This-is-spectacular, Tregan thinks, taking in the sea and beach and breakwall and river and towers. I’ve-always-wanted-an-ocean-view-penthouse.
‘Uh, Damon?’ she asks, nodding towards the bushfires in the north. ‘Is that a problem?’
He shakes his head. ‘Remember those big choppers that used to scoop water from the sea and drop it on bushfires? Well, we’ve found a couple of them.’
Tregan squeezes his hand. Hugs Evan closer to her. Below her the green lawn and white fence of Oxley Oval grows bigger as their helicopter comes in to land beside others already disgorging men and women with weapons.
‘Those men,’ Gail whispers to me, like she’s keeping it from the others. ‘They’re not good guys, are they?’
Reality’s finally sinking in for the poor woman. I’m about to lie that we’re safe when a chopper thumps low overhead. Every atom in my body shakes until it passes. Down against the wooden hull, Will hugs Amber, who holds Hal and Milly. Rachel whimpers on a bench seat and on the opposite side Lottie cries quietly in HB’s arms. Beneath the porthole, Johnno is pale and Nathan’s losing colour. Stannis sits against the cabin door, eyes closed and breathing so slowly I can’t tell whether he’s calm or dying.
‘What’re we going to do?’ says Rachel, voice rising. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘Ssssh,’ Will hisses. ‘We don’t know who’s out there. They could be anywhere.’
He’s actually not helping. They need to believe they’ll make it.
‘We’re okay for now,’ I say softly to Rachel and all of them. ‘We just need to keep cool and stay quiet.’
She shakes her head but the look in my eyes keeps her silent.
‘Trust me,’ I say to all of them. ‘They can’t search everywhere at once. This boat looks as deserted as all the others and there’s thousands of houses and apartments.’
What I say soothes them just enough. And that’s good because Will is right. Any raised panicky voice might be heard by Jacks scoping out the marina.
‘What’s that?’ HB says.
‘Outboards,’ Amber says. ‘Boats.’
We all rock gently with the Fu Hao as wake waves roll under us. The buzz of engines peaks and recedes.
‘I counted five,’ Will says.
Amber nods.
Five boats headed upriver on this smaller waterway. There’ll be more going up towards Limeburners National Park. Checking out the canal communities. Heading inland towards Wauchope. Air, sea, land: Jacks are everywhere already. And there’s more coming.
‘So, Danby,’ Johnno whispers, ‘we just hang out and hide here until when exactly?’
‘Sunset,’ I reply, looking at all of them. ‘Just give me till sunset.’
Not-exactly-what-I-was-hoping-for, Tregan thinks as Damon leads her into a quaint weatherboard cottage on a grassy hill between Oxley Oval and the bush bluff that overlooks Town Beach. We-can-do-better.
‘Just temporary,’ Damon says, showing her darkened bedrooms and a lounge room that might’ve belonged to a sea captain. ‘It’s a bit dusty but no one, y’know, passed away in here.’
‘It’ll do for now,’ Tregan says. They leave Evan bouncing on a bed in perfect mockery of a boy in a new bedroom and head out onto the front verandah, with its view of the bush, beach and breakwalls on the other side of the road.
‘That sea air,’ she says. ‘So fresh.’
Damon says something but is drowned out by Humvees chugging past and another chopper coming in to land behind the house.
‘What?’ Tregan says as the noise dies down.
‘I said, “Should be nice and peaceful”. Eventually, I guess.’
Tregan laughs.
Damon nods at the apartment towers that start on the next block and extend as far as the eye can see. ‘Clearing it’s going to be a big job. Still, when it’s done all this—’
‘Will be mine?’
Damon laughs. ‘Something like that.’
A four-wheel drive pulls up and a guy and girl with friendly smiles get out. Tregan says ‘Hi’ and waves back. They’re the couple who’ve shadowed her and Evan since Baroonah and now they lug suitcases and supplies up the front path. Personal-assistants: that’s how Tregan thinks of them, liking the celebrity feel of it. But every time these two arrive it means Damon departs.
‘You’re not going, are you?’ she asks.
‘Not far and not for long,’ he says with a reluctant nod. ‘Just into town. I have to supervise. Allocate jobs as the rest of them arrive. Make sure we’ve all got enough to eat and drink and places to sleep and go to the toilet.’
Goddamnit-I-thought-now-Danby-was-out-of-the-picture-we’d-be-together, Tregan thinks. ‘How long will you be gone?’ she says evenly.
‘Back tonight,’ Damon says, kissing her cheek. ‘You and Evan just sit tight, okay?’
Sit-tight-with-Evan, Tregan thinks as she watches Damon walk out the front gate and climb into a four-wheel drive that arrives with perfect timing. That’s-what-I’ve-been-doing-for-days.
‘It’s a trap,’ Nathan says. ‘Evan and Tregan, left alone like that.’
We’re in the Fu Hao’s tiny bathroom—the only place we can talk alone.
‘Maybe.’ I take a deep breath. ‘But I’m going to try to get him. Me doing that, it’ll be the distraction you guys need to get away.’
‘I’m going with you,’ Nathan says, not missing a beat.
I can’t hide my surprise. My revelation hasn’t shocked him at all.
‘C’mon, Danby,’ he says with a grin. ‘You thought I didn’t know you weren’t planning to go? Once you knew Evan might be saved? Especially now he’s so close.’
I shake my head. ‘You don’t have to come with me.’
‘I know,’ Nathan says. ‘So, what’s the plan?’
His eyes say he’s not going to give me a choice about this. I’ve seen that calm strength before. When he was willing to die to save Evan from me in Samsara. But I can’t let him throw away his chance of a new life.
‘No, really,’ I say, ‘you’re better off—’
‘With you,’ he says. ‘Like it or not—and don’t get me wrong: I do like it—we’re in this together. And besides, I get horribly seasick anyway.’
I laugh and throw my arms around him. We hug so tight I feel like we’re becoming one being. I look up at him. He at me. We kiss. Affectionate. Soft. Not hard like we did in Samsara.
‘Well,’ Nathan says when we come up for air, looking around at the mouldy bathroom, ‘who says romance is dead?’