Elise and Kiara leap up from the table. Kiara bolts towards the front door, then realises Elise isn’t following—she’s running to the hall instead, towards the thump from upstairs.
‘What are you doing?!’ Kiara whispers.
Elise stops. ‘What are you doing? We have to catch her!’
‘I have to get you out of here!’
‘Stuff that.’ Elise resumes her sprint towards the stairs. Despite the bad knee, she’s fast.
‘Elise, wait!’ As Kiara gives chase, she berates herself for being so foolish. She assumed Ms Madden was lost in the bush and probably dead. It never occurred to her that the missing woman might have doubled back and taken shelter in the house. And if she’s been living here in secret for a week rather than trying to get back to civilisation, that could mean she’s the killer.
Elise isn’t a cop, and she’s unarmed. She’s come face to face with evil before, and survived. But she may not be so lucky this time.
Just as Elise gets to the landing at the top of the staircase and reaches for the doorhandle, Kiara manages to grab the back of her shirt. Elise stumbles, almost falling down the stairs and crushing them both. ‘Let go,’ she snaps.
‘Stay behind me,’ Kiara growls, pushing Elise aside.
The door is unlocked, and the room seems empty. Kiara checks under the bed and in the ensuite. Perhaps the thump was just a possum in the roof cavity.
But Elise is leaning out the window. ‘I see her!’ she yells.
Kiara runs over in time to see a lithe form in dark clothes climbing down the side of the house. Night is falling, and the suspect’s face is hidden by a hoodie, but Kiara is automatically memorising other identifying features: about one-seventy tall, maybe sixty kilos. Matches Madden’s description.
The window overlooks an eight-metre drop onto a gravel path lined with garden beds. The suspect climbs down without obvious difficulty, digging gloved fingers into invisible seams, then leaps off the wall and flattens a shrub before scrambling up and sprinting towards the tree line.
Elise runs back towards the stairs, but by the time she gets out the front door and circles around to the back of the house, the suspect will have disappeared into the endless bush.
‘Aw, shit,’ Kiara mutters, and climbs out the window.
A cold wind attacks, trying to pluck her off the side of the house. The void below is terrifying. She dangles from the window, hips hugging the wall, the toes of her shoes slipping against the bricks, unable to find the footholds the suspect used. Kiara spots a drainpipe bolted to the wall a metre or two to her right, but her outstretched hand can’t quite reach it. She’ll have to jump.
She grits her teeth, swings sideways and lets go of the sill. For a heart-stopping second she’s not connected to anything, five metres above the ground—then she crashes into the pipe and grabs hold. It’s too thick to wrap her hands all the way around, and she finds herself sliding down, her feet scrabbling against the wall, until they find purchase on a bracket.
When she’s still two metres above the gravel, she hears the front door bang. Elise is coming, ready to make a citizen’s arrest.
The pipe groans. As Kiara frantically tries to shift her weight, she loses her footing on the bracket. After half a second of freefall, she hits the ground feet first and tumbles onto her side. The impact bruises her ribs and knocks the wind out of her.
As she rolls over, she sees the dark figure in the distance, running through the trees.
‘Stop! Police!’ Kiara scrambles to her feet and gives chase, limping from the fall. Every step in the dark risks a twisted ankle.
The fugitive seems to know the bush, following the trail even in the dark, while Kiara gets tangled at every bend. After only a few seconds, her quarry has vanished between the trees. She stops running, instead listening for the footsteps. Hopefully she can follow by ear alone.
Something crashes through the brush to her left. Kiara brings up her guard, elbows tucked, fists clenched. ‘Hold it!’ she yells, but the figure is already barging into her, slamming her off her feet. She hits the ground, winded again, the other woman on top of her.
‘Elise!’ Kiara wheezes. ‘It’s me!’
Elise opens her fist, lowers it. ‘K?’
In her statement, Ms Dubois insisted she didn’t know which man she’d slept with on Saturday night, because the lights were out. The claim no longer seems ridiculous.
Elise climbs off, and Kiara sits up dizzily.
‘Sorry. I thought …’ Elise looks around. ‘Fuck me, it’s dark out here.’
Away from town, the moonless night is impenetrable. They have no hope of tracking the suspect. If they hadn’t left the dining-room lights on, they might not even be able to find their way back to the house.
Kiara coughs. ‘I have to get you out of here.’
‘No,’ Elise says. ‘We can backtrack. Pick up the trail.’
Kiara grabs her hand. ‘You’re not a cop. This isn’t your job.’
‘We can’t just leave.’
‘That’s exactly what we should do.’
‘I’m not running away again,’ Elise snaps.
Kiara frowns. ‘Again?’
Elise starts trudging back towards the house.
Kiara hurries after her. ‘You didn’t run away last year. You stood up to those people. You—’ She stops herself from saying killed them. They’ve never talked about this. Kiara had thought, naïvely, that there was nothing to say.
Elise’s gaze is on the dirt between her feet.
‘Listen.’ Kiara keeps her voice low, in case the suspect is close enough to overhear. ‘We’ll tell search and rescue to update the Last Known Point. We’ll go home and come back at sunrise to help with the manhunt.’
‘You can go, if you want,’ Elise says. ‘I’m not leaving.’
Kiara wants to shake her. Do you know how insane you sound?
‘Okay,’ she says instead. ‘But we need to warn the other officers that the suspect is nearby.’
‘There’s no phone reception up here,’ Elise objects.
‘There’s a landline at the house. Come on.’
Kiara has been using her cop voice, calm and firm. It works, thank God. Elise follows her around to the front door, which is standing wide open, letting in the cold.
In their statements, all three suspects agreed there had been no batteries in the cordless handset when they’d tried to call for help. Kiara brought new ones, but it looks like someone has already replaced them. When Kiara dials Warrigal police station, the phone works fine.
The acting station chief, Clive Wallworth, picks up. Kiara explains that someone, possibly Ms Madden, has been secretly living in the house and is still in the area.
‘Bloody hell,’ Clive says. ‘I’ll send a team out. You get Elise back here.’
Kiara shuts her eyes. ‘We’re staying.’
‘You’re what?’
‘Send the team. We’ll meet them here.’
‘You have a civilian with you. This suspect may have committed a double homicide—’
‘I’m technically off-duty,’ Kiara says. ‘You can’t make me leave.’
‘What am I supposed to tell Rohan if you get killed up there?’ Clive complains.
‘Tell him not to let Jennings investigate our deaths,’ Kiara says, and ends the call.
They search the house room by room, in case the suspect doubled back. Kiara tries to focus on the places where the suspect might hide. But she keeps looking sideways at Elise, who’s scanning the environment like a Terminator, arms crossed.
Kiara thinks there are two types of relationships. The first kind grows stronger under pressure, and is fuelled by time together. The second kind gets weaker under pressure, and depends on time apart. She’s seen loving couples break up because they’re forced to live in different cities for a few months. She’s also seen marriages crumble after decades when someone retires and is suddenly exposed to their spouse’s company.
Kiara always thought she and Elise had the first kind of relationship. It could endure stressful situations, but was threatened by the long hours they spent working separately. Now they’re together, and it doesn’t feel like they’re facing this crisis as a team. For the first time in a year, Kiara allows herself to wonder: what if we don’t make it?