blew out slowly to ease her trembling and tapped a whisper-quiet fingernail on the glass between them. Leighton turned his tear-streaked face towards her and she raised an urgent finger to her lips. His eyeballs bulged but he nodded and glanced nervously at the three men. So did she.
She remembered the game he and Clint had played down in Frog Swamp. She held up two fingers and made them walk along the edge of the window.
Can you run?
Leighton shook his head and lifted his feet. Oh, dear God. They were bound together with cable tie. She swallowed back the rage and bile and gave him a thumbs up so he knew she’d understood, then glanced around for any sign of Clint. It was like he’d ceased to exist.
Okay. Plan B.
She mimed turning a key and Leighton bounced enthusiastically and pointed wildly to the front of the car. She stretched over to peer in the driver’s window, glanced down at the ignition and saw the keys dangling there. Her eyes rolled heavenwards.
Thank you!
She gesticulated for Leighton to put his seatbelt on and she eased the driver’s door open, praying it didn’t have some kind of audible signal. It didn’t. She slid into the seat and fired the ignition in the same move. It turned over but failed to catch. The sudden noise drew six angry eyes in their direction. All three men started thundering towards her. Her hands shook so badly she nearly couldn’t turn the key over a second time but at the last moment it caught and all eight cylinders roared to life.
A hundred black shapes launched like startled bats from the trees where the cockatoos had been sleeping. Romy floored the accelerator and swerved out of reach just as the first man got close enough to yank the back door of the car open. Leighton screamed and wriggled away from the gaping hole as the man tried to climb in. He kicked violently with his bound feet as the man got a hold of his ankles. Romy slammed on the breaks rather than risk Leighton being yanked out of a moving vehicle.
Out of nowhere a familiar shape crashed into the strange man and sent them both tumbling to the ground in a bruising tumble. Fists exploded in all directions.
Justin.
In her rear-vision mirror, she saw the third man disappear into the trees as though his legs were cut right out from under him by some silent wraith.
Clint.
And then there were none.
‘Hold on, baby,’ she cried as she slammed her foot to the floor, sending the sedan slewing sideways on the gravel track. She spun them around and headed hell for leather towards WildSprings’s admin centre, spraying tiny stones behind her and wishing wholeheartedly it was a shower of bullets and not loose rocks that peppered the filthy men who’d taken her son.
Neither of them spoke as the white sedan sped away from danger. Romy didn’t ease her foot off the accelerator until there was at least half a mile between them and the danger at Far Reach.
Then she glanced in the rear-vision mirror. ‘Are you okay, baby?’
Leighton started to cry, compounding his fear with embarrassment. Her own relief played out in an adrenaline dump to rival any extreme sport Clint might undertake. Her whole body trembled. She finally got an understanding of why he liked his leisure time on the risky side. That kind of natural high would be a tough habit to kick. And given what he’d done for a living for so long, his adrenaline rushes must have been a constant, addictive feed.
‘Shh…we’re fine now, L. It’s all over. You’re safe.’
‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ he wheezed between sobs. ‘I’m sorry…’
Romy slowed the car right down and looked at him in the mirror. She didn’t dare stop. She’d promised Clint. ‘We’ll talk about it later. I’m taking you home.’
His gaze bulged for the second time that day. He stared past her to the track ahead and shouted. Romy slammed on the brake, sliding to a stop metres from where two cross-parked police vehicles formed an ad hoc roadblock.
The cavalry!
She killed the engine and leapt from the car. She sprinted towards Steve Lawson and a uniformed stranger, who both stood tense and ready, their weapons drawn as she ran towards them. That fact barely registered as she shouted, ‘Clint! He’s—’
‘Romy, stop!’ Steve Lawson’s stern voice was barely recognisable. She skidded to a halt. Just then his partner saw the anxious, eight-year-old face peering over the back seat of the sedan and, without looking at each other, both officers carefully lowered their guns.
‘What the hell is going on, Romy?’ Steve asked, moving towards her and holstering his weapon. ‘I got a call from Customs—their agents will be here any minute. We’re the advance guard. Whose car is this and why were you driving it like a rally pro?’
‘Clint needs your help, Steve.’ Romy kept her hands out to her sides, suddenly uncertain because of the unfamiliar timbre of her friend’s voice—his police voice—but took another step towards him. ‘He’s outnumbered. His brother…’
It took longer than she meant to tell the story because she kept stumbling over a tongue thickened by adrenaline. But she got the important stuff out, including that Clint had walked into a deadly situation without a weapon.
And without knowing that she loved him. Anxiety made her dizzy.
‘Sarge?’ Steve’s partner called from beneath the lid of the sedan’s popped boot where he was carrying out a routine search. ‘You need to see this.’
Romy followed Steve to the back of the vehicle where both men stood staring into it. Nearly twenty light-bulb boxes lined a specially created holding case fitted in the bottom of the trunk. Forty more were stacked empty nearby.
Light bulbs?
Steve gently picked one up and cracked open the box. A clutch of black feathers sprung free. Realisation hit Romy in the time it took to suck in a shocked breath.
Cockatoos. Young ones. The men were not after Leighton when they chased the car. They wanted the living, drugged cargo loaded in the boot.
Leighton was just in the way.
Their escape replayed in her mind—the man grabbing Leighton’s ankle, not to pull him out of the car but to boost himself in. Clint’s brother taking him down—despite the precious cargo—because he thought Leighton was the target, too.
Oh, Justin…
Steve cursed. ‘Stay here, Romy.’
Both officers ran for their respective vehicles. They fired them up and surged forwards, around the stationery sedan and beyond it. She sagged back against the sedan, relieved beyond words that help was on its way to Clint.
How could she have left him there…?
‘Romy.’
Her heart leapt and she turned towards the urgent voice as Clint emerged from the trees, breathing heavily and sweating. He slammed into her like a freight train, swallowing her into his arms and pulling her hard
