When the rain grew heavier she allowed Darren to pull her to her feet and lead her back to the trail through the mountain plants, numb and wooden.
The return trip seemed to take no time at all, the icy rain leaching all feeling out of her face and hands. Darren kept looking at her with concern, but her ability to care had been snatched by the wind along with her screams.
Madison is going to tell the police.
The motorbike was where they’d left it. Eliza struggled to feel anything when she saw it.
Darren spun her around, facing her. ‘Listen, Miss Ellis, I know it’s cruel, but you might still be the only way we have to find those girls. You’re a good person. It’s not your fault they went missing.’ She wished he’d stop, but he kept talking. ‘You can’t give up yet . . . stay with us —’
She looked up into his eyes. She struggled to focus. She looked back down.
He sighed and turned the ignition.
The motorbike roared into life, the sound of the engine blocking out the wind and the rain, warming her, a reminder of technology and civilisation, as they set off, back towards town, away from the wilderness.
All the while, Eliza thought of her niece.
And of what was to come.
CHAPTER 29
MURPHY
The dream was familiar enough by now that he could almost remember he was dreaming.
And he fell slower now, the foggy ground taking longer to reach him.
We’re going to find you, Jasmine. We’re going to find you.
He expected to see his daughter, waiting for him on the ground, but it wasn’t her . . . It was his wife.
Sara stood, face upturned, hair tousled in the wind, laughing as she reached up for him. A lavender dress left her shoulders bare; her teeth flashed white, excitement in her eyes, as he crashed into her.
He jerked awake. He took a few heavy breaths, then rolled onto his side and stared into the darkness.
Later that morning, Murphy stood on the footpath outside his house, reading the profanity that had been marked into his front lawn with weed killer.
An old woman power-walked past: her daily exercise route. She slowed and pointedly looked at the words. She made a noise and glared at Murphy, before power-walking on.
‘Well I didn’t write it!’ he shouted after her.
She just increased her pace.
Across the road were two parked cars: a police car, the cops inside watching Murphy, the second a journalist’s, who stood there snapping photos of him. Murphy slowly scratched his balls, looking the man dead in the eye, then stalked back to the front door. He slammed the door shut behind him.
‘Don’t do any more damage to the bloody house,’ muttered Butch, wearing his Blundstone boots to clean up the broken glass scattered across the kitchen floor, the window broken during the night by another brick. It seemed Madison’s heartfelt video declaring his innocence hadn’t convinced everyone.
Murphy threw himself into the couch. He looked at the TV and turned away. The TV had a hole in the middle of it: that had been Butch’s foot.
Apparently last night, after Skinner had left, Butch had come inside to watch the 24-hour coverage, and yeah, he’d still been high on the angel dust, but he’d just become so enraged that he’d kicked in the TV screen. The latest development had surrounded Murphy – ‘we don’t sell weed to minors’ – and how he seemed to hold power over Madison Mason, enough to make her adamantly declare he had nothing to do with the disappearances.
Madison Mason . . . Murphy would usually never hurt a girl, but he wanted to throttle the little bitch.
His heart lifted. Sara had appeared in his dream. Did that mean she’d heard his prayer? Maybe.
Still, Madison was to blame. She had constructed this plan and now his Jasmine was missing. Or maybe she wasn’t missing, just didn’t want to be found.
Hope and fear mingled within him, making him even edgier. Where would she go? Her backpack presumably had the same gear as the ones at the Hut. So where would she set up camp, where would she think no one else would know to look?
It hit him. Of course. The crop.
She wasn’t supposed to know where it was, but Murphy had always suspected Jasmine had followed them there, at least once.
He got off the couch and found his brother. ‘Let’s go check on the crop.’
‘Bad idea, lad,’ said Butch. ‘The cops are watching.’
‘Good. Let them. You know we’ll lose them in the gully. And we have a right to walk through the bush if we want to.’ He couldn’t hide the excitement in his voice, but he didn’t want to tell Butch the real reason.
‘It’s just adding fuel to the fire. If they catch you in the bush, they’ll think you’re off to bury the bodies or something,’ said Butch. ‘What’s gotten into you, lad? Usually it’s me wanting to do the risky shit.’
Murphy hadn’t told Butch that Jasmine had intended to disappear. It was stupid, but there was always that sibling rivalry when it came to raising Jasmine. He wanted Butch to think he was a good dad, even though his daughter had captured the entire world’s attention by . . . It’d come out sooner or later, but if he could find Jasmine today, then maybe it wouldn’t be as bad . . .
And well, maybe, he wanted to protect Jasmine’s reputation in Butch’s eyes. He thought the sun shone out of his niece.
‘Let’s just go check the crop. I know it sounds stupid but . . . maybe Jasmine is there.’
‘It’s too risky. We’ve never been watched this closely.’
‘Bro. Jasmine could be there.’
Butch threw his hands up and went to get changed.
Almost immediately after leaving their property, they were enveloped in scrub. Cool green dogwood and musk, and the cak-cak-cak-cak of a native hen. The sounds of the town were lost behind them as the ground rose, rocky and heady.
They climbed. The harsh cries of the native hen mixed with a forlorn-sounding kookaburra, a loner up high in the ghostly white gums. This whole place felt haunted – Murphy had always hated this walk as a kid, whenever Dad had made him hike up here when he was too lazy to check the crop himself. Dad had known how much it scared him, so it was one of his favourite punishments, other than belting the shit out of him.
Butch seemed to read Murphy’s thoughts. ‘What do you reckon Dad would tell us to do?’ he said, voice hushed, subconsciously respectful of the sacred quiet of the bush.
‘He’d probably be out here, night and day, looking for her,’ said Murphy. ‘A beer in one hand and the shotgun in the other.’
His mind flashed to the Glock now stashed in his bedside drawer.
‘What about Sara?’
Murphy was silent for a moment. ‘Don’t know.’
They both bent down to all fours to scale a slope of scree, fingers in the slated rock.
‘Wish she was here,’ said Butch once they were at the top, upright and getting their breath back.
‘Me too,’ said Murphy. He wafted a spiderweb out of his way as they pushed through a copse of white gum and dogwood, a wallaby trail. Then: ‘I dreamed about her last night.’
‘Yeah? She say anything?’ said Butch.
‘Nothing.’ Murphy’s feet squelched over rotting gumtree bark, wet and slippery. ‘Just smiled.’