Long Way Home (Hearts of the Outback Book 3)

by Susanne Bellamy

  “No.”

  “What do you mean? No, you won't wear a wire, or no, you don't want to talk horses with him?”

  “No, I don't want to be wired for sound.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it feels like an invasion of my privacy. I'm there overnight, not for a couple of hours. And you'll hear everything, won't you? Is it even showerproof?”

  For two, maybe three heartbeats, Caleb watched as a blush crept up Sarah's neck and cheeks. Tempted to laugh aloud as he realised what she was thinking, he refrained. “You can take it off when you're in your room. It's simple to use, and not hard to put on or take off. I'll show you.”

  Smothering a grin, he handed the pie box to her and sauntered over to his vehicle. From the glove box, he took out a small package and weighed it in his hand. So long as he set up close to the homestead, Sarah needed only the basic device and he'd pick up everything. He returned to his chair and unwrapped the package.

  “It's discreet and easily tucked inside your shirt. Water will render it useless so stay out of the shower while you're wearing it.” He offered it on the palm of his hand.

  Sarah picked it up and examined it closely. “O. . . kay. You say I can take it off, but how do I attach it? And where?”

  “Stand up and I'll show you.” He took the tiny transmitter between two fingers.

  She set the pie on her chair and turned to face him.

  “Will you be wearing a shirt like this?”

  “No, detective. I thought I'd wear my ball gown and tiara.”

  “Yes, well, while that might offer more hiding places for this little piece of technology, maybe we'll work on where in your shirt it will fit for the time being.” He reached for the pocket over her breast and paused.

  The slim-fitting beige shirt hardly hid her curves but the chance of the transmitter's signal being muffled beyond usefulness if she forgot and shoved something in her pocket was greater. He stepped back and considered her lapel. “Are all your shirts plain like this?”

  “Now you're a fashion critic? I don't carry a suitcase full of changes of clothes, detective. In case you haven't noticed, my travelling companion is a horse.”

  “That's a no then. Patterned material would help disguise the presence of the bug, that's all. We'll work with what you've got.”

  He showed her the clip fastening on the back of the bug before he slid two fingers under the open lapel of her shirt. As he worked to attach the device, his knuckles brushed the bare skin of her throat. It was the gentlest of touches but Sarah jumped back like a scalded cat.

  “Damn. I lost the transmitter. Don't move.” He dropped to his knees and scanned the ground between them.

  Sarah kneeled carefully opposite him and joined the search, her attention focused on the dirt between them. “I didn't see it fall.” She pulled out her mobile phone and switched on the torch. Bright white light illuminated the empty ground.

  As he glanced up, his gaze fell on Sarah. Or more precisely, straight down her shirt at the same time as she looked at him. Looking down her shirt.

  He saw the precise moment she realised. His finger was pointed at her cleavage although he had no memory of raising his hand. She reared back on her booted heels and flashed the light into his eyes.

  “Perve! I knew it. I knew you had an ulterior motive. You—”

  He shaded his eyes from her anger and the stabbing light of her phone. “Stop it this minute. You jumped and made me lose hold of the damned bug. And I wasn't trying to see down your shirt. I saw something—”

  “Which you sure as hell aren't seeing again.” She folded her arms across her chest and glared.

  “Dammit, Sarah, I think the bug fell between your—um—down your front. I saw something black there.” Abruptly, he stood and Sarah scrambled to her feet.

  Pink burned up her cheeks. She flipped the cover over her phone and shoved it into her jeans pocket. Cupping one hand beneath the top button of her shirt, she slipped her fingers into the plain white bra. Between breasts that were imprinted in his memory as the last glorious sight before she'd all but blinded him. She wriggled and did a little shimmy as she fished the bug out and offered it to him.

  Warmth from her body clung to the black bug as he closed his hand over it and glared at the ground.

  “I'm sorry, Detective. I thought—”

  “My name's Caleb, Sarah. And I won't jump, harass, or otherwise molest you so relax.” Anger simmered behind his words. Not with Sarah, oddly enough. She'd reacted reasonably to the situation as she perceived it. But their little accident had done nothing to reconcile him to sending her into a potentially hazardous situation. There was little choice in the matter.

  Which was why he was angry now. Intelligent as Sarah was, she wasn't trained in the job. That slip up over the bug underlined the fact. In his peripheral vision he glimpsed her hand rising towards his arm. She paused, before quickly pulling back.

  “Strangely, I trust you, Det— Caleb. Insofar as this goes, at least. I just don't like being touched.”

  “Not an issue. Look, try putting the bug in your pocket and just remember not to put anything else in or you'll muffle the sound. I want to make sure it's working properly.”

  He looked at the tiny bump in the smooth line over her left breast. “That will have to do. I'm heading back to my ute. Give me a couple of minutes to lock onto your signal then start speaking.”

  “What do I say?”

  “Tell me to go to hell for all I care.” He strode off towards his ute, cursing this sudden and unwanted awareness.

  Self-conscious, Sarah turned her back on the fire and Caleb somewhere off in the shadows. Stupidly she'd given in and called him by his first name and now, he was no longer the detective who had arrested her and half her family. A moment of weakness on her part and he'd changed from the bastard detective to a decent man she'd hurt through her paranoia. According to Lizzy Carter, he was a reasonable man. And caring, she’d said. And in her heart of hearts, Sarah acknowledged her dislike of him had everything to do with her disappointment and anger over the men in her family.

  I don't like being touched.

  That didn't begin to cover how she felt around men. Lizzy's father had been a violent man and, although Sarah hadn't understood when she was a child, the single encounter with Lizzy's father had damaged her in ways she still hadn't come to grips with. At times of stress, the nightmare returned, crushing her beneath suffocating fear.

  “Sarah, are you okay?” Caleb's distorted voice called from the gum trees separating them.

  She opened eyes she didn't remember closing and dragged in an audible breath. The night wind raised goose bumps over her skin. Turning back to the fire, she straightened her shoulders.

  Caleb strode into the campsite and stopped on the opposite side of the fire. His gaze raked her from head to boot and back.

  “I'm fine, Detective. Shall I begin? How do I loathe thee, let me count—”

  “Your heart rate accelerated and your breathing was ragged. I thought you were having some sort of attack.”

  He heard my heartbeat? One hand crept up to her neck as her throat closed on a lump of dread. Damn Caleb. He was too close to the truth. Her panic attacks had been few and far between since she'd left home. Working with horses kept her calm and focused on their needs, as did being away from the homestead where her nightmare lurked in the storage room, waiting to pounce. Where Campbell had—

  She clamped a lid on the memory and cleared her throat. “Fascinating as playing doctor and listening to my heart must be, this is precisely why I don't want to wear your bug. You've invaded my privacy too far, Detective.” Digging for the anger that had sustained her earlier in the day, Sarah fished the bug out of her pocket and held it to Caleb. Good grief, couldn't she stop thinking of him as a person with concern in his eyes? For her?

  He glanced at the bug but made no move to take it. “Please, Sarah. I won't touch you again but try attaching it under your collar.”
/>   “Enough. Take the damned thing or I'll toss it in the fire.”

  Firelight flickered in the night breeze, casting his expression in shadow before revealing his lips clamped together. But he said no more, only held out his hand.

  She dropped the bug into his palm, turned on her heel and headed off to find comfort in Tabitha's warm neck and uncomplicated trust.

  Chapter Four

  Caleb lay flat on the sandy slope and trained his binoculars on the homestead, although the complex spread out before him had little in common with most properties given that label. Pale grey render covered the walls between panels of tinted glass, which looked out to the east over an expanse of green lawn and sub-tropical bushes.

  He scanned the main building. Instead of lying awake tossing and turning last night, he'd studied the plan from the file and committed the layout to memory. Everything that might help if Sarah got into difficulty and he needed to get inside in a hurry. His gut churned at the memory of her riding off this morning without a backward glance. Without even one snarky comment.

  But she had taken the bug in its container when he offered it, and tossed it into her saddlebag. Whether she would decide to wear it or not, he had no idea.

  Working with an untrained undercover person was so far outside the rulebook—and his comfort zone—Caleb didn't know where to begin. And it made Glen Kaiser's agreement all the more puzzling. More than likely, he expected Sarah to give herself and her partners in crime away. Kaiser would have interpreted her reluctance to wear the bug as proof of her complicity.

  With anyone else, so would Caleb. But something deeper and darker than a felon's fear of being discovered lurked behind Sarah's response. The flash of fear when she'd intercepted his unfortunate gaze down her shirt had been primal. Prickly, snarky, standoffish—were these defences against more than nasty gossips and tough family times?

  Movement on the western side of the complex attracted his attention. He trained the binoculars on the stables and watched as a young girl exited astride a dappled grey horse. Ralph Jenner's daughter, Lily, was thirteen, no, fourteen since her birthday last month, and went everywhere with her father. According to Caleb's notes, the wife loathed horses and never accompanied her husband when he visited his property. Was the presence of the teenager a sign that nothing bad would happen to Sarah when she arrived?

  Sunlight glinted off the silver on the girl's reins as a young man appeared leading a second horse. A white stallion. That was as much as Caleb saw before the stallion dug its hooves into the dirt and tossed its head, yanking the stable hand half off his feet. Even from this distance, Caleb could hear the man's cursing.

  Lily Jenner reined in her mount and turned in the saddle. “Be gentle with him.”

  At least, that's what Caleb imagined from her body language. At this distance, his imagination was filling in lots of gaps.

  The stallion reared and its hooves thumped the earth, engulfing the man in a cloud of dirt. A second figure ran out from the stables and tried to calm the animal. He grabbed the halter on the other side but the horse became more agitated.

  Caleb focused the binoculars on the stallion. Was this the sort of troubled horse Sarah worked with? White eyes rolled as it lashed out again and furious, high-pitched squeals unlike anything Caleb had heard before. He’d learned to ride years ago, but there was no way he'd come within cooee of such a beast.

  “Get him back inside.” Ralph Jenner strode from the house, his voice carrying to where Caleb surveyed the scene. Stocky and powerful, the millionaire was easily identifiable. Gold glinted at his throat and wrists, and even at this distance, his designer clothes were obvious.

  The stable hands—such inept handling wouldn’t come from a trainer—finally got the horse to pass back through the stable doors.

  Jenner strolled over to his daughter and patted her horse as he exchanged words with her before she trotted off to an undercover exercise yard behind the stable block and he returned to the house.

  Lily returned her horse to the stables an hour later and shortly after, disappeared into the house.

  Caleb checked his watch. Three hours until Sarah would reach Jenner's property. The property drowsed under the midday winter sun and he scanned the buildings looking for activity. But a chill wind reminded Caleb; tonight the temperature was set to plummet as a southerly straight off the Antarctic swept up through central Australia. Sarah would be warm inside Jenner's house but Caleb was too close to the property to risk building a fire. Whatever the inconvenience, he would stay nearby. If Jenner had Sir Alain and suspected Sarah was snooping, she would be in danger.

  ##

  A headache thumped behind Sarah’s gritty eyes. Sleep seemed a long-distant memory and she was never more glad to see the end of her day's ride as now.

  Damn Caleb Richards for dogging her footsteps and disrupting the enjoyment and peace she'd hoped to recover in the vast silence of the outback. Last night should have been relaxed and healing. She'd even half reconciled herself to his presence over dinner and dessert. Until the bug incident.

  A simple brush of his hand over her skin and she'd jumped like an untamed filly. Her rational mind accepted he’d meant no harm but the shadow of Mac Campbell still blighted Sarah’s life. Squeezing her eyes shut, she refused to allow the dead man to overshadow her present and future with dark memories and regret for tainted childhood.

  Blinking away moisture, she was surprised to discover Tabitha moving with increasing speed towards a cluster of large grey buildings surrounded by strips of lush green lawn unknown in the west. The bay mare trotted into the home yard, her hooves tapping out her pleasure in arriving at food and rest.

  Sarah dismounted and walked the mare towards the stable building as angry equine protests rang out. As she passed through the doors, she called out. “Hello. Anybody there?”

  A surly youth appeared around the corner of the central aisle. He looked her over without speaking, shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned against the end stall.

  “Hi, I'm Sarah Tait. Mr. Jenner is expecting me.”

  A second man, middle-aged and weather-beaten, came into view, coiling a length of rope as he walked. “Ms. Tait. Welcome. I'm Frank Kelsey. Mr. Jenner's in the house. Hugo here can look after your horse if you'd like to head on in and meet him.”

  Hugo made no move to take Tabitha's reins, but watched Sarah with a look that raised the hairs on the back of her neck. Entrusting any horse to the young man seemed like a bad idea and even her beautifully calm Tabitha would buck against the anger rolling off him.

  “Hugo, hop to it. Take Ms. Tait's horse and—”

  Ignoring young Hugo, Sarah spoke to the older man. “I'm happy to attend to Tabitha myself, thanks all the same. Can you show me which stall you've assigned to her please, Frank?”

  “Sure thing, Ms. Tait.” He turned up the centre aisle and led the way, his limp favouring his right leg. Frank pointed to a stall three from the end. “In here. We're trying to keep a buffer zone around Donald there.”

  “Donald?” Clear signals of distress emanated from the last stall, and Tabitha sidestepped and whickered softly in response.

  Frank jerked a thumb at the end stall. Angry snuffling and the sound of a hoof striking the floor at irregular intervals suggested Donald had some antisocial tendencies.

  If she was a betting woman, she'd lay money on Horrible Hugo having stirred up Donald. Intent on seeing to Tabitha's comfort, she led her mare into the stall and unsaddled her.

  Frank returned with a serving of oats and patted the mare's neck. “She's a beauty. How old?”

  “Three.”

  Thumping sounded from Tabitha's neighbour. Donald was unhappy and letting them know it in no uncertain terms.

  “Mind if I have a look at Donald?”

  “He's got a chip on his shoulder bigger than Uluru, that one. I think he's got potential, but something or someone has done wrong by him and he's unforgiving. Don't go in, Ms. Tait. And watch your fingers on the
gate.”

  Sarah stood a little way back from the bars between her and the stallion. He tossed his head, and his nostrils flared as he caught her scent. Disturbed, definitely, and dangerous if you didn't know how to handle him. Her fingers itched to soothe him. She crossed her arms and turned to Frank. “Why is he called Donald? Is that like, short for Donald Duck, because of his white coat?”

  “Ah, bit of a joke, love. His real name is Aladdin but he's been stirring up trouble since he arrived a couple of weeks ago. Like that American wannabe-president fella. Best not mention the nickname to Mr. Jenner though. He reckons this bloke has the makings of a Cup winner.”

  Sarah studied Aladdin with a critical eye. His proportions reminded her of Sir Alain, and he had a similar imperious tilt to his head as though lesser mortals were beneath his notice. The dark coat of a black colt, like the young Sir Alain had at birth, could have lightened to the grey standing before her. Some horses silvered quickly, like Sir Alain's sire. Was there a chance that Aladdin was the kidnapped stallion beneath a coat of light paint? It wouldn't be the first time such a deceit had been attempted, but the Fine Cotton affair thirty or so years earlier might have been successful if they'd done a better dyeing job on the horse.

  “Ms. Tait, welcome to Selkirk.” Sarah spun around and saw Ralph Jenner, her host for the evening with a hand on the shoulder of a shy, brown-haired teenager. He held out his other hand to shake. “This is my daughter, Lily.”

  The teenager wiped her palm over her jodhpurs and then gripped Sarah's hand and shook it firmly. “Hi, Ms. Tait. I really wanted to meet you. I want to do what you do when I leave school.”

  “Endurance riding?”

  “Horse whispering.” Lily's soft hazel eyes were bright as she looked from Sarah to Aladdin. “I want to make him well.”

  Sarah looked back at the stallion. His ears twitched as he edged towards the front of his stall. Lily slowly raised a hand to his nose and the grey lowered his head a fraction.

  “See, he knows I won't hurt him but every time we take him outside, he carries on like a company of crocodiles is after him.” Lily ran a hand up one side of the aristocratic nose.