“Oh, Matt, we’re so past fault now. We can stay or go. We can fly across the water if we want to. The crows will carry us.”
“Sounds like you’re hallucinating from lack of water.”
“Stay or go. Stay, I think. We have a mission. The crows will help there too.”
“What are you talking about, Heather? What mission?” Matt asked.
“Deep assignments run throughout all our lives. I was given meteor iron. It came with instructions. The past two days were just the start. Killing the dogs. Destroying your fuel. Poisoning the well. Blowing up your generator. I’ll be back every night. You’ll never find me. I was sent here, Matthew. I was sent here to form another line to erase your line. To erase you. Down to zero. Do you understand?”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Get all the kids over there out if you can because I’m going to cleanse this island of the O’Neills’ presence.”
“Have you gone mad? Did you drink seawater?”
“We’re fine. We have fresh water. Plenty of it. This is our island now. We can live anywhere here, but you’re trapped. Trapped on an island that’s a tinderbox with a woman whose dad was a sniper and who trained her to be a sniper too.”
“Bullshit!”
“Oh, he was conflicted about it, sure, but he told me it was the only thing he was ever good at. I can strip and aim and shoot any firearm ever made. I can take out a sewer rat on the beach at dusk. I can knock the scut off a rabbit at a thousand yards. You’re all dead, Matt. You just don’t know it yet.”
Heather’s signal was coming in very clear now on the walkie-talkie. She had to be within a quarter mile of where Matt was riding. There was a clump of eucalyptus trees up on a hill to the west. He’d noticed them many times before but it had never occurred to him to wonder where those big old trees drank from.
Plenty of water, she’d said.
“What’s your point, Heather?”
“The point, Matt, is that time is running out for you and Ma and the others. The police are going to be here very soon and they will be looking for us and they’ll find us, and the lot of you will be up on murder charges. Every one of you. I will make your life hell until then.”
“Are you suggesting a deal?”
“Leave us the ferry. Everyone stay on the farm until we’re off the island.”
“What’s in it for us, Heather?”
“I’ll tell the cops Jacko killed Tom and Petra and Hans. And I killed him in self-defense.”
“And what about Danny?”
“We won’t mention Danny.”
Matt nudged Pikey down from a canter to a trot. He was approaching the eucalyptus trees now. The sun had finally risen on another scorching day. He took his rifle out of its leather holster.
“Easy, girl,” he said to Pikey. He dismounted and tied the horse to a tree.
He was feeling bad again. He dry-heaved and then pulled himself together. He pressed Talk on the walkie-talkie. “I’ll have to run this past Ma,” he told Heather.
“Do that.”
“I will.”
He walked through the trees and there in front of a cave mouth he had never seen before was the little girl. Digging for yams, like Heather said.
47
Heather looked at the radio and waited for Matt’s response. Maybe there was a way out of this without more bloodshed. Without putting the kids’ lives at risk by trying Olivia and Owen’s plan.
Matt was the cleverest and possibly the most reasonable one of the family.
“Matt?” she said into the walkie-talkie. She’d been standing guard with the Lee-Enfield and hadn’t noticed anything wrong. But the silence now was worrying.
What—
“Come out, come out, wherever you are!” Matt said, not through the walkie-talkie but from somewhere really close by.
Heather shrank behind the tree trunk.
Oh my God. He was here.
“Come out, Heather! I’ve got your little girl. I’ve got a gun pointed at her. Come out!”
How had he found—
“It’s so boring, isn’t it? To count down from three? But that’s what I’m going to do, Heather. Three, two, one…”
Heather stepped out from behind the eucalyptus tree.
“I’m here,” she said.
Matt was holding Olivia by the scruff of her neck with his left hand. He had a rifle in his right hand that he was pointing at her.
“Drop your gun or I blow this one to kingdom come,” Matt said.