Zara stayed quiet. She could hear the murmur of the mob of sheep behind them and her mum’s earlier words reverberated inside her head. ‘This is my home, and all the stock and work that go with that are also mine. I love it.’ Her mum would be okay here after Will wasn’t alive anymore. There would be horrible lonely times, she was sure, but her mum would be okay.

‘Don’t you ever want another partner, Mum?’

Lynda didn’t answer. Instead, she got into the ute and started it. ‘Come on, let’s head home.’

CHAPTER 14

Chapter 14

Dave wanted to go back out to Rowberry Glen and follow up Will’s cryptic comment that he might be the reason the drones were around Barker. Try as he might, he couldn’t work out what on earth Will could’ve done to cause them to be there. He frowned and scratched his head as he thought.

‘What’s wrong, sweetie?’ Kim asked as she came into the kitchen. Bob was at her heels and he went over to his favourite place underneath the kitchen table and flopped down.

‘I’m trying to work out if I can go and visit Will again today,’ Dave said.

‘Why couldn’t you?’

‘I don’t want to put him under any pressure. I could see yesterday he was really tired. I don’t know much about these things, Kim, but I can’t see how much longer he can go on. His eyes are all sunken back in his head and—’ he broke off. ‘I don’t know, he sort of looks like a living skeleton.’

‘I noticed that when I was out there. And I don’t know too much about this sort of thing either. You and I’ve been really lucky not to have been through this with anyone we know.’ She sank down in a kitchen chair and put her head in her hands.

‘You want a cuppa?’

‘Yes, please, love.’

Dave switched the kettle on and got two mugs out of the cupboard before putting a tea bag in each. He didn’t feel like coffee in the middle of the day.

‘Why do you need to go back out there?’ Kim asked, reaching down to pat Bob’s head.

‘He said something about the drones yesterday and I couldn’t follow up on it. I feel like he knows something about them.’

Kim was silent as she continued to pat Bob. Finally, she asked, ‘If it was a murder enquiry, what would you do?’

‘I’d have to go out there,’ he answered without hesitation. The kettle boiled, and he picked it up and poured steaming water into the cups and started to dunk the tea bags. ‘This is different, though. It’s not a murder enquiry and I can probably solve the problem without calling on a dying man. He would just make it quicker and easier.’