Chapter 15
Kayden
I looked at Sapphire for a long moment. The homestead light caught her face as the dark paddocks swallowed everything else behind her.
Ten years ago, I’d stood in a moment just like this one and made the wrong call.
I wasn’t going to make that mistake again. “You’re right. I’ll make them talk.”
“Mitch won’t like it.”
“Mitch can get stuffed.” I turned and marched toward the steps. “Come on.”
I pushed back through the screen door, and Sapphire followed me in. Everyone looked up from the table.
I grabbed a chair and sat down hard. “Listen up.” I waited until I had everyone’s attention.
“No more bullshit, and no more keeping secrets from Sapphire. Everything we know about Frank and Bob and that money—she needs to know, starting with what we did with Bob’s cash.
” I looked at Mitch. “You want to start, or should I?”
Mitch held my gaze for a long moment. Then he looked at Sapphire. Then back at me.
Cassidy’s eyes narrowed, analyzing me the way she always does. “What changed your mind?”
“Sapphire changed my mind when she aimed her gun at Bob’s face today.” I didn’t look at Sapphire when I said it. Didn’t need to. “Now, can we get on with it?”
“We need to talk.” Mitch glared at me as he pushed back on his chair.
“No. Mitch. We don’t.” I kept my voice flat.
“You saw Sapphire work out that we moved the money from the outstation. She’ll work out the rest.” I scrunched up the note in front of me and tossed it onto the table.
“Sapphire could’ve kept these stupid notes from us.
But she didn’t. She wants to catch Frank and Bob as much as we do.
She’s invested now.” I swept my gaze around the room to my siblings and all their new partners. “We all are.”
Another beat. Then Mitch nodded once. “Fine.” He eyeballed Sapphire. “We took the money from the eastern outstation and hid it here on the property. Four of us know where it is. That’s how it stays.”
Sapphire pulled out her notebook and sat down. “Okay. I’ll accept that for now, but what were you planning to do with all that cash?”
Silence. Then Cassidy shrugged. “Honestly, we had no idea. We haven’t gotten that far.”
Sapphire looked around the table. Nobody contradicted it.
I hoped like hell she believed us because it was the truth.
“Okay.” Sapphire wrote something down. “What else?”
I looked at Mitch. “Tell her about the body you and Charlie found in the cave.”
“Another body?” Sapphire’s head came up fast.
“A skeleton, actually,” Mitch said. “He’s been there thirty-seven years.”
“Thirty-seven! Jesus. That’s very specific.” She sat back in her chair. “Go on, fill me in.”
Mitch and Charlie walked her through how they’d found that body. The flash flood. The cave. Finding the skeleton with the crack in his skull and the bag of jewels in his hand. Charlie’s boss and Bob threatening them with a rifle because of the jewels.
“You said the skeleton had been there thirty-seven years. How do you know that?” Sapphire asked.
Mitch looked at Xavier. “You want to take over from here?”
Xavier leaned forward, rubbing his hands together as if he’d been dying to have his turn. “My mother and Frank had an affair, and there’s a possibility Frank is my biological father.”
Sapphire’s pen hovered over the page. She swept her gaze between Xavier and Cassidy. “I’m sorry.” She held up her hand. “I thought you two were together.”
“We are,” Cassidy said.
Sapphire opened her mouth. Closed it.
“I’m not Frank’s biological daughter,” Cassidy said. “I’m not related to any of these guys by blood.”
“We only found that out a couple of days ago,” I said, then jerked my chin toward Xavier. “At the same time we found out we might have another brother. It’s all news to us since Frank disappeared.”
Sapphire’s pen dropped to the table. Her gaze swept around us, slowly and deliberately, like she was watching her case unravel thread by thread. “What the hell is going on in this family?”
“That’s exactly what we’ve been trying to figure out.” Mitch’s voice came out flat, wrung dry. “Every single thing we’ve told you tonight—the skeleton, Xavier, Cassidy, the money—we only found out after Frank rode off and didn’t come back.”
“And there’s the diamond mine,” Bella said, rubbing her hand over Declan’s arm. “And how Frank nearly got those miners killed.”
“Yeah, that’s a whole other story,” Declan muttered.
“Plus, there’s what’s in these notes.” I nodded at the crumpled pile in the middle of the table. “Half of this is news to us, too.”
“Frank’s an asshole,” Mitch said. “We know that better than anyone.”
“Yeah, but I never pegged him for a killer.” Cassidy drummed her fingers against the table. “Did you?”
“Nope.” Mitch shook his head. “Or a bloody money launderer. I thought he was too dumb for that.”
“Right.” I dragged my gaze back to Sapphire. “We’re only just figuring out how much of a bastard Frank really is. Same as you.”
Sapphire let that sit for a beat, her eyes unfocused like she was trying to fit the fucked-up puzzle together.
Then she flipped the Chivas box lid open.
“Then we need to figure out where he is and get to him before Bob does.” She pulled out another folded page.
“Let’s keep reading. Who wants another one? ”
“Still working through mine,” Declan said, picking up the note in front of him.
“Me, too.” Xavier tapped his note. “This one’s about my mom. You should read it next, Sapphire. It explains what happened to that pilot.”
“I’ll grab it when you’re done.”
Charlie raised her hand. “I need another one.”
“Hey, what about that foolscap pad?” I asked. “You thought you might—”
“Oh God, I forgot about that.” Sapphire reached into her backpack and pulled it out.
“We found this on the table at William’s house,” I said as she set it down.
“Does anyone have a pencil?” Sapphire glanced around the table.
“I do.” Declan pushed back his chair and disappeared down the hallway.
Sapphire flattened the pad on the table, gently smoothing down the curled edges with her palms.
Declan returned and handed her a pencil. “What’re you doing?”
“Hopefully, revealing the last note Frank wrote.” She angled the pad under the dining room light and started working the pencil across the page in light, steady strokes.
I leaned over her shoulder to watch.
Big mistake.
She smelled the same as she had ten years ago, amazing. That hit me harder than it should have. How the hell had I not noticed that all day?
I forced my damn attention back to the page.
Frank’s writing emerged in white against the gray pencil shading. His heavy ballpoint had gouged deep into the paper, and each pass of the pencil pulled the words out line by line.
“There’s his title.” I tapped the first line. “The laundry that don’t smell too good.”
Cassidy clicked her fingers. “He’s referring to the money laundering again.”
Sapphire kept shading, her hand moving in smooth passes.
I leaned closer, squinting at a paragraph taking shape.
“Yep, money laundering stuff. We already know that.” Then another line appeared, and I read it aloud.
“Soon I had more than I could launder, and we started hidin it in plastic bags in a cave that we found decades ago, the one with them ancient hand and croc paintin’s that them black fellas did. ”
Sapphire’s pencil stopped mid-stroke. She frowned. “Frank wrote about burying Kat in a cave.” Her gaze cut to Mitch. “Could this be the same one you found that pilot’s skeleton in?”
He shook his head. “I don’t remember any Indigenous art. Do you?” He glanced at Charlie.
“It was dark,” Charlie said, frowning. “But no. I don’t think so.”
Sapphire’s gaze swept the table. “Does anyone know a cave like this?”
“I do,” Cassidy said, and every head turned to her.
“Found it years back. A young steer bolted into it during a muster, and I had to go in after the stupid thing.” She paused, her fingers tapping the table edge.
“I remember seeing a couple of white handprints on the walls. No crocodiles, though. But I wasn’t in there long enough to look properly. ”
“How far away is it?” Sapphire asked.
“It’s too far away to ride.” Cassidy shook her head. “A couple of hours by chopper, maybe more. It’s deep in the western country, near The Narrows, where Bazza had his leg crushed in that stampede. We don’t go that way much because it’s useless cattle country.”
“You think Frank knew about it?” Sapphire said.
“Frank knew every bloody inch of this place.” I dragged a hand across my jaw.
Nobody spoke for a beat.
“That’s where he’s gone,” Sapphire said, like she’d been turning it over and finally landed on the only answer that made sense. “If Frank’s coming back to Koolaroo to die, that’s where he’d go. He buried Kat there and hid the money there. It’s the beginning and the end of everything.”
“And we know Bob knows about that cave,” Mitch said, “so he’ll be headed there, too.”
Sapphire’s eyes locked on mine. “I need you to fly me out there.”
“Yeah.” I held her gaze. “I agree.”
“Tonight.”
“No way, it’s nearly eleven o’clock.” I shook my head hard. “That’s four hours of flying time out in the dark, over country we barely know. We’ll never find it. And I don’t know about you, but I need some shut-eye.”
Her lips pressed into a thin line, and I watched her hate that I was right.
“We’ll leave at first light,” I said. “Five a.m. We’ll be there by nine.”
“I’m coming,” Mitch said.
“So am I.” Cassidy’s tone left no room for argument.
“No. This is a police operation.” Sapphire’s voice went into cop mode. “I can’t take civilians into—”
“You need me to find the cave.” Cassidy cocked one eyebrow. “You won’t find that cave without me. Trust me, it’s well concealed. I only found it by fluke.” She glanced at Mitch. “And I’m not going without Mitch.”
Sapphire tilted her head back, eyes on the ceiling for a long moment as she heaved a huge sigh.
“The chopper seats four,” I reminded her.
She rolled her gaze to me. “I’m aware of that, Kayden.”
“So that’s me, you, Mitch, and Cass.”
“I’m aware of the math as well, thank you.”
Mitch’s mouth twitched.
“Fine.” Sapphire snapped her notebook shut. “Five a.m. But this is my operation, and you do exactly as I say. I don’t want any cowboy shit.”
I slapped the table. “Yeehaw.”
Sapphire’s glare could’ve stripped paint, and I had to bite down hard not to grin at her.
“You’re an idiot,” Cassidy said, smiling at me. “See you at five o’clock. We meeting at the chopper?”
I looked at Sapphire, and she nodded. “At the chopper.”
Chairs scraped back around the table, and my siblings peeled off in pairs, heading to their own places scattered around the ranch.
I stayed put until the room cleared. I needed to talk to Sapphire. I needed to find the words to explain what I’d done today: the lying, the holding back, making her job harder when she’d already been fighting an uphill battle. I saw what it cost her.
But when she’d dropped that line about once loving me, it had hit like a gut punch.
We had loved each other. Hell, we’d been perfect together until we started talking about the future. That’s when it had gone to shit. She wanted the city, a career with the Queensland Police, and a life that didn’t involve dust, cattle, and endless red dirt.
I’d wanted to join the army, and if that hadn’t panned out, I was always coming back to Koolaroo. But she had never wanted to live on a property like this, in the middle of nowhere.
We couldn’t find a way through it, and I’d said some bloody cruel, stupid things I couldn’t take back. Things that had made her walk away and never turn back.
She’d chosen the badge. I’d chosen the land.
We’d both been wrong. Or maybe we’d both been right but just too young to know the difference.
But that had been ten years ago, and after watching her stand up to Bob today, aiming her gun at his head, I knew exactly who Sapphire Delaney was now. She was a cop, and a damn good one.
She didn’t need me to make things harder.
She needed to know she had my support. All of it. No more bullshit. No more holding back.
I just had to figure out how to tell her that without screwing it up again.
Rose appeared from the kitchen and started clearing plates without a word, but her expression was all wrong. She always had that frown line between her brows—it came with carrying the family’s weight for decades. But this was different. Deeper.
Sapphire gathered the unfolded notes from the table, stacking them carefully. When Rose’s gaze lingered on them a beat too long, the hair on my neck lifted.
Had she been listening?
“You okay, Rose?” I asked.
“What?” Her hand flew to her chest. “Yes. Fine. Just tired.”
I studied her. That wasn’t tired. That was spooked.
A sick feeling settled in my gut. Did one of Frank’s notes have information about Rose she didn’t want revealed? Christ, that would suck. Rose had been in my life since the day I was born. Steady. Solid. Wholesome.
If I was wrong about her, too, that was going to gut me almost as bad as Mom walking out had.
Sapphire picked up her backpack with one hand and scooped the Chivas box under her other arm. “Goodnight. See you at five.”
I shot to my feet. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“I think we’ve done enough talking for today.” She gave Rose a tired smile. “Thank you. Goodnight.”
“Let me know if you need anything,” Rose said softly.
Sapphire walked down the hallway without looking back.
Maybe that was for the best. She already knew I was an asshole. She’d known it for ten years. One conversation in the dark wasn’t going to change that.
I pushed back from the table and headed for the door.
Tomorrow would bring answers. Frank. The cave. Maybe even justice.
But it wouldn’t change the fact that Sapphire was everything good about the law, and I was still the asshole who made it look like lying to her was easy.
The sooner we found Frank, either dead or alive, the better.