched up the tissue in her fist. One of her clearest memories of her childhood was of getting trapped in a storm drain during heavy rain. She simply hadn’t been able to cope with confined spaces since then. Was it an exaggeration to say she’d rather die? Maybe, but it was a close-run thing.

She took a deep breath. “It probably sounds silly to you.”

“No. Not silly,” he said in an odd but gentle tone.

“Anyway, if it was so good, why didn’t you stay down there instead of coming up into the storm?”

“I heard you calling. When I looked up the shaft and saw the darkness, I guessed you were in trouble.” He lifted the canvas strap over his head and tossed the bag onto the back seat. “We’d better get you home for a shower.”

He started the engine and moved off.

Caitlyn’s priority was removing her contact lenses, and until she’d accomplished the task, she didn’t speak. At last, she peered through the windscreen, but she couldn’t see a thing. “How do you know where the road is?”

“You can put it down to local knowledge.” Even so, he took it slowly.

She sighed. “God, I’m so glad I didn’t come on my own. Did you find anything interesting down there?”

“No, I found nothing at all.”

“What took you so long, then?”

“The number of drives. Some of them were so small I had to crawl out backward. Checking one at a time was slow work.”

Caitlyn shuddered. Trying not to picture the scene too clearly, she said, “The drives are tunnels, right?”

“Exactly.”

“So, no sign of Wally at all? Did it look like he’d been down there recently?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t. It’s not easy to tell what’s new and what’s old digging. But I definitely didn’t see any sign of an opal strike.”

Caitlyn considered this. They hadn’t gained any new information, but it had still been worth going, even having to contend with the dust storm. “We’ve eliminated the possibility of him lying injured in one of his own tunnels. That’s a pretty big thing ticked off the list.”

“Yes,” he said. “Unfortunately, it means that now we’ve discounted the simplest theory, we have to face the fact that this search is going to be difficult.”

She took a quick, sharp breath. “You don’t want to go on?”

“I didn’t say that.” He looked over at her. “Why don’t you close your eyes and rest them? They look pretty bad.”

“I can’t until I know that you’re not going to pull out.”

“I’m not,” he said firmly. “I am not going to let you go around asking questions and taking risks.” He hesitated, then in a softer voice said, “I like you too much for that.”

A new and unexpected warmth surged through her. She was too surprised to do more than nod, and then she felt silly.

“Um, thank you.” She cleared her throat. “But don’t we need to find out whether he was ratting? How are we going to do that if we can’t ask questions? We can’t go all over the opal fields looking at other people’s claims.”

“No, and I doubt that it would do us any good if we could. We’ll have to come at it from another angle. Wally went off with some guy—what was his name?”

“Chet.”

“Maybe someone knows him or saw him around the place, either before or after Wally disappeared. A stranger stands out at this time of year when the fields are depopulated. If we’d been looking for him in winter, we’d have had a harder task.” He glanced across at her. “It will be best for me to ask about him. It would sound odd coming from you. It’s hardly the kind of thing you’d need to know for the book you’re supposed to be writing.”

“You’re right. But if I can’t ask questions, what can I do?” She didn’t want to leave all the work to him, and she’d been kind of hoping that they’d do whatever had to be done, together.

“You can watch the people who come to the station. Any man who’s not local is of interest to us. See if Max thinks there’s anything familiar about him. If you can find out where he’s heading, or any other detail, it could help.”

She nodded, thinking of Steve, the tourist. Perhaps she should have accepted that invitation for a drink. Then again, he seemed an unlikely partner for Wally.

…

Later, she stood in front of the small shaving mirror in the bathroom, trying to put her cleaned lenses back in. Impossible. Her eyes were so tender she couldn’t open them fully. She sighed and put on her glasses instead. She hadn’t worn them in public since the day she’d got the lenses, and that was years ago. She would have preferred not to wear them now, but she had no choice and it was bloody lucky she’d brought them with her.

Her ultra-short, chic hairstyle had begun to grow out. She would have had it cut the week before if she’d been in the city. Already, bits of hair stuck out here and there, foreshadowing the inevitable frizz. Her hair grew fast, and if she was going to be here for a few weeks it would end up a terrible mess if she couldn’t get it taken care of.

With her glasses on she could see that as a result of the storm, red dust had seeped through the window frames and settled everywhere in the house. So much for the thorough cleaning she’d given the place earlier.

A car churned up the gravel of the forecourt and with a last grimace at her reflection, she headed outside. Steve had parked his car at the edge of the block and was talking to Max, who gestured toward her.

“Hello,” she said as she joined them. “Did you find a room at the pub?”

“Sure did,” he said. “All the comforts of home—if you’re used to living in a box and using a coin-operated shower.”

“Sounds perfect,” she said with a chuckle. “What can we do for you? Do you have a car problem?”

He glanced back at the dark blue Mazda. “No, it’s going well. In fact, it’s loved the run out of town nearly as much as me.” He smiled. “What about a drink at the pub tonight?”