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Back Dead Horse Gap Save as PDF
Chapters (58)
  1. COVER PAGE
  2. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  3. DEDICATION
  4. Prologue
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-one
  26. Twenty-two
  27. Twenty-three
  28. Twenty-four
  29. Twenty-five
  30. Twenty-six
  31. Twenty-seven
  32. Twenty-eight
  33. Twenty-nine
  34. Thirty
  35. Thirty-one
  36. Thirty-two
  37. Thirty-three
  38. Thirty-four
  39. Thirty-five
  40. Thirty-six
  41. Thirty-seven
  42. Thirty-eight
  43. Thirty-nine
  44. Forty
  45. Forty-one
  46. Forty-two
  47. Forty-three
  48. Forty-four
  49. Forty-five
  50. Forty-six
  51. Forty-seven
  52. Forty-eight
  53. Forty-nine
  54. Fifty
  55. Fifty-one
  56. Fifty-two
  57. Fifty-three
  58. Acknowledgements

‘Your sister-in-law, Kristin, told us that the night Art flew in she was upstairs reading the children a book, when she heard you come in around eight-thirty. Dan had been out in the paddock delivering a calf and she thought it was him. She went to the door, but it wasn’t her husband who came out of the office. It was you, Heidi. Why did you go into the office, and then leave straight away?’

Heidi’s lips turned white.

‘Did you take the tractor key from the office? The spare key Ben Hoff asked your brother to hold on to because he was always losing things?’

‘No, Kristin must have made a mistake,’ Heidi said, though she was openly weeping now.

‘Forensics are confident they’ll be able to lift a print off the envelope and possibly the key,’ Ryder told her. ‘We’re pretty confident of getting a match with a partial print on the syringe you brought to Detective Sterling’s residence today.’

‘Heidi,’ Sterling said suddenly.

Ryder sat back so Sterling could ask her question.

‘You said you wanted protection. You told us that you fear for your life. You won’t get any kind of leniency if you continue to lie to us.’

‘Did you take the key and move the tractor onto the airstrip?’ Ryder asked, looking at Heidi.

She was distraught and exhausted, caught off guard by the evidence they’d presented that implicated her in her brother’s death.

‘Did you start the tractor with the spare key from the office at White Winter Station and drive the tractor onto the airstrip?’

‘Yes!’ she bawled out the word. ‘He was going to ruin everything. I told him years ago what Rod had made me do, what I’d done for him, but he did nothing to help me. His twin sister. He didn’t care.’

Ryder stayed quiet, letting her words sink in, trying to imagine what it would be like to be caught in such an intolerable situation. To glimpse freedom, and then have someone who only thought of themselves snatch it away.

Heidi blinked away her tears. ‘He said the property was his superannuation and that he needed to keep it safe from the people he’d ripped off. The heartless bastard had destroyed my life once before, and now he was going to ruin the only chance I had of getting out of all that shit.’ She hiccuped then coughed. ‘Rod was scared of him too.’

Sterling turned bewildered eyes on Ryder.

‘Why was Garrett scared of Art?’ he asked.