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  ‘It’s Amelia,’ Dani puffed, her face contorted in exertion. ‘She’s been . . . she’s hurt. She’s in hospital.’

  Dave watched as Kim’s face drained of colour and she shot out of her chair. Frantically she grabbed her handbag from the table and rummaged in it, pulling out her mobile phone. ‘What happened?’ she snapped, as she turned on the device and stared down at it, her hands shaking.

  Dave stood and placed his hand on Dani’s shoulder. ‘Slow down,’ he said gently, but with authority. ‘Start at the beginning.’

  Dani ignored him and continued to talk in a high-pitched, panicked tone. ‘Natalie and John have been trying to reach you. She was attacked last night. Driving the rodeo takings into Torrica. All the money is gone!’

  ‘Fuck the money,’ Kim said as her phone buzzed with messages. ‘Is Milly okay? Which hospital?’ She half-ran towards the door, with the phone at her ear.

  ‘Barker!’ Dani called after her.

  ‘Charge this to my account,’ Dave said to Jackie, who’d come out of the kitchen after hearing the commotion. Then he caught up with Kim. ‘In my car,’ he told her and steered her towards the motel car park.

  She went with him, her phone to her ear. ‘Natalie?’ she barked. ‘What’s going on?’ Dave unlocked the door and held it open for her, while Kim clambered in, still speaking. ‘What? Are you serious?’ There was a pause. ‘I’m on my way.’

  Dave concentrated on the road to Barker, while Kim tossed the phone into her bag and stared moodily out of the window. Dave knew better than to ask anything. His mind was whirling. Rodeo, attack, money stolen. Definitely a matter for the police, and he hoped the locals had done a decent job this time.

  Kim was silent until they hit the outskirts of Barker. ‘Take the first left here,’ she said. ‘The hospital is down the end of this street.’ She sighed and rubbed her eyes. ‘Thanks for bringing me over.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  As soon as Dave pulled into a parking bay and turned off the engine, Kim got out and started striding towards the entrance. Not sure what to do, Dave followed, but at a distance. It was inbuilt in him to help wherever he was needed, but he was wary of walking into an explosive family situation.

  Kim stopped and turned. ‘Are you coming?’ she called out.

  ‘Sure.’ He jogged a little to catch up with her. ‘Want to tell me what’s going on before we get inside?’

  Pulling up to a sharp halt, Kim gave him a watery smile. She reached out and put her hand on his shoulder. ‘It sounds like Milly was run off the road and forced out of the car. She was tied up and beaten. The rodeo takings were stolen. But that’s not all.’ Kim took a shaky breath. ‘The ambos are sure she was tasered.’

  Dave’s insides froze but he kept his face impassive, professional. ‘Tasered?’

  ‘She’s got burns. It must be the same bastards who attacked that old bloke last week, out at his farm.’ Kim’s voice broke.

  ‘How did you hear about that?’

  ‘Oh, it was in the Barker News, of course, and all my customers have been talking about it.’ She walked into the hospital, Dave staying by her side this time as they approached the reception desk. ‘Amelia Bennett, please?’ she asked.

  The ward clerk told them where to go and Kim hurried towards the end of the corridor, checking room numbers as she went. When she stopped, Dave watched her take a deep breath, pull her shoulders back and push open the door. He walked slowly down the corridor and leaned up against the wall. Pulling out his phone, he tried to ring Jack’s mobile. He still hadn’t met the other local cop, Andy.

  Unsurprisingly, Jack didn’t answer his phone. So casual, Dave thought with an inward groan. He considered calling Joan at the station, then shook his head and punched in the number for his supervisor in Adelaide. It rang once and then he listened to dead air. Looking at the screen, he realised the battery was flat.

  ‘Shit.’ And his charger was back in the motel room in Torrica. ‘Damn it!’

  He leaned up against the wall, looking at the ceiling and cursing himself. What a hypocrite he’d been about Jack—here he was, getting it on in his motel room and neglecting his duties! The pot calling the kettle black.

  Before long he heard weeping from the hospital room, which immediately sobered him. ‘Who would do this, Kim?’ a female voice said, distraught and bewildered. ‘And why?’

  Chapter 12

  Amelia couldn’t remember why her head hurt so much. She wanted to open her eyes, but her lids were so heavy. Maybe she could reach up and peel them open. She tried to move her arm, but that wouldn’t work either.

  Fear shot through her. Flashes. Yelling, glass breaking.

  The money!

  ‘The money,’ she managed to say out loud.

  A warm, soft hand gently stroked her arm and moved down to squeeze her fingers. ‘S’okay love, try not to talk. You’ve had a bit of a nasty accident.’ Her dad’s voice filtered through the fuzz.

  ‘Accident! It wasn’t an accident.’ Amelia recognised her mother’s voice.

  Then a softer one. ‘Sweetie, it’s Aunty Kim. Can you open your eyes?’

  She felt a hand on her forehead and smelt Kim’s moisturiser. When she tried again to open her eyes, she was rewarded with a murky image of her aunty. There was a shadow on the other side, another person, and she turned her head to look. Shooting pain ricocheted up her neck and into her skull, and she gasped.

  ‘Don’t move, Milly. You’re hurt. Just lie there and we’ll look after you.’ Natalie’s voice was softer than normal. Gentle, even. ‘The police are coming to interview you in a few hours. You need to be strong for them, so just rest, darling.’

  ‘I’m okay,’ Amelia managed. ‘Water?’

  There was blurry movement before a straw tickled her mouth. She put her lips around it. ‘Can you suck?’ her mother asked.

  Even though her tongue felt dry and woolly, she managed to get a few gulps down, but the effort exhausted her and she shut her eyes again.

  Amelia wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep. Everything ached or hurt, but her head was clearer this time. Looking around the room, she saw her father sitting near the window, his face relaxed in sleep. At the end of her bed sat Aunty Kim, a magazine open on her lap. ‘Ah, hello,’ she whispered with a warm smile, ‘you’re back with us.’

  ‘What time is it?’ Amelia asked.

  ‘Three o’clock.’

  Her brow wrinkling, Amelia tried to understand.

  ‘It’s Sunday afternoon,’ Kim explained. ‘The rodeo was last night.’

  Amelia’s heartbeat sped up, her addled brain struggling to take everything in. Finally she gave up. ‘Dad?’

  Her father stirred in his chair and opened his eyes. Seeing Amelia awake, he came and sat on the bed, gently taking her hand. ‘You’re a bit banged up, love.’

  ‘Feel like I’ve been run over by a truck.’

  ‘We’re all here, so if you want to go back to sleep, do that.’

  ‘Where’s Mum?’ She tried to shift her body to a more comfortable position, but winced as more pain ran through her legs.

  ‘She’s gone to help Graham at home. She’ll be back tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Paul?’

  John and Kim looked at each other with horror. ‘Oh, sweetheart, we didn’t think to call him. We’re so sorry.’ Kim’s face crumpled and she pulled out her phone, dialling Paul’s number, but he didn’t pick up. ‘I’ll try him again soon.’

  ‘I’d like him here.’ Amelia craned her neck a little and looked down at her body, trying to work out why it hurt so much. Why was her arm in a bandage? ‘What’s wrong with me?’

  ‘Nothing that’s going to stay with you forever,’ said her dad. ‘Gravel rash.’

  ‘And some burns.’ Kim’s face was set.

  Memories filtered back. An electric shock. Gravel from the side of the road, pushing into her cheek as her body convulsed. Muscles not doing what she wanted them to. Feeling like she had fire burning
through her.

  ‘What happened?’ she whispered.

  ‘They used a taser gun on you,’ her father answered, his voice low and distressed.

  Amelia closed her eyes again and tried to remember. She’d put the money bags in Pushme, then Gus had turned up and they’d moved everything to his ute. She’d driven off along the dark, winding road. There wasn’t much after that, just snippets. She knew, though, that the money was gone, and that somehow it was her fault.

  ‘I mucked up,’ she said, as tears started to slip down her cheeks. ‘What will everyone be saying?’

  ‘Don’t worry, love,’ John said intently. ‘It doesn’t matter. Everyone is only worried about you—not the money, not anything else. Don’t think about it, just concentrate on getting better.’

  She couldn’t help it. Tears kept trickling down her cheeks. Once again, she’d let everyone down.

  Kim reached across the bed for the tissues and wiped Amelia’s face. ‘Listen to your father,’ she said. ‘He’s right and he’s wise. Everyone’s only worried about you.’

  The door swung silently open and a shaft of light from the passageway streamed in. ‘Just come to take Milly’s obs,’ the nurse said, with a slightly too-bright smile. John and Kim got off the bed and retreated to the wall at the far end of the room, while the nurse wheeled in a machine to read Amelia’s pulse, blood pressure and temperature. ‘The doctor’s doing her rounds—I’m sure she’ll be popping in here soon. It’s been such a busy day.’

  As if on cue, Chelle entered the room and made a beeline for Amelia’s bed.

  ‘How you going?’ she asked softly, holding her hand out for the chart.

  ‘Okay. Bit sore.’

  ‘Yeah, of course you are. Poor thing.’ Chelle flicked through the information and gave it back to the nurse, before looking into Amelia’s eyes and touching her arm. ‘So,’ she said, sinking onto the bed, ‘it’s mostly superficial. You’ve got a rather impressive black eye. There’s rope burn, pretty deep around your wrists, and grazing on your arms and legs. We got quite a few stones out of your upper arms. Your legs aren’t so bad because you were wearing jeans.’ She gave Amelia a cheeky grin. ‘I know those jeans were your old faithfuls, but we had to cut them off you, sorry!’

  Amelia managed a small smile, but her heart was pounding. Those blokes had meant business and they had fairly banged her up. Something shifted in her mind. A man’s voice. She tried to reach out and grab the memory, but couldn’t quite catch it. Then she noticed Chelle watching her. ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m just wondering what you’re thinking.’

  ‘Nothing really. I can sort of remember things, but . . . not much.’

  ‘That’s perfectly normal—you’ve had a trauma and a whack on the head. It’s your body’s reaction to protect you, and my guess is you’ll remember in time.’ Chelle paused. ‘You’re probably feeling a bit anxious.’

  ‘Mostly I just feel really tired.’ It was the truth—all she wanted to do was go back to sleep.

  Chelle kept talking, her face sombre. ‘Look, you do have a few bruised ribs and two cracked, which will hurt like hell when you laugh, breathe too deeply or cough. Don’t get a cold if you can avoid it. And don’t let anyone tell you jokes.’

  Amelia half-smiled. ‘I’ll try not to.’

  ‘All right, one last injury to discuss and then I’ll let you rest. Two lots of taser burns. They aren’t really concerning unless they get infected, because they’re so small, like cigarette burns. They’re on your left shoulder and just below your left shoulder blade. But look, these stun guns can cause heart attacks if you have an underlying problem, so I ran a few checks on your heart while you were sedated. No issues there—not that I expected one, but better to be safe than sorry. Especially with my cousin. And my best friend.’ She squeezed Amelia’s hand. ‘The good news is that if you feel up to it, you should be able to go home tomorrow or the next day.’

  ‘Thanks, Chelle.’ Amelia tried to smile but her eyes kept drooping.

  ‘Here, before you go to sleep again,’ the nurse interrupted, holding out some tablets and a cup of water, ‘take these painkillers.’

  Amelia managed to swallow them before dropping into another deep sleep.

  A couple of hours later the two coppers from Barker, Jack Higgins and Andy Denning, appeared at the nurses’ station asking to see Amelia. Chelle, who was filling in forms at the desk, took them down to her room but stopped in front of the door.

  ‘Now you listen to me,’ she said, pointing a stern finger at them. ‘This woman is very dear to my heart, and she’s badly beaten and fragile. Be gentle. If you’re not, I’ll report you to the highest authority I can.’ She fixed them with a death stare, then pushed open the door. ‘Milly?’ she asked quietly. ‘The Barker police are here—you know Jack and Andy. They need to ask you some questions.’

  Amelia cracked open her eyes and looked at them all, and Chelle felt her heart constrict. ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘How much money were you carrying?’ Andy asked.

  ‘Um, I can’t remember exactly. Around four hundred grand. There’ll be a copy of the deposit slip I filled out. At the rodeo office.’ She was taking sharp, shallow breaths between every few words.

  Andy made a note. ‘And what can you tell us about the incident?’

  Amelia opened her mouth and shut it again. Chelle could see the pain on her face, but knew how important it was that her cousin answer these questions. Even though Chelle hated it, she had to let the police do their job.

  Finally, Amelia tried to answer. ‘We left the rodeo grounds around one-thirty, I think. I remember that because I looked at the clock on the dash and that’s when I realised the ute was going too fast. We . . . Gus and I, we transferred the money from my old car into his ute, and then I drove his ute, with him behind me. Um, I can’t remember how I was stopped, or what happened after that.’

  Andy looked at Jack, who shrugged.

  Poor bastards are incompetent, Chelle thought as she watched the show play out. Well, maybe not incompetent, but so young and inexperienced. How the hell were they to know what questions to ask? Where was the hotshot Adelaide detective?

  ‘Anything unusual happen at the rodeo that you can think of?’ Jack asked.

  ‘No. But I mean, not that I remember. There were a lot of people through the gate. I had the feeling it was going to be a really successful night. Of course, I spent most of it in the office, tallying up money and handing out change.’

  Andy seemed to pounce on that idea. ‘So your job is . . .’ He left the question open-ended, a tactic Chelle had seen before.

  ‘Treasurer. I collect the money for the entries, campsites and so on. I have change in the safe for whichever stall-owners need it, and then at the end of the night, I count it, put it in bags and take it to the bank in town. Or that was what was meant to happen. I was trying to do that.’

  Chelle knew from the slurring of Amelia’s words that she was too exhausted and it was time to intervene. ‘Right-o, fellas, that’s enough for the moment.’ She smiled at Amelia’s grateful glance.

  ‘We need a bit more info than what we’ve got,’ Andy protested.

  ‘I’m sure you do, but not at the detriment of my patient. Enough is enough for today.’ Chelle fixed them with another one of her stares and the policemen backed down. Following them out the door, she said, ‘Maybe get your questions organised, then come back, huh?’ And she shut the door with a firm click.

  Needing to go to the toilet, Amelia struggled to flick the sheets back. Her arms felt like they were being pulled tight and the burning pain took her breath away.

  ‘What are you doing, young lady?’ Kim appeared next to her, hands on hips.

  ‘Need to go to the loo.’

  ‘I’ll get a nurse. Can you hold on?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  Within moments Kim was back with a nurse. ‘You’ll have to tell us if we hurt you.’ Together they eased their hands under Amelia’s armpit
s and slowly helped her off the bed, then over to the bathroom.

  Sitting there in solitary, Amelia closed her eyes. She knew the police needed more than what she had told them. If only she could remember and wasn’t so tired! The dreams she’d had the night before were rushing back. She was curled up on the ground. Even though the air felt warm, her body was freezing. She was shaking. There was a roar of an engine in the distance and then silence. She couldn’t work out why her legs wouldn’t work, and she couldn’t free her hands from behind her back. Everything throbbed. There were pounding footsteps coming towards her and a man’s alarmed voice—Gus? Sirens and flashing lights; kind, calm voices and gentle hands. Then nothing, until the hospital.

  She would have to think harder to remember the attack itself, but something was muddling her brain. She wasn’t sure if it was the bashing or the drugs Chelle had her on. Managing to get herself off the loo, she shuffled over to the basin to wash her hands. As she looked in the mirror, her breath caught in her throat. That bruise was almost the size of a bloody dinner plate, extending from her eye down to her chin. Gently she ran her fingers over her face and tears sprang to her eyes. Bastards.

  Then there was the missing money—and Gus’s new ute! She remembered the sound of smashing glass. But what about Pushme? Why had Gus been so far behind? Then she remembered. She’d been driving too fast. She’d left him behind.

  Unable to bear it, she leaned over the basin and let her tears fall, her sobs becoming louder until Aunty Kim opened the bathroom door, gathered her in her arms and held her, whispering that everything would be okay.

  But how could it? Amelia wanted to wail. How could it?

  Chapter 13

  On Sunday afternoon, Dave pulled over about twenty metres from where Gus had found Amelia Bennett lying in the dirt. The local police had been over the area and sealed it off, and he’d met with them and examined their findings once his phone was charged, but he had to see it with his own eyes. He needed to try and understand how the theft had gone down.

  The fact that Amelia was driving in front and Gus was so far behind had him puzzled. And how the thieves had got her to stop was also intriguing. Cutting her off was not only dangerous for everyone, but downright foolish. How could they be certain she’d be able to brake in time? Or maybe it hadn’t been like that at all.