‘We were young, just fooling around.’ He laughed. ‘Got our hands on some liquid E, invited girls over, had a few parties with mates …’

Jake’s heart skipped a beat. ‘Are you kidding?’

Murphy grinned, his pale-blue eyes nervous. ‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘Tell me you’re having me on?’

‘Come on mate, it wasn’t like what Campbell did, if that’s what you’re thinking. They always got over it and they never complained, except …’

‘Except?’

‘This one stuck-up bitch, but Kelly said she couldn’t prove it wasn’t consensual, so he wouldn’t charge me. Didn’t want a bad mark against my name for no reason.’

Jake shot out of his chair, stalked to the front door and slammed it open. Outside, he let the freezing air punch him in the face and threw a flurry of frenzied blows at the mist in return. He gulped in air, then coughed, his lungs seizing with the cold. Eventually he straightened up and stared into the white-grey fog.

Shit. Shit! Shit!! He was sharing an office with a man who’d drugged and raped who knew how many girls and thought it was funny.

And Kelly knew.

With extreme reluctance, he had to confront what had been staring him in the face since his first day in Dunton. Jake had turned a blind eye to too many signs; clues that a detective of his experience should have pieced together from the get-go. Why had he been so slow?

Not wanting his chance at starting his life over to be screwed up in less than a fortnight, maybe. Wanting to be away from Melbourne for an extended period of time, to give himself space to rest, recover, process his feelings about his bastard brother’s betrayal of Nic; time to set new directions in life.

Wanting to like Kelly and Murphy, and be liked in return? That was a factor. Jake was tired of his only friends at work also being his family. He’d wanted to start over in a new community, become part of something bigger for once. But if he did this, he was going to be run out of town …

Fuck it.

Dunton had shitty takeaway anyway.

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

Dunton, Tasmania

Friday, 6.52 a.m.

Jake walked around the station to his cottage, shivering. He cranked the heater to the highest possible temperature, stood directly in front of the warm blast of air and rang Meena, trusting she would already be in her office.

‘Jake?’

‘I …’

‘I was going to call you this morning,’ she said. ‘I’ve already got the rush results from overnight.’

‘That’s great. Listen, I need to ask you to run an exclu­sionary test …’

‘Jake.’ The tone in her voice forced him to skid to a halt.

‘I’m listening.’

‘I already ran everyone in your station for exclusionary purposes. I always do. I have … um. News.’

‘Right?’

‘We have a match for the maternal line.’