Death is Forever (26 page)

Cole checked out the helicopter and started it up. The engine ripped to life and settled down to running steadily. He waited, listening to the engine.

It missed a beat, picked up again.

He checked the gauges. Nothing unusual. He ran the revs up and down and waited.

Again, the engine missed a beat, then resumed smoothly.

He sat and listened to the engine’s beat—and the times when it missed. After several minutes he shut down the helicopter and jumped out.

Erin, who was working on her second cup of coffee, looked up from the photos and poetry in time to see Cole open a panel on the chopper and probe the engine’s innards.

It wasn’t long before he was coming toward her, holding a round metal cylinder in one big hand. She could tell by his walk and the line of his shoulders that he was angry.

“This shoots one day all to hell, and probably two,” he said to Erin, holding up the cylinder.

He looked at the sky, hazed by heat. In a few areas clouds were already forming. It was early for the wet to settle in, but the signs were there. Rain could come at any time, shutting down the possibility of finding Crazy Abe’s mine until the dry returned.

“Lai,”
he snarled.

She appeared in response to his summons with a speed that told Erin the Chinese woman had been standing just inside the door, waiting or listening or both.

And Cole had known it.

“Yes?” Lai asked, looking only at him.

“Tell Wing to send down three complete sets of fuel filters for the helicopter. I’ll keep the spares with me at all times.”

Lai nodded and added a phrase in Chinese.

“Speak English,” he said.

“But you understand Chinese very well,” she murmured.

“Erin doesn’t.”

“Why don’t you teach her as I taught you?”

The question was simple, but Lai’s voice evoked an image of two lovers endlessly intertwined, teaching and learning things that had nothing to do with language. The same vivid sexuality ran through Lai’s graceful hand, the fingers slightly curled as though to plead or to hold a man’s sex in her palm.

The implied intimacy of the gesture was so great that Erin looked away.

“Call your brother,” Cole said in a clipped voice.

Expressionless, Lai nodded and withdrew into the house.

“What happened?” Erin asked.

“Dirty fuel.”

“What?”

He unscrewed one end of the filter assembly and pulled out a paper cone. “Feel it.”

She ran her fingertip over the cone, then rubbed her fingers together. At first she felt nothing but the fuel. Gradually she became aware of a vague, almost gritty texture. She looked into his eyes, silently questioning.

“You expect some dirt to get into the fuel,” he said. “That’s why you have filters. But it looks like half the grit in the Oscar Range ran through the system.”

“How did the fuel get that dirty?”

“I could have left the cap off,” he said neutrally.

“Not bloody likely.”

“Thank you.”

She shrugged. “It’s the truth. You’ve watched that helicopter like a mother hen with one chick.”

“It was our best chance of finding the mine before the wet. Somebody else knew it and buggered the fuel.”

“Sabotage?”

“It’s what I’d do if I was trying to slow somebody down.”

“Or kill him?”

“Yes.”

She shivered at the certainty she saw in his eyes.

“They’ll try again,” he said flatly. “Walk away from it, Erin. From the mine, from the station, from Australia. Nothing is worth dying for, not even God’s own diamond strike.”

“The arctic taught me that walking away is another way of dying. I came here to find a new way of being alive. I’m staying.”

He didn’t hear any doubt in her voice. There wasn’t any in her eyes. Arguing with her would be worse than useless—it would increase the distance between them, making her even more vulnerable to an assassin.

“Who did it?” Erin asked with a calm she didn’t feel.

“It could have happened before the fuel was delivered to the station. More likely, somebody did it right here.”

Without thinking, she turned and looked at the door where Lai had retreated.

“Possible, but I doubt it,” he said. “Not that Lai wouldn’t kill for her family. She would. Hell, she did. But we’re the Chen family’s best hope of getting a piece of the diamond tiger, and she’ll do whatever her family tells her to do.”

“Lai killed someone?”

“She was seven months pregnant when Uncle Li ordered her to abort my child and marry another man, a Chinese man who would solidify the Chen family’s position in Kowloon. She did it and never looked back.”

Erin opened her mouth, but no words came. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Why? It wasn’t your doing.”

She simply shook her head, unable to explain why Cole’s past pain was hurting her now. Before she could find words, Lai appeared in the doorway.

“Wing wishes to speak with you.”

Cole looked at Erin. “I can’t see you from the radio room. Come with me.”

Although her eyes widened, without a word she stood and followed him into the stifling rooms of the station house.

“What else has gone wrong?” Cole asked Wing as soon as he picked up the phone.

“Jason Street is on his way to the station.”

Cole raked his fingers through his black hair and made a sound of disgust. “What happened?”

“We suspect the Americans threw the Australians a bone.”

“Not good. Street was a lucky prospector before he took up running a mine security business.”

“There is one welcome factor. Satellite photos don’t show any break in the weather. The monsoons have not materialized yet.”

“Damn good thing. Prospecting by Rover is a hell of a lot slower than by chopper. Anything else?”

“No,” Wing said.

“Think hard, because I won’t be checking in with you tonight,” Cole said. “In fact, I won’t be checking in at all until we find Abe’s mine or until the wet begins, whichever comes first. Erin had an idea I want to follow.”

“The diamond mine?” Wing said instantly. “Are you close?”

“Not as close as we were before the fuel was buggered. Go over the files on your men, Wing. At least one of them is cashing two paychecks.”

“I will look, but it is doubtful. The men were vetted with exquisite care before they were sent. Is it wise for you to be out of contact so long?”

“Erin won’t abandon the hunt, so I don’t have any choice. We’re going to ground.”

“But—”

“Don’t send anyone after us you care about,” Cole cut in. “Understand?”

He hung up before Wing could answer.

Sunlight and humidity turned the Rover into a four-wheel-drive sauna. Erin and Cole had camped the night before on a nameless patch of land beneath an acacia tree. They had awakened to heat and silence, because they were too far from water for any birds to be about. The Rover had consumed the silence. Now the vehicle was being consumed by the searing day.

On the flats some speed was possible. Dog Four had been the most productive of Abe’s mines, so there was a road of sorts. Other than slamming on the brakes shortly after dawn to avoid a handful of cows, the ride had been uneventful.

“After Dog Four, where are we going?” she asked.

He flicked a sideways glance at her before he returned to watching the road—it had a tendency to vanish among termite mounds and spinifex.

“Twenty miles beyond Dog Four there’s a place where the station land is joined by a mosaic of Abe’s mineral claims,” Cole said. “I’ve never been there. From the looks of the map, nobody else has either. But the satellite photo showed a highlands and what could be a karst drainage pattern. Maybe Bridget’s Hill is there.”

“What’s a karst drainage pattern?”

“Water flows underground rather than aboveground. It’s common in heavily eroded limestone areas.”

“Does that mean caves?”

“Sometimes.”

While he spoke, his eyes checked the gauges on the dusty dashboard of the Rover. The electrical system showed a steady charge. The oversized fuel tank was above three-quarters. He wasn’t worried about petrol. With the extra cans he had lashed on the Rover, he had ample fuel to check out the most likely spots for a steep limestone outcropping, with enough gas left over to reach a neighboring station before the wet made the country impassable.

Right now he was more worried about keeping Erin alive until the wet than about finding a diamond mine. Jason Street’s arrival meant that the Americans were divided about how to handle her legacy, or the rest of the cartel had ganged up and forced Street down Faulkner’s throat, or both. No matter what the reason, it left Erin exposed in a way she was too inexperienced to understand.

It had been her American government connections that had prevented an outright assassination.

United we stand, divided we fall.

They were falling.

“It’s running a little hot, isn’t it?” Erin asked, seeing Cole’s frown.

“Not surprising. It’s about a hundred and ten in the sun. Close to the ground, where the engine is, the air is even hotter.” He looked at her. “Don’t worry. The Rover was built to take worse in Africa.”

“But I wasn’t.” She plucked at her cotton tank top in a gesture that had become as automatic as brushing away the outback’s relentless hordes of flies.

“I like the way you’re built,” he said. “Sleek, soft, and sweet. How much longer are you going to punish me for something that happened years before I met you?”

For a moment she didn’t believe what she’d heard. Then she did. The flush on her cheeks deepened even as her heartbeat increased. She was aware of Cole with an intensity that had only increased since she’d refused to share his bed.

“If you’d been the one to walk in on a tender little scene between me and a former lover,” Erin said finally, “what would you have thought?”

There was a long silence followed by a savage word. “Try trusting me.”

“If I didn’t trust you, I wouldn’t be alone with you in this rolling oven.”

“Then why the cold shoulder?”

“Cold? In this godforsaken climate?”

“You know what I mean,” he said tightly.

“Call it a period of adjustment.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I haven’t had as much experience as most women my age,” she said simply. “When it comes to what I should and shouldn’t expect from a lover, I’m still nineteen years old with stars in my eyes. I assumed any man who was my lover would be as exclusively interested in me as I was in him. Childish of me, but there it is.” She made an odd gesture that ended up with her fingers plucking at her damp top.

He glanced quickly at her, silently encouraging her to keep talking. It was the first time in days she’d been willing to discuss anything personal.

“When I catch up with my generation,” she said, “I’ll be able to hand my body over to an attractive man and keep my mind in reserve. But until I catch up, it’s a complete package. My mind looks at you and sees an emotional attachment to Lai I can’t compete with.”

“You’re crazy,” he said flatly. “I don’t love her.”

“I didn’t say you did. Hate binds every bit as closely as love. Either way, hate or love, Lai has a hold on you.”

“Shit.”
Cole lifted his bush hat, wiped sweat that had been dripping into his eyes, and put the hat back in place with a yank. “Don’t you see how easily you’re letting the Chen family manipulate you? You’re a lamb among some very experienced wolves, and I’m damned if I’ll let them cut you up for a snack. If I wanted Lai, I’d be screwing her right now. I don’t want her. I want you. And I know I can make you want me.”

Erin’s breath came in and filled her throat until she ached. “We’ve been around this track before. You won’t rape me and we both know it.”

“That leaves ninety-nine point nine percent of the sexual field wide open. Think about it, Erin. I sure as hell have.”

They drove in silence through increasing heat and humidity while hot air rose in columns from the land, creating an updraft that sucked in moisture from the Indian Ocean in an endless river of clouds that would grow through the day until it slowly consumed the sky.

That was when the climate went from ugly to unbearable.

That was when the anticipation of rain hung in the air and lightning winked across distant horizons and veils of rain hung down, only to evaporate before touching the steamy land.

That was when friendships and marriages broke apart.

That was when men went troppo and killed their mates.

Divided we fall.

And there was nothing Cole could do about it except what he’d already done—grab Erin and vanish into the lethal, sultry, unlivable outback.

Cole braked just before the track twisted away from the flats and termitoriums whitewashed by bird lime. The pedal responded sluggishly. He wasn’t surprised. There had been a slow leak in the system since the Rover had crashed through the brush to avoid the roadtrain.

He pumped twice and the brake pedal firmed. The Rover stopped close to a termite mound that was as tall as a man. He jumped out, took a rock hammer from the Rover, and began chipping away at the top of the mound. Beneath the white bird lime the mound was a faded rusty shade.

Erin picked up her camera, got out, and winced as the sunlight hammered down on her. She walked out among the mounds with a determined stride. Within minutes she’d forgotten the brutal heat. She was completely caught up in angles and exposures, trying to capture the alien, sun-beaten world where billions of insects built a towering mud metropolis.

When Cole finished hacking at various mounds, he looked around for Erin. She wasn’t anywhere in sight.

“Erin,” he called. “Where the hell are you?”

A languid, muggy breeze stirred nearby spinifex. The narrow, rasp-edged blades of grass made a secretive sound.

“Erin!”

“In a minute,” she called back.

From her voice, she was several hundred feet away, hidden among the towering, broad-based mounds.

He looked at his watch. He’d spent half an hour grubbing around in the termitorium. He hoped she had more to show for the time than he did. Lifting his hat, he wiped his face on his short-sleeved khaki shirt. The cloth was already dark with sweat from collar to hem. He unbuttoned the shirt, mopped his chest with it, and tossed the damp khaki in the Rover.

“Time’s up,” he called.

No answer came.

“Erin!”

“I’m coming! Just give me a minute!”

Her voice was farther away than it had been before.

He went looking. It took him ten minutes, but he found her crouched amid the termite mounds with her camera at the ready. Her hat was on the ground beside her and she was staring through the viewfinder, heedless of her surroundings.

Cole picked up her hat and stood nearby, waiting until she finished the roll of film. Then he stepped in front of the lens and stuffed her hat down on her head.

Startled, she looked up, realizing for the first time that she wasn’t alone.

“Wear the damned hat,” he said. “When you’re taking pictures you don’t think about anything else. If I hadn’t been here, you’d have been wonky from sunstroke before you had the faintest idea something was wrong. Get it through your stubborn head.
This isn’t Alaska.
Out here, the sun is your enemy. Hear me?”

“Quite clearly.” She hesitated, then asked, “How long were you standing there?”

He looked at his watch. “About seven minutes.”

“But you didn’t interrupt me. Why?”

“You weren’t in any immediate danger. I’d rather wait than take a chance on ruining another ‘Uncertain Spring.’”

For an instant she thought he was joking. When she realized he wasn’t, pleasure rippled through her, disarming her. “I doubt if there’s another ‘Uncertain Spring’ in that lot, but thank you.”

“Can you always tell in advance what you’ll have?”

She shook her head. “No. That’s why I protect the film so carefully. Each shot is unique and unrepeatable. I could have spent the rest of my life in the arctic and never taken another shot like ‘Uncertain Spring.’ Just as I could spend the rest of my life in the Kimberley and never have the same reaction to it that I’m having now, take the same photos I’m taking now.”

“That’s what I figured.” He gave her a look that was half amused and half irritated. “All the same, the next time I find you in the sun without your hat, I won’t wait until you run out of film.” Without warning he pressed his thumb against her upper arm and watched to see how long the pale circle remained. “When was the last time you put on sunscreen?”

“When you stood over me after dawn.”

“Then you’re overdue. Even inside the Rover—”

“—reflected sunlight will burn my Scots-Irish skin to toast,” she finished. When the line of Cole’s mouth flattened, she said, “I know it’s not a joke. I won’t forget again.”

He let out his breath in a rush of sound and said tightly, “Sorry. I’m not usually so irritable, even during buildup. You have a way of shortening my fuse. Come on. Let’s get out of the bloody sun.”

“Pity we can’t prospect in the dark,” she said as she walked beside him to the Rover.

“For all that I’ve found, we might as well.”

“What were you doing, anyway? A vendetta against small segmented beasties?”

Cole swiped at a nearby mound with the pick end of his rock hammer and caught the crumbling bits of earth. He smeared them across his palm and held it out to Erin.

“Dirt,” she said.

“Every bit of it,” he agreed, leading her toward the Rover.

“So?”

“So I know that the first forty to one hundred feet of earth around here is a fairly homogeneous layer of finely packed soil. Nothing interesting, although I’ll look at it through the microscope eventually to be certain.”

She blinked. “Those bugs go one hundred feet deep?”

“It’s the only way to beat the climate.”

“I’ll keep it in mind. What were you looking for that you didn’t find?”

“Indicator materials that would reveal a diamond pipe, or rounded grains of silica that would hint at old beaches or riverbanks.”

Erin eyed the shapeless, ugly termitorium. “Is picking at mounds a reliable way of prospecting?”

“It’s how Lamont found the Orapa diamond mine in Botswana.”

“You sure he didn’t just consult chicken guts in the dark of the moon?”

Smiling crookedly, Cole wiped his palm on the seat of his shorts and climbed into the Rover. “This is science, not voodoo.”

She gave him a sideways glance and smiled in return. “Science, huh?” she said, opening the Rover’s passenger door. “And I’m the tooth fairy.”

“You can slip things under my pillow any time you’re in the mood.”

She tried not to respond to his retort but couldn’t help it. Shaking her head, she snickered, then gasped when her bare thighs met the Rover’s sun-baked seat.

“Lift up,” he said.

When she did, he spread his discarded shirt on the seat. As he withdrew, she felt a breath of a caress over the back of her thighs.

“Try that,” he said.

She sat down cautiously.

“Better?”

“Yes. Thanks.” She looked at him. Except for dark patterns of hair, his legs were as bare as hers. “How can you stand it?”

“Same way you took the cold in Alaska. I’m used to it. That doesn’t mean I like it. I’d trade buildup for a dog and shoot the dog.”

Erin looked startled, then laughed aloud. “That bad, huh?”

“Worse.”

He started the Rover and followed the track as it veered away from the flats, heading toward an unknown destination. Only when Erin looked back did she realize that the land was slowly rising. Just as slowly, it was becoming more uneven.

With no warning they crested a rise and found themselves driving between low, roughly parallel ridges that poked sluggishly from the ground. Stunted gum and acacia reappeared, along with an occasional bizarre boab tree. Spinifex grew more thickly, though never to a point Erin would describe as lush.

She straightened in her seat and looked longingly at the lacy skirts of shade beneath the trees.

“We’ll stop up ahead,” Cole said, following her glance.

“The government map doesn’t show much, but the land rises about five hundred feet more. There’s a gorge I want to check out. It’s on the boundary between a sandstone district and a limestone district.”

“Is that in the whatsit drainage?”

He smiled. “Karst. No. That’s farther in.”

“No caves, huh?”

“Not that I know of, but I’ve never explored the area. The last time I went to Dog Four, I came in another way.”

She looked at him curiously. “When were you last in the Kimberley?”

“A while back.”

“Why?”

“I’m a prospector.”

“Did you ever find anything?”

“I’ve found my share,” he said, dividing his attention between the increasingly rough track and a part of the Kimberley he’d never seen before.

“Any diamonds?” she asked.

“Some.”

“Gold?”

“Here and there.”

Her mouth flattened. “You know, each time the topic of you and the Kimberley comes up, you either change the subject or clam up.”

“Look. I’ve got my hands full driving and at the same time trying to guess what kind of strata are beneath the surface. Is there something you really want to know about me and the Kimberley,” he said, “or are you just feeling chatty?”

She slipped his khaki shirt from beneath her butt and used the hem to mop her face. “How did you get Abe’s diamonds and the will?”

“A little late to be suspicious of me, isn’t it?”

“Better late than—”

“—never,” he interrupted sardonically. He flexed his hands on the wheel and thought of Uncle Li’s thin neck. “Everybody who ever pegged out a lease in Western Australia spent some time on Abe’s station. He was as close as the Kimberley came to a Renaissance man. Miner, scholar, stockman, spy. You name it, he’s done it.”

“Spy?” she asked in disbelief.

“Must run in the family.”

She refused to be sidetracked. “If you knew that about Abe, you must have known him very well.”

“Is that an accusation or a question?”

“Take your pick.”

There was an electric silence before Cole spoke. “One year we sat out an early wet together.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before now?”

“You didn’t ask.” Cole gave Erin a swift, intense look. “Abe’s dead. What we did or didn’t do doesn’t affect what I’m doing now. Nothing I did in the past affects us now. So instead of being suspicious of the one man in the Kimberley who’s on your side, worry about the diamond cartel’s latest entry into the sweepstakes—Jason Street.”

“Are you worried about him?”

“I’d be a fool if I wasn’t.”

“Is that why we left the station?”

“One of the reasons.” Cole shrugged. “But it will only buy us a day or two. Street knows the Kimberley better than any other white man alive. The Aborigines all but worship him the same way they did Abe. Fear, not love.”

She looked out over the empty land. “Well, we’ve got a lot of country to get lost in.”

“There are only so many waterholes. Street knows every one of them. What he doesn’t know, the Aborigines will tell him. Sooner or later he’ll find us. Sooner, most likely.”

“Then why are we out in this bloody oven?”

“Because out here, everyone we meet is an enemy. At the station I couldn’t be sure. Hesitation can kill you.” He turned and looked at her. “I could have you on an airplane out of here in fourteen hours. Still want to go diamond hunting?”

“What do you think?”

“I think the ice chest full of film is in the sun.”

Erin made a startled sound and turned in the seat. The reflective cloth she had put over the ice chest had slipped. She pulled the silvery cloth back in place.

“The ice will melt sooner or later,” he said. “What happens to the film then?”

“Nothing, if I’m careful. The emulsion is stable even in this heat. It’s just direct sun that can be a problem. The bag I carry film in when I’m shooting is insulated.”

“How many rolls have you gone through since we left?”

“Not many.”

He smiled slightly. “How many is not many?”

“Less than I wanted to. When I’m working, I can go through a roll of film every five minutes.”

“No wonder you packed that cooler to the gills,” he said. “Must be twenty pounds of film.”

“Must be twenty pounds of shotgun shells, too.”

“If I run out, I’ll use your film.”

“Wish I could say the same about your shells,” she muttered. “How long are we going to be out here?”

“Until the wet.”

“How long is that?”

“Until it rains.”

“Gee, thanks for enlightening me.”

He smiled.

“I tell myself to conserve film,” she said, “but when I’m shooting I forget. Every image I see is so new. I’m afraid if I don’t capture it now I’ll never see it again.”

Cole touched Erin lightly on the cheek. “I’m the same way when I’m prospecting. Every place is a treasure waiting to be found.”

Before she could react to the brief caress, he took hold of the steering wheel again and focused on the increasingly difficult terrain.

Biting her lip, trying to ignore the leap in her pulse at such a simple thing as the brush of his fingertips over her cheek, Erin concentrated on the countryside.

“Look—kangaroos!” she said suddenly.

He glanced over to the right. “No such thing.”

“What? Of course they are. Nothing else hops like that.”

“Nope,” he said. “Ask any Aussie. They’re kangas or they’re roos. Personally, I think they’re roos. Kangas tend to hang out farther east.”

She snickered and felt herself drifting more deeply beneath the spell of companionship that grew between them whenever she let down her guard and responded to Cole without calculation. He seemed to respond to her in the same way, without calculation.

You’re a fool, Erin Shane Windsor,
she told herself.

There was no argument.