by Sandy Vaile
The woman placed the red kit on the ground and opened it. “Rowan, is it? Would you like to come and look inside my special medicine box?”
Curiosity won, and Rowan stumbled up the hill.
All Neve wanted to do was run after him, but she stayed ankle-deep in the dam, covered in sticky mud, her hands on her head.
The officer approached. “Do you have any weapons on you?”
“No.”
“Turn around.”
She complied and received a pat down.
“Is there anyone else in the vehicle?” The officer nodded towards the roof of the ute, which was all that was left protruding above the surface.
“Yes, a man called Dave, but he’s dead.”
The officer kept his eyes on her but relayed the information through his radio.
“How do you know he’s dead?”
She gave him a very brief rundown of the events, pleading for information about Tony, Micah, and Chelsea.
“It seems we have a lot to discuss, Miss Botticelli. How about we head up to the ambulance and get you both checked out. Then you’re going to need to accompany me to the station to give a full statement.”
The officer held an arm to one side to indicate she should go ahead of him. His gaze still roamed cautiously, but he hadn’t cuffed her.
She scooped Rowan’s tiny body into her arms on her way past.
“I want Mummy”—tears crowded his eyes again—“and Daddy,” he said like an afterthought.
Neve looked at the paramedic, who shrugged, as did the cop. Her stomach flipped as an ache began to spread to her heart. Chelsea’s bloody body . . .Micah covered in blood and then wrestling Boiler. And Tony, where was Tony? Bile burned its way up her throat as she followed the trail of broken vegetation the ute had made on its way down.
She paused near the top and pressed Rowan’s head to her shoulder.
“I’ll take him if you like,” the paramedic said.
Neve was about to look over the edge and see the end of life as she knew it. After a deep breath, she took the final step.
Boiler’s car was still there, with the door open. Cop cars were everywhere, bathing the landscape in flashes of red and blue. Two-way radios crackled, and four bikers were sitting along one wall of the shed, their hands secured behind them. Boiler gave her a death stare as she hurried across the car park, searching.
Her boots stopped before her brain registered the blood-soaked sheets covering two bodies.
“No!”
If one of them was Chelsea, the other had to be Tony or Micah.
Pain ripped through her, so strong that it doubled her over and the meagre contents of her stomach spilt onto the ground.
• • •
“Please hold still.” The frustrated paramedic brandished a blood-soaked wipe at the graze on Micah’s bicep.
He leapt from his seat in the back of the ambulance, and Officer Wagner stepped forward.
“You need to get that looked at, Mr. Kincaid.”
“It barely scratched the surface. For God’s sake, will you just tell me how Neve and Rowan are?”
“You are going to be detained for questioning, but I can put the handcuffs back on and arrest you if you don’t cooperate.”
“That won’t be necessary. I just want to know if they’re safe.” Micah pushed his way around the ambulance doors and stopped dead.
Neve was bent over in the middle of the car park. Alive, but she must be hurt, and here the paramedics were wasting time trying to bandage his scratches. Her dark hair was matted, clothes caked in mud, and . . .
No Rowan. She’d tried, but was too late. Rowan was gone.
Air came in gasps, but it wasn’t enough. He dropped to his knees.
He had done this. Chelsea would still be alive if he hadn’t acted impulsively this morning. Rowan would still be alive if he’d just followed Boiler’s orders. And where was Tony?
Neve looked up, and their eyes met. The corners of her eyes were pinched with anguish, but it was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen. His vision blurred. Her unsteady legs propelled her towards him, and he opened his arms to receive her.
“Your arm.” Her hand hovered over the wound.
“I’m all right.” He took her face between his hands. “Are you hurt?” It was difficult to tell through all the grime.
She shook her head, but tears flowed down her cheeks.
“I know,” he said, and pulled her to him. “I can’t believe he’s gone.”
“No.” She whimpered against him. “Not Tony . . .”
He pulled back. “They have to get him out of there.”
Neve cocked her head. “What are you talking about?”
“They can’t leave Ro—” His voice caught. “Can’t leave him in the water.”
Her eyes widened in horror, and she grabbed his hand, tugging him towards a second ambulance. He was reluctant—not yet ready to see Rowan’s body—but Neve was as persistent as ever. When he stepped around the open double doors at the back, there was Rowan, sitting on a bed, swinging his muddy legs back and forth as a paramedic pressed a stethoscope against his back. Filthy and bewildered, but smiling.
“Rowan! Thank God.” Micah bear-hugged them both, until Rowan wriggled to get free.
“Daaad, you’re squishing me.”
They all laughed.
“I can see the celebrations have started without me.”
It was a voice Neve would know anywhere. One she cherished and trusted. She held her breath and turned slowly. “Dad!”
Chapter 38
Neve swiped at the grit that clung to her skin. The cops had allowed Bronwyn to deliver a change of clothes to the station, but you could only clean so much silt off with paper towels in a public bathroom sink.
A rogue yawn forced its way past her pressed lips and out her nose.
For crying out loud. How much longer are they going to keep me in this room?
She’d been staring at the same scuffed, white walls in the interrogation room for hours, and if it had felt small in the beginning, now it felt like a closet. The recording device they’d used during several interviews had been pushed up out of the way, but the intrusive, glossy black security dome still clung to the ceiling in one corner.
Was Officer Wagner watching her now? Waiting for her to lose it and confess to multiple murders? He’d circled around a lot of questions during the last few hours, leaving the room and coming back several times. Asking the same questions in different ways, but none more frequently than, “Why did you help Micah when you had no prior relationship and the child isn’t yours?” He’d been very interested in how Chelsea got shot, too.
As if I’d shoot her so I could have Micah all to myself. What kind of person did a thing like that?
Her poor dad. He must be beside himself being inside a police station, let alone being questioned and sampled. Hopefully, he wouldn’t do anything stupid enough to get him locked up.
She folded her arms on the table and rested her head on them; let her eyelids close . . .
• • •
Neve woke with a start at the sound of footsteps.
“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Miss Botticelli. As I’ve already explained, you’ve been charged with aggravated trespass, because you went onto the property without lawful intent. It will be up to a judge to decide if you entered the property with the intent to inflict grievous bodily harm.
“However, I’m sure the judge will take the extenuating circumstances into consideration, and the fact that you helped us break up the Mutts’ southern operations. For now you are free to leave with your father, but I’d appreciate it if you would make yourself available to answer further questions that may assist our investigations.”
She was on her feet and out the door without another word, but halfway down the corridor, she paused.
“What about Micah?”
“He has been cooperating with police and will be released shortly. I believe he wants to
spend the night at the hospital.”
“What? I didn’t think he was hurt badly.”
“He’s not. Mr. Kincaid’s son is being held overnight at Flinders Medical Centre so that an officer can question him in the morning, when someone from child services will be available to sit in on the interview. Mr. Kincaid won’t be allowed to see him until after the interview, but he insists on staying close.”
Micah had nearly lost it when he wasn’t allowed to go with Rowan in the ambulance. He must be beside himself not being allowed to go to him now. What if child services decided he wasn’t a fit father anymore? Hell, it didn’t even pay to think about Micah losing Rowan over this.
Micah will want to take Rowan home now. His home, not mine. Far away in Sydney.
“Honey, are you all right?”
The reassuring voice immediately relaxed the knot of angst in her gut.
“Dad.” She flung her arms around him, breathing in his comforting scent.
He squeezed her back.
“I love you,” she said against his shoulder. “I’m so glad you taught me to defend myself.”
It was only as she stepped back and studied him under the harsh fluorescent lights that the shadows under his eyes stood out and the texture of his skin looked papery, as though this ordeal had aged him decades.
“Are you all right, Dad?”
He draped an arm around her shoulders. “Let’s go home.”
Walking ahead of the officers must’ve given Tony the same uneasy feeling she felt—as if the cops might change their minds at any moment and march them back into the interrogation room—because they both quickened the pace and practically burst through the door at the end of the corridor. Neve fell straight into Bronwyn’s arms.
“Thank goodness Micah organised lawyers for you,” Bronwyn said, wrapping Neve in a bear hug. “I thought the next time I saw you, you’d be wearing an orange jumpsuit.”
“We’ve organised for you to leave through the rear door,” Officer Wagner said, “because there’s quite a media contingent out front.”
Of course Micah’s involvement would hit headlines. Not good for any of them, but especially not for Tony. Officer Wagner opened the rear door, scanned the car park, and closed it again.
“There are a couple of reporters out there, but you’ll be away before they realise who you are. Call me if you have any trouble or think of anything else.” He passed a business card to Neve.
“My car is right by the door.” Bronwyn squeezed Neve’s hand reassuringly.
• • •
No one spoke during the drive home. No doubt Bronwyn had a million questions, but Neve ignored her worried glances. She didn’t have an ounce of energy left.
It seemed like an eternity since Micah had strode into the kindy, demanding to see Rowan. In a single week, he’d ingrained himself in her life, in her home; even Tony and Jack seemed to accept him now. Beneath the Louis Vuitton, there was a determined, practical man who cared deeply and would fight for what he believed in. And despite his barbed comments about Neve giving up her life for Tony, she believed he respected her life choices.
Micah was someone who understood the importance of keeping family close. The loss he’d suffered as a child hadn’t been death, like hers, but his father’s abandonment had been just as permanent and had caused just as much upheaval in his life. How ironic that, because he valued his family, she was going to lose him now.
He didn’t have a choice though; his mother relied on him and Rowan would need stability more than anything after losing Chelsea. Micah would be Rowan’s rock. She had no doubt he’d put his son’s needs first, and he could offer financial security and extended family. Far more than Neve had to offer.
A warm hand patted her shoulder, and she turned to smile at Tony in the back seat.
He reached up to wipe away her tears, his mouth turned down in sympathy. “We’re going to be okay, honey.”
“I know,” she said. Physically they were all okay. It was emotionally that frightened her. Right now her heart felt like a porcelain trinket that had been shattered and fitted back together again without glue. It wouldn’t take much force for it to fragment irrevocably.
Chapter 39
Micah pushed a coil of sleek brown hair from Rowan’s forehead and watched his son’s chest rise and fall with the slow rhythm of slumber. The child had cried for a long time, asking intermittently for his mother. It wasn’t possible to adequately explain the finality of death to a four-year-old.
I’m never letting him out of my sight again.
Micah had spent the whole of the previous night pacing hospital corridors, unable to tear himself away. Many times he’d thought of calling Neve, but she would be nursing her own wounds. They were all criminals now, at least until his lawyer worked his magic. Worse still, they would all be subjected to an intense media spotlight. Neve and Tony didn’t deserve to have their peaceful life cracked open like a walnut shell; each piece delivered as public fodder and chewed over by the masses.
No, it was better if he steered clear of them until the worst of it had blown over.
This morning, an endless compilation of doctors, social services workers, and police detectives had gone in and out of Rowan’s room, and it took his lawyer’s intervention before Micah was allowed to take Rowan back to the Travaglias’ bed-and-breakfast.
There was a gentle knock on the cabin door. He got up but hesitated at the bedroom door, unwilling to leave Rowan. Finally, he left the bedroom door ajar so he could still see his precious son.
Taking a deep breath, he checked that the door chain was in place. Although the media was camped at the end of the Travaglias’ driveway, you never knew how bold they would be. He opened the front door a fraction.
“Sorry, I hope you weren’t asleep.” Bronwyn Travaglia proffered a glass bowl lined with a chequered tea towel. “I didn’t think you’d want to leave Rowan, so here is some lunch.”
He sighed and rolled his shoulders, then slid the chain aside and fully opened the door. The bowl was warm, and the steamy aroma of scones made his mouth water in an instant.
“Thanks, Bronwyn, you’ve been very good to us. I appreciate how difficult having me here must be with the media camped out, but we’ll be out of your hair tomorrow.”
“Don’t worry about it. Mum and I have got the no comment thing down pat, and we let the answering machine get the phone calls. I’ll bring some roast pork and vegetables by around six, if you like.”
“That would be lovely. Rowan’s asleep at the moment, the poor little tyke is exhausted, but I’m sure he’ll be ravenous when he wakes.”
“If you need anything at all, just let me know. You’re part of the family now.”
It was a nice notion, but he couldn’t be sure about where things stood between Neve and him. Not yet. “How is Neve?”
“Not great. She misses you and Rowan . . .but she’ll be fine. She has Tony and me to look out for her.”
He smiled. Neve certainly had a protective extended family. “I’ll call her,” he promised.
Bronwyn seemed to relax a little. “Great, see you later.”
As he pushed the door shut and relatched the chain, a faint pinking of the skin across his knuckles caught his eye. It was fading faster than the impression Neve had made on him on his first day in Turners Gully.
Neve’s stoic resolve had so frustrated him then, and yet even through his haze of desperation, the fire in her eyes had caught his attention. Their potent attraction had taken him completely by surprise, and no matter how much she denied it, he knew she felt it too. It was a magnetism that set his skin on fire and clouded his mind, but it had developed into so much more for him. She was everything he had never known he wanted: independent and fragile, stunning without the least bit of effort to flaunt it, she fought for her fundamental beliefs, and would challenge him on every level, but most importantly, she loved Rowan.
In just one week, he’d fallen for her—harder than he’d ever fal
len before. He desperately wanted to be sure her feelings were as strong . . .but couldn’t ask, not until he was sure he wouldn’t put her at risk anymore.
He slumped into the armchair beside Rowan’s bed and let his eyelids close for just a moment . . .
The sight of blood oozing into creamy silk fabric made Micah gasp. He clawed at the air to stop the sensation of falling into an abyss . . .and then opened his eyes.
He couldn’t breathe until he turned his head and saw that Rowan was sleeping safely beside him. Even though Micah was awake now, the images of Chelsea lying on the ground, her blood oozing between his fingers, wouldn’t fade.
“It wasn’t your fault I didn’t fit. Just couldn’t s-stay in your world,” she’d said. What if all of this god-awful mess could have been avoided if he’d done something differently? Chelsea shouldn’t have felt like she didn’t belong in his world. But Neve would see a life with him exactly the same way: as though she would have to forfeit her own career and beliefs and be uprooted from her father.
I won’t do that to you, he promised.
Chapter 40
A Barnevelder hen ruffled the double-laced pattern of its black-and-brown feathers and pecked the fluff at the top of Neve’s Ugg boot. She flinched and the hen gave a shocked squawk before fleeing across the yard. She must have been sitting still for so long that it forgot she was there.
A chill from the slab of granite under her, cut through her jeans. The peace and quiet of her home had never before felt lonely, but she couldn’t stand it any longer. Tony was a man of few words, and she didn’t even have Bron and Jack to visit because the media was still camped at the end of each driveway. Then a reporter got her mobile number, so she turned that off too.
Even Kookapie didn’t bother with his infectious cackle as he perched on the low bough of a nearby gum tree and puffed his feathers out against the bitter wind.
At first she’d put the emptiness inside down to the shock of the near-death experience, and then the grief of losing two people she wanted in her life, even though she’d known they couldn’t stay. The truth was, she would never again be whole without them.
