Darcy caught her before she reached the door. He’d moved like lightning, reaching her to grip her arm and stop her from going further.
‘Leave it,’ he said roughly. ‘I’ll see him.’
‘Yeah, like you’ve done a lot so far.’ She was so angry she didn’t care who heard her fury. ‘A little boy dead? And now Jody. I don’t believe this. Let me go.’
‘You’ll do more harm than good,’ he said urgently. ‘If you threaten him he’ll take himself off to the bush and take his people with him. He’s done it in the past. When Sam died.’
‘And you let it happen?’
‘I didn’t have a choice,’ he told her. ‘They watch the road. When Sam was ill I was so desperate I even called in the police. But they couldn’t find them. And now… It’s taken me ages to persuade Jerry to let me come and treat the kids.’
‘But you let the children stay.’
‘There’s been a Social Services hearing,’ he told her, and she could hear years of frustration in his voice. ‘Margaret loves her kids. Social Services knows that. So do Lorraine and Penny. Jerry’s agreed to let the kids be assessed once a month. Hell, Ally.’
Enough. His hands were tied. She could see that. Focus on Jody. Focus on one child’s needs.
Margaret loved her little girl, she thought, watching the woman’s face. But…did she love Jerry more?
Who could possibly love Jerry?
‘Margaret, you can’t possibly want to stay with Jerry when it’s putting Jody in danger.’ She hesitated and moved to face her. She reached out and gripped her shoulders, forcing her to meet her eyes. ‘You can’t.’
‘You don’t know what he’s like,’ Margaret whispered. ‘I’m his. We’re all his. When Sam died, Penny tried to leave but…she came back. He’d find us.’
‘So you’re scared of him?’
‘Of course we are.’
‘There’s no physical abuse,’ Darcy said from behind her. ‘We went through that after Sam died. Margaret might say this now, but if the authorities come in Jerry will have all their support.’
‘Right.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I do know what he’s like, Margaret. And I can deal with this. I promise.’
‘How the hell?’ Darcy was looking at her as if she was out of her mind.
‘Bring the rest of the kids and the women here,’ she told Margaret. ‘Things are going to change. Right now.’
‘You’ll destroy…’ Margaret looked appalled.
‘No,’ Ally told her. Once upon a time she’d been terrified of Jerry Hatfield herself, but that was going back almost twenty years. No more. And that these women and these kids—probably the men, too—were going through what she’d faced.
‘I’ve waited a long time for this,’ she said. ‘Trust me. I can cope with Jerry Hatfield. Darcy, give me your phone.’
‘What—?’
‘I don’t have a cell phone,’ she told him, as if he were being stupid. ‘I need it.’ Then, as he didn’t react, she stepped forward and lifted it from the clip on his belt.
She started dialling.
And she started walking.
‘If you want to see what a massage therapist can do when she decides to do no harm, come along and watch,’ she told him over her shoulder. ‘But this tragedy will stop right now.’ And she started talking urgently into Darcy’s cell phone.
He followed. He hardly had a choice.
Whatever harm she did…well, it couldn’t be worse than what was happening, he thought. His intention now was to put Jody into his car and take her down to the hospital, facing the consequences later. There would be consequences. To physically remove a child from her parents…
It didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. The alternative was Jody’s death, and he wasn’t prepared to have what had happened to Sam happen to another child. Sam’s death had occurred in the first month he’d been in Tambrine Creek and he still felt dreadful that he hadn’t done more. He’d called in the social workers, rather than taking things into his own hands, and it had backfired dreadfully.
But what on earth was Ally about? He watched in stunned amazement as she spoke urgently to someone on the other end of the phone and then stomped furiously across to the neighbouring hut. She was only about five feet one or five feet two. She was slightly built. Her jeans were faded, her shirt had a paint streak down the back and she was wearing flip-flops. Her long blonde hair hung down her back, and it swayed as she walked, accentuating her entire stance of fury.
She looked like David stalking off to face Goliath, he thought, and he quickened his steps to join her.
Should he stop her?
Maybe not, he decided. This situation had reached breaking point. There was no use skirting round the issues at stake, because those issues involved a child’s life.
But what did she know about this? He was under no illusion that her anger was solely caused by one sick child, justified as that was. She’d reacted too fast, too directly.
What had she called Jerry? Jerry Hatfield? The name the group’s leader was using was Jerry Dwyer.
What did Ally know of him?
All he could do was watch. He arrived at the hut door two seconds after Ally did, and by the time he arrived she was already in action.
This was the meditation hut. He’d glanced in here once, but the women had almost seemed afraid of it. ‘We only go in there to clean,’ he’d been told.
The two living huts were putrid but this was lighter and brighter, with a ring of bright candles around the perimeter sending a golden glow over a group of four men kneeling on prayer mats in the centre.
But the glow was fading. Ally was kicking every candle over, pushing its wick into the dust.
She was ignoring the men.
‘What the…?’
Jerry was the first to rise.
The other three men were spineless. Darcy had decided that early in his encounters with the group. Acolytes who didn’t have the courage to stand up to Jerry, they simply did as he said in all things. It was Jerry who called the tune.
Jerry was in his late fifties or early sixties, a huge bull of a man, habitually dressed in a vast purple caftan with his beard and hair falling almost to his waist. He seemed a bit mad, Darcy had decided. His people were afraid of him, and even though there’d been no proven physical abuse, he guessed there was good reason for their fear.
Ally didn’t seem afraid of him, though. She kicked over the last candle and then stalked over to face
