Page 15 of The Bait

Then his phone rang, the search and rescue coordinator’s name on the screen; no doubt he’d just heard the search was called off... Then the station phone rang, then another line lit up.

ASIO sure worked fast.

The three of them sighed and got back to work.

FOUR

August knewbefore they’d even come to a stop at Michael and Joshua’s place that ASIO had already been. He wasn’t surprised. He also wasn’t surprised that the secret door in the water tank had been opened with an angle grinder, by the looks of it.

They clearly had neither the smarts nor the time to figure out the lock.

But the guns were gone.

The house had been broken into, the door still ajar, and that just pissed August off.

So disrespectful.

They didn’t care.

And that’s when August realised he did. Hedidcare.

Not about protocol or government agencies having the right to break and enter—not in this instance, anyway—but he cared about Michael and Joshua.

Not that those were their names.

Not that August knew them at all, apparently.

He tried googling Timothy “Harry” Harrigan and gotnothing. Even his photo that Deans had found had somehow been scrubbed from the internet.

August had a hard time thinking of him as Harry, or Timothy. To him, he was Michael Hill. A newcomer to Tallowwood, moved here with his husband, Joshua. They kept to themselves mostly, and even though August knew there was something dark about them, he’d always assumed they were dangerous and ex-military, he still liked them.

He couldn’t help it.

Now, August had no clue exactly what government mess he’d stumbled into. Like, he had no clue just who Michael and Joshua Hill really were, or what they’d done before they moved here. But he couldn’t quite believe the two men who’d stood in his kitchen the other night, who had asked them to please look after their little cat, who’d told August to lock the house and keep the lights off, were a danger to him.

As August stood outside Michael and Joshua’s house, looking at the destroyed tank, at the broken lock to the house, he realised why.

“What is it?” Jake asked. “You got that scowl that never bodes well.”

“Just thinking,” he said quietly.

“About? The fact those assholes just left the place wide open? Or the fact they took the case from us? Three missing men and not a fuck to be given, apparently.”

August found himself smirking, glad they were on the same page. “Not a single one.” Then he sighed. “You know, I was just thinking about Michael and Joshua. Or whatever their names are, or what they’ve done. And the very little we really know about them at all.”

Jake smiled at him. “And you can’t figure out for the life of you why you like them.”

August laughed. Jake really knew him too well. “I shouldn’t. But I do.”

“Wanna know what I think?”

“Always.”

“No, we don’t know who they really are or what they did. Or what made them leave at two in the morning. We know they’re dangerous, we know Joshua has sniper skills, and we know that Michael could probably take someone’s head off with his bare hands.”

August nodded. That was probably true.

“But they have... I dunno, an air of integrity to them that’s hard to describe.”

---