Munching on the pie and already feeling better for it, Hannah drove all thought of Jacob’s crinkly smiling eyes from her mind and cruised slowly down Main Street, wondering who owned the vehicles. Once she would have recognized all of them, but she could still pick the out-of-towners. An older couple strolled down the street, sporting brand new Akubras. They probably belonged to the caravan and Land Cruiser combo parallel parked illegally in front of the abandoned car yard. There were still heaps of vacant angled parks available, although there were a few people about.
Growing up, her Mum used to come in for a whole day once a month, to do crafting at the Country Women’s Association and grocery shopping. Occasionally her dad would come in later. If it was her mum’s birthday, they’d collect James after rugby training and have dinner at the Chinese restaurant, smashing some sweet and sour pork, Mongolian beef, dim sims and fried rice. Good times.
Hannah sighed and fiddled with the car stereo, skipping tunes and looking for something upbeat. That was the thing about being home, memories were around every corner. Some days she felt like she was drowning in them. She needed distraction. Count the empty stores? The restaurant was sadly long gone. In front of its papered-up windows was another non-local four-wheel drive. Easy to see it was a visitor; not many aerials or spotlights, and dark tinted windows. But something about it didn’t have a tourist vibe. Maybe some government agency vehicle? The new mayor Jazzy Parker had done a good job of lobbying to improve access to services in the region. Her dad had been moved to mention the mayor, which said everything Hannah needed to know. He was a hard man to impress and not a big conversationalist. He’d admired the way she’d taken on the old guard at the shire council to improve services and facilities by leveraging the town’s miniscule budget and accessing every kind of federal government funding she could find. Hannah was at boarding school when Jazzy Parker and her sister Abby had moved to town with their mum, so they’d never met.
Settling back into the seat and changing up the gears with a grind and a wince — she really hadn’t gotten the hang of driving a manual again after so many years in a city-friendly auto — Hannah turned back onto the highway and pointed her dad’s old truck for home. Glancing in the rear vision mirror, she noted the government vehicle pull out behind her. She wondered what brought kind of work they were doing in Granite Ridge.
Maybe there was already an investigation going on into cattle rustling? Perhaps the local police were working with other law enforcement agencies to investigate? For a moment she considered turning back and driving to the police station to share her concerns, but she already had her nose pointed for Somerset Downs. Besides, Betty said she’d heard nothing, and it was doubtful small-scale cattle rustling would be enough to attract the kind of government agencies that drove vehicles like that.
Ahead, the empty road stretched for miles. She finished the last mouthful of pie and scrunched the paper bag into a ball, tossing it on the floor. What a sweet thought from Jacob. She really should have returned his calls; she could have asked him if he knew anything about the missing cattle. Maybe tomorrow she could use the pie as a reason to phone her thanks and discuss it. It felt good to be making decisions. Maybe the veil of grief was lifting.
She pressed the accelerator and the ancient Land Cruiser slowly gathered momentum. It was a kindred spirit to her dad. He’d taken a long time to adapt to change too, and she wished someone had pushed him to move with the times after James died. Guilt stabbed at her at the thought maybe that should have been her, but he wouldn’t have listened to her anyway. Her father’s decline was in evidence in every neglected fence-line and broken-down piece of equipment. He hadn’t been coping, he’d been hiding. A better daughter would have turned up occasionally instead of relying on phone calls. He’d said Facetime wasn’t an option, but that had been a fib. There was good internet now, probably thanks to that Mayor. Video might have been revealing. She should have insisted. Squirming in her seat, she glanced at the rear vision. That car was heading out of town too. Idly she wondered whose property it was headed to.
Forty minutes out of town, she neared the turn for the gravel road to Somerset Downs. Hannah indicated nice and early. The turnoff was sharp and there was no turning lane. The roadside verge needed grading again, it was rutted and gouged, ready to catch a tire and yank a vehicle off-course. She’d learned the hard way as a teenage learner driver, home from boarding school. They’d get it graded, then a summer storm would wash away the surface all over again. But the car following her at a distance had plenty of room to overtake.
She glanced in the rear vision, expecting to see the vehicle moving across the broken white line into the empty oncoming lane to go past her. Instead, it was closing the gap between the two vehicles — fast. Too fast for Hannah’s comfort. Why did people do that, run up hard and then veer at the last minute? It was so unnecessary. Hannah’s nerves skittered. Surely, they’d pull across, now?
They didn’t.
Closer, closer. She was starting to get scared, fingers gripping hard on the steering wheel. Something was off. This was not right. Hannah thought of the empty homestead she was going back to and chewed her lip. Should she forget about turning, speed up and wait for a better place to get off the highway, then turn around and come back?
The vehicle hurtled towards her now, almost like it was aiming for her. Instinct made her stomp her foot on the accelerator, pressing it to the floor. The old truck’s engine revved hard and it slowly began to gather momentum.
“Come on, come on, you bastard!” Slowly, oh so slowly, it began to gain speed but still the vehicle closed the gap faster than she could widen in it. Hunched forward in her father’s seat, fingers clenched white on the steering wheel, Hannah zoomed past the turn off and it felt like fear grew legs and jumped into the cab with her as the Somerset Downs road sign flashed past.
She couldn’t see the bumper of the vehicle in the rear vision mirror, it was so close. The sparse roadside trees were flying past her now. The speedo crept higher and higher, numbers she didn’t know the truck could do, the engine screaming. Hannah’s eyes flicked frantically from the speedo to the rear vision to the barren road ahead. She couldn’t see who was driving, dark tint across the top of the windscreen cast their face into shadow.
Who was doing this? Why? Were they targeting her, or was it random? But why would anyone target her? It had to be some random idiot. Should she slow down now, get half off the road?
But it was too late for answers, the four-wheel-drive was pulling out and around her now, a sudden violent lurch, so close she braced for impact. Instead, it roared partway alongside her, not overtaking, just keeping pace. Her fear ratcheted up another level. Was it going to ram her off the road? Christ what was happening? Termite mounds dotted the landscape. If she hit one of them, she was toast.
Hannah moved her foot from the accelerator to the brake.
But it was too late. The menacing vehicle was still a bit behind her cab when it veered suddenly towards her. Hannah screamed and yanked the steering wheel instinctively to avoid collision.
The old truck rocked and shot onto the verge, hitting something that launched the vehicle into the air. Hannah screamed. Blackness descended.