28

I spat the sand from my mouth, gingerly touched my right eye which felt like it had come in contact with a rock the size of Uluru, and sat up. My head ached. And when I moved my legs, a searing pain shot through my right ankle. Great. Just when I might be called on to run for my life—I’d sprained my freakin’ ankle.

“Nice of you to drop in, Katrina.” Mick’s voice, colder than steel, conveyed exactly how welcome I was at his little hole-digging ceremony.

“Where in heavens did you spring from?” Gina bent to help me to my feet but one Rottweiler snarl from the man with the gun had her backing off in a hurry.

I dragged my eyes away from Mick and Gina and stared at Liz. My little sister. Face smeared with sweat and dirt, the hem of her long colorful skirt torn, hands bleeding from digging, she stared back at me as though I was a gourmet ice cream and she wanted to eat me in one big swallow.

Finally, she dropped her eyes to her feet and sighed. “Hi, Kat.”

“Hi, Kat?” I snapped. Suddenly the hurt of Liz’s rejection overflowed, pushing aside the fear of the man with the gun. “That all you can say after six years of avoiding me?”

“Well, what do you want me to say?”

“Damn it, Liz. I’m your sister—once your best friend and protector—and yet after Dad died you took off and left me to cope with Ma on my own.”

“You know what she was like with me, Kat. With Daddy gone—I couldn’t cope. I had to get away.”

“Okay, so what about now?” I demanded. “Gina lives a few blocks from me and yet you couldn’t pick up the phone—or say—drop around to see me—let me know you weren’t lying dead in a gutter somewhere.”

She shrugged one shoulder and her face closed down. “I didn’t contact you, Kat, because I knew this was how you’d carry on.”

I let out a gasp of disbelief. “I carry on as you call it, because—”

“Enough!” yelled Mick, spittle flying from his mouth. “Jesus, it was trouble enough having the Mouthy One in my ear every five minutes—now I have her freakin’ sister too. Kat McKinley, what the hell are you doing here?”

“I followed you.”

“Oh, did you now? Can’t say I’m surprised though,” he said, eyes shooting daggers at me—every one razor sharp and itching to slice me into tiny bite-sized pieces. “You’re always poking your nose in where it’s not wanted. Reckon you’re some bloody great sleuth, don’t you? A girly Sherlock Holmes?” He lifted his lip in a sneer as I tried to push to my knees and let out a yelp of pain. “Well, you’re not. You’re nothing but a freakin’ snoop.”

“I—”

“But this time, Katrina,” he broke in, his voice like chalk on a blackboard, “you stuck your nose into my business.” Two black holes of death stared chillingly back at me as Mick’s gun shifted closer, his finger quivering on the trigger. “And that means I can’t let you walk away from here.”

I stared at the gun, mesmerized. I was going to die, yet my throat was suddenly too dry, too closed over with fear to do what all fictional heroines always do in mystery novels—keep the bad guy talking. Hell, my throat was too dry to even gulp.

But not so, Gina’s. “For God’s sake, Mick, stop this nonsense and come to your senses before it’s too late. Think of your family.”

Mick gave a mirthless laugh. “This is about my family, Gina. The bookmaking business isn’t what it used to be and I’ve had a long run of losses. How do you feed a wife and seven kids when there’s no money coming in? Beg on the streets?”

“But you don’t want to add murder to your list of crimes.”

His laugh was off-key, almost over the edge. “Who do you think did away with Jack Lantana, that idiot with the fashion sense of a 60s rock groupie?” Mick gave another hysterical laugh—but at least his gun shifted away from me which meant I could start breathing again. “Did you know, Lantana demanded a bigger cut of the profits? As if. Hell, I did the world a favor when I took him out. The decrepit old guy had the brain capacity of a lump of wood.”

“And what about Scott?” Liz edged forward. “You tried to kill him too, didn’t you?”

“His own fault. Scott overheard me talking to my mate, Garry Smart, so he had to go. In between races, Garry slipped a little something into Scott’s drink and then offered to help him to his car when he started feeling dizzy.” Mick turned his head in my direction and snarled. “It was a fool-proof plan too. Would have worked—except Sleuth Girl here stuck her nose in—again.”

I sent him the sweetest smile I could dredge up under the circumstances. “That’s okay, Mick. Anyone in a similar situation would have done the same thing.”

The snarl changed to a roar.

“So, Garry was involved in attempted murder?” Gina’s voice grated against her throat, each word forced through gritted teeth.

Mick tutted. “Gina, your boyfriend has been in this up to his foul-smelling armpits since the beginning.”

“The pathetic little creep.” Gina let out a sigh. “And he isn’t my boyfriend—he’s my stepbrother. Ever since he came into my life at fifteen, he’s been trouble. Got let out of jail a couple of months ago and came whining to me for help.”

“And helping him was your first mistake,” said Mick. “The whole scam was Garry’s idea in the first place. He owed me fifty thousand dollars in gambling debts and couldn’t pay, so the Slow Dog scam was a way out for him.”

“I’m just as pathetic for believing him. He swore on his mother’s grave that he was trying to go straight. Said some guy had forced him to steal greyhounds and would kill him if he refused. I told him I’d dob him in unless he brought the dogs to me so I could hide them and eventually get them into GAP homes.”

“And that decision landed you right smack in the middle of the scam.”

While Gina continued to distract Mick, I transferred my weight to my hands and pushed upwards, attempting to stand. Wrong move. Immediately the nose of the gun swung around and pressed against my left temple. I froze, still kneeling in the sand, the pain in my ankle making me want to cry.

In my peripheral vision I could see Liz, shovel half-raised, inching forward.

But so could Mick.

His eyes never leaving my face, he dug the gun harder into my head. “If your mouthy sister takes one more step, we’ll see daylight through the hole in your head, Katrina. And of course there’ll be a matching hole in hers too. Which of course will only leave Gina and me to get rid of the dogs. Still, no big deal. I’m tired of playing games and don’t need all this irritation.”

Gina threw her shovel in the hole and stood, head up, shoulders back. “Shoot my friends, Mick, and you may as well shoot me too because I’m not going to lift a finger to help you harm the dogs.”

The gun moved slowly in Gina’s direction. “In that case, I’ll shoot you first.”

A whirlwind of white fur broke through the clump of bushes directly behind Mick. A four-legged flash of white, armed with a smug grin and with only one objective in mind.

“Hey, how do you like your goat steaks, Mick?” I said, grinning inanely up at him as he stood, black coat wrapped around him, completely unaware of his fate.

“What—”

I held my breath as Atticus the goat, horns lowered, grin fixed in place, aimed for the most vulnerable spot at the back of Mick’s knees.

Bull’s eye.

The gun flew in the air. I reached out with one hand and grabbed it on its way down, and Liz swung her shovel in the direction of our captor’s head and connected as he catapulted past.

“Yay!” I yelled, waving the gun.

“Woohoo!” said Liz, waving her shovel.

“Good boy,” said Gina, cuddling the goat whose rough tongue was busy cleaning the dirt from her face.

I painfully climbed to my feet, leant against Liz for support and we all stood and silently regarded the fallen bookie as he lay at the bottom of the hole.

If Atticus hadn’t come to our rescue, this man—a cold blooded killer—would have shot the dogs, forced us to bury them and then shot us too.

I shivered.

You couldn’t always tell what evil stirred in another person’s mind.

Okay, I’d never regarded Big Mick as a friend, and he’d always put his hand up to participate in any money-making scam, but—a killer? No way. An image of Mick’s children eating at the kitchen table sprang to mind. Five still in high chairs—a giggling baby Eddy throwing spaghetti. How would these children feel in years to come when the kids at school teased them, called their father a murderer?

He deserved everything the court threw at him.

I raised the gun. Cocked it. “Okay, scumbag,” I said as I pointed the gun at a vulnerable spot between Big Mick’s legs. “Just move ya little pinkie finger—and your family jewels are history.”

I could hear several police sirens wailing in the distance and looked up as a four wheel drive pulled off the road and came bumping across the sand toward us. It screeched to a halt and out tumbled Detective Sergeant Adams followed by Ben and Tanya.

I grinned like an insane Cheshire Cat at the sight of the three people I most wanted to see. “So, you did get my message.”

“Yep, but it seems like you and the girls have everything under control,” said Ben. “We’re just in time to applaud.” He smiled at me, a smile so warm and tender, I had to swallow to stop myself from crying. Still smiling, he hurried over and slipped an arm around my waist, pulling me tight against his body to plant a kiss on my nose. “You okay, babe?”

“Sprained ankle, that’s all.”

Tanya, eyes bulging, stared, horrified, at the body lying at the bottom of the hole. When she spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper. “Is he dead?”

We stood in a circle around the hole, all eying Mick. Twenty seconds passed and no-one spoke.

At last, I shook my head. “Well, I’m not volunteering to go down there to find out.”

“Of course not, Ms. McKinley,” said Detective Adams, harrumphing and evidently deciding it was time he took charge of the situation. “This is police business now.”

“What I mean is, I couldn’t anyway—can’t walk—hurt my ankle when I went for a tumble down the hill,” I said waving the gun in the air to demonstrate how I rolled over and over when I lost my footing.

Adams turned white, gasped, and then ducked. “For God’s sake, give me that gun before it goes off.”

“Here, take it.” I shoved the gun in his direction, then winced as the detective ducked again. “Sorry.”

Adams snatched the gun and disposed of the bullets. “Fine,” he said. “Now, stand back and leave this to me.” While reading the comatose man his rights and fumbling in his many pockets for his set of handcuffs, Adams slid down into the hole. We watched as he bent forward, attached handcuffs to the man’s wrists and then felt for a pulse. Finally, he looked up and nodded. “He’s alive,” he said. “But whoever hit him must have given him a decent old whack. This man’s out for the count.”

Gina and I turned to Liz and gave her a high five. She laughed and the tension drizzled out of me.

“Yep! My sister, by a knockout!”