Tilly didn’t dignify the threat with an answer. She prayed that the road he’d mentioned was the new one. Connor was there. She didn’t know how he could help, but he was her only chance of getting out of this alive, and getting help for Luke. She turned the key, engaged the gear and, with mentally crossed fingers and toes, headed back towards Sandstone Springs.

And the miracle she had asked for happened.

‘Not there. Go right,’ Matt barked, ‘over the saddle.’

‘But—’ Deliberately she stalled the vehicle. ‘There’s no road.’

‘Well, it ain’t sign-posted,’ he said scornfully. But it’s there. Use your bloody eyes. Now get this heap movin’ an’ follow the tracks.’

There were none to be seen on the gravel, but proceeding hesitantly, more for show than need, Tilly soon picked up traces of wheel prints where Gerry must’ve driven in. She wondered where Matt’s own vehicle was. Perhaps planted in the scrub at the springs, or somewhere closer, hidden from sight as he had been all these years. With malice, she drove carelessly, hitting the gutters a little too fast and dropping into the potholes until Matt jabbed the knife lightly into her thigh, drawing blood. She cried out in shock and from the pain of the slight wound.

‘I’m warnin’ you, bitch,’ he snarled, fresh sweat gleaming on his face. From then on she took more care, driving so slowly that he snarled at her again to speed up. When the pillars of the Lost City came in sight, she remembered to stare and peer out the side-window as if it was her first sighting of them. She passed the point where she and Connor had pulled up, and from then on the track required her full concentration. They stopped only once. Matt made her hand over the keys and her shoes, then told her to get out and bring him the waterbag from the side rail where it hung behind a protective skirt of leather.

She slid out reluctantly, wincing as the cut in her leg smarted and her bare soles hit the rough ground, and moved down the vehicle’s side. She wished she had some way of causing a puncture, but even supposing she could snap off the valve stem, he would know she had done it. Casting a longing look down at the back tyre, she noticed there was no cap on the stem and the idea was instantly born. Matt had twisted sideways in his seat and was watching her through the window, but her hands were out of sight. Stooping, she wrestled with the stiff buckles, muttering to herself, then bent to snatch up a length of grass.