31

Matt was heavy. He was crushing her. But he was the only thing holding her together.

Oh God, Kane was going back to kill her friends.

The bush fell silent as he reached the clearing. He must have turned around because his voice came at them loud and clear, amplified by the crisp night, sounding cold and hard and cruel.

‘And I’ve got the perfect spot for you, Wiseman. Right next to that slut you never found.’

Above her, Matt turned to stone. Then, without warning, he pushed his palms flat to the dirt, lifted himself clear of her. She knew in an instant what he was doing. He was going after Kane. And Kane would shoot him. She grabbed him in a bear hug, locked her legs around him.

‘No!’ she hissed in his ear.

Matt pushed against her, trying to break free. Her arms were weak from hauling him across the grass and she wanted to hit him for trying to be such a goddamn hero back there, for telling her to run like he had any right to make that decision, but she just held on for dear life. He was going to survive this thing whether he liked it or not. The battle seemed to ease some of her crazy, uncontrollable shaking. Or maybe it was just being wrapped around his warm body that did that. He was tall and strong and determined – and he was protecting all of her with all of him. There wasn’t much more she could ask of a man. Then just as suddenly, the tension left him, as though he’d slapped the book closed on that idea. His weight settled on her again. She let her arms go slack, breathed into his neck, filled her nostrils with his sweaty, dirt-covered man smell. Felt a whole lot less shaky.

Kane’s footsteps landed heavily on the timber steps, stomped across the verandah. He was shouting as he went through the door. Travis shouted in answer. Jodie squeezed her eyes shut. She should have made it down the hall. She should have gone back to her friends.

‘Are you okay?’ Matt whispered. He was close enough for her to see most of the detail of his face in the dark. There was a new bloodied scratch down his cheek, a match for the graze on the other one.

‘What was with the crash tackle?’ she said.

‘Your sweater was glowing like a light bulb. Kane was right behind me.’

She pushed him off her, sat up, suddenly freezing without his body heat. ‘What the hell did you think you were doing back there? I told you to run and you sat on your butt.’

There was a beat before he answered. ‘I couldn’t get up. My knee . . .’

‘What about later? You were up on your feet, running just fine.’

‘I was trying to save your life.’

Anger and fear burned in her throat. She wanted to put her arms around him, hold onto him tight but instead she poked a finger into his chest. ‘I don’t need a goddamn hero. I need you to stay alive.’

He looked down at her finger. His eyes narrowed a little. She couldn’t tell if he was annoyed or amused. Maybe he was both. ‘Come on. We need to move,’ he said.

Jodie got to her feet, watching Matt hobble awkwardly, favouring his bad knee. How far would they get?

She looked at the barn over the top of the bush. Its high, A-frame roof and towering facade dwarfed the lounge room’s long span of windows. Light seemed to bulge through the glass into the almost moonless night, illuminating the verandah from the kitchen to the right-hand corner of the old building. The pale curtains looked undisturbed except for the stretch missing from the centre where the pane had been smashed. Jodie could see into the room through there – the big table askew, a couple of toppled dining chairs, a lounge and a corner of the island bench. Travis was further inside the room, standing side-on. The half of his face she could see was covered in blood. He was shouting, throwing his arms around. Somewhere out of view, Kane was shouting back. She couldn’t catch the words, just angry, guttural barks of sound. An argument. The other end of the barn looked dark and ominous. Fear gathered like a fist in her stomach. She moved towards the clearing.

‘This way.’ Matt grabbed her arm and pulled her in the other direction.

She shook off his hand. ‘No. We have to go back for them.’ She swung her head to the barn. Lights were coming on inside. Quickly, as though Kane or Travis was running down the hall, flicking the switches in the rooms.

‘Come on.’ Matt dragged on her arm. ‘We have to go.’

‘We can’t leave them.’

‘Come on, Jodie. Now.’ As he said it, lights started coming on along the verandah, too. Two at a time. Starting at the lounge room then past the kitchen, the bathroom, around the bedroom end. Two seconds later, the deck that ran behind the fireplace lit up. The verandah was a solid square of light.

Kane’s voice boomed from the house. ‘I’m gonna get you, Wiseman.’

A powerful floodlight on the roof at the bedroom end of the barn opened up. The stretch of grass from the verandah to the scrub was lit like a prison yard, the top of the bush beyond it silhouetted in the glow. Another came on at the rear of the barn. The clearing to their left lit up. The scrub beside them switched from darkness to reflected low light.

‘For Christ’s sake, Jodie.’

She looked at Matt. He had her by the wrist, half turned away as he tried to pull her with him, his head above the foliage line. ‘Get down,’ she hissed, dragging at his hand as she ducked below the scrub.

Suddenly the texture of the darkness around them changed. The sky went from black to deep purple and through a silhouette of branches, the clearing glowed a ghostly green.

‘Move,’ Matt said.

He didn’t need to pull this time. She took off behind him, bent low, her arm outstretched where he still held her wrist. Branches thrashed around them. A shot thundered into the night. She held her breath, expecting to feel the bite of a bullet in her flesh.

They stumbled on until the light was well behind them and they could stand up straight without being seen as they pushed further through the scrub. The piercing cold of the night finally penetrated her adrenaline rush and the sweat on her skin felt like ice. Corrine’s sweater could have been mesh for all the warmth it gave her. The sky was huge and star-filled with a white sliver of moon that gave off no light. Matt’s hand had slipped to hers and she held on tight, not wanting to lose him in the dense scrub. Close as he was, he was just a darker shape in the darkness.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

‘Somewhere we can see more of the barn.’

‘We have to go back.’

‘You want to go ask Kane to let you into the wardrobe?’

‘No, but we have to help my friends.’

He said nothing, just pushed on through the bush. They’d changed course, no longer moving deeper into the scrub but parallel with the barn, heading towards the bedroom end.

‘What did you dig up?’ he asked.

She remembered the bristle of apprehension she’d felt when her pick hit softness. ‘I don’t know. It looked like some kind of thick fabric. Felt, maybe. Like maybe it was wrapped around something.’

Matt’s hand tightened on hers. ‘Was it red?’

‘I don’t know. It was too dark to see colour. It wasn’t pale and it wasn’t black. In between. Yes, it might have been red. Or brown.’ I’m gonna dig a hole and put you in the ground. Something worse than apprehension scuttled like a rat down her spine. ‘What’s red, Matt?’ He held a branch back, stopped it from slapping her in the face as she walked past. His hand was so tight on hers it was starting to hurt. ‘Matt. What’s red?’

‘Tina had a red coat.’

She swallowed hard. ‘Who’s Tina?’

‘The girl who went missing.’

Jodie stopped walking. She felt sick. She’d dug up a body. A teenage girl. In a red coat. Bile burned at the back of her throat. ‘Jesus, Matt. I . . . Was she . . . ?’

‘Keep moving, Jodie.’

She stumbled on, not watching where she was going, letting Matt pull her forward while her heart banged in her chest. Kane and Travis killed a teenage girl called Tina. They’d buried her in her red coat. They’d made Jodie dig her up.

Matt stopped. ‘This is good.’

They were in line with the back corner of Hannah and Corrine’s bedroom with a view down one side of the barn to the kitchen and along the other to where the French doors opened out onto the verandah.

Louise and Hannah and Corrine were up there. Locked in with killers.

Jodie thought of the other holes under the barn and felt hot and cold at the same time. Had they made Tina dig her own grave? But Jodie hadn’t been digging a grave. She’d been digging Tina up. She looked at Matt in the darkness. He’d squatted on the ground, was looking up the slope towards the barn, his mouth a hard line, his jaw clenched. Jodie knelt down beside him. ‘What did you dig up?’

He didn’t take his eyes off the barn, barely moved his lips. ‘A box.’

A box?

A coffin kind of box?

Jodie closed her eyes, swallowed hard, forced herself to breathe.

A roar of gunshot cracked open the night.

The noise came back to her a dozen times as it echoed around the valley. In her head, she saw Louise and Hannah and Corrine huddled in the wardrobe, terror on their faces. And she was on her feet, the sound of her gasp like a rush of wind in her ears.

Her eyes were on the bedroom. Her legs were already moving as a second shot shook the darkness. Oh, God, no. The adrenaline rush that hit felt like a starter’s gun. She took off, was three paces into a sprint and picking up speed when Matt reached her. One arm went around her waist, pulled her off course, spun her away.

As they fell, crashing through foliage, a third shot rang out.

‘No. No. No,’ she cried.

She wanted to scream it but Matt had crushed the air from her. She wanted to yell and punch and kick, tried to as they hit the ground but he held her tight, arms locked to her sides, his body like a wall at her back. He was saying something, over and over, but all she could hear was the fourth blast, filling her up, making her head spin and her body shudder and her eyes spill over with tears.

They were dead. She’d left them and they were all dead. Louise and Hannah and Corrine were dead. And Angie. Four friends. Four shots. One for each of them.

Matt wasn’t talking any longer. Just breathing. Loud, laboured breathing. His chest heaved against her spine. His arm around her stomach was like a seatbelt on crash lock. Jodie squeezed her eyes shut, tried to block out the bloody images that were forcing their way into her head.

‘I’m sorry. Jodie, I’m so sorry,’ Matt breathed into her ear.

A tear ran sideways across her cheek, leaving a cold trail on her face.

‘Hey, Wiseman!’

Jodie went limp with fear. It was Kane, shouting. Footsteps thumped on the timber verandah, walking the length of the barn.

‘Try being a hero now, Wiseman. See if you can make it past the lights. I wanna do some pig huntin’.’ He hooted like a madman.

There was a pause in Matt’s breathing. When it started up again, it was still laboured but slower, more controlled.

‘Hey, pig,’ Kane bellowed.

Matt pulled his arm away, put a finger to his lips. On the verandah, the thud of Kane’s footfalls became a double beat. Travis was out there, too.

‘Make a run for the bitch’s car. See how far you can get on shot-out tyres, pig.’ Kane’s feral laugh hung in the darkness.

Jodie’s head snapped up. Shot-out tyres. Four tyres. Four shots. Not Louise and Hannah and Corrine. Kane hadn’t shot them. He’d shot the tyres. If he’d shot them, he’d be bragging about it.

They weren’t dead.

She looked at Matt, wanting some kind of confirmation that she hadn’t got it wrong. He’d closed his eyes and a muscle on his jaw moved in and out as he clenched and unclenched his teeth. Then he met her eyes in the darkness and she knew she was right. A wave of relief crashed over her. She sucked in a breath that seemed to go on and on forever, as though her lungs couldn’t get enough oxygen. As though she was breathing for her friends as well, keeping them alive in the wardrobe. Matt hooked an arm around her neck and pulled her to him, held her against his shoulder, his face in her hair. She clung to his shirt.

They are alive, Jodie. Locked up in a wardrobe, bleeding and terrified but not dead.

The double footsteps moved away, fading to a single beat before they disappeared, as though one brother was walking along the back of the barn while the other watched the front.

Matt took her by the shoulders. ‘You have to go for help,’ he said quietly.

We’ve got to run, Angie. Jodie’s own voice from eighteen years ago was as clear and as loud as if she’d just spoken.

‘Jodie? Did you hear me? You’ve got to get some help.’

‘No.’ She pushed away from him. Gunfire echoed in her head and ricocheted around in her skull. She forced herself to breathe, to look at him.

He kept his voice low. ‘There’s a stock trail through the bush. There’s no chance they’ll see you from the barn.’

No, no. She’d have to leave them. She’d promised she would never do that again. Dread pulsed through her veins. Her heart was racing. She could hear it in her ears. Pounding like a death beat.

‘It’ll take you down to the house on the road.’

The road’s just through the trees. I can run that in under a minute. Flag someone down. Get help.

Oh, God. She squeezed her eyes shut. She was puffing, hard, like she was already running. Through the dark. Through the trees. Running as fast as she could. Not fast enough. Never fast enough. ‘No, no. I can’t.’

‘You can. Just get down to the house and call the cops. Tell them gunmen have taken hostages. Then wait there for them, make sure they find the driveway.’ He took her by the chin, tilted her face to his. ‘You can do this, Jodie. I know you can.’

She shook her head. It was roaring. She was seeing it all. Louise bleeding, Corrine crying, Hannah frozen in shock, Angie’s eyes in the dark, a teenage girl in a red coat, holes in the dirt. The images were careering around, smashing into each other. ‘No. I’m not leaving them.’ She pushed his hand away. ‘You go. You do it.’

‘Jodie.’

‘I have to stay with Angie.’