Breaking Free

Soon.

Dylan was about to make Louisa Fairchild do just that. Still, like the smoldering hotspots across the Hunter, a small coal of doubt flickered quiet and deep inside Dylan. He knew he didn’t have enough to officially charge her. Yet.

But his superintendent had issued the order to bring her in ASAP.

A gas bomb had detonated in the Sydney central business district less than two hours ago—part of the APEC protests. It had gone off just as the U.S. President was landing at Sydney International for the leaders’ portion of the Summit. The U.S. Secretary of State was already in town, at her hotel, where a second device had been primed to detonate simultaneously.

Techs had managed to defuse that one, but the death toll from nerve gas in the first explosion had already hit thirtytwo and was climbing fast. The New South Wales police force had received threats from one of the radical protest groups that there were more bombs out there. Riots were now erupting, and part of Sydney had been quarantined. According to Superintendent Matt Caruthers—Hunter Valley Land Area Commander—the Australian Prime Minister was about to go on air to declare a state of emergency.

Caruthers had also informed Dylan that the Prime Minister was calling in the military, and that the NSW police commissioner had ordered the majority of the state police force to the capital ASAP—including just about every officer in the Hunter Valley Land Area Command. The homicide team working the Sam Whittleson–Lochlain arson case had also been recalled.

All that remained in the Upper Hunter was a skeleton staff for rotational patrol.

Dylan had been left to twist solo in the dry wind until the APEC dust settled.

This arrest was unorthodox. Everything about it.

And Louisa’s lawyers were going to be all over it.

But Caruthers was worried Louisa Fairchild would use this very opportunity to slip through the cracks. She was already a flight risk, and so far, everything the homicide squad had found to date pointed right at her.

She had the motive, opportunity and means to shoot Sam Whittleson, her sixty-one-year-old neighbor and owner of Whittleson Stud, whose charred remains had been found at Lochlain the night of the fire.

Louisa and Sam had been fighting like dogs over rights to Lake Dingo for the last two years. The lake straddled their estates, but the farm boundaries themselves were in dispute, and Louisa had already shot and injured her neighbor over the water issue ten months ago. She’d shot Sam in her library, with her Smith & Wesson .38. He’d survived, but there were witnesses who’d heard Louisa say she “should have killed the bugger properly the first time.”

That was a death threat in Dylan’s book.

And now Sam Whittleson was properly dead.

The first shooting had never gone to trial, a fact that irked the hell out of local cops, including him. Louisa Fairchild with her overpriced lawyers and swanky PR team had claimed self-defense, wangling a deal with Whittleson’s legal counsel that saw Whittleson dropping charges against Louisa for fear of being prosecuted for trespassing and assault himself.

But the homicide team now had witnesses who’d seen Louisa Fairchild’s dark-gray Holden fleeing Lochlain the night of the blaze and murder. The soil in the tires of her truck confirmed she had been there.

And the fire-damaged murder weapon had finally been recovered from the crime-scene rubble—a Smith & Wesson .38. The gun was currently being processed by forensics techs, and a serial number should be legible before the day was out, which meant the weapon could be traced.

Quite possibly right back to Louisa Fairchild.

Dylan would have been happier to have known for a fact the murder weapon belonged to Louisa.

Instead he’d been sent in prematurely. To squeeze her, bring her in for questioning, rattle her cage, find anything that would allow the NSW police enough to hold her for trial while they built their case.

Right. And who was going to take the fall if the weapon wasn’t hers, if the charges didn’t stick?

Dylan pinched the bridge of his nose.

He could see himself going down as the scapegoat on this one. Once those APEC stories started dying back from national headlines, this was going to be the news.

A small fist of tension curled in his gut as he caught sight of the bronze-and-red Fairchild logo emblazoned on massive stone pillars flanking the entrance to the estate. Dylan’s jaw tightened as he signaled to the guard his intent to enter and swung into a driveway lined for almost a mile with mature jacarandas that knitted branches in a canopy over the hardpacked dirt.

On either side of him white fencing trailed across acres of dry grassland that was being cut to the quick for fear of bushfire, the tractors boiling soft clouds of dust that blew like spindrift. But as he neared the manor house and saw sprinklers shooting long white staccato arcs over lush emeraldgreen lawns and vibrant flower beds, Dylan’s acrimony bit deeper.

Louisa Fairchild defied even the drought.

There were severe irrigation restrictions on the river. She was likely pumping water from Lake Dingo which belonged, allegedly, to a dead man.

A man she might have killed. For this very water. For the stud farm she was still trying to snatch out from under his family.

Dylan reminded himself to bury his personal hatred of Louisa Fairchild. It could cost him down the road if his animosity got in the way of her arrest.

The mobile phone on his belt buzzed as he pulled into the circular gravel driveway.

He reached for it, checked caller ID. Heidi. Probably calling to pester him about that party she was desperate to go to tonight. Or the private art school in Sydney she suddenly so passionately wanted to attend.

Dylan let the call flip to voice mail, feeling the tension in his gut wind tighter as he pulled to a stop.

His kid might be as fickle as the wind, but she’d also had a rough ride lately, nearly losing her own horse in the Lochlain fire. Yet no matter how Dylan tried to help, Heidi was throwing up barriers, acting out, making additional demands. She’d just have to wait until he got home tonight, because right now he had a potential career-breaker on his hands.

And Heidi wasn’t going to have a future if this case ended up taking him down.

He got out of the squad car, adjusted his gun belt, and put on his hat. It was unusually hot for an autumn evening. He squinted into the haze, waiting for backup from the neighboring Scone station to arrive.

He’d asked for a female cop to help him execute the warrant. What he’d gotten was Ron Peebles, a probationary constable on the job for all of three weeks.

Already things were going sideways, Dylan thought as he watched a plume of dust rise behind the squad car approaching in the distance.

Constable Peebles drew up alongside Dylan’s vehicle, got out, his movements taut. It was the young rookie’s first arrest and it showed.

“Ready?” Dylan said.

Dry gum leaves clattered suddenly in a gust of hot wind, and a flock of lorikeets burst from the branches in an explosion of color as they took flight and darted through the sprinklers.

Peebles tensed, cleared his throat. “Yeah, I’m ready,” he said, looking everything but.

Boots crunching over the gravel driveway, they made their way to the entrance of the massive stone-and-stucco mansion, built ten years ago. Dylan still remembered the old house. He’d played on this farm as a kid with his brother Liam and their friend Henry. That was many years back, before Liam had been murdered.

He climbed the stairs to the door, chest tightening. He glanced at Peebles standing slightly to the side of the door, feet planted square, hand near his weapon. Peebles nodded.

Dylan rang the bell.

A great booming clang resounded inside the house, and the door swung open, two blue heelers barreling out.

“Officer Hastings?” Louisa’s housekeeper, Geraldine Lipton, regarded them with a frown.

“G’day, Mrs. Lipton,” he said. “Is Miss Fairchild in?”

Her eyes darted to Peebles, then back to Dylan, hand tightening on the brass doorknob as she pulled the door slightly closed. “Miss Fairchild is busy riding,” she said tersely. “And then she’ll be busy packing. She leaves for London tomorrow.”

Dylan flashed Peebles a look—a definite flight risk. “It’s important we speak to her immediately, ma’am,” he said.