‘All the time, Ash. Hale’s not that different to Sietta in some ways. They both made choices they felt like they had to make, and those choices mean they have to live with what they did. Sietta’s lucky because his choices only hurt him in the end. Hale had to hurt a lot of people to make his choices and he’s not the kind of guy who likes hurting people.’
No he wasn’t.
‘You get along really well with Finn, huh?’ He’d never really noticed, but then he didn’t get to see his siblings at work during downtime much, much like they didn’t really see him. Those parts of their lives were their own, for the most part.
‘Yeah, he’s my favourite,’ Taylor admitted. ‘You’re not supposed to have those, but he’s it. Mendel annoys me, it’s like everything is a competition to see who’s the strongest, and Jones never seems quite on the same page. Harris is still a kid and has no interests outside surfing, drinking and dating. Clay’s like looking in the mirror if I got out on the wrong side of the bed …’
Ashley snickered, wondering if Clay felt the same way. Probably, they were identical twins after all and took that to a whole new level.
‘Finn’s quiet and calm, and funny. He’s good for you. I don’t want you to think I don’t approve. Bray’s the same; he knows you think he’s against it, but that’s not it. He works with Sietta, he knows what it’s like. But we didn’t want you to have to know what that was like, to watch someone you love struggle with something like that. I figured if I could scare you off before it came to that, then it was for the best. If I couldn’t scare you off, then well maybe you were strong enough to deal with it.’
‘But Brayden’s also simply being a dick about it,’ Ashley pointed out, realising he was still hurt by Brayden’s reaction to the whole thing. Brayden was usually the calm, supportive one; the one you turned to when you needed advice, or you were hurt, or things had gone wrong. But he hadn’t been the right person to turn to this time, and that was confusing because Taylor had never been that person. Taylor was standoffish and aloof and had a well-earned reputation for being an arsehole. He was the last person to go to with a problem, unless it involved beating the crap out of someone, and even then he’d probably prefer to ask why Ashley hadn’t done it himself.
‘You are his baby brother,’ Taylor reminded him softly.
‘So are you. I didn’t see him warning you off Sietta, or Clay off Joel.’
‘Well, yeah … because we would have beat the crap out of him and told him where to shove his ego. You’re still stupid enough to listen to him.’
That was true.
‘I’m in love with him,’ he admitted softly.
‘Ash, you’ve been obsessed with Finn from the first day I turned up at the house with him. I thought it was hero worship, but I get it now, that I miscalled that one. All he had to do was look at you and you were going to fall in love with him. I’m pretty sure everyone already knew.’
‘Seriously?’ Was his crush that obvious? But it had been, and he simply hadn’t cared because it was Finn Hale.
‘Everyone. But we didn’t think he would look at you,’ Taylor laughed at him. Then he sighed, Sietta calling him from the other room audible over the phone.
‘Look, Ash? You’re not going to screw him up. Just be you. You’re it for him, so just be you and that’ll be right, okay?’ He hung up before Ashley could respond.
He sat in the dark and stared at his screen until it turned off. Then he sat a while longer and smiled.
15
Marina bomb-tastic
‘Why do you look smug?’ Keller demanded, frowning at him. Ashley continued making his coffee, because he didn’t look smug, he looked the same as always. Keller was trying to get a rise out of him. Trying to distract him from the last few shifts and fears of what they might face this time.
‘How’s the foot?’ He pointed to the boot on Keller’s broken ankle and smirked, knowing it was frustrating the man and that he stupidly thought that if he’d been at full working capacity the last few shifts wouldn’t have been so bad. It was stupid because they didn’t make the fire what it was, they were there to put the fire out. Keller being there or not changed nothing, and Bell had done a damn good job. But that was for Keller to figure out.
‘It’s fine.’ Keller moved to sit on one of the couches and picked up a magazine, flicking through it without really reading it. Something to do with his hands while they waited for the alarm to go off.
The waiting was the worst. Constantly on edge wondering if the bell would ring, and what they would have to face when it did. But for now it was quiet and Ashley took his coffee through to the gym, setting up a bar and some weights to do deadlifts, feeling the need to lift heavy things as if it would help to lift the darker memories from his soul.
He took his time, working his way up with sets of ten until he couldn’t sustain the weight, then sets of five until he felt at breaking point. Then he worked on sets of five with minimum rest between until his arms ached and the sweat was pouring off him. Worn, he packed away the weights and went to shower but he’d barely gotten naked when the alarm went off. He glared at it on the wall.
‘Seriously?’ Of all the times! But he didn’t hesitate. He pulled his shorts back up and tugged his singlet on while he ran for the garage, stepping into his boots and pulling his overalls up.
‘Jameson … were you naked?’ Bell was laughing at him, and that was fine. He could see the funny side of it, and he knew it was little more than another distraction from the niggling fear as they all climbed into the truck and the siren came on as they launched free of the station.
‘Fire at the marina,’ Keller mused, a frown on his face. ‘How do you light a boat on fire? You’re literally on the water.’
‘Maybe they lit the lard on fire,’ White offered and they all turned to frown at him. ‘What?’
‘How old are you?’ Ashley grumbled, incredulous. ‘They’re not out whale hunting on the weekend, you know! No one’s stocking lard on their yacht, you weirdo.’
‘Why not, it’s delicious, and it lasts ages and it’s got heaps of uses …’ White’s frown closely resembled a pout.
‘If you’re using lard for lube, I know why your wife is mad at you,’ Keller snapped from the front seat and White’s horrified blush was enough to break the mood. The crew relaxed and were still laughing when they turned down the boat ramp at the marina to find hell had opened up on the water.
‘How the hell do we do this?’ Bell asked for ideas.
The yachts were burning. There were people in the water, swimming for the ramp and the truck, others calling for help from the decks, not wanting to abandon their vessels to the fire and the sea. Ashley climbed out of the truck as a young woman scrambled to shore and crawled up the ramp, sobbing as she threw herself at his feet. He helped her up and turned to see an ambulance had arrived at the top of the ramp.
‘Go on,’ he told her, because she wasn’t injured and he had work to do. ‘They’ll help you!’ She slipped on the cement but didn’t fall, catching herself and running up the ramp, disappearing into the shadows broken by swirling flashes of red lights.
More people were escaping the water, rushing past, but Ashley ignored them, helping with the hose and getting water connected, Bell shouting at them to run around the side of the marina to where some hoses and hydrants were built in. Ashley took off in one direction, aware of Tully going in the other.
There was a hose on the bank, but some boat dwellers had already swum to shore and grabbed it and had it shooting on their boats so he ran past them for the wooden walkway leading out to the boats where the next hose was. The jetty was on fire, one of the boats rocking into it, spilling new flames with each small collision and causing the wooden planks to buck and heave. Cursing under his breath, Ashley ran out to the hose and started unwinding it, leaving the boats closer to shore for the truck and instead shooting at the boats further out on the water, trying to wet them down before they caught alight.
Movement caught his eye and he turned to see a small group huddled on the deck of one of the boats. About five people in all.
‘Hey!’ He bellowed, unable to wave his arms without putting the hose down. ‘Hey, get off there! You need to get off the boat!’
But they either couldn’t hear him or weren’t listening. Either way they remained huddled against the side of the boat, clinging to one another.
‘Fuck my life!’ Ashley looked around and failed to find anything to help. He shoved the hose nozzle between the metal brackets of the hose hoist and hoped it stayed, though he doubted it. He sprinted for the boat, waving his arms.
Finally someone noticed him, pointing and calling out but before Ashley could get to them something slammed him sideways, a wave of heat and power that threw him off the jetty into the water and when he hit he looked up and saw a wave of flames wash over the jetty, a boat exploding to the side.
He came up for air and trod water for a while, looking along the line of boats, spotting the people jumping ship and fleeing for the bank, trying to help someone between them who clearly couldn’t swim. They were likely the reason they hadn’t jumped ship to begin with.
The water wasn’t as cold as he had expected, probably because of the fire. He started swimming for shore, noticing more trucks were arriving.
The water carried sounds, people’s screams and cries for help seeming to come from all directions. It was difficult to stay oriented and he paused to look around him, seeing a few of the boats had started to sink, the masts sticking up out of the water. More people were swimming to shore, others still clinging to their boats and crying out, unsure what to do.
The jetty was crumbling, the hose still sitting on the bracket but facing a different direction, spraying in a distorted arc at nothing in particular, catching the lights from the emergency crews and raining small flashes of bright red rain into the water. His eyes were starting to sting from the salt and dirt in the water and his clothes and boots were feeling heavier. He continued toward shore but was again distracted, this time by a small child clinging to the front of one of the boats further out.
Cursing, Ashley changed direction and headed out. The water seemed darker away from the fire and he struggled not to imagine sea monsters rising out of the depths to pull him under.
‘It’s okay, I’m coming!’ He called out when he thought he was in ear shot and the child stopped crying and stared down at him, looking confused. Ashley had to admit the last thing he would have expected to see was a fireman swimming to his rescue, but the boat was on fire so it wasn’t completely weird.
‘Jump down!’
The child clearly did not understand. He was Asian, and by his features Ashley guessed from the south-east, maybe Indonesia. He struggled to remember anything but all he could remember was selamat datang and he didn’t think the kid would appreciate him shouting ‘welcome’ for no reason.
Instead, Ashley busied himself with trying to find a way onto the boat. He swam toward the back of the boat and frowned at the familiar name scrawled on the side.
Conquistador.
There couldn’t be too many boats called that and it made Ashley pause. He knew that name for some reason. A niggling suspicion formed in his mind, but he ignored it because he had a job to do.
Swimming to the rear and finding a set of steps by the motor, he hauled himself onto the deck and cursed the weight of his uniform full of water. It felt like he was trying to walk on the moon, or the opposite of the moon he supposed. Slow and cumbersome and weighed down.
The child came sprinting down the deck at him, flinging himself into Ashley’s arms and babbling at him fiercely in a language Ashley didn’t know, though he suspected it was indeed Indonesian based on the sounds.
‘Shh! It’s okay, I’ve got you,’ Ashley assured the boy. ‘Where’re your parents?’ He didn’t expect an answer, and the boy ignored him, still waving his hands and crying loudly on Ashley’s shoulder. Ashley took him toward the door leading below decks and the boy’s arms tightened around his neck to the point of pain.
When he kicked the door open, Ashley gasped and fell backward, barely shifting the boy into his lap before he landed hard on his arse, bruising his tailbone and jarring his spine. But he barely felt the pain, staring wide-eyed at dark eyes lifelessly staring back at him. They’d been killed with a knife, stabbed so many times the blood was thicker and heavier than the flimsy clothes they’d worn. A man and a woman, Asian, black hair matted and stuck to the floor by blood and sinew. The man’s intestines had erupted through the hole in his belly, bloated and oozing across his lifeless form.
‘Oh God,’ Ashley gasped, rolling onto his side, the boy falling to the deck as he pushed himself to his knees and vomited bile and coffee. They were dead. Not simply dead but murdered dead.
He didn’t think on it more. He grabbed the boy and ran for the edge, leaping back into the water and sinking for a moment, letting the dull roar of the world be stripped away by the quiet, cool water until they surfaced and it all came rushing back in.
The boy clung to him, and Ashley shifted him onto his back, making sure his arms were tight around his neck before slowly swimming to shore. A gas bottle on one of the boats exploded and shards of wood rained down on them. The boy cried but Ashley tried not to focus on it, staring at the familiar emergency lights on shore and making his way there.
It felt like the longest swim of his life, the boy’s arms too tight, his clothes too heavy, the water growing uncomfortably warm, the lights too bright and shadows too dark. His mind too shadowed by the dead, his vision blurry around his own shocked tears. They were murdered. He needed to tell Taylor. He needed Finn.
His hands hit cement and he cried out in relief, letting his feet fall to the ramp and crawling up out of the water. Hands grabbed the boy, but he clung to him and refused to let go. Ashley forced himself up, pushing Bell away and the man understood, going back to work while Ashley fumbled his way into a standing position and hefted the boy up into his aching arms. Everything hurt but he forced himself to the ambulance, somehow startled when Hayley turned to greet him, her eyes wide as she looked him up and down.
‘Ash … what … sit down!’ She ushered him forward to the rear of the ambulance. The boy still refused to let go and Ashley felt like the devil himself when he pried the boy’s hands from his neck and managed to sit him down on the bumper.
‘Are you okay?’ His sister’s hands stroked his hair back from his forehead and she shone a torch in his eye, nearly blinding him.
‘Stop it, I’m fine! I’ve gotta get back to work.’ He forced his feet to move and struggled back down the ramp toward the truck.
‘Ash, wait—’ But he ignored her and she had her own work to do, so he was soon back at the truck, leaning against the side as he stared out at the smoke billowing from the burning boats, the water swallowing each blackened husk and doing their work for them, extinguishing the flames as it devoured its bounty. The fires were dying down, but had taken their toll. There would be many unhappy boat owners … or, not boat owners any more.
His mind was churning, trying to remember what he knew about boats, but also about illegal immigrants and Chinatown and the economy. He dredged up each of the fires they’d attended lately with immigrant victims and found one commonality. Part of him could barely believe it, but most of him cursed because they had all been blind and stupid.
‘I need a phone,’ he realised, looking around desperately. ‘Bell, you got your phone?’
‘Use the radio in the truck!’
‘I don’t—never mind!’ He ran back up the ramp, tripping over his own heavy boots several times and hitting his knee hard enough to bruise, but he barely felt it, rushing to the ambulance.
‘Hayley, I need your phone!’ The boy saw him and lunged back into his arms. Hayley glared at him and threw up her hands in exasperation.
‘Now, Hayley!’ He bellowed at her and he didn’t know if it was that he’d never yelled at her like that,
or the fact he was completely furious in his desperation but she didn’t argue. She got him her phone, handing it over and trying to check the boy over for injuries while he hung from Ashley’s arm like a leech.
Ashley found Taylor’s number and impatiently waited for him to answer, his hand subconsciously finding its way into the boy’s hair and massaging his scalp in soothing circles. He calmed enough that Hayley could check him over while Ashley was on the phone.
‘Hay?’
‘It’s Ash, we’re at a fire on the Marina.’
‘Don’t you mean by?’ Smart arse.
‘No, I mean on. I pulled a boy off a boat; Asian, if I had to guess I’d say Indonesian. His parents were on the boat, both murdered. They were all cut up and there was blood everywhere and their guts were falling out and …’
‘Whoa, Ash! Slow down …’ Taylor was calling out to Mendel in the background. ‘Which Marina?’
‘Birkenhead Point!’
‘We’ll be there soon. Don’t go anywhere.’
Hayley was quiet, treating a series of cuts down the boy’s arm; splinters from the exploding boat while they swam to shore. She kept stealing glances at him and frowning but he couldn’t tell if it was because she overheard his phone call or because she wanted to treat his own injuries which he could feel as a hundred small stinging nuisances across his skin.
When he went to go again, the boy wouldn’t let go.
‘Take him with you,’ Hayley waved her hand. ‘I’ll come grab him before we head to the hospital, there are still a lot of people who need attention so we’ll treat them first.’ She didn’t wait for a response, rushing off to help her partner who was holding down a girl while he tried to brace her very broken leg.
He looked at the boy and pointed to himself.
‘Ash.’ Then he pointed to the boy.
‘Adi,’ the boy said softly and Ashley nodded to acknowledge him, lifted him onto one hip and hurried back down the ramp, looking for Bell.
Rhino Ash (Saturday Barbies Book 2) Page 25
