Better with You: Outback Skies, Book 4 (9 page)

Safe, beside him.

Mr. and Mrs. Baynard.

That couldn’t happen without Dani. He couldn’t be Charlie Baynard, the
real
Charlie Baynard without her. Not now. Not after discovering what they felt for each other, meant to each other…

Drawing a deep breath, he stood motionless for a moment. Slowed his heart. Centred the adrenaline surging through him.

And he then strode from his office.

“Heading to the pub,” he called as he crossed the stationhouse. If anyone answered, he didn’t hear it. He hoped to hell Timothy had already left for the art gallery. The last thing he needed was an over-enthusiastic deputy on his heels as he dealt with the director.

A surreal stillness blanketed the road outside the cop shop. Locals had retreated inside, all too aware of the impending storm. Charlie spotted a family from Melbourne, tourists who’d been in the Ridge for two days. Incredulously, they stood in the middle of the road, photographing the approaching cloud of red dust—now barely fifty kilometres away from the town by Charlie’s reckoning—with their phones.

“Oi,” he shouted as he began jogging toward the pub.

All four of them—Dad, Mum and their teenage daughters—jumped.

“Get your arses inside,” he yelled at them.

It wasn’t until the Dad sneered at him and went back to taking photos on his phone that Charlie realized he wasn’t in his cop’s uniform.

Without slowing down, he yanked his wallet from his back pocket and flipped it open.

“Oi,” he shouted again, flashing his badge at them when they all turned to him again. “Get inside, or I’ll throw the lot of you in lock up for your own safety.”

The sneer on the father’s face faded, replaced with sheepish guilt.

Charlie didn’t wait to see if they did as instructed, although by the sound of a door slamming shut, it would appear someone from inside the station had come out at his shout and would deal with them.

Stare fixed on the pub less than a hundred yards away, he increased his pace.

He stopped at the bottom step when the door swung open and Matt walked out.

Accompanied by the director.

Fuck.

“Charlie.” Matt’s gaze fell on Charlie, his smile wide and warm and genuinely happy. “I was just looking for you. This guy here says he thinks he knows you from years ago. Although he thought your name was Rudy.” He turned his smile to Bruce, who stood close beside him. Close enough to grab his head in two long-fingered hands and snap his head with a single jerk.

Charlie met the director’s stare.

The director smirked. Inched a little closer to Matt.

“
Charlie
,” Bruce said, teeth flashing in a sneer. “You’re a hard man to track down. You just seemed to drop off the face of the planet. I’ve been trying to find you for a while.”

Charlie bared his own teeth at his old boss in what he hoped Matt took for a smile. “Have you now? How ’bout that.”

The director dipped his head in a slow nod, the fleshy meat of his jowls bulging beneath his jaw. “Took your wife coming here. Of course, she’s always helped me out when I’ve needed her to. Very accommodating. Wouldn’t happen to know where she is at the moment, would you? I got something for her.”

In Charlie’s peripheral vision, Matt frowned. Turned to cast the director a puzzled look. “Where she is? I thought you said you—”

Charlie bolted up the stairs, stumbling on the last step to knock Matt sideways as he grabbed the director’s hand in an enthusiastic handshake. “Bruce, you bastard. Long time, no see.”

He risked a glance at Matt, relief rushing through him at the sight of his friend staggering back another step. Out of reach of the director.

“Not for the lack of trying, mate,” the director answered, his laugh as boisterous and fake as Charlie’s. He squeezed Charlie’s fingers in a cruel grip. “You trying to dodge me or something? Who’s a man gotta hurt to get your attention these days?”

Charlie crushed the director’s fingers with his own. “You know me. I’m not one for living in the past.”

Pain flickered in the man’s flat eyes. There and gone just as quickly. He threw back his head in a loud guffaw, trying to disengage their grip even as he sliced a look at where Matt stood beside them. “Reckon I should fill your friend here in on your past,
Charlie
? Tell him of some of your achievements.”

At Charlie’s elbow, Matt let out a chuckle. “That’d be good. The senior constable’s a bit of a closed book.”

Bruce laughed again. “Did you know Charlie worked for the Foreign Affairs department before coming here? He was a real killer at what he did for the federal government.”

Charlie tossed Matt a grin, even as he squeezed the director’s fingers tighter. The satisfyingly unmistakable sensation of bone grinding against bone radiated through his palm. “No more than this bastard here,” he declared, slapping his ex-boss on the shoulder with a solid thud, driving his thumb into the soft flesh between the director’s shoulder joint and clavicle. Digging in to the pressure point nerve there. Digging hard. “The tactics old Brucey employed to get the job done…” He let out a whistle full of awe. “Man, it’s almost criminal.”

The director bayed with laughter.

Matt chuckled again.

Dropping the director’s hand, Charlie snaked his arm around his beefy shoulder and hauled him to his side, trapping Bruce’s right arm between their bodies, his grin wide for Matt. “I’m going to spend some time catching up on old times with the wanker, Doc. Do you mind checking the Dutch tourist in lock-up 2 for me? I think Ross may have slipped something funny into those pastries he baked him.”

Matt raised his eyebrows. He studied Charlie for a heartbeat, flicked a glance at the director, and then nodded at Charlie. “Can do, mate.”

“The dust storm is going to hit us soon,” he went on, releasing the director’s shoulder and sliding his hand down the man’s back. With a flick of his wrist, he hooked his hand under the hem of the director’s jacket and wrapped his fingers around the handle of the Glock tucked into the man’s waistband. It wouldn’t be the only weapon on Bruce’s person, but it was the only one either of them had in their grip at that very moment. “Can you do me a favour?” he asked, keeping his smile wide for Matt even as he held the gun—and by association—the director motionless, “and make sure everyone we know stays indoors? Ring them if you have to. Tell them to stay exactly where they are until it blows over.”

Puzzled uncertainty crossed Matt’s face. He frowned. He wasn’t a dumb man, and he’d lived through some seriously intense shit in his life before settling here. Had been lucky to survive it. Was he sensing something off about the situation now?

Charlie’s gut tightened.

And then, before Charlie could do something riskier like ordering him to go, Matt nodded. “I can do that.” He cast a contemplative gaze over the director, standing at Charlie’s side and then frowned at Charlie again. “What about you? You going to be okay?”

Charlie chuckled. So did Bruce. Neither sound was convincing.

“I’ll be fine,” Charlie said, inching the director’s Glock a little from his waistband when the man made to step away. “Bruce and I have a lot to discuss, don’t we, Bruce? The storm’s going to feel like a puff of ill wind when we’re done.”

Matt studied them both again. Charlie’s heart quickened. Shit, his friend was going to get himself killed if he didn’t—

“Give me a call when you’re finished catching up, Baynard,” Matt said, descending the two steps to the road. He smiled, the action not reaching his eyes at all. “My pager’s dead, but I’ll have my mobile on, waiting. What do you want me to tell your wife if I see her?”

Charlie inched the director’s gun out farther when the man stiffened. “Tell her I’ll track her down when I tidy up some lose threads.”

Matt frowned once more and then, with another glance at the director, flipped the collar of his shirt up against the rising wind—thankfully free of dust at the moment—and hurried away.

Heading, Charlie was relieved to see, in the direction of the cop shop.

“Of course, you know,” the director muttered beside him, “even if you walk away from this, I’ll make sure everyone you care for here suffers?”

Charlie watched Matt move along the road, watched him approach the Wallaby Ridge police station. Watched him step up to the door. Open it. Disappear into the building.

And then, before the director could move, he smashed his forehead into the bridge of the man’s nose.

“Fucking prick,” Bruce snarled, staggering back a step.

Charlie snagged his wrist and hauled him back, driving the end of the gun into the pudgy side of his belly as he did so. “In about ten minutes, the air’s going to be replaced with flying dust, Bruce. Thick enough you’ll choke on it. I can let that happen, or we can talk. Somewhere private. Your call. But let me assure you, if a single resident of Wallaby Ridge suffers even so much as a paper cut thanks to you, you’ll be wishing you died choking to death on hot red dust.”

“Where’s your lovely wife, John?” the director snarled back. “Or is it Rudy? Or Charlie? She told me you weren’t here. That the man she thought was you, was just a dumb Outback cop.”

“How’d you know I was here? Did you follow her?”

The director laughed. “Ah, you have been out of the game for a while, haven’t you? Your contact? The one who kept you abreast of everything in the agency? He’s been under surveillance since you went AWOL. I knew he was talking to you the day you reached out to him.” He
tsked
. “You should’ve known I kept track of all your old interactions before you went out on the field.”

Charlie ground his teeth.

To anyone stupid enough to be outside in the approaching wildness, they’d look like two guys talking on the pub’s front verandah, watching the sky turn to a bruised red as the dust front blew closer.

Just two guys.

But both guys were armed to the teeth. Both were ready to kill.

Both had their whole lives to lose.

“Of course, I didn’t actually know where you were. That little fact deluded me until he contacted you about Dani. I made sure he knew that, by the way. That she was in the country. I figured it was the best way to find out where you were.”

Charlie narrowed his eyes. “So you gave her a job she wouldn’t complete to find me? You risked Australia and Indonesia going to war to track me down?”

“Fuck, no,” the director snorted. “I
wanted
the prime minister’s lesbo sister out of the way. She bugs me, what with her gay agenda and always on the telly. And I
wanted
Australia to start tearing Indonesia apart from the inside. I wanted our illustrious leader to order a full-on covert assault on them. It’s high time we wipe that annoying breeding ground of terrorists and boat people off the map. I was mighty pissed with Dani when she refused the job. Pissed enough to tell her she was dead. That’s when she came running to you.” He chuckled. Even went as far as rubbing his hands together. He looked nothing like a man standing with a loaded gun rammed between his ribs.

A cold itch flared between Charlie’s shoulder blades. His gut clenched.

“Finding you…” the director went on, tone conversational. “Well, that was sweetly serendipitous. I was in your contact’s home when you rang at two in the morning. I listened. Found out where you were. And the second you disconnected, I walked out of the shadows and slit his throat. You’d been friends since when? Since you were both sixteen, is that right?”

Charlie’s grip on the director’s gun turned painful. His head roared.

“And when I’m done with Dani, she’ll be equally bereft of blood. Although I’ll make it a slow bleed-out for her. She deserves that, don’t you think? Given the atrocities she’s committed.”

“You so much as touch her—”

The director laughed. “I never thought you were one for clichés, John. Have I ruffled you that much? Or is it your wife who’s thrown you off your game?” He smirked, his gaze flaying Charlie with condescending contempt. “You know, I regret the day I paired you up. Sexual tension and the spy business aren’t as simpatico as Hollywood would let the general public believe. Of course, you were a bleeding heart with morals before she came along, so you were doomed from the beginning.”

Charlie chuckled, driving the director’s gun harder to his ribs. “So did you come all this way to insult me?”

“Hell, no. I came all this way to kill you. Something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. You know too many things about me to live, John.”

“Who says I’m the one that’s going to die, Bruce?”

The director laughed. “I do. Seeing as I’ve arranged for the good doctor I was just chatting with to be arrested for being a sleeper agent for ISIS if I don’t contact
my
contact within the next forty-eight hours. The fact the doctor was in Somalia for that stretch of time, and MIA for some of it, only makes it easier.”

Charlie’s blood ran cold. His head roared.

This was no bluff. He knew what the director was capable of. Knew it well.

“Plus, your fag cowboy friend will find himself arrested for transporting illegal drugs across the country in that chopper of his and thrown into maximum security at Goulbourn Correctional. He’ll find some new bum chums there, I’m sure. Oh, and I’ve made certain the poofter deputy PM is implicated in his crimes as well. Can’t have a homo running the country.” Bruce made a clucking noise with his mouth, watching not Charlie, but the approaching wall of dust. “And last but not least, shocking new evidence of drug use will see Evan Alexander, hero firefighter, brought up on charges of murder for the death of his partner in that Sydney bushfire. Death by reckless behavior. He may get off, but not before his life is as fucked as his body.”

He turned to smirk at Charlie. Smug victory gleamed in his eyes. “So you see? I live. You die. I win. You lose.”

“Unless,” Charlie raised an eyebrow, his heart fast, his grip on the director’s Glock tight, “I know who
your
contact is and take care of them after I’m done with you.”

The triumph in the director’s eyes flickered. His Adam’s apple jerked up and down his wide throat. And then he threw back his head and laughed. “Shit, you almost got me on that one, John. Almost fooled me. You don’t know who my contact is. You have no fucking clue.”