A standalone action thriller containing armed threats and violence.
The station, mineral prospect, companies, and commercial arrangements depicted here are fictional. The story is not a report about an actual deposit, transaction, or security operation.
The last flight in
The little charter aircraft dropped through a pocket of hot air, and the woman beside Moira caught her hat before she caught her breath.
Below them, the country stretched red and folded towards a horizon that seemed to have forgotten about towns.
“Last lot for the wedding,” the pilot said. “Unless somebody’s forgotten the groom.”
Across the aisle, Jack adjusted the collar of his linen jacket.
“Still time,” he murmured.
Moira looked past him at the narrow strip beside Redbank Station. A minibus waited near the hangar. Beyond it stood two men who were not watching the plane.
They were watching the road to the homestead.
“Bluey,” she said, leaning forward. “Those men yours?”
The pilot glanced down.
“Mine wear worse shirts.”
The wheels met the strip with a succession of bumps. Six other passengers applauded with the relief of people who had paid a considerable amount to arrive somewhere without a terminal.
Moira did not applaud.
Jack followed her gaze towards the hangar.
“Perhaps they’re here for the cake.”
“Then I hope nobody tells them where it is.”
Something borrowed
Uncle Col met them with a battered hat in one hand and a list of room allocations in the other.
“Wedding’s at four. Dinner at seven. If you complain about the heat, you’re on washing-up.”
“Any other rules?” Jack asked.
“Don’t feed the dogs pavlova. Don’t discuss the seating plan with my sister.”
He lowered his voice.
“And don’t tell me those blokes by the machinery shed are with the florist.”
Moira looked at him properly.
Col’s face was weathered, his shirt carefully ironed. His eyes were not amused.
“We’re here at Arthur Vance’s request,” she said.
“About time.”
Arthur was the bride’s father, a European investor whose expensive taste had survived several poor decisions. Three days earlier, he had contacted Southern Reach Risk, the firm through which Moira and Jack worked.
The request had been discreet: attend his daughter’s wedding, review a proposed commercial agreement, and find out why his new lender insisted it be signed before midnight.
Since then, Arthur had stopped answering their questions in writing.
The lender’s representative, Viktor Chen, had not stopped sending instructions.
Their room was in the refurbished shearers’ quarters. Jack left the luggage closed while Moira read Arthur’s last message again.
PLEASE DO NOT INVOLVE ELENA. HE KNOWS WHERE EVERYONE IS STAYING.
Through the window, they could see a satellite terminal on the machinery shed roof.
“That belongs to Chen’s party,” Jack said. “Col says they arrived yesterday with their own technician and insisted on a private room.”
“Have the police replied?”
“They have the messages we sent. They want Arthur to speak to them directly.”
Moira folded her sunglasses.
“Then let’s find him before somebody marries him to a contract.”
The agreement
Arthur stood beside the veranda steps, twisting his wedding programme into a cylinder.
“You came,” he said.
“You asked us to.”
“I know. I thought perhaps I had been ridiculous.”
Across the lawn, Chen lifted a glass towards them.
Arthur’s hands stopped moving.
“Not ridiculous,” Moira said.
The transaction concerned Arthur’s stake in Glassbird Minerals, a small exploration company with a prospect near Redbank Station. Preliminary surveys had attracted attention; they had not established the enormous fortune promised in the investment brochures.
Arthur had borrowed against his shares. Chen’s company now controlled the debt.
The agreement on Chen’s laptop was described as a refinancing arrangement. The copy Arthur had sent Moira contained something else: a surrender of his stake to a purchaser he could not identify.
“Why sign it here?” Jack asked.
“He says his investors have given him until midnight.”
“And if you refuse?”
Arthur looked towards the garden, where Elena was laughing with two bridesmaids.
Chen had sent photographs of the family.
Nothing about those photographs proved how far he would go. That uncertainty was doing the work of a weapon.
“A signature won’t make this safe,” Moira said.
“You don’t understand the debt.”
“I understand that you hired us to read an agreement and then became frightened to answer the phone.”
Arthur looked down.
“Yes.”
“We need you to speak to the police.”
He nodded once, then looked up at a familiar voice.
“Dad?”
Elena stood at the bottom of the steps. Her veil was folded over one arm.
“You can stop deciding what I am allowed to know,” she said.
The bride’s condition
They spoke in a small pantry behind the kitchen.
Moira told Elena what they knew, and what they did not. Arthur sat on an upturned crate, looking older than he had on the lawn.
Outside, the caterer asked somebody to move six crates of glasses.
“Is Toby involved?” Elena asked.
“We haven’t seen evidence of that.”
“Then he needs to be told.”
Arthur opened his mouth.
“No,” she said. “You don’t get to protect me by leaving me alone with a room full of strangers who know more about my wedding than I do.”
He shut it again.
Jack arranged a private call using their independent satellite phone. Arthur spoke to a police officer and agreed to make his messages available. The officer told him not to meet Chen alone.
There would be further contact as soon as help was on its way. Nobody promised that distance would cease to matter because they were afraid.
Elena listened, then set down her veil.
“I’m marrying Toby at four. After that, my father stays with us. If Chen wants a signature, he can ask for it in front of eighty people.”
“He may not accept that,” Moira said.
“Neither do I accept what he’s doing.”
It was the first useful condition anyone had placed on the day.
Under the fairy lights
The ceremony took place beside a jacaranda tree.
Arthur walked Elena across the lawn with a concentration usually reserved for carrying something breakable. Toby met them with his collar already coming undone.
For twenty minutes, Chen did not seem to exist.
Afterwards, Moira watched him look at his phone, then at the machinery shed.
Dinner filled the old shearing shed with light and noise. Long tables stood beneath the rafters; someone had placed small arrangements of white flowers in enamel jugs. The band had been promised food before its second set and was determined not to miss it.
Jack sat near the kitchen door. Moira took the chair beside Elena’s cousin and listened to a complicated account of a horse that had hated hats.
At half past eight, Chen approached Arthur.
“We should finish our business.”
Elena laid a hand on her father’s sleeve.
“He’s about to make a speech.”
“A few minutes.”
“You can wait.”
Chen smiled without changing his eyes.
His phone vibrated. He read the screen, then bent close to Arthur.
Moira could not hear the words. She saw what they did.
Arthur stood.
Toby rose with him.
“Sit down,” Chen said.
He said it softly enough that the family at the next table went on arguing about who had taken the last bread roll.
Moira joined them.
“Arthur is staying here.”
“This is a private matter.”
“Not anymore.”
For a moment, Chen looked as though he might let his anger show. Then he stepped back.
“You should be careful whom you trust with your father’s future, Elena.”
He turned towards the rear door.
Moira caught Jack’s eye.
That was when the lights over the kitchen passage went out.
The machinery shed
The band continued playing.
At the main table, Elena drew Arthur into conversation with her new mother-in-law. Toby stayed on his other side.
Behind the kitchen, Jack found a young waiter staring at a dead wall socket.
“Somebody’s pulled the wrong circuit,” Col said, coming around the water tank.
“Your somebody?”
“No.”
Beyond the generators, the machinery shed glowed faintly through its open side door. One of Chen’s men stood outside it. The other was walking towards the guest quarters with a torch.
Jack checked his phone. The independent handset had been left with Toby, who was waiting for the police to call back.
“We should stay with Arthur,” he said.
“Elena’s cousin just saw one of those men asking which room is his,” Col replied.
Moira looked between the shed and the darkened line of buildings.
“Get everyone out of the quarters and back to dinner. Quietly.”
Col nodded.
The man beside the shed called him over, demanding to know where the station’s electrical controls were. Col gave him a long, irritated answer and led him away from the door.
Moira and Jack moved close enough to hear the voices inside.
Chen stood over a seated technician.
“I don’t care how. The meeting happens tonight.”
“The terminal is online. It’s the other end that’s waiting for him.”
The technician began to stand. Chen caught the back of his chair and shoved it against the desk.
“You leave when I say.”
Arthur, Moira realised. They were waiting for Arthur to appear on a call.
They meant to put a frightened man in front of a camera and record him agreeing to terms he would later struggle to undo. Arthur’s absence was the one thing Chen could not conceal from the people waiting at the other end.
Chen’s phone rang. He stepped into the office at the back.
The technician stayed very still. Moira could see the open doorway reflected in his screen; he looked at it, then towards the office, but did not move.
Jack made a small movement towards the side door.
Moira caught his sleeve.
“No heroics.”
“I was going to ask the technician a question.”
“With your polite face?”
“It’s the only one I brought.”
The witness
They entered together.
The technician recoiled from the screen.
“Who are you?”
“Working for Arthur Vance,” Moira said. “Is anyone making you stay here?”
He glanced towards the office.
That was enough.
“There’s a problem with the agreement,” Jack said. “And the police have been contacted. Step outside with us.”
“My equipment.”
“Leave it.”
The young man took off his headset. His hands were trembling.
Before he reached the door, Chen came out of the office.
“Nobody is leaving.”
The pistol was low against his leg. There was nothing theatrical about it.
Jack stopped.
Moira moved her hands away from her sides.
Chen looked at the technician.
“Finish the connection.”
“He hasn’t done anything wrong,” Moira said.
“Then he should be grateful for the opportunity to remain useful.”
She heard a sound behind her: a loose sheet of metal knocking against the side wall.
Col.
She kept her eyes on Chen.
“Arthur has spoken to the police. Whatever happens to that call, there are already copies of your messages outside this station.”
Chen’s expression changed.
Not defeat. Calculation.
“Copies can be explained.”
“Threatening his family will be harder.”
He lifted the pistol.
The technician stumbled backwards into the workbench.
There was a crash at the side entrance. A wheeled sorting cage lurched through the doorway, struck the bench, and scattered tools across the floor.
Chen turned.
Jack moved.
The next few seconds were noise and broken shapes: a shot, Moira pulling the technician down, Col shouting from somewhere beyond the cage.
Jack and Chen hit the concrete together.
The gun slid beneath a shelving unit.
Jack’s breath came in harsh grunts. Beneath the bench, the technician had both hands clamped over his ears.
Chen fought, swearing, while Jack tried to hold him away from the shelf. Col reached them with two station workers at his back. Between them, they brought the struggle to an ugly, breathless stop.
When it was over, Jack was sitting against a post with one hand pressed to his shoulder.
“Hit?” Moira asked.
“Don’t think so.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Then get someone who can give you a better one.”
She did.
What the music concealed
Toby arrived with the handset while the station’s first-aid volunteer was checking Jack.
The police were coming. They now knew a shot had been fired.
Elena had moved the guests to the homestead veranda under the entirely believable explanation that there was an electrical fault. The band followed, carrying its smallest instruments.
Outside, Chen’s two men had stopped beside the water tanks. With their employer restrained, they put their hands where the station workers could see them and waited for the officers.
Moira watched their hands. Until the police arrived, she could not bring herself to look away for long.
She stayed near the technician, who had begun to shake uncontrollably.
“What’s your name?”
“Daniel.”
“Daniel, the police will want to speak to you. Tell them what happened, including the parts you wish hadn’t.”
He looked at the laptop.
“There are meeting recordings. He made me test the camera.”
“Don’t touch it now.”
Jack, pale but talking, had finally agreed to sit still. A cut above his eyebrow needed attention; his shoulder was swelling.
Chen said nothing.
Col stood beside the doorway, no longer making jokes.
The first officers took control when they arrived. Chen’s party was separated in ordinary rooms under supervision while statements were taken and medical help attended those who needed it.
An officer asked who had touched the computer. Daniel answered, then began to explain what might be stored on it; the officer drew him aside to take it down. The equipment remained on the bench, its screen still showing a meeting room in which nobody had appeared.
Arthur handed over his phone.
His hands shook as badly as Daniel’s.
The wedding that remained
Near midnight, Elena found Moira on the veranda.
The bride had taken off her shoes. Red dust had worked its way into the lace at her hem.
“Is Jack all right?”
“He’s been examined. He’ll need follow-up.”
“And Dad?”
“Still giving his statement.”
Elena looked towards the open doors.
“He keeps apologising for the wedding.”
“What do you want him to apologise for?”
“Not telling me.”
Moira nodded.
Inside, Toby was helping someone move the cake away from a table that tilted. For all the money spent on the day, they had discovered at the last moment that nobody had brought a proper cake knife.
“I suppose,” Elena said, “that we did get married.”
“You did.”
“And nobody got to make him sign.”
“Not tonight. Tomorrow there are lawyers, accounts, and a great deal to untangle.”
Elena considered that.
“Tomorrow can have tomorrow.”
She went inside to find her husband.
Moira stayed where she was until Jack lowered himself into the chair beside her.
He held two mugs.
“Col says we can either drink tea or explain ourselves to his sister.”
“Tea.”
“Thought so.”
Beyond the veranda, the land was dark. The prospect beneath it had not become more valuable because somebody had pointed a gun. Whatever happened next would require more than a signature obtained in a machinery shed.
Inside, the band tried a waltz.
Arthur appeared at the edge of the dance floor, uncertain where to stand. Elena reached for his hand, said something Moira could not hear, then drew him into the circle.
At sunrise, another police vehicle arrived, and the last statements gave way to the long work of the morning. Nobody could yet say how far Chen’s arrangements reached.
The first wedding guests crossed the lawn carrying their shoes.
Moira watched the light touch the white lace caught on a chair, the red dirt beyond the fence, and a little paper place card that had survived the night.
It read: We are so glad you came.
From the kitchen, Uncle Col called that the kettle was on.
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