‘Exactly like roadkill. Or was the crocodylomorph a predator?’
‘Like saltwater crocs today. They’re apex predators. At least, that’s what they say at Australia Zoo.’
He had it in one. ‘That’s what I think, too,’ she said. ‘If a croc today is a predator, then why wouldn’t its ancestor be a predator, too? Oh, hang on a moment.’ She stopped to eye the way ahead—more scrub bashing through spinifex and loose rock, or what looked to be a walking track, made by sheep no doubt. ‘Let’s go this way; it’s easier walking and it’s headed straight for the jump-up. Keep an eye out for a pile of rocks that have been built into a sort of tower. About the same height as you.’
She shifted the tripod to her other shoulder and rearranged her fingers on the camp oven handle, because the steel was starting to cut her circulation off, and trudged after him. ‘So to get back to why we’re here, Jedda suggested I come because the trip might lead to something great happening …’
Which was kind of working out in that this camp was a great opportunity for some mother–son time, but was maybe going to be a total bust on the fossil discovery front.
She had her mouth open to keep talking, because—who knew?—hiking through the outback turned out to be an awesome way to tell your son what you actually did in your day job without them drifting off to the TV room and shutting the door, but Luke’s pace had quickened and he was fifty yards away now and she was about to collapse with the weight of what she was carrying.
‘Mum!’ he yelled back at her. ‘There’s a dog!’
Shit, that was all she needed. A dingo attack would seriously mess with her plan to prove to Craig and Luke that she could be a great mother.
‘Stay back! It might attack you!’
His squeal had her dropping her pile of camping gear and breaking into a run, but as she got closer she could see that her son was not being attacked by Australia’s most fearsome pack animal. He had a dog leaping at him, yes, but it was little. Some sort of cute, scruffy mongrel, and the most dangerous part of it seemed to be its tongue, which was doing its best to lick every part of Luke’s face.
It also only had three legs.
‘Hello, Possum,’ she said, dropping to her knees beside Luke. ‘How did you get out here?’
‘He’s with me.’
Of course he was. She’d been wrong, before: the most dangerous part of the dog was not his licky tongue, it was his owner.
Luke realised who was standing there the same moment she did, but his response was of a very different kind.
‘It’s him,’ he breathed, his voice ascending about six octaves he was so delighted. ‘Mum, you’ll never believe who this is! It’s him! It’s the guy I’ve been telling you about!’
She swallowed. The last person in the world she needed an introduction to was Gavin Huxtable.
CHAPTER
29
Hux had not thought, when he flew out to Corley Station to walk the land, that he’d have the ghost of his sister Jessica walking alongside him. But there she was, at every step. He’d finally worked up the courage to read the news articles that his media release last week had stirred up, and it was hard not to dwell on her. On the life she’d missed out on having.
TheLongreach Leaderhad run the most in-depth article.
IS TRUTH STRANGER THAN FICTION?
Extraordinary news this week from the publishers of Aussie crime-writing juggernaut Gavin Gunn, who, on Thursday evening, released a statement outing the author as Yindi Creek local and helicopter charter pilot Gavin Huxtable.
The question is: Why? And where in heck is Yindi Creek?
Type the words ‘Huxtable’ and ‘Yindi Creek’ into any search engine and old news stories start popping up. A missing girl. A broken family. A town torn apart.
What did happen to Jessica Huxtable? A little over twenty years ago, Jess was seventeen years old. She was babysitting her younger sibling, Gavin, twelve at the time, while the rest of the Huxtable family were 350km away at a function in Longreach.
At 6.00 pm on the Saturday, as Jess and Hux ate dinner and squabbled over what movie to watch, the phone rang. Jessica answered. She’d been invited to a party, she told her little brother, and she really, really wanted to go.
‘I told her I’d be right,’ he was quoted in the press as saying at the time.
She left the house wearing denim shorts and a t-shirt and a new pair of boots which had been her birthday present—just one week earlier—from her parents. She took the key to the old farm ute from the hook in the kitchen and told Gavin she’d be home before the movie finished and she’d make them hot chocolate if he promised not to tell her mum and dad that she’d snuck off.
Jessica Huxtable was never seen again.