High Stakes Bride Read online

  Dani eyed the camera hung around his neck. “Only if you weren’t following us.” She’d noticed his vehicle just seconds after they’d pulled out onto the county road. Flynn was a lot of things, but he wasn’t subtle.

  “It’s not against the law to drive on the open road.”

  Carter locked the truck and pocketed the keys. “It might be if harassment’s involved.”

  Flynn’s expression didn’t change. “Now I’m scared.”

  Harry strolled out onto the shaded porch and shoved on a pair of dark glasses. He peered at Flynn. “What are you doin’ back here?”

  “Came to buy some ostrich oil. For my gun. You got any?”

  “What?” Harry twiddled with his ear.

  Dani strode past Flynn. Now that she was here, she just wanted to get the viewing over and done with. “He can’t hear you, his hearing aid’s not turned up.”

  Harry’s head swivelled in her direction. “You don’t have to yell.” He glared at Flynn. “What do you want—you’ve paid.”

  “Don’t remind me. What’s Wells doing here?” Flynn’s expression grew hopeful. “This place going broke?”

  “Smart, huh? Better watch your mouth.”

  “Or what? You gonna blow me away?”

  “Huh?” He peered at Flynn. His head swivelled, his gaze fixed on Dani. “You want to see your bird?”

  “Offhand I can’t think of any other reason to be here.”

  “You’ll have to wait. Walter’s just viewing his bird.”

  Carter stepped up onto the veranda, dwarfing Harry. “What’s the wait for?”

  “You gotta wait on Jim. He’s the only one who can deal with the birds.” Harry shook his head. “Damn dangerous.” He turned on his heel then stopped. He gestured at the lone plastic table with two chairs that was set up on the veranda. “If you want a cup of tea we’ve got a café here, just take a seat.”

  Tyler studied the grimy surface of the table. “I wonder who the waitress is?”

  Harry stamped inside. He disappeared from view then appeared in his office window, an electric kettle in his hand.

  Carter slipped off his dark glasses and stepped inside. “Guess that answers that question.”

  Harry made a production of opening the gate.

  Walter Douglas was leaning on the fence, in conversation with Roger Wells. Jim was in the far corner of the pen, armed with a broom: he had an ostrich cornered. Jim aimed a scanner at the bird. “This one’s yer bird, Walter.”

  Walter stared at the big bird with its long neck and beady eyes. “Great,” he said glumly.

  Jim turned his back on the bird. A small head snaked down, Jim made a gargling sound. The bird ducked, avoiding Jim’s clumsy fend with the broom and strutted back to join the motley group of birds clustered in the opposite corner of the pen.

  Harry’s gaze fixed on the birds with a kind of horrified fascination, giving credence to the blunt statement he’d made shortly after the facility had opened, that he “wasn’t never goin’ near those birds.” He cleared his throat. “Another customer for you, Jim.”

  “Client,” Jim snapped.

  Harry didn’t take his gaze off the birds. “Whatever.”

  Carter leaned on the fence and gave Jim what Dani termed the standard “guy” look. “Looks like you run a tight operation.”

  Jim’s expression took on a defensive cast. “I just show people their birds.”

  “Be interested to know how many you’ve got.”

  “Enough. Couldn’t tell you offhand.” Jim’s expression grew hopeful. “Not unless you wanted to invest?”

  Carter’s eyes glazed over. “Let’s not worry about numbers today.”

  Dani stared at the ostriches. They looked like they were a long way from home. Every time she saw the birds she experienced the same sense of disbelief. With the struggle and challenge of sheep and cattle farming she couldn’t understand why anyone would want to buy into something so exotic and risky. As far as she was concerned, if she could meet her mortgage payments, that was enough excitement to last her for the next ten years.

  Jim marched toward the cluster of birds. They flowed around him then reformed in the adjacent corner. Face reddened with exertion, he finally managed to separate the birds into two groups. Seconds later, he cornered an ostrich.

  “Looks like a random choice,” Carter murmured. “I thought he was going for the big one.”

  “The big one?” Dani stared at the remaining birds, which had reformed into a single group. “From here they all look big.”

  “It’s not a random choice.” As Jim pulled his scanner out of his pocket, Carter opened the tall metal gate and walked into the enclosure.

  “Hey you can’t come in here—”

  Carter’s gaze fixed on the ostrich. “Is that Dani’s bird?”

  “Of course it’s her—”

  “Have you checked?”

  “I don’t need to. I reared these birds from chicks. What I don’t know about them isn’t worth knowing.”

  Carter slipped the scanner he’d borrowed from his pocket and stepped closer to the bird.

  Jim’s face took on a purple tinge. “Hey! What are you doing?”

  “Same as you. Checking.” He studied the reading then compared it with the one still showing on Jim’s scanner. “This is the same bird you just said belonged to Walter.”

  The conversation between Wells and Walter stopped.

  Carter slipped a document from his pocket. Dani’s gaze sharpened as he unfolded the sheets. It looked suspiciously like her ostrich contract. She hadn’t been aware it was missing but, after the kiss on her veranda the other night, keeping track of that particular piece of paperwork hadn’t exactly been a priority. The last time she could remember seeing it was when Carter had been studying the amount noted on the receipt, after that, things had gotten a little confused.

  But if things had been hazy for Dani, they hadn’t been for Carter. She had known the kiss had been a deliberate tester. He had wanted to gauge his progress, and he had wanted to soften her up before he’d made his offer of financial help. He hadn’t achieved everything he had wanted, she hadn’t allowed him to tie her to him financially, but he had stepped in closer to her, putting their relationship back on a physical footing—and he had obtained information he had wanted.

  Carter had a ruthless streak—she had always known it. He’d made no secret about the fact that he wanted her back or that, as he’d stated a year ago, he wanted to tie her to him—on his terms.

  She didn’t trust him, period. If ever she’d needed a reminder of exactly what it was that made her wary, this was it.

  Grimly, she watched as he ran the device down the ostrich’s neck and checked the number registering on the screen with the number noted on the contract. “Looks like I owe you an apology. This is Dani’s bird.”

  Jim blinked, the broom wavered.

  He continued to scan down the bird’s neck. “And Walter’s and about…six others’.” With a deft movement, he slipped the contract back in his shirt pocket and took the broom off Jim, releasing the stressed bird. “Besides fraud there’s got to be a law against inserting eight microchips in an animal’s neck.”

  Wells looked interested. “What is that device?”

  Carter slipped the scanner back in his pocket. “A microchip scanner, the same thing Jim’s using. It picks up the individual codes. The ostrich facility has just over one hundred investors. From what I’ve seen there are only about thirty birds. Would that be right, Jim?”

  A vein at Jim’s temple pulsed. “I’m just the handler, Harry does the figures.”

  Harry’s eyes bugged.

  Walter went bright red. “I just wrote out a cheque.”

  Carter didn’t take his attention off Jim. “If I were you, Walter, I’d go and get it.”

  Walter’s head jerked in assent. “Right.”

  Jim took a step forward. “Hey you can’t do—”

  Carter blocked him. “What? Get back t
he money you just stole from him?”

  Harry’s expression took on an indignant cast. “We ain’t stole nothing.”

  West straightened from his relaxed position against the fence. “Who’s your boss?”

  A vein throbbed at Jim’s temple. “Don’t say a word, Harry. Not until he comes up with a warrant.”

  “There’s a thought.” Carter pulled out his cell phone and put through a call. “Murdoch’s going to love this.”

  Jim went pale.

  West pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket. “Ever heard of Alex Bainbridge?”

  Harry blinked, Jim kept his gaze on the ostriches.

  “He owns Jackson’s Bay Holdings, which makes him your boss. He also runs the syndicate that’s been buying up farms and businesses.”

  A nervous tic started on the side of Jim’s jaw.

  Dani frowned, a flicker of movement distracting her. Flynn was visible in Harry’s office, and it looked as if he was searching it. “Jackson’s Bay Holdings. That’s John McLean. Didn’t he marry a Bainbridge? Hetty Bainbridge.”

  Carter slipped his cell phone in his pocket and strolled back to the fence, his limp barely perceptible. “McLean’s wife is a Bainbridge?”

  Dani shrugged. “Aunt Ellen had a friend in Mason who went to school with her. Not many people know it, but Hetty McLean is Alex Bainbridge’s half-sister.”

  The metal gate clanged behind Carter. “That’s it, he’s sunk.”

  West shook his head. “Small towns. You gotta love ’em.”

  “Did I hear you say Bainbridge?”

  Dani turned to find Wells right behind her. “That’s right. We’re just discussing the coincidence that Alex Bainbridge’s name seems to be all over the place lately.”

  Jim’s expression grew panicked. “Can’t see how. The first time I’ve heard it is today.”

  Dani lifted a brow. The nervous tic on Jim’s jaw had gone crazy, which probably meant he was lying through his teeth. “Then you better get used to it.” She jerked her head toward Harry’s office, where Flynn’s shadowy figure was still visible. “Once Flynn gets hold of the story, no one’s going to be talking about anything else for a month.”

  Wells looked increasingly uncomfortable. “I think we need to talk. In private.”

  Chapter 11

  In the moonlight the chain-link fences of the ostrich facility glinted a ghostly silver. A faint breeze blew in off the sea, stirring the humid air and rustling through the tough leaves of the stunted manuka trees and short, bristly coprosma bushes that bordered the beach.

  A truck, its headlights doused, idled past the facility and ghosted to a halt. Seconds later, a man exited the vehicle, collected a knapsack from the passenger seat and moved on foot toward the facility.

  The wind lifted as he walked, making the sign above the gates creak. When he reached the gates, he shrugged out of the knapsack, extracted a pair of heavy-duty bolt cutters and snipped through the chain that fastened the gates.

  Slipping the bolt cutters back into the knapsack, he stepped through the opening.

  Grinning coldly, he walked the perimeter and cut jagged holes in the chain-link fences. When he was finished, he examined his handiwork with a critical eye.

  The facility had more than served its purpose.

  Carter removed his night-vision goggles and examined the pale line of surf, faintly luminescent and easily visible now that the moon was up. Systematically, he skimmed the dark folds of the hills that plunged down to the beach, waiting for his vision to adjust.

  Shifting position, he eased the stiffness out of his leg. As on the last three nights, the beach and the hills were empty. Whoever had been concealing their vehicle in the scrub and prowling around Dani’s place hadn’t been back.

  Minutes ticked by. A subtle change in the air made him tense. A warm gust of wind intensified the faint drift, turning it acrid. Smoke. Simultaneously, a shift in the shadows caught his attention. He tracked the movement as a dark shape glided from tree to tree until he could identify the outline. The figure was male, tall and well-built.

  Keeping his gaze fixed on the figure, Carter began to climb, gauging the point at which his path would intersect with the intruder’s—at the edge of the smooth sweep of lawn just below Dani’s house.

  Minutes later, bracing himself against the stiffening pain in his thigh, he surged forward, grabbed the man’s wrist and took him down to the ground in one fluid movement. A knee jabbed into his belly as the man rolled, elusive as a snake. Something metallic skittered across the dusty ground and the intruder lunged, wrenching free of Carter’s hold with a neat twist. Carter caught him by one leg then reared back as a boot caught him in the jaw. Ears ringing, he countered with a wrestling move, lunging forward and using his weight to shove sideways, pinning the intruder on his back.

  Moonlight slanted across the man’s face.

  “O’Halloran.”

  Detective O’Halloran to be precise. A former member of the Special Tactics Squad. Carter hadn’t ever met him personally, but he knew a couple of ex-SAS guys in the squad who had worked with him. Eighteen months previously O’Halloran had headed up an arson investigation. In the process his own home had been targeted and burned down, with his wife and child in it. O’Halloran had tried to save them and failed, ending up in hospital.

  Gaze cold, a second, more elusive shadow watched Rawlings and O’Halloran converse from the deep well of shade cast by a towering oak. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but their topic of conversation wasn’t in doubt. Silently, he retreated further back into the deep cover of the trees hemming the Galbraith house, glad that he’d listened to his instincts and used an alternative route.

  When he was sure the coast was clear, he slipped further back into the shadows, skirting the moonlight-drenched stretches of lawn as he made his way to the barn.

  In the distance a familiar siren sounded.

  Finally someone had noticed that the ostrich facility was burning.

  The siren jerked Murdoch out of sleep, seconds later his pager, which was stationed on the bedside table, began to vibrate. Pushing the covers back, he checked the message, climbed out of bed and searched out a fresh uniform. His wife, used to his odd hours, didn’t stir. Her hair was soft and rumpled on the pillow, her face smooth. Murdoch envied her the calm oblivion. Lately, the sound of the siren was beginning to haunt him.

  Ten minutes later, after he’d put a call through to the two Mason detectives who’d been assigned to Jackson’s Ridge as backup for the fires, he picked Lowell up and headed out to the ostrich facility.

  A kilometre out, something large darted off the road. Murdoch swerved; his headlights caught a flash of white and the gangling outline of an ostrich. As he drove, he glimpsed flighty movement along the sides of the road, in the paddocks and even down on the beach, which was visible from the road. There were ostriches everywhere.

  Cursing beneath his breath, he brought the cruiser to a halt beside what remained of the facility. Given that both of Jackson’s Ridge’s ostrich “experts” had spent the evening in town at the pub it was unlikely that either Harry or Jim would be in any state to recover the birds. He’d once read somewhere that those birds could clock up to thirty miles an hour, and counting. By morning they would be in Mason. Someone was going to have to round them up, and fast.

  The fire truck was parked just inside the open gates, its lights strobing. According to the information he’d gotten from emergency services, they had responded quickly, but even so the main building was a smoking ruin.

  As he climbed from the cruiser a lean figure was briefly visible in the flash of a camera. Flynn had beaten him to the fire and was already busy taking pictures.

  Murdoch slammed his door. “Don’t you ever sleep, Flynn?”

  “I do my job, Murdoch, you do yours.”

  “So why does mine seem so much more worthwhile?”

  Flynn clicked the shutter, the flash lit up the night. He lowered the camera, not bothe
ring to hide his amusement. “It’s not a good idea to upset the media.”

  “Better wipe that smile off your face, I hear you had shares in this place, which puts you on my list of suspects.”

  Flynn didn’t bother to adjust his expression. “In that case, you could be indicting the whole town.”

  A burly figure in a helmet and coverall appeared out of the gloom, backlit by the dying glow of the fire.

  Walter Douglas took off his helmet and wiped his face. “Half a dozen ignition points. Whoever lit this one wanted it to burn. Even lit up some of the fences.” He shook his head. “They had containers of ostrich oil in there. That didn’t help.”

  “Heard you got here early—again.”

  Walter’s face grew cautious. “Some evenings I stay late at the station.” He turned his gaze back on the smoking ruin. “Now that Lily’s gone there isn’t an awful lot else to do.”

  Lily was Walter’s wife. Ex-wife now. A couple of years ago she’d moved back to live on her family’s orchard. The fact that Lily Douglas, née Barclay, was living at the address of the first fire to hit Jackson’s Ridge was something that had been keeping Murdoch awake at night. He liked Walter, he didn’t want to find a reason for him to be the arsonist, but when it was staring him in the face it was more than his job was worth to ignore it. “Even so, seems to me you’re spending a lot of time hanging out at the fire station.”

  The pump sputtered and the hose deflated. Walter shoved his helmet back on his head and roared an order. For a few seconds the air turned blue as Walter undid the coupling from the empty water tank and transferred the hose to the second, smaller appliance pulled up beside the main truck, getting drenched in the process. The new pump started, stuttered, then settled into a steady rhythm. Flaccid hose bloated out and embers hissed as the new stream of water hit the last remaining hot spot. Walter, still swearing, wiped water and soot off his face and bellowed instructions.

  Murdoch waited out the process as the last hot spots were doused. This was the country. One of the refreshing differences he enjoyed about the place was that people here were blunter and more direct. Of course there were exceptions and, lately, Jackson’s Ridge had taken on a whole new feel he didn’t like. Families that went way back were leaving town, their properties and beach houses bought up by the syndicate that wanted to turn the place into a resort—the houses left derelict. On top of that farmers were going broke because of the drought—and now these fires.