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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

‘I know that Sir, but I trusted what my senior partner was telling me,’ she said, her body burning hot with a mixture of anger and embarrassment. ‘Naturally, I assumed the information he was giving me was reliable.’

Sterling stopped running and crouched down to untie her shoelace. Taking her time to retie it, she covertly checked that she wasn’t being followed.

‘You stitched me up,’ she said, standing beside Rob’s desk and peering down at him.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said softly, getting up from his chair and standing too close to her. ‘Why don’t you and I go out tonight, and we’ll talk about it.’

Sterling shook her head and backed away. ‘No, I’m not interested.’

In that moment she knew he’d done it deliberately, and in the days that followed he’d made it known to anyone who’d listen that she was hard to get along with. A surge of renewed anger welled up inside her. It had taken her three years to fight her way out of the dead-end team she’d been dumped in following the botched warehouse report, and another two years to become eligible for Homicide.

Straightening up, she took off again, determined to outrun the memories, only stopping when she heard the familiar roar of water gushing from the spillway. Wiping the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve, she stared at the Road Closed sign. Figuring the barrier had been put there to stop cars driving onto the spillway and the television crews from taking footage of the wrecked plane, she slipped around the barrier and with her hands on her hips walked the short distance onto the spillway.

A chill slid down Sterling’s spine and it had nothing to do with the cold morning air or the freezing spray of water carried backwards on the wind and onto her face. Standing there looking down on the airfield, it was impossible not to imagine Art Lorrimer flying in over the water, and the plane touching down in the dark. Impossible not to imagine his horror when he realised he was staring death in the face.

Thirteen

Flowers sat on the floor of the apartment, his back propped against the lounge and Lorrimer’s documents spread out around him. There were registration papers for the boat and plane, a printed copy of last year’s electronic tax return, and a copy of his yearly physical from a Port Stephens clinic. There was insurance for the fishing boat, and numerous policies for the Cessna, though none for the car.

Flowers stood up, his muscles stiff from sitting in the same position for too long. Nothing here would advance the case, and the pilot’s wallet, phone and laptop, and his passport if he owned one, were likely to have been incinerated in the crash.