“Thanks,” he said to Louisa.
They chinked glasses in a speculative truce, and Dylan could not help thinking that this old woman truly was formidable. People half her age would not have come through like this.
“What was it that you wanted to show me?” he said, taking a sip, relishing the numbing spread of warmth through his chest.
Louisa reached for an envelope on her desk. “This,” she said, holding it up.
Dylan could see the letter had a red Scottish postmark over the stamp. Megan tensed beside him as she caught sight of it. A cool warning whispered through him.
“They used to call you D.J., didn’t they? D.J. Smith. Your brother was Liam Smith.”
Megan’s glance whipped to Dylan, but his attention remained fixed solely on Louisa.
“This is a letter from a true-crime writer in Edinburgh,” she said, meeting his glare with her steel-blue eyes. “She wrote to tell me that a man has been arrested in Scotland, and charged with the abduction and murder of two young boys.”
Dylan’s pulse quickened.
“This suspect is in his sixties now, and was working the Thoroughbred circuit from Australia to the U.S., Britain and South Africa over the last thirty years before he retired in the Edinburgh area.” Louisa raised the envelope. “This crime writer believes that suspect is also responsible for similar crimes in all those countries where he worked.” She continued to hold Dylan’s eyes.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“She thinks his first murder, the debut killing, may have been one that occurred right here in the Hunter Valley thirty years ago. The victim’s name was Liam Smith.”
Megan inhaled sharply, touched his arm. “Dylan?”
He jerked away, stepping backwards slightly as memories assailed him. “You let him go,” he said, very quietly, rage encircling his heart. “You let Banner Mac go free to kill again. Over and over again. For another thirty years. More innocent young boys. More lives shattered.”
She held his eyes coolly.
She was a total bitch, he thought. DNA technology might have convicted Banner Mac had the science been available back then. He wondered if Liam’s cold case files still contained any viable samples they could use now.
“It’s not Banner Mac they have in custody, Dylan,” Louisa said calmly. “It’s a groom who used to work on the Morundah Estate farther up the Hunter.”
“Who?” he whispered.
“Simon Wake. He left the country at the same time Mac went to trial.”
Dylan stared at her, his entire world shifting off its axis, resettling askew.
“You’re not much different than I am, Hastings,” Louisa said. “We both want justice. Fair and for all. I believed implicitly in my trainer’s innocence, and I only wanted Mac to have a fair trial. Prejudice accused him, and prejudice was going to convict him for something I didn’t believe he could do. Just as you tried to convict me.”
Dylan and Louisa stared at each other, tension humming, two adversaries, just as they’d been the day he’d arrested her right here in the library. Megan stood on the periphery, silent this time.
“I wasn’t going to bear witness to that kind of prejudice from the sidelines, Hastings. Just because Mac had a drinking habit—one he kept under control and to himself in his room—just because it toyed with his memory on occasion, just because of his sexual persuasion and the fact that he liked long solo hikes in the bush didn’t make him a murderer of young boys.”
“You’re telling me Simon Wake did this?” His voice was hoarse.
“That’s who the Scottish police have in custody.”
Dylan swallowed. “Why did that crime writer contact you?”
“She’s working on a book. She wanted to speak to me as Mac’s employer, and because I funded his legal defense.”
He took a step back, needing air, needing to get out of here. To think that after all these years, Liam’s killer might yet be brought to justice.
Not in spite of Louise, but because of her.
“Like I said, Hastings, we’re two sides of the same coin. You use the system for your fight. I admire that. But sometimes you need people like me to fight the system. Because the system makes mistakes. Like you did in arresting me.”
He rubbed his hand hard across his brow, swearing softly to himself. He glanced at Megan. She’d known about Liam’s murder. He could see it in her eyes, hear it in her silence.
“When did you know D.J. was me?” he asked Louisa, but looked at Megan.
“In hospital, when Megan brought me this letter. It made me think of something Megan said. She’d asked me if I knew you from before, and from the look in her eyes I knew someone had said something. Then I got to thinking about your eyes. And I remembered that particular clear sky blue in the young D.J.’s eyes. A brave boy.”
Emotion burned behind those eyes now, and Dylan hated himself for it.
“It was the police who let your family down, Hastings, not me. The cops were so bloody pigheaded, and they believed so firmly that Banner Mac was their man, that it stopped them looking further. They let a murderer go, not me. I saved an innocent man who could have been incarcerated for life because he couldn’t put up the kind of legal fight he needed.”
Dylan felt bile rise from his belly.
Louisa had just shown him that he had harbored hatred for the wrong man his entire life, hatred for Louisa herself, and that he was just as capable of prejudice as everyone else.
He’d even judged Megan at face value because of her clothes, hair, the car she was driving, her affiliation with Fairchild, her potential for inheritance. Rocked by this knowledge, and wanting to hide the raw emotion threatening to burst from him, he picked up his yellow package and turned to leave with the evidence that would exonerate Louisa.
“Take this letter, Hastings, read it,” Louisa called after him.
But Dylan would not look back.
He was about to lose it, spin out of control, and he wasn’t going to let Megan—a woman he loved—see his goddamn tears.
“Do what’s right, Louisa,” he said as he pushed through the front door and made his way down the steps into a dark morning dense with the acrid scent of smoke, an apocalyptic landscape across the river.
“Dylan! Wait—” Megan raced down the stairs after him.
Still he wouldn’t look round.
She grabbed his arm, forced him to turn around. And Megan’s heart crumpled at what she saw in his eyes.
“You knew,” he said darkly. “You knew and you said nothing.”
“Dylan, it’s not like that—”
“Oh, and how is it, then?”
Megan swallowed at the bitterness in his voice. “I did try to tell you. I read some old newspaper cuttings Louisa had kept—”
“She kept them?”
“She did.”
He looked down at her, his body wire-tense, hot energy rolling off him in waves.
“I…I didn’t know it was you and your brother in the articles, Dylan. The cuttings referred to the boys as D.J. and Liam Smith. I know you as Dylan and your brother as Timmy.”
“Dylan John,” he said quietly. “And Timmy the Tim Tam monster.” His eyes began to gleam in the dim morning light. “Liam loved the fact Tim Tam biscuits were named after a horse that won the Kentucky Derby in 1958. He loved everything about racehorses, and he loved the biscuits. He thought it meaningful that Ross Arnott, from right here in the Hunter Valley, was there in Kentucky the day Tim Tam won, and Ross decided it was a perfect name for his new biscuits.” He glanced at the charred ridge, the burned and dead forest, like a moonscape in the gray dawn. “I think Liam would have made a great trainer,” he said quietly. “It’s why he spent so much time with Banner Mac. That’s why…”
“Why they thought Mac took him?”
He nodded.
“What happened to the other boy, to Henry?”
“He lost it. He’s become a drifter. Drinks too much. Can’t settle down. Can’
t hold a job.”
“Was he, were you…abused?”
“Sexually? No. Just Liam. We got away.”
Megan could see now why his interest in Louisa had been so personal, so bitter. Why he’d been so determined to arrest her aunt and to make her pay somehow. She saw why Dylan had become a cop. Why he so fiercely tried to protect his own child. The past tragedy explained so much about him. “You had survivor’s guilt, didn’t you?” she said softly. “You still do.”
He said nothing.
She reached up, touched his face. “Dylan, about the other night—”
He shook his head, stepping back, his eyes narrowing. “It’s fine.” His words were clipped. “I understand. And I need to go, get this evidence in.”
He climbed into his ute, started the vehicle. He looked out the window, and held her eyes for a long beat.
Then he turned his head, and he drove off.
Megan watched him go, her heart tearing. She understood this man fully now, and loved him even more, yet somehow she’d just lost him.
The CD Dylan handed the homicide squad had shown Rick “Sandy” Sanford shooting Sam Whittleson before dragging Sam’s body into an empty horse stall and dousing it in turpentine. The abandoned Holden had been stolen near Melbourne and driven to the Hunter Valley by Sanford.
Sanford had finally been apprehended at Tweed Heads, going north into Queensland, and his prints had been a match to those lifted from the turpentine containers found in the abandoned truck.
Once Sanford was shown the security tape, he confessed in an effort to ameliorate charges.
He claimed he’d used Louisa’s gun to throw cops off his trail, and he’d dumped the truck in a hurry after he became aware witnesses had seen him fleeing Lochlain. He knew he wouldn’t get through any of the roadblocks that had gone up immediately, so he’d driven into remote bush instead. He said he’d returned in an attempt to retrieve the CD from the truck when he noticed it wasn’t on his person, but that he hadn’t been able to find the disk under the water.
However, Sanford said nothing about who he was working for, or who had fed the false tip to the NSW police.
The feds were now getting involved, investigating Sanford’s alleged links to the crime syndicate known to control racing and betting fraud. The feds would also be looking for links to Jacko Bullock and his bid for the ITRF presidency.
Megan got a call from a private client saying the auction she’d been planning to attend in Europe had been rescheduled and moved forward. The piece he wanted was coming up for bid in three days. If she was to bid on it, she’d need to make an emergency trip.
She left for Paris as soon as she could, unable to reach Dylan to speak to him before she went. She’d called his house and his mother had said he and Heidi had left town for a while. June had a nurse staying with her and she seemed confused about where her son and grandchild had actually gone.
To Megan’s frustration, the mobile number she had for Dylan was no longer active. He’d handed his phone in with his badge. The new Pepper Flats officer didn’t have his private cell number either.
While Patrick stayed on at Fairchild Acres, Megan sat back in her seat on the plane en route to France feeling edgy and unhappy about doing her job. Which was nuts. This was her life.
But her brief time in the Hunter Valley had shown her otherwise.
She’d learned how important family really was to her, and she was ready to make some changes. Big ones. She wanted a garden. She wanted to be in touch with the soil, to ride again. Often. Mostly she wanted Dylan.
But she was afraid he’d shut her out already.
Almost four weeks after the big bush fire, Dylan and Heidi were staying at a Sydney hotel. Heidi had passed the entrance exams to Brookfield, and a space had opened up at the exclusive school thanks to the daughter of a diplomat who’d had to transfer immediately. And because Megan had already gotten Heidi onto the waitlist, she was able to start at once.
Dylan had also managed to secure a place for his mother at a beautiful psychiatric nursing home overlooking the ocean, and he’d been to see some of his old law-enforcement colleagues in Sydney.
The buzz was all about how the internal investigation into Dylan’s conduct had been scrapped—Commissioner’s orders. Louisa Fairchild and D’Angelo, Fischer and Associates had backpedaled, Louisa instructing her formidable legal team that she’d made a grave error in misreading her arrest situation.
Dylan was blown away by this, not sure whether to be thrilled or irked by Louisa’s and D’Angelo’s extensive reach. But it sure as hell helped to have that kind of reach on your side, and not against you.
All he needed now was to see Megan. He had called her and learned from Marie that she’d left the Valley, so he and Heidi had gone to her Bondi Beach apartment. Megan’s neighbor told them she’d gone to Europe. Dylan’s heart had sunk.
Megan had returned to her life, and he’d come to accept that it really was over between them.
Heidi was dejected, too. But Dylan explained that she and Megan could still be friends, no matter what happened between Dylan and her.
“You’re an adult, kiddo. You’ll be right here in Sydney and you can see her on weekends. You can go see Gran, too.”
“I know. I just thought maybe you and Megan…” She looked away, deciding not to venture there. “It’s just that Megan promised to take me to the big race at Warrego Downs. It’s coming up this weekend, and I brought my hat and everything.”
“Tell you what, chook. You and me, we’ll go. I can spend an extra weekend in town with you before I need to get back. How about that?”
The atmosphere at Warrego Downs was exhilarating, the day bright and sunny and cool, the fashions outlandish and the hats spectacular.
Even Dylan got swept up, but mostly by the joy on his daughter’s face. Her eyes shone a brilliant jewel-green, and she looked so grown-up and startlingly beautiful in her hat, he was just the proudest dad around to walk with her on his arm. But in his heart, he wished Megan was here for Heidi.
For him.
God, he missed her. She’d become part of the fabric of their lives in such a short time. But he wasn’t going to let negative emotion ruin Heidi’s day.
They both leaped up from the stands, cheering wildly, making themselves hoarse with hysteria as An Indecent Proposal, Louisa’s three-year-old stallion, racing neck and neck, took the win by a nose.
Flushed with sunshine and infectious excitement, they began to mill towards the exit gates with the crowds.
That’s when he saw Megan.
In the winner’s circle.
She looked like a Vogue model in a long, white, backless dress slit all the way up her thigh, a glass of sparkling champagne in her hand. Dylan’s heart clean stopped.
She threw back her head, laughing, the brim of her wide hat shading her eyes. She was surrounded by her Thoroughbred “family”—Louisa, Patrick, Andrew, Tyler, Darci, Daniel, Marnie—and their trainers, media clamoring to talk to them all about recent events, photographers clicking.
Dylan had never felt more the outsider.
In a raw flash he could see he didn’t fit into her life, never would.
He gripped Heidi’s hand, trying to steer her away before she glimpsed Megan. But it was too late.
“Oh. My. God!” she squealed. “Look! Over there, Dad. It’s Megan!” Heidi leapt with excitement, suddenly all of fourteen again, and she ran, trying to push her way against the thronging crowds.
Dylan moved quickly after her. “Heidi! Wait!”
The crowds pushed her back, knocking her hat from her head, trampling it underfoot.
Irate, Dylan ordered people back so he could pick up the battered hat. Heart thumping hard, he caught up to Heidi, who stood still and forlorn. She’d been turned back from the winner’s circle by security, Megan and her clan having moved on.
“Hey, come here, chook.” He hooked his arm over her small shoulders. “Let’s get out of this place.”
But Megan glimpsed him—Dylan’s sandy head and broad shoulders tall above crowds. He had Heidi at his side.
Her heart pounded, the excitement and color of Warrego Downs fading to a dull blur as her attention zeroed in on Dylan moving swiftly towards the exit gates.
She frantically tried to push out through the crowds, to go after them, but was jostled back. “Wait!” she called out pointlessly.
Breaking Free (Thoroughbred Legacy #10) Page 24
