Chapter 12
Kayden
As the lights of Winton shrank behind us, the night came down hard like a giant lead blanket. Sapphire sat in the seat beside me with the Chivas box on her lap, and she was quiet as she angled the foolscap notepad toward the console light, trying to read it.
“Can’t figure it out,” she said, scowling and shaking her head.
“You should read that note I looked at,” I said into the headset. “It has some interesting details about Bob that you should know.”
Her face looked gray in this light. Or maybe she was sick to her stomach. Not surprising considering she’d just found out her boss was a fucking asshole.
She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment.
I could see her mentally working through it.
Maybe she was wondering if handing that box over to my family was the right call.
That box of Frank’s notes was evidence, and Sapphire had always wanted to do things by the book.
It was one of the things I respected about her, even when it drove me up the wall.
The problem was, doing things by the book was bullshit when the top cop was corrupt.
She let out a long breath, lifted the box lid, pulled out the top page, unfolded it, and read.
After a few beats, she turned to me. “Do you remember a stockman called Bazza Crawford? He lost his leg in a cattle stampede?”
“Yeah. A few years back. Cassidy was furious with Frank over that.”
“Seems she had every right to be.” She turned back to the page.
A frown rippled her forehead as she kept reading. She gasped. “Bob and Frank have been laundering money for twelve years!”
“Yeah. Told you they went back a long way.”
“Oh, God.” She put the page down on the box. “Oh, God.” Her breathing changed, coming in fast and shallow. “Oh, God, Kayden, I can’t—” Her chin dimpled. “I can’t breathe.”
“Hey.” I reached across and gripped her arm. “Hey. Look at me.”
“I worked under him.” Her voice cracked. “I worked with him every single day for four fucking years, and all this time he was—” She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth.
“Hey, Fire. Come on.” The nickname I’d given her all those years ago still suited her so well. I squeezed her arm. “Look at me.”
She looked at me, eyes bright, jaw tight, fighting hard to keep it together.
“He fooled everyone. He’s probably been corrupt since the day he put on that badge.” I kept my voice steady. “This is not on you.”
“I should’ve seen it, Kayden.” A tear broke loose, and she flicked it away like it pissed her off. “I’m a cop. I’m supposed to see things that aren’t right.”
“You saw it today.” I held her gaze. “You’re a brilliant cop, Sapphire. No one can take that from you. You’re going to take that bastard down.”
She stared at me for a long moment.
Then she picked the page up again and kept reading. When she finished and lowered the page, she turned to me, and she was so gray I thought she was going to be sick.
“You okay?” I asked. Stupid question.
“You knew they were laundering money.” Her glare tore shreds off me. “Didn’t you?”
Shit. “Yes. I’m sorry. I couldn’t tell you.”
“Couldn’t,” she snapped. “Or wouldn’t.”
“Couldn’t. Mitch, Declan, Cassidy, and I decided we couldn’t tell anyone ‘til we knew who we could …” I stopped.
She said nothing. Fists clenched. Eyes forward. “Trust. Is that it? You don’t trust me?”
“I do now. But we knew Bob was crooked, how could we know if—”
“Fucking hell, Kayden. We’ve known each other since we were kids.”
“People change, Sapphire.”
“Yeah, well, I haven’t.” She thumped her clenched fist on her thigh.
“I’m sorry. Please believe me, I would’ve told you, but we made a pact that we wouldn’t tell anyone until we knew where the money came from and who it belonged to.”
“When were you going to tell me? Huh?”
“I needed to talk to my brothers and Cass first. I needed them to know you could be trusted.”
“Well, that’s just great.”
“How was I to know that Bob hadn’t gotten to you, too? You showed up without warning.”
“Bob told me to come here.” She yelled so hard the tendons in her neck bulged. “Bob told me to. That’s the whole bloody point.”
“Okay. Just … calm down.”
“No, I won’t fucking calm down. This is ... This is bullshit.” She slapped Frank’s handwritten note.
“Yes. You’re right. And believe me, I’m on your side.” I flicked my gaze across the dark country ahead of us and back to her.
“Really?” She turned to look at me. “You spent most of today making my job as hard as possible.”
“Yes, I did. And I’m sorry.” I glanced at her. “I’ll talk to my brothers and Cassidy when we land and tell them you need to know everything.”
She turned back to the window. Her reflection looked back at me from the dark glass. Her jaw was clamped hard, and her gaze was cast somewhere far away.
“Sapphire, please.” Goddamnit. I’m such an asshole.
She raised her hand from her thigh. “Just …” She released a long breath. “Just give me a minute.”
The rotors beat a steady pulse above us. Dark country rolled beneath us, and I let the silence do what it needed to do.
She pulled her phone from her pocket.
“Who are you calling?”
She looked at me like I was a criminal. I shut my mouth.
She pulled one ear cup off her headset and held the phone to her ear. “Nate, it’s Sapphire. Have you heard from Bob?”
A pause. She frowned. Then she clamped her lips together.
“I’m working a lead.” Another pause. “Can’t say yet. Has anything come in tonight? Any calls out?”
She shook her head at me. Nothing.
“Okay. Don’t do anything until I’m back. And, Nate, keep this between us.” She nodded. “Soon.”
She ended the call. “He doesn’t know about Bruce and Wayne,” she said before I could ask. “And it seems none of William’s neighbors rang the police about the shots I fired.”
“Or maybe they did, and Nate’s lying to you.”
She squinted at me, then turned her gaze back to her phone and dialed again.
I wanted to ask who she was calling, but didn’t.
“Bob?” She said.
What the hell?
“Bob. Are you there?” She held the phone harder against her ear. “Bob, I know what you’ve done.” Her voice was steady and strong. “You need to hand yourself in. We can work through this. I can help you, but you need to come in before this gets any worse.”
She picked up Frank’s handwritten note and shook her head.
“Whatever you’re planning now, Bob, don’t do it.” A long pause. Her jaw tightened.
She lowered the phone slowly and clipped her ear cup back into place.
“What did he say?” I asked.
“Nothing.” She shoved the phone into her pocket. “Absolutely nothing.”
The darkness outside the windshield pressed into the cockpit like something solid.
“What do you think he’s going to do?” I asked.
She shook her head. “How the hell should I know? I don’t even know who Bob Ackerman is anymore.” She held up the handwritten page. “I never did.”
“Sapphire, this isn’t on you.”
She folded the note carefully and put it back in the box. Then she shifted in her seat, angling her shoulder toward me and her face away.
I hated myself for lying to her. I pushed the speed up and reached for the UHF handset. “Koolaroo homestead, this is Kayden. Mitch, you on channel?”
Sapphire spun toward me. “What are you doing?”
The radio crackled. “Kayden, where the hell have you been? You okay?”
“I’m fine. Listen, I need you to get everyone together. Sapphire has found something you all need to hear.”
“What is it?”
“I’ll explain when we’re on the ground. Hey, has Bob been out to the property at all?”
“Bob? No. Why?”
“We’ll tell you when we get there. We’re about forty minutes out. Get everyone in the homestead, and we’ll need food. It’s going to be a long night.”
“Kayden—”
“Just do it, Mitch.”
A beat of silence followed on the other end. “You don’t sound fine.”
“I said I’m fine.”
“Okay. Okay. We’ll be ready. See you soon.”
“Over and out.” I clicked off and set the handset back.
Sapphire was watching me. Not angry exactly. Something more complicated than that.
“I’ll make sure we tell you everything, Sapphire. Okay?”
She turned back to the window without answering.
But she didn’t argue either. That was enough for now.
She slid the Chivas box off her lap onto the cabin floor between her boots and pulled her laptop out of her backpack in the same movement. I kept my mouth shut and let her work.
The countryside stayed black beneath us. I pushed the chopper to its limit and watched the GPS readout tick down through the kilometers to Koolaroo, trying not to think too hard about what was waiting at the dining table.
I’d never called a family meeting in my life.
That had always been Mitch or Cassidy’s job.
Frank had sometimes, on the rare occasions Frank had bothered.
Tonight was different. Tonight, I wasn’t just calling a meeting.
I was going to have to lead it, and if we were going to get through whatever was coming, we needed to work together.
We needed Sapphire. She was sharp, and she missed nothing.
She’d probably see things in those notes that none of us would.
The blue glow of the laptop lit her face from below as her fingers moved fast across the keys, the screen jittering against her legs with the vibration of the rotors. Each time something new flickered up, and she leaned in to read it, I thought she’d share it.
She didn’t.
She clicked through more screens. Stopped. Read. Her expression gave nothing away.
I clenched my jaw and kept quiet. I’d already done enough damage for one day.
Ten minutes to go on the GPS readout. It was going to be a long ten minutes.
She closed the laptop, slid it back into her pack along with the foolscap notepad, and sat back in her seat. The line of her jaw was hard.
“Where could Frank go to hide on Koolaroo?” she asked.
Relieved she was talking to me at all, I said, “Plenty of places on a million hectares. Caves, gullies, dry creek beds. Frank could sleep in the middle of nowhere, keep moving, and we’d never find him.”
“I think Bob’s going after him. That’s why Frank’s running.”
I watched the GPS tick down and thought about that. “Frank wouldn’t run, Sapphire.”
“I think we already know that he is.”