Page 53 of Stockman's Showdown

Bree shook her head. ‘Remember, this is before my time. But I do know Darcie was very particular about fuels and oils because he had an old burn scar on his leg he’d gotten as a kid. He made sure everyone put any and all flammable things away in particular places. I also remember Pop telling me that Jack Price would lecture the new ringers about everything being in its place when they started here at the beginning of the muster season… What I want to know is,’ said Bree, as she pulled outa photo. ‘What is that length of elastic string doing there?’ She tapped the corner of the image. ‘They use that for sewing and it’s not something you’d normally find in an old tack room. Not to mention I can’t see why or how they could accuse my great-uncle of this murder. It could have been anyone.’

Ryder and Dex both sat back.

‘What am I missing? You’d better not be hiding anything from me. Not when I’ve been forthcoming with you two.’

‘Bree deserves to know,’ Dex mumbled to Ryder.The big mouth.

‘Are you kidding me?’ Bree wagged her finger at Ryder, her temper making her eyes shine. ‘Did you think you could deceive me with your fluffy powdery sugar cakes, hoping I’ll be too busy counting calories to notice!’

‘Calm down, Bree.’ Ryder went to his desk and removed the photo he’d hidden for a reason. ‘I didn’t want to show you this one.’

‘Uh-uh, sugar pants, we had an agreement.’

‘Yeah, but this…’ Ryder hesitated, because he was trying to protect her.

She snatched it out of his hands. ‘No freaking way.’

It was another image of the dead body, taken from a different angle, but it was enough for Bree to become eerily still, and completely expressionless. And they thought he had ice in his veins—not when Bree had a much quicker trigger to shut down her emotions.

She then grabbed the chalk and approached the outline of the body, where the right hand lay in a particular position. There, she wrote the words of a dead man:

Harry Splint did this.

‘The chalk was in his hand when they found him,’ explained Ryder, taking the chalk and the damning picture from Bree’ssmall hands. He felt the slight tremor in her fingers, but also saw the look of terror in her eyes. But Bree feared nothing. She may seem hard as ice set in a glacier wall, but the cracks were starting to show all from that one image that killed any hope of her proving her great-uncle’s innocence.

Twenty-one

Just after midnight, Bree stood at the cottage’s front gate. Dressed all in black, with her rifle in one hand and a small cooler in the other, she was ready to play commando with Captain Cupcake and his offsider, Sergeant Stormcloud. And she was looking forward to it. Hello, it was sneaky, illegal, and everything that made her pulse tick that little bit quicker, as she waited.

Dex had suggested they take the Razorback, but Ryder said it was too noisy. Surprisingly, Ryder was using his fancy ute, that was worth more than most people’s houses, so said her grandfather, who’d hammered away on their PC’s keyboard to learn more about the car Ryder drove when the Riggs brothers had first arrived.

She had taken great pride in teaching her grandfather how to use the internet, where Charlie was now part of a stockmen’s chat group that shared stories in the region. It was amusing watching Charlie type with two fingers, while cussing under his breath, complaining about some silly sod’s comments, in between gulps of his beer. She’d learned to walk away in those moments.

Now she couldn’t stop thinking about how she was going to tell Charlie that all the evidence was pointing to Harry being a murderer.

Charlie must have known about Jack Price accusing Harry in such a damning way. And with Bree not believing Harry’s innocence in the first place, Charlie may have kept that piece of news to himself.

Poor Charlie.

Doing this sneaky raid on their nasty neighbour was the best thing for taking her mind off her family dramas—because so far, her murder-solving skills just sucked!

She gazed up at the stars that seemed extra bright tonight without a moon. On the other side of the large compound stood the farmhouse with its pantry light barely casting a soft glow inside.

To the left of that, the boardroom lights had just switched off.

They were coming.

She cocked her head, straining for the sound of a vehicle starting.

Then, in disbelief, she watched the ute’s taillights disappear down the back of the property, leaving her behind.

‘That a-hole!’ A surge of anger had her slinging the rifle strap over her shoulder as she marched towards the back shed to take the quad. She wasn’t getting dressed up like a plus-sized Catwoman for nothing.

When the ute spun around, its bank of powerful spotlights shone over her when she was halfway down the fence line.

‘Were you going to saddle a horse?’ Dex asked, with his head out the window as Ryder stopped the car beside her.

‘You were going to leave me here.’

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