WE REACHED THE GREEN Saturn turn-off without further incident. Turned north. Danny sat squirming in his seatbelt, biting his lips and keeping a sharp eye on the rear-view mirror.
Maybe it was the good road. Maybe anxiety drove my foot a little harder into the throttle. Whatever the reason, the mine appeared much quicker than I expected.
We’d been driving for barely twenty minutes when a fluorescent smudge loomed in the distance, an array of lights, reflectors and silver metal throwing a ghostly coruscation onto the surrounding hills.
I pulled over, switched off and stared at the mine.
Ribbons and filaments of fire radiated into the night. A circuit of floodlights illuminated the mine works: headframe and smelter, engine room, workshops, a row of pre-fab huts. On a flat stretch off to the east, a long corridor of lights. The air strip? Bigger than I’d have expected. There’d be some sort of security. Had they spotted us already?
I doubted it. I’d been hanging around mines for much of my life. Out here in the middle of nowhere, security would consist of some fat drunk a year or two past retirement who’d be flat out warding off sleep, much less intruders.
Not that I had any intention of intruding: my aim was to slip around the mine as unobtrusively as possible, push on down to Galena Creek.
I crept down the road, lights off, motor low. The country this side of the mine was bare and flat, levelled. All the better: less chance of a puncture or of having to make a racket revving out of some ditch. Two or three hundred yards before the guardhouse, I slipped off-road; there’d be a perimeter fence somewhere in there, a maintenance track alongside it.
All went according to plan. I found the boundary, freshly graded, followed it round. The mine was strangely quiet; given the hype, I’d have expected it to be working twenty-four seven, but apart from the odd electronic ping and the generator hum, all was silence.
Until we crossed a grid on the western boundary.
A bank of spotlights exploded in my face and a Humvee came roaring out of nowhere and penned us against the fence before I knew what hit us.
A door flew open, a figure emerged, a voice boomed out of the lightblast: ‘Step out of the car!’
I pushed Danny down into the shadows and climbed out, stood against the door. Prepared to bullshit my way out of whatever I’d stumbled into.
‘Keep your hands where I can see them.’
Have to think up some pretty convincing bullshit, from the sound of that. I peered at the car: there were two of them. Big men. Hard. A sudden dryness of the mouth, a quickening of the pulse. One stayed in the cabin, the other advanced, raked me with a heavy Maglite and a set of wary eyes. He was decked out in a crisp uniform, gun on one hip, baton on the other, walkie-talkie on his collar.
Security appeared to have been upgraded in my absence.
‘Who the hell are you?’ he barked.
An unfamiliar surge of panic. I forced myself to think beyond it. Wondered whether the police alert had stretched as far as mine security companies. Maybe not: beneath the strident tone there was suspicion, for sure, the sound of a professional hard-arse. But not the sound of somebody who’d been warned to watch for a black woman and a boy on the run.
Best to play it safe.
‘My name Jenny Temple, sir.’
‘What you doing driving round, middle of the night?’
I put a hand to my mouth, tried to look uncomfortable: not a difficult thing to do. ‘I bin out huntin, got separated from our mob, lost my way.’
‘This is a restricted area. You savvy, girl? You not allowed in here! You’re trespassing on private property.’ He leaned in close. ‘I know you people, always sniffin round, lookin for something to steal.’
‘Wouldn’ be doin that, sir.’ I lowered my eyes, fidgeted.
‘We’d be well within our rights, locking you up. Hand you over to the Bluebush police. What we normally do with trespassers.’
Fuck, don’t do that. ‘Just tryin to find the road back ’ome, sir.’
‘Home?’ He stepped back. ‘Where’s that?’
‘Dixon Creek, sir.’
‘Dixon’s Creek,’ he snorted. ‘You’re miles off track.’
He lowered the torch. In its reflected light, I caught a calculated narrowing of the eyes, a callous hook on the corner of his mouth. He looked me up and down.
‘You on your own out here then?’
‘Yuwayi,’ I whispered. No need to role-play the leap of fear in the gut.
He swept the Hilux with his flashlight, making sure I didn’t have a load of stolen gear. The beam was almost on Danny when the walkie-talkie crackled into life: ‘Base to roaming. Everything okay there, Kubal? Over.’
‘Trespasser. Over.’
‘What have you got? Over.’
‘Some little gin sniffing round the boundary. Over.’
‘Better bring her in, mate. Brock’s down—wants to be notified of anything unusual. I’ll put a message through to the cops, come pick her up. Over.’
There was a long, painful silence, broken only by the pounding of my heart. I kept my eyes down, hands clenched. Finally he checked his watch, spoke back to the mic with a dismissive twitch of the lips.
‘Bugger it Mark, too much bloody trouble. Let her off with a warning? Over.’
‘Your call. Over.’
‘Finish me rounds, back in twenty. Over and out.’
He turned to me.
‘You understand I just did you a favour then, girlie?’
He paused. I could hear his heavy breath; smell it. It wasn’t even that unpleasant. A hint of recently drunk coffee, a twist of spearmint.
My throat worked and I swallowed bile.
Another heartbeat. Then he grunted and moved his mouth in the same dismissive tic. Too much bloody trouble.
‘Okay shove off—don’t let us catch you running round these parts again.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ I climbed up behind the wheel, drove until we were out of sight then pulled over. Leaned against the tailgate and vomited, long and hard.
When I straightened I saw Danny staring back at me, aghast. ‘You right there, Em?’
Good question.
I was not the same woman I’d been a week ago.
Would never be.
I studied the boy, his anxiety a reflection of my own. Get a grip, I told myself. You have responsibilities.
I ran a hand across my face, tried to still the shaking.
‘I’m right, Danny.’ As I made my way back to the driver’s seat I noticed the first burrs of colour nuzzling the horizon. I rummaged through the bag Jojo had left us. Found water bottles, threw one at the boy, took a swig myself.
‘Let’s get out of here.’
I stepped hard on the throttle and we roared up into the foothills of the Ricketswood Ranges.