Down Among the Dead Men (Entangled Ignite) (8 page)

“Oh, nothing else, I promise you.” She took a long drink and let out a satisfied sigh. “God, I needed that. So, other than thinking, what have you been doing?”

“Sleeping.”

“No fossicking?”

“Not yet.” He gave her a flirtatious glance. “I like the idea of you working here in the evenings. It means I might be able to see you when you finish.”

“That depends on whether I have other plans,” she said.

Steve put his empty beer glass to his lips, then examined it as if he might find one last mouthful.

“Thanks for the drink,” she said, “but I need to go home now.” She took the glasses to the bar, then noticed two men near the door, leaning against the wall watching her. She hadn’t seen them while chatting with Steve, but they looked as if they’d been there for a while. One was completely bald and clean-shaven while the other had a wild mop of hair and a bushy beard. Why were they looking at her? Because they liked her cooking? Or something else…something to do with Wally?

Dale might know who they were. She scanned the pub and spotted him deep in conversation with his friend the blonde. She shook off an irrational spike of irritation that he wasn’t immediately available for her, even though she’d just had a drink with Steve. She’d just grab her purse from the kitchen and if he was still talking, she’d interrupt.

On the way to the kitchen, the two strangers intercepted her in the passage. They’d moved quickly. She hadn’t expected that.

“Hi,” she said, looking from one to the other, then gesturing at the kitchen door. “Do you mind?”

She heard a faint click and went rigid a moment before the bald guy flicked a knife into her line of vision—one with a long, thin, double-edged blade, not the sort she was used to handling in the kitchen.

“Outside,” Baldy growled. “And don’t make a fuss.”

Startled, she turned her head, but at the same time, the bushy guy covered her mouth with one hand and took hold of her upper arm with the other, his rough fingers digging into the soft flesh. They hustled her through the door to the yard, one on each side of her, her feet hardly touching the floor and her attempt to scream muffled.

When the door swung shut behind them, Bushy gripped her arm tighter and forced her along the road to a rusty old truck.

Baldy opened the passenger door of the dirty truck and Bushy pushed her toward it. She grabbed the edge of the doorframe with her free hand and stiffened her arm, bracing one foot against the step.

“Get in,” Bushy said through clenched teeth. He kicked the ankle above her braced foot.

Shock and pain loosened her hold on the doorframe. Bushy took the opportunity to bundle her up into the cab. He climbed up beside her, forcing her into the middle of the bench seat, and slammed the door. The smell of stale sweat assaulted her nostrils as Baldy got into the driver’s seat. He started the engine and the truck took off into the darkness.

Chapter Eight

“Who are you?”

Caitlyn’s question met with silence.

“What’s going on?”

Still nothing other than a grunt from Baldy as he struggled to change gear. A short distance along the road, Baldy swung the truck to the side. Caitlyn jerked upright, ready for trouble.

Bushy opened the door and grabbed her forearm, pulling her with him as he got out. She slid across the seat and stumbled as her feet hit the ground, but managed to remain silent. If they weren’t going to answer her questions, she might as well save her breath. She might need it later to save her life.

Baldy stood in front of her, whiskey breath wafting into her face. “Where’s Wally Bracken?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t bullshit me.” Bushy dug his fingers further into the tender flesh of her upper arm. “We know he’s hiding somewhere.”

Did they? So they hadn’t killed him?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I only know that he’s gone away.” She sounded calm, but her heart was battering her ribs like a machine gun. “He didn’t tell me where he was going.”

The two men exchanged glances. She heard the faint click again and Baldy held the knife in front of her face. Her eyes crossed as she tried to focus on it and her scalp prickled with fear.

Light reflected from the blade. Headlights. A car was coming.

Baldy dropped the hand holding the knife to his side while he shaded his eyes with the other one and peered over her shoulder. Stones crunched as a vehicle swerved off the road and came to a standstill behind her. Bushy reached into his pocket and she saw the flash of another metal blade as he withdrew it. Then his fingers tightened on her arm and he swung her around so they were both facing the oncoming vehicle.

The headlights dimmed as the truck came to a stop, the door opened, and Dale climbed out.

“Is there a problem here?”

Her breath whooshed out at the sound of his voice. But he was at a disadvantage and she had to let him know. “Dale,” she yelled. “They have knives.”

Bushy shook her so hard it made her teeth rattle. “Shut your mouth.”

Dale lifted a shotgun to his shoulder and sighted along the barrel.

Okay, not such a disadvantage, then. First knives, now guns. Heck of a night.

“I suggest you two leave now,” Dale said. “Without Caitlyn.”

She tried to shake her arm free, but Bushy held on.

“Not your business, McMillan,” Baldy said. “Stay out of this.”

“You’re wrong. It is my business, because Caitlyn’s a friend of mine. I told Sergeant Peterson where I was going when I left the pub, and he’s planning to make it his business, too.”

Baldy hesitated before nodding at his partner.

Bushy’s hot breath oozed over her ear. “We’ll be watching you,” he muttered before giving her a forceful shove toward Dale.

She stumbled, regained her balance, and ran to the passenger side of Dale’s truck. Wrenching open the door, she climbed in just as the other truck sped away.

Dale put the gun behind his seat as he stepped into the vehicle. “Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”

“I’m fine.” Her voice wobbled and she bit down to stop her bottom lip from quivering.

“It was lucky they stopped on this road. If they’d turned off…” He shook his head.

“Do you know them?”

“By sight. They’re relatively new around here. They’re working a claim over on the far side of the opal fields, I think.”

“They knew your name.”

He nodded. “Comes with being the only lapidary in town. What did they say to you?”

“They asked about Wally. They said they knew he was hiding somewhere.”

“Interesting.”

“I know.” Her voice shook again. “But I’ve never been so freaking scared.”

He looked at her for a moment, then put an arm around her, pulling her into his shoulder. She clutched at his shirt as if it was her only anchor to safety, while the warmth and strength of his arm soothed her nerves. She closed her eyes and breathed him in. The aroma of beer from the pub clung to the fabric of his shirt, but stronger than that was the clean, warm scent of his skin, and she pressed her face into the hollow where his neck joined his shoulder.

“You smell so much better,” she said, wondering if she’d ever forget the stale odor of those two men.

“What?”

“Nothing. Sorry.” Idiot. What kind of thing was that to say?

“Don’t think about those guys any more. We’ll talk tomorrow. Calm down now. Breathe.”

She nodded, took a deep breath and made a conscious effort to blank her mind. The scene replayed anyway, and she straightened away from him. “Why do you have a gun?”

He dropped his hand from her shoulder. “It’s legal,” he said. “I do have a license for it.”

“I should hope so, but why do you need one?”

He shrugged. “Protection. Look, I have a family. I’m not going to sit here waiting for Shane’s father to find us and not have any means of protecting Ginny and Rose.”

She exhaled. “No, I suppose not.”

“It came in useful tonight, didn’t it?”

“Yes, and I’m grateful, but would you actually have fired it?” She shuddered at the thought.

“We’ll never know.” He started the engine, turned the truck around, and drove back toward the town.

The silence between them soothed her, wrapped around her like a warm blanket.

As they approached the pub Dale said, “You know, you’re going to have to be more careful from now on.” There was a faint tremor in his voice as if he was fighting some emotion.

She recalled Bushy’s parting words and her breath solidified in her throat. She shuddered again. “Oh God, they might try to grab Max next time.”

“Yes, she’ll have to take more care as well.”

“So how did you know I needed help?”

“I was looking for you. One minute you were with that guy, Steve, and the next you’d disappeared. Brenda said she’d heard someone leave by the back door, but your purse was still in the kitchen so she didn’t think it could be you. But then Bruce said he’d seen you leave the bar with those guys following you, so when you were nowhere to be found, we guessed they had something to do with it.” He grinned. “Bruce said they were as ugly as a box of blowflies.”

“He’s right. Sergeant Peterson’s taking a long time getting here, isn’t he?”

“I was bluffing about that. Michael wasn’t in the pub tonight, and I didn’t stop to phone him. I was in too much of a hurry.”

“Oh.” She swallowed. “Probably for the best that he doesn’t know. I get the impression that he doesn’t like strangers in his town. He might have told me to leave to avoid any more problems.”

Dale stopped the truck alongside the Valiant. “Are you coming back inside?”

“No, I’ve had enough for tonight. I’ll go and collect Max and hopefully have an early and uneventful night.”

…

Caitlyn held off saying anything to Max until she felt calmer about the whole kidnapping episode. By then, Max was in bed and Caitlyn knocked on the bedroom door. “Max? Do you mind if I come in? I want to talk to you.”

Max sat up, shuffling over to make room for her on the edge of the bed.

Caitlyn sat, flattening her palms against her jeans then twisting her hands together.

“Thought you wanted to say something?”

She inhaled. “I do.”

“Okay. Shoot.”

Caitlyn shivered, unsure where to start, or how to tell a seventeen-year-old about men who wanted her father so badly they might do something to Max to get to him.

“Do you want to get under the covers?”

“No, I’m not cold.” She took another deep breath and told Max what had happened with Baldy and Bushy.

Max’s eyes widened. “If Dale hadn’t come after you, you could be anywhere by now. We wouldn’t even know where to look.”

“Exactly right. The thing is, these guys seem pretty desperate to find Wally, and they think he’s alive and in hiding. They wanted me to tell them where he is, and the really scary thing is, it might be you they come after next time.”

“But I don’t know anything…” She fell silent.

Caitlyn squeezed her hand. “We’ll both have to be more cautious. I want to know where you’re going to be at any time, and I’ll be sure to tell you where I’m going. Neither of us should be here alone if we can help it.”

Max nodded.

“But even when we’re both here, we won’t be safe unless we plan ahead. We need to be ready for them. I have no intention of being caught off-guard again.”

“Two of us will be much harder to handle than one.”

“True, but there’s two of them as well, and they’re bigger than us and have knives.”

Max was quiet for a moment. “I have a hiding place,” she said. “I used to hide there, sometimes, when I was a kid. When I didn’t want Dad to find me. We could hide there if anyone turns up.”

“Where?”

She hopped out of bed, flipped back the faded floor rug, and scrabbled around on the boards beneath it, then lifted a section of floor. The boards had been joined together to make a trap door. Uneven edges made it inconspicuous to the casual eye.

Caitlyn stared into the hole Max had uncovered and shook her head. “You have to be kidding me. There could be snakes down there. Spiders. Rats. God knows what else.”

Not to mention the fact that it meant climbing into a hole and the not-so-minor matter of her claustrophobia.

No one in their right mind would crawl into such a disgusting place willingly, yet Max had done so and she’d only been a child at the time. She must have badly wanted to hide from Wally. Maybe she should revise her thinking regarding who’d been the luckier daughter, the one with a father or the one without.

“Caitlyn, don’t be a wuss. I’ll have my torch with me.”

“Good for you.” She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter what you say, you won’t get me down there.”

…

Over the next couple of days, Caitlyn kept an eye out for the two miners, but didn’t see them. Dale asked around and discovered they were working a genuine claim and preferred to camp out in a tiny tin shed on it rather than take accommodation in town. Not unusual, he said.

“Any idea why they’re looking for Wally?” she asked Dale. She was having a quick drink with him before collecting Max, and for once, the blonde was nowhere to be seen. “Do you think they know what he was up to?”

“Maybe. They sleep out in the opal fields, so there’s always a chance they saw him out there.”

“But why not come after him straight away? Why wait this long before looking for him?”

Dale swished the beer around his glass. “Perhaps they did,” he said.

“Hmm?”

“Thinking out loud here. Say they attacked him on the opal field and—as far as they knew—finished him off. When you turned up telling people Wally had gone away, well, they’d have to wonder what was going on, and whether he’d survived his beating.”

“Oh. That could be it.” She grimaced. “Damn, I thought I was doing the right thing making it appear that Wally was alive and well, but I could have caused us more trouble.”

“I might be wrong about this theory. It’s just a guess.”

“Okay, but let’s assume for a minute that you’re right. What do you think they’ll do next?”

He shrugged. “No idea.”

“Don’t let me down now. I’m counting on you.”

He drained his glass. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m all out of ideas today. Do you want another drink?”

“I’ll get these.” She took his glass and went to the bar. “Same again please, Brenda.”

“Sure thing. I wish there was some of your apple pie left, Caitlyn. You’re a dab hand at pastry, aren’t you?” She sighed. “I’ve never been able to get a result like it.”

Caitlyn remembered Brenda’s pastry well. “It’s all about air, Bren. The more air in the mix, the better the pastry.”

“Yeah well, you won’t catch me making it again now that people have tried yours. As for the mud cake yesterday, we could have sold as much again.”

“I know that now, but I didn’t want to risk making too much and having a lot left over. It dries out so quickly.”

“Your friend Steve doesn’t know what he’s missing.” Brenda gave her a sideways glance. “He’s paid me to keep his room for him, you know.”

Caitlyn’s eyes widened. “He’s left town?”

“Yes. He said he’d be away for a few days. Strange way to have a holiday, if you ask me.”

“Yes.” Caitlyn shrugged. “Oh, well, it’s not our business what he does, is it?”

“No?” Brenda gave her a curious look. “No, I suppose not. By the way, I nearly forgot to tell you that there were two men in here earlier asking about Wally.”

Caitlyn stilled, and the hairs on the back of her neck prickled. So, Baldy and Bushy had surfaced. “What did you tell them?”

“That he’s gone away for a while. Isn’t that what you wanted me to say?”

“Yes.” She took a sip from the glass Brenda had placed on the bar and tried to look unconcerned. “Do they come here often?”

“No, love, they’re complete strangers. Never seen them before in my life.”

“What? But you saw them the other day. You sent Dale after us. You told him they’d followed me.”

Brenda’s eyebrows rose. “I did not.”

“But—”

“I’m not talking about those two drongos who thought they could drag you off without anybody noticing. No, these are two different blokes altogether.” She grabbed her cloth and set to work on the bar. “They couldn’t be more different, and like I said, I’ve never seen them before. I know we get all sorts in here, but even so, people like them tend to stand out.”

“In what way?”

“Neat, both of them. Smart clothes, expensive ones. One of them wore a lot of gold chains around his neck.”

Caitlyn stared at her. Two
more
men asking after Wally? She just hoped these two weren’t as dangerous as the others. She pulled herself together and picked up the drinks. “Thanks, Brenda. If they come in again, will you tell me as quickly as possible?”

“Sure will. I meant to say something before, but it slipped my mind on account of us being so busy.”

Caitlyn hurried back to the table. “Guess what?” she said, putting down the glasses and sliding into her chair.

“You’ve found someone else you’re related to?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She slapped his arm.