LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘No, I wasn’t. The head stockman was—immobilized before they came after me.’

      ‘Not killed?’ Her eyes were dark with shock.

      ‘No. But captured and tied up and removed heaven alone knows where.’ He started to eat with evident hunger.

      ‘And there was no family, no one else?’ she asked with a frown.

      ‘Jo—’ he paused with his fork poised and glinted her an assessing look ‘—whoever they are, they’d done their homework. It’s a long weekend, it happens to be the district’s annual rodeo with all its attendant parties, B and S balls and the like. A lot of people are away from home, in other words. It so happens I was supposed to be away from home but I changed my mind at the last minute.’

      ‘Is that why your mother isn’t home?’ she asked perplexedly.

      This time he waved his fork. ‘My mother took off for Brisbane two days ago. Some show she’d forgotten she had tickets for. I can only be grateful she wasn’t there and neither, particularly, was Rosie.’ Suddenly, his blue gaze seemed to drill right through her.

      Jo blinked. ‘She mentioned a Rosie several times when we spoke on the phone—a child, I gathered, but I couldn’t work out whose.’

      He stared at her for another long moment, then finished his breakfast and put his knife and fork together. ‘Mine.’

      Jo digested this with several blinks. ‘Well, what about your wife?’ she ventured.

      ‘She died in childbirth.’ He pushed his plate away and there was something completely dark and shuttered in his expression. ‘Any chance of a cup of coffee?’

      ‘Of course,’ Jo murmured and got up to attend to it. ‘Would…’ she hesitated ‘…would I be right in assuming your mother is a tad absent-minded?’

      He looked heavenwards. ‘My mother, God bless her, has developed a memory like a sieve lately.’

      ‘Well—’ Jo put a mug of coffee in front of him ‘—that explains it!’

      ‘You mean it explains why she forgot you were due to descend on Kin Can?’

      ‘Yes!’ Jo put her hands on her hips.

      ‘Doesn’t explain why she never once mentioned anything about getting her portrait painted—drawn, whatever—to me.’

      Jo subsided. ‘Perhaps she meant to surprise you?’

      ‘So how do you think she was going to explain you, in the flesh, away?’

      ‘I don’t know—she’s your mother!’

      ‘For my sins—yet again,’ he said dryly, and got up. ‘I don’t suppose you have any men’s clothing in your bag of tricks?’ he added moodily and hitched the blanket around him again.

      Jo merely stared at him steadily.

      ‘Once again, if looks could kill I’d be six feet under. OK, Miss Lucas, assuming you are lily-white, above board and all the rest, do you have any suggestions?’

      Jo resisted the urge to give vent to her feelings—she posed a question instead. ‘How many are there?’

      ‘Two. They wore balaclavas so I have no idea who they are.’

      ‘How did you escape?’

      He sat down on the corner of the table. ‘Checking up on me, Jo?’

      ‘I do only have your word for it.’

      He mulled over this for a moment, then grimaced. ‘They trussed me up like a chicken and locked me overnight in a windowless storeroom. What they didn’t know was that under the lino there was a trapdoor—the house is on stilts about two feet above the ground, handy in times of flood. I got away through it.’

      ‘How? If you were trussed up like a chicken?’

      He rubbed his wrists and Jo noticed, for the first time, almost red-raw, chafing marks on the inside of each wrist. ‘I found a pair of old scissors and managed to saw through the rope with them. Not that easy since my hands were tied against my back.’

      ‘No,’ she agreed with a tinge of awe, which she immediately tried to mask by adding, ‘Why didn’t they take you away instead of storing you in the house for a whole night?’

      He glanced at her. ‘Well, you see, Josie, I wasn’t their target.’

      She stared at him blankly.

      ‘No,’ he said meditatively and rubbed his chin. ‘It was Rosie they’d planned to snatch, my six-year-old daughter—a much softer target.’

      Jo’s mouth fell open.

      ‘As you say.’

      ‘But…are you sure?’

      ‘I’m quite sure. I heard all the discussion, all the recriminations going on throughout the night, all the new plans being made. They decided since they’d got me they’d take me in her place, but that’s why they called for some back-up.’

      ‘Thank heavens for your mother’s bad memory,’ Jo said a little shakenly.

      ‘All the same, not only do I have to get myself off Kin Can, I have to prevent my mother and Rosie waltzing back into their arms. They cut all the phone lines, you see.’

      ‘Won’t that make people—your mother—suspicious?’

      ‘Not necessarily. The system can have its problems out here and it is rodeo weekend.’

      ‘I do have a suggestion,’ she said slowly. ‘Not to do with how to escape, but I feel pretty sure they must have also removed…any indication it was Kin Can station from the main gate. Perhaps to confuse anyone looking for the place?’

      He gave it some thought as well as tossing her a considering look.

      ‘Believe me,’ she said quietly, ‘that is why you found me on the back track.’

      ‘Hmm… You could be right.’ He shrugged. ‘The main problem now is—have they given up and gone away? Or, are they waiting to trap me somehow, even out searching for me?’

      ‘They don’t sound terribly well organized.’

      He stood up, cast the blanket off and reached for his clothes. ‘Fate may have conspired against them, the weather certainly has, but they’re a dangerous duo—trio if Joe got through. One of them, at least, is using a mixture of drugs and alcohol to keep himself hepped up.’

      Jo shivered and watched as he struggled into his damp jeans, T-shirt and jumper. ‘Did they offer you any violence? Other than tying you up?’

      His lips twisted. ‘A kick in the kidneys, a wallop over the head—’ he searched his scalp through his dark hair and winced as he obviously found a bump ‘—and several others, but perhaps I gave them some provocation.’

      ‘You didn’t go quietly?’ she hazarded.

      ‘No, my dear, I didn’t.’

      Something in the way he said it chilled Jo to the core. She had no doubt Gavin Hastings would be a bad man to cross.

      ‘As for the rest of it, they had the foresight to immobilize every other vehicle up at the house and they locked the dogs in the shed and threw away the key. The gun was a lucky break for me. Case, the foreman, must have forgotten to put it away in the gun cupboard in the shed. I nearly tripped over it.’

      Jo collected the tin plates and empty mugs and stacked them on the floor next to the stove. ‘So your plan was to intercept the other Joe and…?’ She looked a question at him.

      ‘Force him to drive me to the nearest phone.’ He watched her as she swept some biscuit crumbs off the table with her hand, and she became aware that the lurking suspicion was back in his eyes.

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