Cover

About the Book

Why would the police come looking for a dead man?

Young widow Tilly is making a new life for herself, keeping house for the rangers at the Binboona Wildlife Sanctuary in the isolated wilderness of the north-western Gulf Country. Caring for injured wildlife and helping to run the popular tourist campsite are just the distraction she needs from everything she left behind when her husband, Gerry, and young daughter were lost at sea.

But when the police show up asking questions about Gerry, the peaceful routine she’s built is disrupted as she begins to question what really happened to her family. The arrival of botanist Connor stirs up even more emotion and has Tilly questioning who she can trust. When she and young ranger Luke stumble across evidence of wildlife smugglers on a visit to the local caves, suddenly her sanctuary is no longer safe and it becomes clear the past has well and truly come back to haunt her.

Set against the lush backdrop of the Northern Territory with its vibrant birds and deadly wildlife, this is a chilling and highly evocative novel about the wild and dangerous things that can happen in the most remote and untamed corners of our country.

Dedication

This one is for Bill and Judy Bandidt, for friendship above and beyond. Thanks heaps, guys!

Chapter One

Tilly Hillyer woke with a jerk and a small cry, her heart in overdrive. It didn’t happen so often now, but on occasion the dream still returned, making a peaceful night’s sleep something of a lottery, with horror the consolation prize. It was so vivid and immediate even after the passage of two years – the tiny falling figure, bulky in its life jacket, tumbling endlessly through space into the rushing darkness and the waiting water.

An old tag of poetry, from schooldays or something she’d once read, popped into her mind as she panted for breath . . . at one stride comes the dark. Yes, she thought, it had been like that. As if the night had roared out of the mangroves to devour—

‘Enough!’ Tilly sat up, thrusting the cotton blanket aside. Once upon a time the world had been a different place but life had folded in upon itself, leaving her apart and separate from the then. Now was where she was at and the rest was a fairytale whose happily-ever-after ending she had been denied. She was suddenly aware of the bird calls beyond the window, as if her present life, which the dream had temporarily pushed aside, was demanding attention.

It was daylight then, time to rise. Life didn’t stop for anyone’s tragedy. Gerry and Francie were gone, and Tilly had passed through all the painful stages of grief that survivors suffered and it was unhealthy – and pointless – to let that nostalgic once drag her back into the depths through which she had already lived. Sophie, at any rate, would tell her so.