Blood & Dust Read Online Free PDF Page B

instead of in the gun safe.
Strange to see it there without his father holding it.
    'Mum?'
    She jumped, knocked her tea over. Swore, dabbed at the mess, then ignored it to hug him. She
smelled of English Breakfast and sweat; she wore sorrow like an overcoat. The lines in her face had
never seemed so deep. Fresh tears brimmed and she gestured for him to sit at the table. It was as
old as he was, big enough to comfortably seat six though there'd only ever been the three. Knife
cuts, coffee stains and teapot burns marred the timber. Looking at it now, running his fingers over
that abused surface, it was as if he'd never seen it before.
    Meg fetched a cloth and mopped up the spilt tea where it puddled around the little glass vase in
the centre of the table; a single rose curling to brown drooped over its lip.
    'You should be lying down, Kev,' his mother said. 'How do you feel?'
    'Just hungry.'
    'That's a good sign. I had snags out for dinner.'
    'Don't, Mum, it's okay.'
    'Don't be silly. We have to eat.'
    She went into the kitchen and dug out utensils.
    Meg pulled up a chair next to Kevin and said, voice low and anxious, 'Smithy only let us come
back to collect some stuff. We weren't meant to stay.'
    God, she was beautiful. That tanned skin, smooth there on her chest and the side of her throat
where her pulse bobbed. His throat constricted, his stomach tightened with love or lust or both. He
needed her, needed to bury himself in her smell and her heat and -
    A sharp clank made him jump. He swallowed, aware of the tension in his muscles, the shame of his
distracted daydream; here she was, all care and concern, while he could think only of jumping her
bones. And with his mother standing right there, too. With his mother standing right there, and his
father not.
    Meg lifted her hand to reveal a set of keys. 'Smithy gave us these. Found them out the back of
the servo. Yours, see - the key ring I gave you. It's not scratched up too bad.'
    He mumbled an embarrassed 'thanks', his fingers lingering on hers as he took the keys, the Holden
emblem unmarked. He shoved them in his pocket. Keys to a servo that didn't exist, but he'd take them
off the ring another time. When he could do it without crying or smashing something.
    'We're going to have your mum stay with us for a few nights, at least until the police are
finished down at the servo,' she said. 'You can stay, too. Mum and Dad won't mind.'
    A car drove past, slow, its headlights glaring against the front windows.
    'Is that the ambulance?' his mother asked as the sausages sizzled in the pan. The room filled
with the smell of meat frying. 'Or Smithy?'
    'I'll check,' Meg said. 'If it's Smithy, let's hope he's got good news.'

FIVE
    Reece, barefoot and shirtless, cradled a stubby of beer and forty years of regret.
He took in the massive wall of storm clouds building in the west; the humidity had thickened during
the day to be almost choking. His body ached all over, as if he'd been dragged here from the
roadhouse behind Smith's Land Cruiser rather than in the passenger seat.
    He felt bad for Diana Matheson. She was an impressive woman. If his own mother had been that
strong, that stoic, well, maybe he wouldn't have joined the cops. If his mother had stood up to the
drunken thug of a husband of hers, maybe Reece would've gone on to a respectable public service job,
or even, who knew, if he'd stuck with the schooling, to university. Now that would've been funny. It
might've been him brandishing a sign on the street march instead of taking names and busting heads.
Maybe he wouldn't have had to drive over to the morgue and ID his sister, just another overdosed
prostitute dredged up from a Valley gutter. Or maybe it wouldn't have made any difference at all.
    The story about the Night Riders being drug traffickers wasn't a line. Taipan's bunch would sell
anything, do anything, if it meant staying a step ahead of the Hunters. Whereas drugs were the one
thing that the Von Schiller organisation