Desert Flame

by Janine Grey

  Contents

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Sydney-based Janine Grey is also the author of Southern Star, published in 2013 by Penguin Books. A fan of romantic fiction since her teens, Janine writes what she enjoys reading – intense love stories with a twist of mystery and suspense, set against atmospheric backdrops. To find out more about Janine, please visit the Facebook page for J.C. Grey.

  For Aunty Pat, who unknowingly started it all

  There is in it the gentler fire of the ruby, there is the brilliant purple of the amethyst,

  there is the sea-green of the emerald, all shining together in an incredible union.

  Some by their splendour rival in lustre the brightest azure of the painter’s palette,

  others the flame of burning sulphur,

  or a fire quickened by oil.

  Pliny the Elder

  PROLOGUE

  Thirty-two years earlier

  The outback sun blazed overhead but ten metres below ground it was surprisingly cool. Nevertheless, the air was close, and Logan McLeod had been working for barely twenty minutes before he was forced to strip off his sweat-sodden shirt. Elsewhere, technology might have been transforming the industry but this corner of the opal world operated much as it always had, and Logan liked it that way. He liked the thought that a century before him men would have swung pickaxes in the same rhythm as he did and felt the same ache in their shoulders, that they would have sweated and cursed just as he did, in search of the elusive gem that would forever change their fortunes.

  Few ever did, of course, yet nothing swayed their belief that the opal existed, gleaming softly in the dark, waiting for the right man to strike the right blow in the right place.

  Some found decent deposits, enough to live on comfortably for a while if they invested wisely. But what need had a miner for savings plans and share portfolios when he could live the high life for a few months on his modest find, convinced that the big one was still out there, ripe for the finding tomorrow? Or the day after that? Or a month or year from now?

  So the cash went on beer and horses and women, while the dream remained tantalisingly and forever just out of reach. And in truth, though few of them acknowledged it, they would not have wanted it any other way, for the miners knew only one way of life and this was it.

  Logan, though, was different. Oh, he held the same obsession. In his mind, he could already see her, the almost unearthly flame-black shimmer calling him like a siren song. But canny Scots blood ran in Logan’s veins: when he found the big one he would not be tempted to piss it all up against the wall. In any case, he had a family to think of now.

  His shoulder muscles bunched as he swung and hit, swung and hit, but his mind was on his Mairi and little Fingal, hundreds of kilometres away. Logan hadn’t seen Fin for two months now. Remote Ruin Flat was no place for women and children.

  The lad was growing up, aye. And that meant he needed a home of his own, not a grotty apartment, with a yard to play in and a father who was around to be a proper dad. He thought of the photos he’d received with Mairi’s letter just two days ago. At not quite six months, Fingal was a fine, sturdy boy and there was no overlooking the McLeod in him: already his navy eyes were turning pewter, his gaze as unnervingly steady as his grandfather’s, God rest Rory McLeod’s soul. Young Fin couldn’t be more McLeod if his chubby little arse had been swaddled in the clan tartan.

  Again and again, Logan swung the pickaxe, his breath huffing out, biceps quivering as the blade hit rock. When he struck it lucky, Mairi and Fin would be out of that dump as quick as . . .

  His arms stopped in mid-swing at a russet wink from a crack in the rock. Frowning, he peered forward, sending a beam of light from the torch on his hard hat into a narrow fissure. Nah. Nothing. Probably just a trick of the light. He brought up the axe again, and light from the torch spun off the blade into the tiny crack. There it was again, that unearthly fiery glint, more brilliant than anything he’d seen before.

  Logan’s heart began to race and he told himself to get a grip. Worthless potch could fool even an experienced eye into believing it was the real thing. Still, he eased up, using the blade of the axe to chip away at the sandstone. The deep flame gleam intensified and Logan’s pulse hammered. His breath hitched as he downed the axe and took off his helmet to shine the torch deep into the fissure. He would need a screwdriver from here to avoid damaging the gem.

  So intent was he on his prize, he didn’t register the rumble from behind. The level he was working in shuddered slightly. He looked back at the crack in the rock, but the flash of fire was gone as though it had never been. Sand began to shower down from the roof of the mine and he hastily slapped his hard hat back on as small rocks loosened and fell. Shit!

  Head down, he bolted for the shaft, but a few metres away he came up short. His path was all but blocked by fallen rock; and it was still falling. Backing up, he shielded his head with his hands, crouching down as stone rained down from the roof.

  Abruptly, the ominous rumble turned to silence. The shift of rock had stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and he breathed a sigh of relief. If rock had continued to rain down, he could have found himself in a whole heap of strife. With just an axe and his hands, it would have taken him a month of Sundays to dig himself out. As it was, it would only cost him a half-hour or so to clear a path out – just a minor irritation in the scheme of things.

  As he got stuck in, he reminded himself that he’d faced plenty of setbacks before, mostly to do with finance and trying to work the mine alone. Mining, even in the best of circumstances, was no bloody picnic. Working alone magnified the risks. Once he got out, he needed to stabilise the drive in which he was working and locate the mine’s secondary exit, which supposedly existed on the lowest level. The paperwork he’d acquired with the mine was more than forty years old and sketchy at best, so he couldn’t be sure.

  Logan knew he should have commissioned a full survey of the mine. He would have, had he had the cash. But what excess money he spent on this venture came straight out of the mouths of Mairi and Fin, and they always came first. As far as he knew, the second exit might have been planned but never constructed. Miners as a breed thought only of the fire in the stone – not of risk assessments and plan Bs – but Logan owed it to his family to play as safe as he could. Another time, he might not be as lucky. If the secondary exit existed, he needed to find it.

  He stood and stretched before stooping again to the task of clearing a path back to the main shaft. As he did, he saw in his mind’s eye that tantalising glimpse of fiery red, and he hoped to hell that the unearthly molten glimmer he’d seen was his lucky break – and not misfortune turning its opal eye towards him.

  CHAPTER 1

  Eliza Mayberry stiffened a lip inherited from aristocratic English ancestors, squared her shoulders against the inevitable and met the sympathetic eyes of Lincoln Bassett, the Mayberry family lawyer.

  ‘And the house?’ she asked, with not a hint of the panic she felt inside.

  Mr Bassett’s ruddy cheeks flushed an even deeper shade. He cleared his throat delicately for a big bear of a man, and absentl
y patted her hand where it lay, pale and still on his desk.

  ‘Your father didn’t tell you?’

  ‘Tell me what, exactly?’

  As if losing her beloved father in the worst way wasn’t bad enough, Eliza had discovered today that the family business was on the verge of collapse. Actually, it had closed in all but name. The staff had been let go, the office lease had been torn up, and several creditors were grumbling about suing for unpaid debts. Now, it seemed, she had to brace for more bad news.

  ‘Hugh didn’t own the house.’

  Eliza’s head snapped up. ‘Of course he did! Mayberrys have lived in Rose Bay since the 1850s. My great-great-great-grandfather built Edenholme in 1862.’

  Lincoln looked down at his desk. ‘I’m so sorry, my dear, but your father sold the house three years ago. He needed the money to keep the business going. He’d been leasing Edenholme from the new owner so you could both continue to live there, with the hope of buying it back once things improved. Unfortunately, that never happened.’

  Eliza felt the last wall of her world crumbling around her. The ground shuddered beneath her feet. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Your father was a wonderful man,’ the lawyer said. ‘We were friends for many years, you know. But the truth is he never had much of a head for business, and after your mother died . . .’

  Lincoln’s words trailed off but Eliza knew what he was going to say. Her mother might have been a Mayberry by marriage rather than blood, but she’d had the passion and hard head needed to run KinSearchers. Her father, by contrast, had the contacts, status and charm to grease the wheels, but little real interest in budget projections and bottom lines.

  He’d been a much better father than provider: always the one to brush her hair, take her to school, shop for ballet gear – in short, the perfect parent. Her mother, Angela, had always been far too busy. And five years ago when Angela had told them both, matter-of-factly as was her style, that she had an inoperable brain tumour, and had confirmed it by dying six weeks later, he had fallen apart.

  Eliza had hoped, futilely, as it turned out, that the business would give him something to cling on to.

  She rubbed her forehead, wondering when the awfulness was going to end. ‘The house would have been worth millions,’ she pointed out. After the much larger Elizabeth Bay House, the Mayberry family villa was one of the finest examples of nineteenth-century Greek revival architecture in New South Wales, and famous for its circular, domed ballroom. As a child she used to sneak out of bed on the nights of her parents’ dazzling parties, and peer over the gallery onto the ballroom below, full of lights and colour, music and laughter.

  Lincoln nodded. ‘Nine point two million. If the GFC hadn’t hit prestige property so hard, it would have been around twelve. Prices have recovered a little but not completely.’

  ‘There must be something left,’ she pointed out. ‘KinSearchers couldn’t have run through all of that in three years.’

  The solicitor’s bulky shoulders hunched defensively. ‘The business was carrying a lot of debt, unfortunately, and it was not well managed after Angela’s death. Salaries and other costs blew out, from what the accountants tell me. To be frank, it seems to have been bleeding cash for some time. Your father’s expenses were high. The cost of leasing back the house wasn’t exactly small, and of course there were some overseas trips . . .’

  Eliza had to take the blame for the holidays in the south of France and Long Island. Worried that her father wasn’t moving on from her mother’s death, she’d decided to take him away for several months a couple of years back. But if she’d known of their dire financial predicament . . .

  ‘Your father had other costs,’ the lawyer continued, clearly reluctant. ‘He made some ill-advised investments, some of them substantial, and then, well . . .’

  ‘Spit it out, Lincoln. I might as well hear it all.’

  He smiled faintly. ‘You may take after your father in looks, but in every other way you are your mother’s daughter,’ he murmured. A deep sigh followed. ‘Hugh said that your mother, before she died, told him to marry again, that he needed someone to look after him. Hugh took her seriously, thought it would help him over his depression. He became involved with a woman, through an agency about eighteen months ago, but it turned out she was a – a gold-digger, I believe is the term. He wanted a replacement for your mother; she wanted a meal ticket. And once she’d bled him dry, she ended her relationship with him.’

  Eliza stared at the lawyer. ‘I – I had no idea!’

  ‘He didn’t want you to know. He felt like a fool.’

  Tears burnt in her throat, filled her eyes. That dear, sweet man. Why hadn’t he said anything? Why hadn’t he confided in her?

  But it explained a lot. This personal humiliation came on top of his professional failure and the loss of the love of his life. What had he left to live for except his daughter?

  Clearly she hadn’t been enough.

  ‘I can’t understand why . . .’ she started.

  ‘It certainly is difficult to fathom, for everyone who knew him.’

  ‘I can’t quite process it.’ Her voice ended in a whisper. More than a week after his body had washed up onto the rocks near one of Sydney’s best-known suicide spots, it still didn’t seem real.

  ‘If it’s any consolation, I don’t believe that it was his failings that drove him to take his life,’ the lawyer murmured. ‘I honestly didn’t get the impression that he really understood the full extent of his financial position. In the end, I think he just wanted to be with Angela.’

  But what about me? Eliza wanted to scream. What do I do now?

  By force of will and upbringing, she drove the tears down. ‘So – so there’s nothing?’

  ‘Very little, I’m afraid. I think we can save your mother’s jewel­lery should you wish to keep it. But with all the claims on the estate, I doubt there will be much left from the remaining assets.’ He sighed heavily. ‘If I’d known earlier the parlous state of Hugh’s affairs . . . I’m so terribly sorry.’

  ‘Is the business being wound up?’

  ‘Most outstanding issues have been dealt with.’ Lincoln shifted his bulk. ‘I spoke to some business contacts about the former general manager – not a pleasant or very competent man, I gather. Hugh appointed him on Angela’s death, and not wisely, I have to say. He has a track record of exaggerating his credentials. I get the impression that he quickly found himself out of his depth. Without a firm hand at the helm, little real work was being done, which just exacerbated the company’s dire situation. He left a few months ago, but it was all too late then, in any case. All the clients on KinSearchers’ books have now taken their business elsewhere.’

  Eliza didn’t blame them.

  ‘Actually that’s not quite true,’ the lawyer continued. ‘One case remains open. The client is an old friend of your father’s who’d wanted Hugh to oversee the case personally. But with no staff left, I think the only option is to apologise and recommend an alternative investigations firm. I can do that if you wish.’

  Eliza nodded. ‘I suppose it’s for the best.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, my dear. I feel responsible in some way and if I can help at all, you must let me know.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Eliza picked up her bag, noticing its expensive crocodile skin. It had been a birthday present from her father, a gift he could have ill-afforded. Like the lawyer, she had been completely oblivious to the unfolding disaster.

  ‘The house, Edenholme – Mr Chen would like it to be vacated within three weeks. I assume that’s manageable?’

  Eliza steeled herself, even though she wanted to argue that it was too soon. Far too soon. ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Best to get it over with.’

  Lincoln Bassett looked relieved. ‘I’ll be in touch about the deceased estate auctioneers. They’ll take care of most of the furniture so there’s only really your personal effects to deal with.’

  He said it as though she should be relieved t
o see the furniture gone, when the reality was that almost every piece was imbued with Mayberry history. There was the old armoire of Adelaide Mayberry, who was said to have second sight; the chest that had held great-grandmother Edith’s trousseau for her wedding to the English aristocrat who ran out on her after twenty-two days of marriage; the clock that old Robert Mayberry, a distant cousin, had been winding up when he had a heart attack dead on the stroke of midnight and it never worked again.

  The house had been her playground as a child: the curving shiny banister her slide, the cobwebby attic her haunted house, the rambling garden her own private adventure park. She knew every corner of it, loved every centimetre. And now she had to turn it over to the property portfolio of an offshore investor who wanted an asset more than a home.

  Still, Eliza knew she was lucky not to be homeless in three weeks. She might not have been as close to her mother as she’d been to her dad, but right now she was thankful that Angela had left her the tiny Rushcutters Bay flat she’d lived in before her marriage.

  It was currently untenanted because Lincoln Bassett had assumed, correctly, that she might want to live in it or put it on the market. She supposed she would have to furnish it, unless the auctioneer rejected anything from Edenholme. Except, she realised with icy shock, she had precious little to buy furniture with. She had a few thousand dollars in her account. and her credit rating was good, but it wouldn’t last for long without an income. She was going to have to find work if she wanted to feed and clothe herself, let alone have something to sit on and sleep in.

  Too late, Eliza wished she’d listened to her mother when she’d been growing up, and wondered why they hadn’t been closer during her teens and early adulthood. Despite her own fortuitous marriage, Angela had warned Eliza that financial reliance on a man was a risky strategy. Eliza thought her mother had been talking about boyfriends. She’d never considered that her own father, who always seemed so effortlessly wealthy, would be the one to plunge her into poverty – or at least closer to it than she’d ever been before.