‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Get the cuffs, Abby.’ Then, as she glanced despairingly at the fence, he softened. ‘Cuffs first. Kleppy second. Move.’
She moved and thirty seconds later Philip was cuffed to his own steering wheel.
‘You can’t do this,’ he snarled.
‘Watch me,’ Raff said. Then he lifted his radio. ‘Keith? You know we were getting a search warrant for Dexter, thinking it might be better to do it when he wasn’t home? I have another suggestion. You come up to my place and pick him up. He’s cuffed to the car in the driveway. He kicked a dog, pulled Abby’s hair. Take him to the station, charge him with aggravated cruelty to animals, plus assault. I’ll be there with details when I can but meanwhile he stays in the cells. The paperwork could take quite some time.’
‘You…’
‘Talk among yourself, Dexter,’ he said. ‘Abby and I have things to do. Dogs to rescue. And if I find he’s badly hurt…’ His look said it all. ‘Come on, Abby, let’s go. He’ll be headed for Isaac’s and I hope for all our sakes we find him.’
They drove in silence. There was so much to say. On top of her fear for Kleppy, there was so much to think about. Philip’s invective…
Philip’s words.
She cast a look at Raff and his face was set and grim. Had he heard? Was he thinking about it?
Philip… But her thoughts kaleidoscoped back to Kleppy.
‘He can’t be too badly hurt.’
‘No,’ Raff said. ‘He can’t be. He’s a dog who’s given me my life back. I owe him more than putting Dexter behind bars.’
Where? Where?
They reached Isaac’s place and it was fenced and padlocked as it had been fenced and padlocked since Isaac’s death.
All the way up the mountain she’d held her breath, hoping Kleppy would be standing at the gate, his nose pressed against the wire. He wasn’t.
She called. They both called.
No Kleppy.
‘We’ve come fast on the track,’ Raff said. ‘Kleppy’s having to manage undergrowth.’
‘He could be lost.’
‘Not Kleppy. Our farm is on his route down to town from here, his route to his source of stolen goods. He’ll know every inch.’
‘If he’s hurt he could creep into the undergrowth and…’
Raff tugged her tight and held her close. ‘He was running,’ he said. ‘If he’s not here in ten minutes I’ll start bush bashing.’ He tugged her tighter still and kissed her, hard and fast. Enormously comforting. Enormously…right. ‘If we don’t have him in an hour I’ll organise a posse,’ he said. ‘We’ll have an army of volunteers up here before nightfall.’
‘For Kleppy?’
‘We have two things going for us,’ Raff said, and his smile was designed to reassure. ‘First, Kleppy’s one of Henrietta’s dogs. She hates having them put down. She’s over the moon that you’re taking him, and she has a team of volunteers she’ll have searching in a heartbeat. Second, if I happen to mention to about half this town that if we find an injured dog we’ll put Dexter behind bars… How many raised hands do you reckon we’d get?’
‘Is he that bad?’ she said in a small voice.
‘You know he is.’
She did know it. The thought made her feel…appalled.
What had she been thinking, to drift towards marriage? She’d been in a bad dream that had lasted for years. Of all the stupid…
‘Don’t kick yourself,’ Raff said. ‘We all have dumb youthful romances.’
She tried to laugh. She couldn’t. A youthful romance that lasted for ten years?
‘I seem to remember I did have a youthful romance.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. They were walking the perimeter now, checking. ‘I should have come home and been your partner at the deb ball.’
She did choke on that one. Her debutante ball. The source of all the trouble.
She’d been seventeen years old. A girl had to have a really cool partner for that.
Raff had been in Sydney. She’d been annoyed that he couldn’t drive home twice a week to practice, two hours here, two hours back, just to be her partner. Of all the selfish…
‘Don’t kick yourself,’ he said again. ‘Dexter does the kicking. Not us.’
‘But why?’ It was practically a wail. Why?
She’d always assumed Philip loved her. He’d given up Sydney, he’d come home, he’d been the devoted boyfriend, the devoted fiance for ten years.
Why, if he didn’t love her?
‘Let’s walk down to the road,’ Raff said, taking her hand. He held her close, not letting her go for a moment as they walked down the driveway to the gravel road where their world had turned upside down ten years ago.
‘Kleppy?’ she yelled and then paused. ‘Did you hear?’
‘Call again.’
She did and there was no mistaking it. A tiny yelp, and then the sound of scuffling.
She was off the road and into the bush, with Raff close behind. Through the undergrowth. Pushing through…
And there he was. Kleppy.
Digging.
Philip’s kick had hit his side. She could see grazed skin and blood on his wiry coat.
He looked up from where he’d been digging and wagged his tail and she came close to bursting into tears. ‘Klep…’
But he was back digging, dirt going in all directions. His whole body was practically disappearing into the hole he was creating.
‘You don’t need a wombat,’ she told him, feeling almost ill with relief. She reached him and knelt, not caring about the spray of dirt that showered her. ‘Klep…’
He tugged back from inside his hole. He had something. He was trying to hold it in his mouth and front paws, tugging it up as he tried to find purchase with his back legs.
She didn’t care if it was a dead wombat, buried for years. She gathered him into her arms, mindful of his injured side, and lifted him from the hole.
He snuffled against her, a grubby, bleeding rapscallion of a dog, quivering with delight that she’d found him and, better still, he had something to give her. He wiggled around in her arms and dropped his treasure onto the ground in front of her.
Raff was with her then, ruffling Kleppy’s head, smiling his gorgeous, loving smile that made her heart twist inside. How could she have ever walked away from this man for Philip? Like Kleppy’s buried treasure, his smile had been waiting for her to rediscover it.
She had rediscovered it.
She wasn’t going to marry Philip. Raff was smiling at her. The thought made her feel giddy with happiness.
‘Hey,’ Raff said in a voice that was none too steady and he gathered them both into his arms. He held them, just held them. His woman, with dog in between.
Happiness was right now.
But there was only so much happiness a small dog could submit to. He submitted for a whole minute before wriggling his nose free and then the rest of him. He started barking, indignation personified, because Abby hadn’t
