Deadly Intent

by Valerie Parv

  He carried it to the wall safe. The cord barely stretched the distance, so he dragged a chair up and set the phone down, then unscrewed the lower end of the receiver, the part you’d normally talk into. Wedging the remaining earpiece on his shoulder, he positioned the unscrewed section against the safe door. Now when he turned the combination lock, he could hear the tumblers fall into place. The only risk was that he might get the numbers in the wrong order, but there were only so many numbers he could go through, and it didn’t take him long to find the right sequence.

  The metal door clicked open and he was in. Child’s play, he thought. In fact he’d discovered the technique as a child, when he’d experimented with his mother’s telephone and discovered he could hear conversations through closed doors. He’d never learned anything interesting, but he’d impressed the heck out of a classmate, who’d thought him a genius and had allowed him to practice kissing her as a reward for giving her a turn with the device.

  Ignoring a velvet jewel case, he pulled a wad of papers out of the safe and leafed through them, conscious of time passing. He wasn’t sure how long Judy would be able to keep Horvath occupied. Not too long, he hoped. He grew angry thinking of her alone with that creep for a minute, far less all night.

  Most of the papers in the safe concerned Willundina, and dated back to Clive Horvath’s day, Ryan saw. He leafed through birth and death certificates, tax papers, Clive’s probated will, only pausing when he got to the mortgage over Diamond Downs. It was only a copy, so tearing it up wouldn’t help Des Logan. Not that the old man would countenance such behavior.

  A couple of sepia-colored photographs fluttered to the floor and Ryan stooped to pick them up. One showed a middle-aged man standing next to a canoe beside a river. The man resembled Des sufficiently for Ryan to identify him as Jack Logan, probably taken before his last prospecting expedition. The other photo showed Jack in moleskin pants, a white shirt and bush hat. He had his arm around a much younger woman who was wearing a knee-length floral dress with wide shoulders and cinched waist, white gloves and a wide-brimmed straw hat trimmed with flowers. The little boy pressed close to her side wore a white shirt, short pants and long socks, and a cloth cap. They woman and child looked familiar, although Ryan couldn’t place them off the top of his head.

  Not that he wasted any time on the puzzle. He’d obviously struck pay dirt. Cade had mentioned seeing an old photo of Jack and his canoe in the file after Blake and Jo had come across similar shots planned for a historical display in Perth. They’d hoped to compare their finds, but Horvath’s men had gotten to the file first. They’d evidently discarded the file itself and placed the contents in this safe.

  Ryan held his breath as he opened the last bundle of papers and almost hollered with delight. The stolen pages from Jack Logan’s journal were right here in his hands. Fragile and brown with age, but unmistakable even without the date written in fluid copperplate across the top of each page.

  Ryan flicked a look at his watch. He’d have to read the journal entries later. The housekeeper’s medical drama would have finished by now, and he didn’t know if she was in the habit of doing the rounds of the house before retiring. He spread the journal pages out on the desk and took copies with his miniature camera, then replaced the originals in the safe.

  Frowning, he felt his fingers touch a single sheet of paper at the back of the safe. Pulling it out, he saw it was a letter in copperplate handwriting on a solicitor’s letterhead. The date was 1946, the year Jack Logan disappeared. Ryan’s pulse speeded up as he realized he held some kind of deed, signed by Jack Logan himself and witnessed by the solicitor and a woman, perhaps a secretary.

  Suddenly, the writing blurred before Ryan’s eyes as a name leaped out at him. A name he knew well. According to this letter, Jack Logan had deeded the whole of Cotton Tree Gorge to this person.

  “What the devil is going on?” he asked the faded image of Miss Wong, propped against the wall at his feet, But her inscrutable green-tinged gaze could offer no explanation for this totally unexpected development.

  Judy toyed with her pistachio-crusted veal and tried not to sigh too obviously.

  Max had brought her to The Blue Moon, a new establishment run by a couple in their twenties who had moved to Halls Creek only a few months before. The Chinese-Australian man cooked a fusion of international dishes while his dusky-skinned wife looked after the diners. The pair were so obviously in love with each other and their new enterprise that Judy subdued a pang of jealousy.

  The café was in a former shopfront, obviously fitted out on a shoestring but with such flair that they seemed destined to succeed. Pale blue and lemon paint washed the walls. The floor was polished timber, and the furniture was black tubular metal. Overhead fans swept the air, shivering the leaves of the glossy potted plants that gave each table a suggestion of privacy. Max had chosen a table near the front window, which was festooned with ferns in hanging baskets.

  Judy rested her arms on the moon-print tablecloth. “If you’re so worried about me, why don’t you tear up Dad’s mortgage as your father intended to do?”

  “My father’s intentions are no longer relevant. I run Willundina now,” Max said with exaggerated patience. “Frankly, tearing up the contract wouldn’t be in your best interests.”

  Judy’s fork clattered onto the plate. “How do you work that out?”

  “Your father isn’t up to running Diamond Downs any more, and you have enough to do operating your charter service. I know Cade’s doing some of the work for the moment,” he said before she could contradict. He went on, “Cade’s a rolling stone. How long before he takes off again and leaves you to struggle on alone?”

  She had no answer. Cade had always wanted to travel the world with his camera. As soon as he was old enough, he’d studied photography with the goal of becoming a professional. He hadn’t said why he’d come home this time, and she was grateful enough for his help with Diamond Downs not to pry. She’d assumed he simply needed a change of scene. Whatever the reason, she appreciated his support.

  “So you see, handing you the worry of the place would be unfair of me,” Max continued.

  She pushed her barely touched meal aside. “Look Max, you should know by now that your white knight routine is wasted on me. Let’s cut to the chase here. You’re in as much financial trouble as we are.”

  Her dinner companion looked shocked at her bluntness. “Where did you hear such a thing?”

  “Never mind. It’s true, isn’t it?”

  He looked out the window at the darkened street visible through the screen of ferns. “It’s true that I was left with considerable debts after Prince Jamal’s visit. When I agreed to help reunite him with his fiancée, doing what I thought was a good deed, I never anticipated he’d end up in jail for treason in his own country, leaving me unable to recoup my losses.”

  The truth was, Max had sided with Jamal Sayed, hoping to be handsomely rewarded. Max hadn’t cared that Jamal planned to force Shara Najran into an arranged marriage. The deal would have cost her father his throne, if Shara and Judy’s foster brother Tom hadn’t uncovered Jamal’s evil scheme.

  “How you ended up in this jam hardly matters,” Judy said bluntly. “As long as a mortgage exists over our land, you’re putting my family at risk as well as yourself. You can’t tell me that’s in my best interests.”

  Max topped up their wine glasses before answering. “I can’t do what you want, Judy.”

  She scraped her chair back from the table. “Then there’s no point continuing this farce.”

  His lips thinned. “I’d hoped we had more going for us than money.”

  “Like my great-grandfather’s diamonds?” she demanded.

  Max looked around uneasily, although only a few of the tables were occupied. “Lower your voice.”

  “Why should I? The diamonds are the real reason you want possession of Diamond Downs, aren’t they?”

  “I want them for both of us,” he insisted in a fierce u
ndertone. “You know I care about you, Judy. Let me do what’s best for you.”

  She reached for her bag. “In a bizarre way, I think you mean that. What I don’t understand is how you think your actions have a snowball’s chance of being good for me and mine. I was a fool to try and make you see reason.”

  He tossed back half a glass of wine and set the glass down with a thump. “Did you really think you could sweet-talk your way around me so easily?”

  Judy glared at him. “When we were younger we used to be friends. I’d hoped we could be again. Obviously not.”

  “We’ll be more than friends when your property and the diamonds are mine. You’ll have no choice but to turn to me,” he warned her.

  “I’ll never be that desperate.” Judy counted out enough cash to cover her share of the meal, and placed it on the table between them. When he stood up, she said, “Stay where you are. I’ll call Blake to drive me home. As far as I’m concerned, this evening is over.” So was their short-lived romance, but she had a feeling he already knew that.

  Max pulled out his wallet and threw down a credit card. “You can walk home for all I care. I’m going back to Willundina to make some plans, then I intend to get seriously drunk.”

  “Don’t do it on my account,” she said with a calmness she was far from feeling. The threat in his tone shook her more than she wanted him to see.

  Only as she walked out of the café did she consider that Ryan could be snooping through Max’s papers at this very moment. If Max went straight home, he could catch Ryan red-handed.

  Well, you handled that like a champ, she told herself, struggling to control her shakiness as she fumbled for her phone. More like a chump. Any chance of getting under Max’s guard was truly blown. Worse, she had probably ruined Ryan’s chance of finding the stolen file.

  She called Blake at the crocodile park and explained the problem. He told her to stay where she was until he arrived, then they’d figure something out. As she waited, she hoped Ryan was doing better than she’d done.

  Ryan’s hand was far from steady as he stared at the letter. “What do you think of this, Miss Wong?” he addressed the print propped beneath the open safe.

  The painting’s Mona Lisa smile was no help.

  “No comment, eh? The proper diplomatic response. No wonder they’ve let you hang around here for so long,” he said to himself. He smiled wanly at his feeble joke, but his insides were churning. How in the name of all that was holy was he going to tell Judy what he’d found? The discovery would destroy her. All her hopes and dreams for her father and Diamond Downs would be finished as soon as she read the letter.

  Unless he destroyed the document first.

  An old-fashioned brass cigarette lighter in the shape of a cannon stood on the desk. When he flicked it experimentally, a tiny tongue of blue flame shot from the barrel. He held the document close to the barrel. One more flick and his dilemma would be solved. Judy’s dreams would be safe.

  One flick.

  He couldn’t make himself burn the letter.

  Not now that he knew who the people in the photo with Jack had to be. No wonder they’d looked familiar. The woman was his grandmother, Lizina Smith, and the little boy was Ryan’s father, Nick, at about age seven. According to the duly signed and witnessed letter, Jack Logan had deeded a thousand acres of Diamond Downs’s land to Lizina Smith “as a gift and token of my love, in anticipation of our forthcoming marriage.” According to the letter, the acreage included Cotton Tree Gorge, where Jack’s diamond mine was said to be located. On land that belonged not to Judy and her family, but to Ryan and his.

  Why hadn’t Ryan’s mother ever mentioned a connection between his family and the Logans? Obviously, Jack had disappeared before the marriage had taken place, but the deed contained nothing that his death would have affected. Ryan searched his memory. Perhaps because Nick had deserted his mother, she’d seldom spoken of his side of their family and may not have known about the link at all.

  As far as Ryan knew, his grandmother had died when a car she’d been driving had been washed off a flooded river crossing in the Kimberley. His father, a child at the time, had managed to escape and been raised by distant relatives. Ryan hadn’t known there were cars in his grandmother’s day and had researched the era, surprised to learn of the variety of automobiles on the road in the 1940s.

  His father had never said where exactly the accident had happened. On Diamond Downs after Lizina received the news of Jack’s disappearance? Ryan wondered now. Judging by the photo, Jack had been a generation older than Lizina, so their families may not have approved. Had she been fleeing her grief, their disapproval or a combination of the two?

  Speculation would get him nowhere, he decided. First, he had to put everything back and get out of here. He could agonize over details later.

  Had he been thinking straight, he wouldn’t have wasted this much time. He buttoned the legal letter inside his shirt pocket, gathered up the remaining bits and pieces from the safe and replaced them exactly as he’d found them.

  On impulse, he lifted out the original photo of Jack Logan and his grandmother, reluctant to leave it in Horvath’s hands now he knew who the subjects were. Getting sentimental, Smith, he told himself, as he closed the door and spun the combination lock. A patch of faded paint told him how to reposition Miss Wong. Her half smile seemed to promise discretion.

  A last survey of the room revealed nothing else out of place. He adjusted the cannon cigarette lighter a fraction; then, satisfied, he pocketed the photo and his camera, and reached to turn off the desk light.

  “Stop right there.” The voice from the doorway froze him in mid-movement. He looked up into the barrel of a Remington .308 rifle held in Mick Coghlan’s steady grip. Although half a head shorter than Ryan, the stockman had the advantage and the satisfied grin on his freckled face said he knew it. “Leave the light on and step back against the wall. The housekeeper was right when she said she’d heard a rat running around in here. Keep your hands where I can see them unless you want me to use you for target practice.”

  Chapter 7

  Ryan started to back away as instructed, then dived sideways and caught the desk lamp a glancing blow, sweeping it onto the floor in a shower of glass and sparks. The room plunged into blackness.

  A shoulder roll took him under the desk and onto Coghlan’s side of the room before the other man had drawn a breath.

  Obviously not combat trained—unlike Ryan, thanks to a course he’d attended given by an ex-SAS member—Coghlan made the mistake of staying where he was. By being fast and mobile, you increased the enemy’s confusion and gave yourself vantage points for attack or defense, Ryan knew. In the blackness, he imagined Mick swiveling the rifle trying to draw a bead on his target.

  Ryan didn’t give him that chance. He kept moving until he calculated he was within striking distance of the other man. Moving swiftly, he kicked diagonally down, aiming for the side of Mick’s knees. The grunt of shock and a thump as the other man was brought down told him he’d found his mark. Then Ryan was deafened as the rifle discharged.

  He saw the muzzle flash and felt a rush of air past his head, followed by a sensation like a wasp sting. He cursed volubly under his breath, knowing Mick had gotten lucky. The rifle had fired as he’d gone down. The shot had only creased the side of Ryan’s head, but already he felt wetness on his temple.

  “I’m sure I winged you, Smith,” Coghlan said, his breathing sounding labored. Ryan knew he wasn’t the only injured party. “Give this up and I won’t have to shoot again.”

  Answering such a fool challenge would only give Mick something to aim at, so Ryan bit back a retort. This wasn’t a movie where the bad guy spelled out his intentions, taking enough time so the hero could win the day. Ryan had made up his mind if he ever found himself in such a position, he’d shoot first and discuss the details later. He hadn’t anticipated being unarmed against a high-powered rifle.

  Lights snapped on around the compo
und and voices shouted questions. So far, nobody had worked out that the shot had come from inside the homestead. Before they did, Ryan would have to get out of there or the evidence would speak for itself. And he didn’t plan on spending a night in jail while he sorted this out.

  Although his injury was minor, pain started to affect Ryan’s consciousness, making him feel shaky. The other man would pay for that, but not tonight. Forcing himself to think, Ryan called up a memory of the room’s layout. Then he had it. Moving silently, he came up against the leg of the desk. Above his head should be the cannon cigarette lighter. If he hadn’t knocked it off the desk with the lamp.

  He heard Mick moving slowly toward the door and the light switch. Grunts of pain suggested that Ryan’s kick to the knees had done damage. Good. He’d hate to be the only one suffering. His groping hand closed around a heavy metal object and he grinned into the darkness. Hefting the lighter, he bowled it into the opposite corner of the room.

  The crash of impact brought an instant response. The rifle fired again. This time Ryan was prepared. Using the muzzle flash to orient himself, he headed for the French doors, feeling through the drapes that the doors were still unlocked.

  He rolled under the drapes and was on his feet and through the doors before the changing air current in the room told Coghlan that Ryan had escaped.

  One of Horvath’s men almost ran into him. “What’s happening?”

  Glad of the pale light concealing his injury, Ryan gestured back toward the homestead. “Mick’s bailed up an intruder. He needs help.”

  As he’d hoped, the other man didn’t stop to question why Ryan was fleeing the scene, but headed toward the house, calling to his mates as he ran. Some people didn’t have the brains they were born with, Ryan thought. He melted into the shadows and groped for a handkerchief, pressing it against his throbbing temple. Feeling as if he’d touched a naked flame to his head, he bit back an oath. He’d only been grazed, and with any luck the heat from the bullet had mostly cauterized the wound, but he was going to have the granddaddy of a headache for a few days to come.