Chapter 1
Sapphire
The front door slammed open, hitting the wall with a crack loud enough to wake the drunk sleeping it off in the back cell.
"I want that bitch arrested! Today! Right now!"
I glanced at Nate. He was on the phone, but he bulged his eyes at me in a sorry-but-I’m-stuck-on-this-call glance.
I pushed out of my seat and marched toward the yelling.
Bruce Henderson filled the doorway like a bull that had crashed through to the wrong paddock.
The man was a brute. Big, ugly, grubby, red in the face, and with rage radiating off him like a firestorm.
Disgusting sweat patches spread from his armpits across a shirt that was losing its battle with his gut; his straining buttons were one deep breath away from surrender.
I stopped a pace back from him. Bruce was a big bastard. Hands like dinner plates, shoulders that barely cleared the doorframe. He stepped toward me, snarling.
The stupid brute thought his size was enough to intimidate me. He was wrong.
"What's wrong now, Bruce?" I glared up at him. He had at least a foot on me. Probably twice my body weight, too.
"What's wrong?" He jabbed a thick finger at the air between us. "I want you to arrest that fucking bitch, Cassidy Branson. She wrecked my ute."
I knew about his ute, all right. Everybody in Winton knew what had gone down at the Rusty Swagman, and the car chase that followed. Bruce's ute was still sitting in the paddock near that pub, its front end crushed in like a beer can.
Secretly, I wished Cassidy had done a whole lot more than just damaged this idiot’s truck.
"The way I see it, Bruce, you're lucky Cassidy doesn't have you arrested for attempted murder."
"You fucking—" Clenching his jaw, he swung at me. A big, sloppy punch, all shoulder and rage, aimed at the side of my head.
I ducked under it, caught his wrist, and used his own momentum against him. One sharp twist, a sweep of his ankle, and Bruce Henderson was face-down on the floor of Winton Police Station with his arm wrenched up behind his back and my knee planted between his shoulder blades.
The whole thing took less than two seconds.
Behind me, a chair scraped hard across the floor, and Nate charged into the waiting room.
"I've got this," I said, without looking up.
Nate stayed close but didn't intervene. He knew me well.
"Let me go, you bitch!" Bruce thrashed side to side, trying to shake me loose. So I ground his face harder into the linoleum.
I yanked his wrist higher up his back, and he made a sound somewhere between a roar and a groan—the kind that had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with wounded pride. Taken out in under two seconds by someone half his size. And worse, a woman. That'd sting for a while.
Good.
"That was a really dumb move, Bruce." I pulled my cuffs from my hip and pushed his wrist up another inch. "Assaulting a police officer."
"Get off me! Get the fu?—"
"You're under arrest." I snapped the first cuff over his wrist. "If you keep resisting, I'll add that to the charge sheet, too. Nod if you understand."
He didn't nod. "Piss off. I'm gonna get you for this."
"Fantastic." I snapped the second cuff home. "That's threatening a police officer. Thanks for that."
A guttural groan tore out of him, and he thrashed beneath me like a landed fish.
"Calm down, you bloody idiot."
"Don't tell me to calm the fuck down."
"Lower your voice."
"Fuck you! This is police brutality! I know what you're all doing, and it's bullshit. That bitch should be arrested. She ruined my bloody truck."
I pressed my knee harder into his spine. "I said, lower your damn voice.” I kept my tone flat and even.
"Get the fuck off me!" he roared.
I hadn't expected him to lower his voice.
I'd dealt with Bruce and his brothers more times than I cared to count—drunk and disorderly, unprovoked fist fights, the kind of low-grade stupidity that never quite made it to formal charges because nobody ever wanted to be the one to press them.
The Henderson brothers were loud, obnoxious, and liked to throw their weight around whenever they thought they could get away with it.
Lyle was the runt of the family. Too weak to compete against his brothers. Too dumb to know when to stop. Still, the fool looked at me all doe-eyed every time he saw me. He’d even asked me out once. It had taken everything I had not to shudder in front of him.
If it were up to me, the Henderson brothers would be answering for attempted murder. Not crying about a wrecked Hilux. Cassidy was lucky to be alive.
"Are you going to calm down," I said, "or do I leave you on the floor a bit longer?"
"Screw you, you stupid cop."
I glanced up at Nate and rolled my eyes. "What do you reckon, Senior Constable Stephens? Does he look calm to you?"
Nate's mouth twitched. "Nope."
"Why aren't you bloody listenin'?" Bruce's voice bounced off every wall in the station. A glob of spittle hit the linoleum in front of him. "That Branson bitch destroyed my truck, and not one of you bastards has done a bloody thing about it."
I stifled a groan.
Ten minutes ago, I'd been packing up to go home after the most unremarkable day imaginable.
Mrs Walker's near-weekly noise complaint.
A missing dog that turned up asleep under the RSL front steps.
A shoplifting report from the servo that would almost certainly go nowhere.
Small-town policing. Not exactly what I'd pictured when I'd walked out of the academy with stars in my eyes.
Some days, I genuinely wished for something exciting to happen.
Bruce Henderson was definitely not what I'd had in mind.
I crouched down in front of him, staying just far enough back that he couldn't spit on me. "Look, Bruce. I understand you're frustrated?—"
"Frustrated?" His face went a deeper shade of purple. "She destroyed my bloody ute!"
"I'm aware. Everyone's aware." I kept my voice level. "Did you have insurance on the vehicle?"
His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. "What the fuck has that got to do with anything?"
No insurance, then. "So you can add a police report to your insurance claim," I said.
"I don't want to lodge a damn claim." The tendons in his neck looked ready to snap. "I want her arrested! I'm telling you right now—if you lot don't do your jobs, I'll sort it out myself."
I straightened up. "Well, you've gone about this all wrong." I hauled him to his feet with a grip he had no hope of breaking.
"Wait—what the hell? Where are you taking me?"
"You know where." I steered him toward the corridor. "You've been there before."
"Ahh, for fuck's sake." He tried to wrestle free. I yanked his wrists higher up his back, and he stopped trying to free himself.
As we passed the Sarge's office, I caught movement in my peripheral vision. Senior Sergeant Bob Ackerman stood in his doorway, watching. His expression was like stone, and his arms were folded. I couldn't tell if the look was directed at Bruce or at me.
I marched Bruce through the station.
Winton Police Station had two holding cells. Concrete boxes with steel-bar doors and mattresses that had seen better decades. For a town this size, two cells were more than enough.
Bruce yelled the whole way—about Cassidy, about his ute, about what he was going to do when he got out, and about how I had no idea who I was dealing with. His voice bounced off the concrete walls and came back doubled, like even the building was sick of listening to him.
In the second cell, Walter stirred and sat up.
Walter was a regular. Sometimes, I wondered if he got himself arrested on purpose just to guarantee a decent night's sleep.
The poor bloke had been living rough for years, and every time he seemed to get his act together, he'd tumble down an alcoholic landslide and end up back here, staring at the same cracked ceiling.
I undid Bruce's cuffs, shoved him into the empty cell, and slammed the grill shut.
Bruce spun to me and grabbed the bars. "You've got no idea what you're doing." His tone was quieter, which somehow made it uglier.
I held his gaze for a moment. "I'll see you in the morning."
He shouted curses as I walked away.
Small-town policing meant the same faces, the same problems, the same complaints on rotation. Most days there was a rhythm to it, and it was almost comforting, in a grim sort of way. However, every now and then, I'd catch myself wondering what it would feel like if something big actually happened.
The air conditioning had been losing its war with the afternoon sun since lunchtime, and the thin wheeze from the vent above the front counter did nothing but push the warm air around in slow, miserable circles.
I was looking forward to going home, standing under a cold shower until I felt human again, then collapsing onto the sofa with a beer and something completely mindless on the TV.
I headed back through the station toward my desk. Nate caught my eye and gave me a nod and the kind of grin that said, Not bad .
"He's your problem for the rest of the night," I said with a half-smile.
"Gee, thanks."
"Delaney!" Bob's voice cut across the station like a whip crack. Not a question. Not an invitation. A summons.
Nate's eyebrows shot up. "Oh shit, what’ve you done now?" He winked.
I gave him a look and headed for Bob's office.
Senior Sergeant Bob Ackerman was behind his desk, half-buried in the organized chaos that had been accumulating there since before I'd arrived in Winton—files stacked on files, a coffee mug with a brown tide ring staining the inside of the cup. Framed commendations lined the wall behind him… Forty-odd years of service to the Queensland Police, each certificate a little more faded than the last. The venetian blinds hung at an angle that suggested someone had attempted a repair once, but they’d given up.
"Shut the door," he barked.
That was unusual. I shut it.
"Sit." He didn't look at me the way he normally did. There was a tightness around his jaw, and his hands were flat on the desk, and I had a feeling he wanted to strangle someone. I hoped like hell it wasn’t me.
I was an absolute stickler for doing everything by the book, and on a few occasions, that had totally pissed Bob off.
I sat. And waited.
"Frank Branson is missing."
"Missing?" I frowned. "How long?"
"Over three weeks. His sons say he rode out on his horse and never came back."
"And they've only just reported it?"
"They didn't report it." His lip twitched, and I had the feeling he hated wasting time on this. Which was weird… Bob and Frank went back years. "I asked them where the hell he was. That's when they told me."
I let that sit for a second. "And you think it's suspicious?"
"Of course, it's bloody suspicious. Frank's rooted to that property."
"Do you believe what they told you?"
"No." No hesitation. "I don't."
Bob leaned back in his chair, but there was nothing relaxed about it. The movement was rigid, controlled, like a man forcing himself to sit still when every instinct was telling him to pace the room.
"Last confirmed sighting?"
"Before he rode out. The horse came back without him, and nobody's seen him since." Bob dragged a hand down his face. "There’s no sign of Frank anywhere."
"Any indication of foul play?"
He paused. A flicker crossed his face and vanished in an instant. Most people would have missed it. I didn’t. And suddenly, I wasn't sure whether Bob wanted answers because he suspected foul play, or because he already had them.
"I want you out at Koolaroo.” His voice steadied; his jaw didn’t, though. “Get some bloody answers.”
"But Sarge…" I kept my voice even. "If Frank fell off his horse three weeks ago in this heat, he's probably dead. You know that, right?"
He held my gaze for a beat too long. Said nothing.
I had a rotten feeling he wasn't telling me everything. I'd seen Bob pull Frank out of trouble many times. Whatever this was, it went deeper than just a missing man.
"I want eyes on that family regardless," he said. "Something's not right out there."
I drew a breath. Koolaroo Ranch. Everyone in the district knew the place. Everyone had an opinion about the Bransons and their never-ending dramas.
"I'll call Cassidy first thing in the?—"
"Get your ass out there, Delaney—and you’ll stay out there until you find that bastard. Dead or alive." He held my gaze. "Pack a bag."
The words hit like a wrecking ball.
The Branson brothers were the last people on earth I wanted to spend time with. The name alone stirred an ache in me that I’d stored away years ago. It was best that it stayed there, too.
I opened my mouth to argue, but held back. This was not the moment to unpack my crap.
Bob had given me this posting when nobody else would take a chance on a pint-sized, blonde-haired, blue-eyed first-year constable.
I'd lost count of how many times I'd been called Barbie—by crooks, by colleagues, by my annoying sisters even when they knew how much I hated the Barbie reference.
I was no bloody Barbie. But Bob had seen past my appearance and given me a shot.
I owed him, and I always did what he asked.
"Okay," I said, and stood.
"Report back to me every day. Twice a day. I want you searching every building on that property, including the outstations."
I frowned. "The outstations? But they’re a long way from?—"
"I know where they are, Sapphire." His tone left no room for argument. "Get Kayden to chopper you out to each one. That’s an order."
I bit back what I wanted to say. Bloody hell. I'd wanted to switch things up, but this was not what I’d had in mind.
I drove home with the windows down because my car's air conditioning was no better than the station's. The sun was low, throwing long shadows across the road and turning the dust in the air to copper.
My little rental cottage sat at the end of a dirt street on the edge of town. It was nothing special, just a fibro box with a corrugated iron roof and a massive mango tree in the front yard that had never once given me a mango, thanks to the bloody possums who always beat me to them.
As I pulled into the driveway, my phone buzzed. I killed the engine and looked at the screen.
A text from Nate: The Sarge released Bruce Henderson. No charges.
What the hell?
As the engine ticked, the heat pressed in through the open windows. I stared at that message and felt something cold settle in my stomach.
I’d been working under Senior Sergeant Bob Ackerman for four years.
Never once had I questioned his judgment.
Bruce took a swing at me. We’d have it on video feed. Releasing him without charges was bullshit.
And so was my assignment to find Frank Branson.
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