‘Well, how far back these pillars run, for starters. Be interesting to know how wide a detour our poachers had to make.’ He received the bottle back, swallowed a few mouthfuls himself and stowed it away. ‘If you’re game for it, let’s go.’

It was a harder climb than it looked, steeper than it had appeared from ground level. Connor arrived first and reached a hand to pull Tilly up beside him. She clung to him for a moment for balance; the wind was stronger and the weathered rock more uneven than she had expected.

‘What a view!’ She released him and turned carefully, the rush of air cooling the sweat on her body as her gaze slid over the forest of rocky towers that stretched half a kilometre or more away to the south.

‘It must’ve been a cliff wall a few hundred thousand years ago,’ Connor mused, staring down at the crenellated rock, ‘then the sandstone started to break down and this is what’s left. Maybe in another thousand it’ll all be gone. Who knows?’

Tilly wasn’t really listening. She’d spotted the dust cloud rising behind the community of pillars, and her mouth fell open as she grabbed his arm. ‘Connor! There’s a vehicle.’

He reacted to the urgency of her tone, stared where she pointed and then snatched the binoculars from his backpack.

‘And a graded road!’ Tilly exclaimed. ‘Out here? How . . .? That dust cloud’s heading back, not away. Who . . .?’

Connor said wonderingly, ‘There’s a logo on the door. I can’t make it out at this distance but it looks very like – Good Christ! Was it really that simple all along? Not Luke – he’s cook today, you said. And Sophie’s heading for Darwin. It’s Matt. Right under our bloody noses! The one who drives the grader. And he’s graded the bastards an exit road. I’m betting that’s how your husband left the camp without you seeing him, Tilly. And I’m afraid it’s where your wildlife will have gone, too.’

Chapter Twenty

They discussed their find in quick, broken sentences while making a hasty descent to the ground and back to the vehicle. They needed to beat Matt to the camp.

‘Because the last thing we want,’ Connor said urgently, ‘is for him to get wind that we’ve rumbled him. That you have. It’s too dangerous, Tilly. He mustn’t ever know that you’ve even seen the pillars. Crooks are born suspicious, and I want you safe. I wish you weren’t going back at all, but I suppose that might alert him too.’