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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

‘Because he’s paranoid. All of them are, they’re always looking over their shoulders, waiting for the next one to double cross them like Scruffy Freidman did. They don’t trust anyone, even the people closest to them. My twin brother was flying in, and he could name almost all of them if he wanted to. Rod kept on and on at me, saying if the drug ring was brought down, I’d be going down with them. We’d all end up in jail.’

‘So, you went to the airport under the cover of darkness and used the spare key to start the tractor. Then you drove it onto the runway where you knew the plane would come in?’ Ryder asked carefully, for the benefit of the recording.

She nodded, then remembered to speak up. ‘Yes,’ she said, her one maniacal eye fixed on Ryder. ‘You don’t understand. There was no other way. He was going to stop the sale. I did it for Dan and Ethan too. I was there when Rod bashed Scruffy Freidman to death and threw him into the river. From that moment, I was living on borrowed time.’

Forty-six

Sterling had never come so close to losing her life before, and as she let herself into the motel room just after one in the morning, she realised she had indeed lived to see another day.

It was a shame the room’s exposed-brick walls and nondescript carpet were depressingly similar to the rumpus room in Khancoban, save for the two double beds. With the attack still fresh in her mind, even the knowledge that Heidi was in custody failed to ease her frayed nerves. Hopefully, a few solid hours of sleep would help.

Leaving her suitcase on the floor because she didn’t have the strength to lift it onto the bed, she unzipped it and opened the lid. An image of Heidi Lorrimer looming over her flashed into her mind, and Sterling saw herself sprawled across the suitcase as the lid came down on her again and again.

She blinked and the image receded. Hurrying, she rummaged through her things, dragging out her wet pack and the pale-green tracksuit she slept in before zipping up the suitcase again.

Though her rational mind knew Heidi was locked in a cell at the Queanbeyan police station where tomorrow she would be charged with multiple criminal offences, Sterling felt her menacing presence everywhere. It was there when she touched her body: in the soreness of her shoulder, in the tenderness of her scalp when she shampooed her hair and in the dull ache in her spine when she twisted around. And when she looked in the bathroom mirror after spending twenty minutes soaking in the bath, it was Heidi’s face staring back at her, holding the syringe that would plunge Sterling into one final sleep.