Sullivan.
She held up her phone and took a photo of him through the glass, with his licence in the shot.
‘What’s that for?’
‘Insurance.’
‘I just need a lift. That’s it. I have no interest in you beyond that.’
‘Easy for you to say.’
Her thumbs got busy texting it to both her closest friend and her father in Melbourne. Just to cover bases. Hard to know if the photo would make them more or less confident in this dusty odyssey she was on, but she had to send it to someone.
The grey eyes she could now see rolled. ‘We have no signal.’
‘The moment we do it will go.’
She hit Send and let the phone slip back down into its little spot on her dash console.
‘You have some pretty serious trust issues, lady, you know that?’
‘And this is potentially the oldest con in the book. Broken-down vehicle on remote outback road.’ She glanced at his helmet and the marks that could be emu claws. ‘I’ll admit your story has some pretty convincing details—’
‘Because it’s the truth.’
‘—but I’m travelling alone and I’m not going to take any chances. And I’m not letting you in here with me, sorry.’ The cab was just too small and risky. ‘You’ll have to ride in the back.’
‘What about all the biker germs I’m going to get all over your stuff?’ he grumbled.
‘You want a lift or not?’
Those steady eyes glared out at her. ‘Yeah. I do.’
And then, as though he couldn’t help himself, he grudgingly rattled off a thankyou.
Okay, so it had to be safer to let him loose in the back than have him squished here in the front with her. Her mind whizzed through all the things he might get up to back there but none of them struck her as bad as what he could do up front if he wasn’t really who he said he was.
Or even if he was.
Biker boy and his helmet limped back towards the belongings piled on the side of the road next to his disabled bike. Leather jacket, pair of satchels, a box of mystery equipment.
She ground the gears starting the Bedford back up, but rolled up behind him and, as soon as his arms were otherwise occupied with his own stuff, she unlocked the bus and mouthed through the glass of her window. ‘Back doors.’
Sullivan limped to the back of the Bedford, lurched it as he climbed in and then slammed himself in there with all her worldly possessions.
Two hours...
‘Come on, old chook,’ she murmured to the decades-old bus. ‘Let’s push it a bit, eh?’
* * *
Marshall groped around for a light switch but only found a thick fabric curtain. He pulled it back with a swish and light flooded into the darkened interior of the bus. Something extraordinary unfolded in front of him.
He’d seen converted buses before but they were usually pretty daggy. Kind of worn and soulless and vinyl. But this... This was rich, warm and natural; nothing at all like the hostile lady up front.
It was like a little cottage in some forest. All timber and plush rugs in dark colours. Small, but fully appointed with kitchenette and living space, flat-screen TV, fridge and a sofa. Even potted palms. Compact and long but all there, like one of those twenty-square-metre, fold-down and pull-out apartments they sold in flat packs. At the far end—the driving end—a closed door that must lead to the only absent feature of the vehicle, the bed.
And suddenly he got a sense of Little Miss Hostile’s reluctance to let him back here. It was like inviting a total stranger right into your bedroom. Smack bang in the middle of absolutely nowhere.
The bus lurched as she tortured it back up to speed and Marshall stumbled down onto the sofa built into the left side of the vehicle. Not as comfortable as his big eight-seater in the home theatre of his city apartment, but infinitely better than the hard gravel he’d been polishing with his butt for the couple of hours since the bird strike.
Stupid freaking emu. It could have killed them both.
It wasn’t as if a KTM 1190 was a stealth unit but maybe, at the speed the emu had been going, the air rushing past its ears was just as noisy as an approaching motorbike. And then their fates had collided. Literally.
He sagged down against the sofa back and resisted the inclination to examine his left foot. Sometimes boots were the only things that kept fractured bones together after bike accidents so he wasn’t keen to take it off unless he was bleeding to death. In fact, particularly if he was bleeding to death because something told him the hostess-with-the-leastest would not be pleased if he bled out all over her timber floor. But he could at least elevate it. That was generally good for what ailed you. He dragged one of his satchels up onto the sofa, turned and stacked a couple of the bouncy, full pillows down the opposite end and then swung his abused limb up onto it, lying out the full length of the sofa.
‘Oh, yeah...’ Half words, half groan. All good.
He loved his bike. He loved the speed. He loved that direct relationship with the country you had when there was no car between you and it. And he loved the freedom from everything he’d found touring that country.
But he really didn’t love how fragile he’d turned out to be when something went wrong at high speed.
As stacks went, it had been pretty controlled. Especially considering the fishtail he’d gone into as the mob of emu shot past and around him. But even a controlled slide hurt—him and the bike—and once the adrenaline wore off and the birds disappeared over the dusty horizon, all he’d been left with was the desert silence and the pain.
And no phone signal.
Normally that wouldn’t bother him. There really couldn’t be enough alone time in this massive country, as far as he was concerned. If you travelled at the right time of year—and that would be the wrong time of year for tourists—you could pretty much have most outback roads to yourself. He was free to do whatever he wanted, wear whatever he wanted, be as hairy as he wanted, shower whenever he wanted. Or not. He’d given up caring what people thought of him right about the time he’d stopped caring about people.
Ancient history.
And life was just simpler that way.
The stoic old Bedford finally shifted into top gear and the rattle of its reconditioned engine evened out to a steady hum, vibrating under his skin as steadily as his bike did. He took the rare opportunity to do what he could never do when at the controls: he closed his eyes and let the hum take him.
Two hours, she’d said. He could be up on his feet with her little home fully restored before she even made it from the front of the bus back to the rear doors. As if no one had ever been there.
Two
