Outback Escape (Koolaroo Ranch #2)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

DECLAN

The knife left my hand in a perfect spin but hit four inches wide of the bullseye.

“Goddammit!” I yanked it out of my homemade target and stepped back to the throwing line I'd scuffed into my timber floor years ago. My hands knew the weight, the balance, the exact moment to release. My brain knew I'd never hit center.

Some habits don't break. They just become a pain in the ass.

I threw again. Wide left this time.

At least out here, a fifteen-minute horse ride from the main homestead, no one could see me fail.

The afternoon light was fading through my living room windows, slanting low enough to make the dust visible in the breeze whistling through the open door. I'd left the ledgers spread across my kitchen counter like crime scene evidence, hoping distance would make the numbers look better.

It didn't.

Our bottom line was still bleeding. The ledgers showed more red than black, and each negative number was a small indictment of my failure to keep Koolaroo Ranch afloat.

I'd spent hours shuffling things around, moving the equipment lease to next month, delaying the fuel order, trying to figure out how to talk the feed store owner into extending our credit one more time.

But none of that bullshit helped.

I threw the knife again, and it stuck two inches higher than last time.

I grabbed another knife, and the small scar along my left cheek tingled. The scar was a permanent souvenir from when I’d been with Krystal, back when I was twenty-one and stupid enough to think I could join the circus with her.

She’d been an acrobat with a traveling show that had passed through Brisbane when I was at the university. She’d been fearless, spontaneous, sexy as hell. Everything I wasn't.

She’d taught me knife and ax throwing. It turned out I was shit at it, but we’d laughed about that. She’d shown me how to grip the handle, how to read the distance, and then how to let the knife do the work instead of forcing it.

I’d practiced non-stop and made plans to escape Koolaroo and run away with her.

But my old man had made sure I came back.

I threw. The blade sank two inches to the left of the first one.

Close, but still not good enough. Never on target.

I turned back to the counter and stared at the wage run that was about to flatten us like a fully loaded road train. We'd been bleeding money for months, hell, nearly a year now, and we were hitting critical mass. The kind that required drastic decisions.

Nobody knew the real situation except Frank. My old man. He ran Koolaroo Ranch like a dodgy car dealership.

At least he did, until he went missing.

Sometimes, I wondered what would've happened if I'd told him to go to hell and joined that circus. But here I was, thirty-four years old, still trying to hit that bullseye. Still using the same chunky desk Dad had shoved me behind when I’d turned eighteen, like it was a consolation prize.

You're not cut out for real farm work, boy. Stick to what you're good at and leave the farmin' to the real men.

Translation: You're fucking hopeless at ranching, so make yourself useful with the calculator.

I hated that he’d been right.

I could ride horses, quad bikes, and motorbikes. They were easy because I was in charge. Running cattle, though, that's where I failed. I didn't have the patience for cows that wouldn't go where I needed them to go. The stubborn bastards drove me mental.

Cassidy always got a good laugh out of it. She was like an animal whisperer and could read their minds like they were her own kin. I used to be jealous of how well-suited she was to this land and how natural it all felt to her.

But I'd learned to accept my lot.

I was good at numbers—making things add up, shifting things around to pay the urgent bills and keep the sharks at bay.

Except now, the numbers wouldn't shift anymore, no matter how many times I rearranged them.

I pulled the knives from the target and lined them up on the bench beside the ledgers. Each one had a different weight, a different balance point. Thinking I was Rambo, I threw them fast. One after the other.

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

Three perfect throws. Three absolute misses.

Everything was out of whack. My aim. The books. The whole damn ranch.

Ten days ago, Dad had ridden out on his horse, Razor, and never came back. We found Razor with blood on the saddle. We assumed it was Dad's blood, but there was no sign of the old man.

We needed to start thinking about the very real possibility that Frank was dead.

Kayden, my younger brother, had been saying it for days. Mitch probably wanted it to be true. Cassidy, though, kept clinging to hope.

I didn't care either way. I just wanted an answer so we could move forward and start working on systems to put this place back in the black. Perhaps we could make some drastic decisions, like diversifying from what we'd been doing on Koolaroo Ranch for over a century—breeding cattle.

I'd tried diversifying once. Had a go at creating another income stream. But it failed, and Dad took every bloody opportunity to remind me how useless I was.

I dragged my hand through my hair, pushing the waves off my forehead, but they fell right back. Frank's voice still rattled in my head, even though I hadn't spoken to him in weeks.

Make it work, Declan. Do your damn job.

He’d said it like I was making shit up.

I wasn't. Numbers don't lie.

I collected the knives, rolled them back into their leather case, and tucked them in the bottom drawer of my kitchen cabinet.

I didn’t know why I bothered hiding them.

Nobody came out here anyway. This cottage had been empty for years before I'd claimed Old Henry's place, after the eighty-year-old stockman had passed away in his sleep during a cattle drive in the middle of a stinking hot summer.

The tiny home suited me fine. I didn't need much, just simple furnishings, a practical layout, and nobody around to tell me I was doing it wrong.

I grabbed the ledgers and walked onto the front verandah.

Apollo was still hitched to the railing where I'd left him an hour ago. The horse was the last gift my mother had ever given me, before she’d left without saying goodbye to any of us.

I thought about that a lot … how she'd said a good horse needed an owner he could rely on and trust. Then she'd abandoned me at fourteen. Not just me. All of us.

Why?

I shoved that bullshit question that had been rattling around my head for twenty years back into its box. After packing the ledgers into the saddlebag, I unhitched Apollo, swung into the saddle, and he headed for the main homestead like he'd done hundreds of times before.

The main house looked the same as it always did. Tired. Like it was holding itself together through sheer stubbornness.

Apollo aimed for the rear of the building where the quad bike still lay on its side by the machinery shed, one headlight dangling by its wires. I shook my head. Kayden had promised he'd fix that three weeks ago, but my brother had a gift for starting things and never finishing them.

Kayden, Cassidy, Mitch, and his new girlfriend, Charlie, had all left yesterday afternoon.

They'd be gone for a couple of days, maybe longer, depending on how things went.

They were searching for answers about the skeleton Mitch and Charlie had found in a cave near the northern boundary.

Searching for Frank, too, or more likely just his body, if there was anything left after the dingoes, crows, and ants finished with him.

They'd have better luck finding Doug's body. Charlie's boss had been swept away in a flash flood in the ravine a few days ago. From what Mitch and Charlie had said, the man had lost his bloody mind.

But Charlie needed to know if he’d survived before she went to the police.

And Mitch needed answers about that skeleton and the gems and jewelry they’d found on the body.

Hell, we all did. Nothing about that skeleton and the bag of jewels sat right.

Plus, I had a rotten feeling Dad knew exactly who that man was and how he’d died.

Hell, I’d gotten to the stage where I wouldn’t be surprised if Dad had killed that poor man and dumped his body there.

Over the years, I'd learned to trust my gut, especially when it came to money. There were plenty of assholes who dealt bullshit to save a few bucks.

So, with everyone away, I was left to hold down the fort.

I glanced toward the kitchen window as I latched Apollo to the verandah hitching post and gave him some hay to munch on.

Bella was in there, pulling a tray out of the oven.

Even from here, I could see the tension in her shoulders, the way she moved like she was bracing for bad news.

She set the tray down and stared at the steaming food like whatever she'd baked was a disaster.

It wouldn't be. Her cooking was amazing.

Yet she stood there. Staring at the tray.

She'd been acting like that since arriving at Koolaroo. Either completely lost in thought or checking over her shoulder.

I'd noticed her nerves during her job interview.

The way her voice shook when she'd explained why she didn't have a résumé, how she’d flinched when a door had banged shut.

I had figured she was just nervous. New job, middle of nowhere, or maybe I didn't look like the employer she'd expected.

I'd tidied myself up since then. Trimmed my beard, cut my hair a bit so it didn't fall in my damn eyes all the time.

Yet her jumpiness hadn't gotten better. Sometimes, she got this expression that punched me right in the chest. Homesick, maybe. Or person-sick. Like she was missing someone so badly it was hollowing her out.

I recognized that look. I saw it in the mirror all the damn time.

That particular stillness in the way she stood there reminded me of Mom. Right before she’d pissed off and left us kids.