THE EVERYWHERE MAN
by
VICTORIA GORDON
© Victoria Gordon 1981
CHAPTER ONE
It was the sound that woke her. A strange, eerie sound that began like a soft wind, whispering secrets to the high leaves of the gum trees, then deepened, thrusting its voice into a full-throated, bellowing roar that crackled with hidden danger. Bushfire!
No one who had spent a lifetime in south-central Victoria could mistake that sound. Certainly not a girl who had lost both parents to a raging bushfire only five years before. Alix snapped erect, ignoring the spasm of pain the movement caused in her slender, swan-like neck. Her eyes, a curious yellow-green colour and slanted ever so slightly, sprang open to widen in horror at the rosy hues of the darkening evening sky.
She swung her long legs out of the station sedan, fingers instinctively fumbling for the whistle that hung by a lanyard round her neck.
‘Nick! Nick-Nick-Nick!’ Her voice snapped out the commanding cry, then she followed up with a long, trilling blast on the whistle. The sound of the fire seemed to mushroom in her ears, surging and roaring like a deadly crimson surf.
‘Nick!’ She .screamed it this time, then sighed with visible relief as the big dog burst from the underbrush and hurtled up to her. He came with that strange, walking-on-glass gait so typical of German Shorthaired Pointers, a high-stepping, ground-covering trot that never ceased to amaze Alix,
But not now! Her neck hurt and her eyes throbbed from the effort of covering nearly two thousand kilometres in two days, and despite her panic, she moved stiffly as she waved the big dog into the rear of the vehicle and slammed the tailgate.
Then she ran for the driver’s door, mentally cursing herself for having stopped in this isolated section of scrub in the first place. She was only about thirty-five kilometres from Bundaberg, her destination in the long trek from Melbourne, but her own physical exhaustion and the onset of dusk had combined to cause the halt. Dusk is the absolute worst time of day for driving. Her father had always said so, and Bruce had agreed. It was a time when the eyes played tricks with the light, and a time when too many other drivers took chances by driving without headlights. It was a time when the kangaroos and the wallabies came out to play in the traffic, and Alix had seen once or twice what damage a kangaroo can cause to a car when struck by an unwary driver.
So she had pulled off the road at dusk, just as she had done briefly the evening before, so few hours and so many, many kilometres away, far to the south and west near the Victoria/New South Wales border. Here, in south-eastern Queensland, dusk came a shade earlier, but she could probably have made it to Bundaberg before full dark. It was only for her own peace of mind, and to give Nick some much-needed exercise, that she had stopped. And now …
The wheels of the station sedan sprayed up a cloud of dirt and leaves and broken twigs as she slammed it into gear and slewed down the narrow scrub track to the highway.
She shot out on to the bitumen before she realised it was there, and she spun the steering wheel and snapped on her headlights as she fought to keep the heavy machine on the road. The rear end skidded, throwing the front over to the wrong side of the road just as Alix suddenly realised there was another set of headlights speeding towards her. She swung into the skid as the other driver swung away from her, and then there was a moment when she was certain they would strike head-on. But somehow he missed her, and the relief cost her the last shred of her concentration. The station sedan slithered into the ditch and came to rest in the long grass and rubble.
Instinct and half-forgotten driver training made Alix flick off the ignition before she threw her arms across the steering wheel and bowed her head as tears sprang to her eyes and great, convulsive sobs shook her slender frame. In the rear, Nick whimpered in confused sympathy, a whimper that suddenly changed to a growl as Alix’s door was flung open and a hand reached in to grasp the shoulder of her jumper and drag her out of the vehicle.
‘Are you drunk, or crazy, or what?’ a voice grated in livid rage. And then, only a shade less angrily, ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine,’ she whispered, unable to quell the shaking of her body as reaction took over. She was trembling like a leaf as strong hands closed around her shoulders just before she collapsed.
She returned to consciousness disorientated, and her confusion changed to outright fear as she opened her eyes and found herself being held, almost like a baby, in the arms of a man she had never seen before.
‘Ssshhh! It’s all right,’ growled a strangely gentle voice, and the arms which held her across his lap relaxed slightly, as if to assure her she wasn’t being held against her will.
Alix shook her head, only vaguely aware that the movement loosened the high-piled knot of hair at her crown, letting it spill down in a shower of chestnut across his arm. Then memory, or a semblance of it, returned.
‘N-Nick?’ she cried softly, eyes probing his face for an answer she feared.
‘The dog? He’s all right. I’d have let him out, but I reckoned he might decide to take my arm off or something. But you? Are you all right now?’
Eyes like sparkling diamonds, only a clear, dark grass green, bored into hers as he shifted his arm so that Alix could straighten up. She could see, then, that they were in the front of what she presumed must be his vehicle, parked nose into the narrow track from which she had emerged so precipitously only moments — hours? — before.
‘Here. I reckon we could both use this.’ She turned to look at him again, barely aware of the flask he was holding out to her. ‘It’s only brandy; it won’t hurt you,’ he said, and she took it without another thought.
The stranger took a deep swallow of the liquor himself, strong throat muscles flexing with the movement. He looked at Alix again as if reassuring himself that she was fit to be questioned, and when he spoke again there was less gentleness in his voice.
‘Now maybe you can explain just what the hell you were trying to do back there,’ he said. ‘You came awful damned close to killing us both, in case you don’t realise it. What’s the idea of screaming out of the scrub like that with no lights on and without even stopping to look for traffic?’
The liquor eased a warm track down Alix’s throat to puddle in a fiery pool in her tummy, and the warmth brought back old terrors. Her eyes widened and she snapped her head around in a revealingly fearful motion.
‘The ... the fire!’ she whispered, suddenly confused by what she couldn’t see. Around them was only darkness, broken by the cast of his parking lights against the track ahead and by the dying breath of twilight against the trees to her right. But of the fire, the sky-painting crimson wash that had panicked her there wasn’t a sign. ‘B-b-bushfire,’ she stammered in a whimper of frightened disbelief
‘Bushfire? There was no bushfire,’ he growled. ‘They were just firing some cane up the road there. Do you mean to tell me that’s what scared you?’
The disbelief and ... was it contempt? ... in his eyes brought Alix upright as anger purged the confusion from her brain.
‘Well, of course I was frightened!’ she snarled, thrusting away his arm as she struggled to shift herself totally away from him. The look of half-amused contempt on his face infuriated Alix more than her own fears shamed her. Maybe she should have recognised the cane fire, although just how she might be expected to, she didn’t know. She had never seen sugarcane being fired, but she had read up enough on the industry and the Bundaberg region to know the cane harvest would be in full swing by the time she got there.
She knew that the trash of useless cane leaves and foliage was burned both to destroy the snakes and insects harboured there and to raise the sugar in the stalks of cane, and she knew that the firing
created a holocaust that flared and died within minutes, but knowledge from a book could do nothing to prepare her for the horrifying fear that an unexpected cane fire could produce inside her.
And now here was this ... this arrogant, sneering man, who dared to smirk at her fears.
‘Well, I’m glad you think it’s so damned funny,’ she snapped, swinging her legs out the open door of the Range Rover. But before they could touch the ground a hand flashed out to grasp her shoulder and pull her back inside.
‘I never said it was funny,’ he replied with exasperating calmness. ‘Now just settle down, because you’re not going anywhere in that state. You may be too angry lo realise it, but you’re in .shock, my girl.’
‘I am not your girl!’ Alix retorted angrily, pushing away his hand and in the same motion rejecting the brandy flask he was once again offering. ‘Nor anyone else’s, either. And I don’t want any more of your damned brandy.’
‘Just as well you aren’t my girl,’ he replied, ‘or you’d be over my knee getting your pretty little rump paddled. Now settle down! And for once try acting your age; you’re not a child.’
‘I’m surprised you’d notice,’ she snapped, retreating to the very edge of her seat. ‘And just who do you think you are — telling me what I can do and what I can’t?’
‘I’m the man you damned near ran off the road with your damned-fool driving,’ he replied with growing anger. ‘So the least you can do, since you don’t seem to even have thought of apologising, is explain to me what you were doing back in here in the first place.’
‘Well, what do you think?’ she replied in a tone of voice that implied he should imagine it was a comfort stop and that he’d be wrong.
He didn’t bother to reply, and when Alix turned to face him squarely she could see that he wasn’t about to. His fiery green eyes were blank with determined stubbornness, and that same stubbornness was stamped on every feature of his face.
A rather handsome face it was too, she couldn’t help thinking. A strong chin, wide, determined, but generous mouth, slightly crooked nose and heavy, sloping eyebrows. Laugh wrinkles round the eyes and worry wrinkles on his forehead, coffee-coloured hair a little too long to be classically stylish.
But it was his eyes that commanded the attention. Where Alix had slanted, oval eyes beneath straight, upswept brows that made them seem wide and highlighted their yellow-green colour, this man’s eyes were small and deep-set. Not piggy-small, but so deep beneath his heavy brows and partially hidden by folds of eyelid that they seemed small. And bright! Bright like green fire, like smouldering emeralds or grass-green diamonds, because surely no emerald could flash like that.
A strong, muscular neck led her eyes to a broad chest with a thatch of coffee-coloured hair protruding from the half-open front of his khaki drill shirt, and the legs beneath the drill trousers were obviously well muscled and sturdy. He’d be tall, she thought, perhaps six foot and probably an inch or so over that. On the ground he would have towered above her slender five foot nine, but here in the vehicle the difference was less apparent.
Handsome, definitely. But so arrogant. And despite the tangled, shaggy hair that showed not a hint of grey, he’d be ... thirty-five ... probably closer to forty. Shirt-sleeves rolled up along muscular forearms, good, strong, well-shaped hands, clean fingernails, not manicured, but tidy...
Alix suddenly realised she had been assessing this stranger for far longer than propriety or common sense would allow, and that he was not unaware of her assessment. His eyes seemed to twinkle at her sudden start of confusion.
‘Well, if you must know, I was resting,’ she replied with tongue-tying haste. ‘And exercising the dog.’
‘Not very bright,’ he murmured almost to himself, but Alix caught the words.
‘What did you say?’ He couldn’t have said that, she thought. I must have misunderstood.
‘I said it wasn’t very bright,’ he replied with increasing volume, and this time there was no mistake.
‘I don’t think 1 know what you mean,’ she replied cautiously.
‘Obviously,’ he replied with a taut little twist of his generous lower lip. And then sat in silence, his eyes roving over Alix as if she were some unusual museum specimen and a rather unwholesome one at that,
‘Well, then perhaps you’d like to explain,’ she said, not bothering to try and hide her exasperation.
His hand made a gesture of obvious disgust. ‘You really think it’s smart to be running your dog in a patch of strange scrub, in questionable light, only fifty feet from a main highway? What if he’d jumped a hare or something and chased it out on to the road? One dog — and a valuable dog, from the look of him — splattered all over the road because you’re too lazy to walk him on a leash.’
‘And who said he wasn’t on a leash?’ Alix felt the warm glow rising up her throat that announced the lie she was implying, and she knew instantly that she wasn’t fooling anyone. Her inquisitor merely raised one eyebrow and quirked the corner of his mouth as she stumbled on. ‘And besides, he doesn’t chase...’
She didn’t bother to finish that statement. The look on his face was that of a stern headmaster faced with a recalcitrant student who should know better. ‘I’ve seen older and wiser GSPs than that one get hurt doing exactly what I just described,’ he said wearily, revealing by his use of the initials that he wasn’t unfamiliar with German Short-haired Pointers. Among dog fanciers, the unwieldy name was invariably shortened to the three initials, and his use of them implied a familiarity Alix would rather not have known.
Her dog was of a breed whose popularity, though increasing, fought a continuous battle, because the dogs had a well-founded reputation for stubborn independence. Gundog fanciers tended to either love them — hence owning them — or hated them with an almost fanatical dislike that far outweighed the preference for more conventional breeds. And although Nick was among the most faithful and generally obedient of dogs, his independent spirit required constant surveillance to keep him from getting out of hand.
He might very well have chased himself into danger, and the acceptance of her responsibility for Nick’s safety brought Alix down out of her anger.
‘You’re right,’ she admitted lamely. ‘If it’s any real consolation, I don’t generally do things like that, either, but—’
‘Doesn’t matter now,’ he interrupted. ‘I wasn’t trying to tell you how to lead your life, just keep you talking until I could be sure you were getting back to normal.’
The sudden switch to an apparent total indifference both confused and surprised Alix, but before she could reply he was out of the vehicle and coming round to help her step down as well.
‘Let’s just see if you’re as steady on your feet as you should be,’ he said, steadying her as she swung down on to the ground. Standing, he was even taller than Alix had thought, a least six foot three, and his hand on her upper arm had the strength of an iron clamp.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, shrugging against his grasp, but he ignored her, and didn’t remove his hand until she had walked several steps in her attempts to free herself. Looking up at him, she found the rising moon cast an almost satanic light on his features, and suddenly she wanted nothing more than to get back into her station sedan and get away from him.
‘If you’d like to go and get in the wagon, then, we’ll see if we can’t do something about getting you back on the road,’ he muttered, stepping back into his Range Rover in one smooth gesture almost as he spoke. He put on the headlights and backed cautiously out on to the highway, leaving Alix to walk in sudden comparative darkness to fumble her way into the ditch to the door of her station sedan.
Nick whined a greeting from the rear, scrabbling at the wire netting which separated him from the passenger compartment and vocalising his discontent until Alix snapped at him to be quiet.
She sat in silence, mildly piqued by the stranger’s entire attitude, as he used the lights of his vehicle and a small torch to evaluate her pos
ition. Then, somewhat to her surprise, he drove the Range Rover down into the ditch and around her, stopping just in front before he emerged carrying a length of sturdy rope.
‘You might come and hold this light for me,’ he said, dropping to his knees in front of her vehicle, but even before Alix had scrambled out and reached for the torch, he had fastened one end of the rope and was lifting himself erect again.
‘Right! The best way is for me to drag you straight up the ditch there to where it isn’t quite so steep,’ he said. ‘Now I don’t want you to try and help — just leave it in neutral and let the Rover do the work.’
‘But surely...’ She had intended to suggest that the power of her vehicle would take some of the strain from his, but he interrupted her almost angrily.
‘Surely nothing! My way, everything will be done under control. You start interfering and you might come up out of that ditch too fast to maintain control. And we’ve already seen what happens when you lose control … remember?’
Alix bristled at the remark, but to no avail. He didn’t even notice, having walked away to attach the other end of the rope to the trailer hitch on his Rover. She got back into her wagon as he slowly eased forward, taking up the strain gently so that the elasticity in the nylon rope wouldn’t cause her vehicle to suddenly surge ahead.
The rope seemed to stretch forever before suddenly her car began to spring forward, and Alix touched gently at the brake to keep from moving too quickly. They moved up the ditch for several metres before he aimed his Rover at the slope, where it clawed its way up on a frightening angle. When Alix’s wagon reached the incline, dangling almost like a pendulum, it slid alarmingly sideways before suddenly thrusting up over the crest and across the highway to come to a halt behind the Rover.
‘Nothing to it,’ the tall man grinned as he slid from his vehicle and began disengaging the tow-rope. He coiled the rope and flung it carelessly into the rear compartment of the Rover, then abruptly ordered Alix to open the bonnet of her own vehicle.
The Everywhere Man Page 1
