Bloodtree River

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  SARAH BARRIE is a bestselling Australian author writing suspense in rural settings, with a generous splash of romance. Her debut bestselling print novel, Secrets of Whitewater Creek, earned her a spot as one of the Top 10 breakthrough authors of 2014, and her next three books, the Hunters Ridge series, also reached bestseller status. She has finaled in several major awards: twice in the RUBY, the Romance Writers of Australia’s premier award, and three times in the Australian Romance Readers Award for favourite Romantic Suspense.

  Sarah has also worked as a teacher, a vet nurse, a horse trainer and a magazine editor. When she’s not writing, you’ll find her ferrying children to soccer or gymnastics, or trudging through paddocks chasing cattle, sheep, chickens or the Houdini pig that never stays put very long. Occasionally, she’ll attempt to ride her favourite horse, who’s quite a bit smarter than she is and not always cooperative.

  Her favourite place in the world is the family property, where she writes her stories overlooking mountains crisscrossed with farmland, bordered by the beauty of the Australian bush, and where, at the end of the day, she can spend time with family, friends, a good Irish whiskey and a copy of her next favourite book.

  Also by Sarah Barrie

  Secrets of Whitewater Creek

  The Hunters Ridge Trilogy

  Legacy of Hunters Ridge

  Shadows of Hunters Ridge

  Promise of Hunters Ridge

  BLOODTREE RIVER

  Sarah Barrie

  www.harlequinbooks.com.au

  For Krista

  To growing up, spreading wings and new beginnings x

  Contents

  About the Author

  Also by Sarah Barrie

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Acknowledgements

  CHAPTER

  1

  Crack! The explosion of pain radiated from her closed fist to her shoulder, reverberated down her spine. ‘Damn it!’ she hissed from between clenched teeth. Shooting the tattooed teen with the bad attitude would have been overkill, but it would have hurt a lot less than the punch.

  ‘Mummy!’

  Detective Indiana O’Meara swung around, pulling her gun out and settling it into its correct grip as she assessed the scene. Squeezed between a tattered lounge chair and a television cabinet at the far end of the lounge room, Matthew Davies huddled on the floor, tiny arms wrapped around knobbly knees as another perp dragged the boy’s mother towards the shattered, floor-to-ceiling second-storey window.

  Strung out on whatever it was that had him scratching and sweating, the guy holding onto Matthew’s mother was in no rational state of mind. Desperation was pouring from him; his Metallica T-shirt was soaked with sweat. He pulled the near-hysterical young woman more tightly against him, the four-inch-long blade of his pocket knife against her throat.

  Indy flicked a glance to the door. Where the hell was her backup? She’d walked in on the scene accidentally—had stopped by to talk to Sasha Davies, a nineteen-year-old junkie with a murdered boyfriend, and had heard the commotion from the street. She’d called it in before entering the flat to find the two perps messing the place up and terrorising Sasha and her young son.

  Dealers, she’d quickly surmised. Sasha must owe them money.

  ‘Let her go,’ Indy ordered, her gaze steady, ‘and we’ll sort this out.’

  ‘You’ll shoot me!’ He dragged Sasha back another step until there was no space for more, and took a nervous glance down. ‘I’ll take her out with me!’

  ‘No! Please!’ Sasha’s voice broke. Tears trickled down her face as she almost collapsed with fear. Indy uselessly willed her to be calm.

  ‘I’m not going to shoot you. I’m putting my gun away. See?’ She made a show of replacing it in the holster. ‘I just want to talk.’

  ‘About what? How you’re gonna lock me up?’

  ‘I’m not interested in you. Not yet. That changes if you make any bad decisions in the next few seconds. Understand?’

  ‘What do you want?’ He swiped at a trickle of perspiration on his face with his shoulder, pressing the knife against Sasha’s throat. Sasha flinched. Indy noted the thin trickle of blood that ran from the blade and her heart rate kicked up another notch.

  ‘I want us all to walk out of here in one piece. I want to know who you’re working for. You let her go, you tell me that, you walk away.’

  His crazed eyes were darting around as though the walls might tell him what to do. ‘I just came to get the money like I was told to.’

  She moved around the room, stepping carefully over the mess the two had made of Sasha’s things, trying to get closer without appearing to.

  ‘Where are you going?’ He demanded, lifting his elbow outwards to make his knife appear more threatening.

  ‘I’m getting out of the way of the door, because you can still leave. I promise you.’

  ‘You swear?’

  ‘I swear.’

  ‘Okay … okay. There’s a guy.’

  ‘What guy?’

  He was shaking, pallid. If he slipped, she was still too far away to help Sasha. ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Down near the docks—under the Botany Road overpass.’

  She knew that part of Sydney, committed the information to memory. ‘I need a name.’

  ‘I dunno! We pick up the stuff from this guy, pay him cash. Cause we were friends with Chad, he sent us after Sash for what she and Chad owed.’

  The name immediately registered. ‘You’re talking about Chad Garvin, correct? The one found dead in a garbage bag at the dump last week?’

  ‘Yeah—yeah. He said if we mucked him around he’d send Bull after us, too.’

  She inched closer, closer. ‘Who’s Bull?’

  ‘The one that took out Chad.’

  A little closer again. She pushed her luck, took another step. Glass crunched underfoot. ‘When are you supposed to meet the one you deal with?’

  A siren sounded, closed in. His eyes rounded on hers. ‘You lied!’

  ‘I didn’t. I—wait!’

  Panicked, he stepped back into nothing.

  The knife fell from Sasha’s throat as he flung out his arms to reach the wall for balance. Indy lunged, got a hand on Sasha, and twisted and threw what weight she could towards keeping her in the building. The painful, heavy landing on the tiled floor was a relief. There was a scream. When she untangled herself and looked up, he was gone.

  Matthew shot up from his hiding place and threw himself into his mother’s arms, wailing.

  ‘Thank you.’ Sasha’s voice was trembling with emotion. She clung to her son and turned tear-filled eyes up to her. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’

  Indy squeezed Sasha’s arm in reassurance, smoothed a gentle hand over Matthew’s curls. Then she stood up and moved to the broken window. Beneath her the dealer’s body lay staring sightlessly back up at her.

  ‘Damn it!’ She muttered. She’d hoped he mi
ght have survived; second-storey falls weren’t always fatal. But he’d landed on concrete, his blood spattering the patio.

  ‘Look out!’ Sasha’s warning had her spinning as the guy she’d thought she’d knocked out launched himself at her. In the scuffle, his forehead crashed against her temple and the smack of his fist into her cheek sent her head reeling, but a well-placed elbow and a strike to the side of the knee dropped him and she got him under her, his hands behind his back, just as the pounding of feet up the stairs told her backup had arrived.

  Senior Constable Patricia Langdon gave Indy a pat on the back. ‘Well done,’ she said, as the surviving perp was assisted from the paddy wagon towards the holding cells of the Sydney police station.

  ‘Thanks, but I don’t feel much like celebrating. I don’t consider it a very good outcome when someone falls out a window.’ She walked into the brightly lit station and down the corridor towards her office.

  Patricia shrugged. ‘A drug dealer took a two-storey dive. You’ll go through the usual rigmarole, debrief. Nothing to worry about.’

  The dead boy’s image flashed into Indy’s mind. The lifeless stare, the blood. For a moment his face blurred into another image; that of her mother and her grandmother, bodies tangled on the kitchen floor with the same, unseeing stare on both their faces. There’d been blood then, too. So much blood. She pulled herself together with difficulty, swallowed back the anger. ‘He had a family. He wasn’t much more than a kid. Someone’s kid, Pat.’

  ‘How’s the mother and the little boy?’

  She took a steadying breath, released it. ‘Together and in one piece. Sasha’s putting herself into rehab.’

  ‘Then there’s your good outcome—focus on that. What’s on tonight?’

  ‘A long soak in a hot bath and an early night.’

  Pat snorted. ‘You’re such a party animal.’

  ‘Hey—the other guy didn’t exactly come quietly.’ She rolled her shoulder and tried to unlock the kink in her neck.

  ‘Indy—got a minute?’ The tall, suited figure of Detective Ben Bowden stood in the doorway of his office.

  ‘Sure, Ben,’ she said, turning to her friend. ‘I’ll see you later, Pat.’

  ‘Enjoy that bath,’ Pat said with a smile as she walked away.

  Ben stepped into the corridor and closed the door. ‘I heard what happened. You okay?’

  She rubbed her temples against the beginnings of a headache as a fluoro light above them flickered, on, off, on, off. ‘Will be. And I’ve got another lead. I was out there to talk to Sasha about her murdered boyfriend, because in her initial statement to police she revealed he’d been dealing for D’Angelo. When I arrived two minor dealers had already been there awhile, messed the place up. They were there to collect the money Sasha had been too scared to pay back in person. The perp that later died told me if he didn’t get the cash, a guy called Bull would come after him, just like he had Chad.’

  ‘I’ll check it out. See if that tag’s come up anywhere.’

  ‘Bull is obviously D’Angelo’s standover man. And I think the skimming story is just an excuse. Chad Garvin is the sixth low-level dealer to be knocked off since the Drug Squad started on the D’Angelo drug investigation. I’m not saying D’Angelo didn’t want his final payment from Sasha and Chad, but Sasha said Chad never skimmed—that he only owed for the last drop-off and would have paid up if he hadn’t been killed. And I don’t think Chad will be the last one to die. Every time it looks like the entire operation is close to being uncovered, we find out D’Angelo has another source, another supplier. Running an operation on that sort of scale, I’ve got to think D’Angelo is going to be a lot more worried about someone talking than losing a couple of grand in drugs money. I suspect he’s getting nervous—ordering Bull to take out any possible leaks because of the pressure we’re putting on him.’

  ‘It’s a plausible theory, but we still don’t have anything solid.’

  Frustration ate at her. ‘We’ve got a shipping merchant with criminal convictions, caught on surveillance more than once associating with a known crime boss. He has contacts with two trucking companies and a freight-forwarding business, all of which are under investigation for smuggling drugs and tobacco through the Sydney docks over a thirty-year period. That’s not nothing.’

  ‘We were brought in on this to investigate several murders linked to him, remember? Let the Drug Squad pin the drug-smuggling operation on him.’

  ‘Someone else has got to know about this “Bull”. That sort of business means lots of connections. I’ve just got to find the one that will talk.’

  He sighed and rubbed his fingers over his forehead. ‘I know you’re not going to like this, but unfortunately, that might have to wait.’

  ‘What are you talking about? Why?’

  ‘Something else has come up.’

  The flare of anger wasn’t helped by the headache. ‘Come up? I’m in the middle of a case!’

  Ben held up a hand to silence her, then continued quietly. ‘You need to hear this. This request is urgent, and it’s come from the top.’

  They stepped aside as two officers walked past. ‘Does this involve you, too?’

  ‘If you say yes, it does. You don’t have to do this, Indy.’

  ‘Do what?’

  He paused with his hand on the handle of his office door. ‘We’ve got company.’

  Interest piqued, she stepped into Ben’s office. Almost immediately an amply built man with an expensive suit and a thin covering of salt-and-pepper hair got to his feet and wiped his brow with his handkerchief. His complexion was red, his expression strained.

  ‘Indy, this is Senator Melville, from Canberra,’ Ben said.

  The senator held out a hand in greeting. His palm was damp, the quick shake was agitated. ‘Hello, Detective O’Meara.’

  ‘Senator.’

  ‘Neil, please.’ He sat back down in his chair, his foot jiggling as he crossed one leg over the other.

  Ben moved around the desk and sat down. Indy found a third chair and sat next to the senator, waited.

  ‘Neil is here because of his daughter’s disappearance,’ Ben said.

  ‘Disappearance?’

  Ben handed her a photograph of a young, attractive woman with lots of brown hair and a big smile. ‘Caroline Melville went missing from a backpacking holiday three weeks ago. Despite a thorough investigation, no leads have come to light.’

  ‘Caroline was working for Calico Mountain Lodge, in Tasmania,’ Neil cut in. ‘I wouldn’t have allowed her to work down there if I’d known what was going on!’

  She looked at Ben for some sort of clue. ‘You’re going to have to fill me in.’

  Ben nodded. ‘In December 2016, a group of trout fishermen found the body of a young woman snagged on some debris in the Tyenna River. She was identified as twenty-four-year-old Latisha Nolan.’ Ben handed her a file containing paperwork and photographs. ‘She’d also worked at Calico Mountain.’

  ‘She’d been missing for almost two years before they found her,’ Neil added.

  Aware the senator didn’t need to see the disturbing pictures, she dropped the folder below desk level and carefully checked through the images. The body was only in the first stages of decomposition. ‘Two years?’ She looked up at Ben in confusion. ‘She hadn’t been in the water more than a few days.’

  ‘Correct. She was emaciated and had a wound to her ankle suggesting she’d been held against her will for a substantial amount of time before she entered the water.’

  She frowned back down at the folder. ‘I’d agree two years is substantial.’

  ‘And there was another one—a few years before that,’ Neil said. ‘Tell her, Detective.’ A shrill ringtone had Neil digging for his phone, a heavy sigh escaping his lips as he checked his screen. ‘It’s my wife—she’s beside herself from all this. Excuse me a moment.’

  Ben exchanged a short, telling glance with Indy as Neil let himself out of the room. ‘Back in January 20
14, a woman turned up on a property on the Gordon River Road, approximately three kilometres from where Latisha was found. According to the property owner, Gaylene White, she looked like she’d been in the bush a long time and was rambling about escaping “him”. When Gaylene went inside to call for help, the woman ran off. Gaylene was shown photos of missing persons and identified the woman as Mandy Reeves—a backpacker who’d been missing for almost four years. Police conducted a thorough search but found nothing. She was never located. Mandy had also worked at Calico Mountain.’

  ‘So two victims who had previously worked at this Calico Mountain, disappeared only to turn up showing evidence of having been abducted and held for a considerable amount of time. Were there any others?’

  ‘Gretchen Bailey, who went missing shortly after Latisha’s body was discovered. Same location, same circumstances. Never found.’ Ben dropped another file on the desk.

  ‘And Caroline disappeared from the same place. You’re concerned we may have a serial abductor.’

  ‘Look at the timeline. Due to the fact she was never discovered, it’s fairly safe to assume Mandy was either recaptured and/or killed. If we speculate that her captor killed her, he’d need another victim, which would coincide with Latisha’s disappearance just a few weeks later. Fast-forward to Latisha’s discovery, and within a couple of months Gretchen has gone missing.’

  ‘And now Caroline.’ Indy chewed on her lip as she thought about that. ‘Doesn’t bode well for Gretchen. Any suspects?’

  ‘Logan Atherton,’ Neil spat, reappearing in the doorway. ‘They all worked for him. He’s some kind of hotshot horseman. My wife seems to think Caroline had a bit of a thing for him. The day before she went missing she told her he was taking her out trail riding in the wilderness. That was it.’ He rubbed his fingers across his eyes. ‘We haven’t heard from her since.’

  Indy’s gaze sharpened at the vehemence of the accusation, but her voice was kind. ‘Senator, what we’re discussing is just one possible scenario. I assume because you’re here you’re aware of the details of the case. We don’t know Caroline has been abducted. Have we ruled out her leaving of her own accord?’