“Okay,” Mike said, putting down his name. “Who else?”
Tina put up her hand, swiftly followed by Matt, the rookie, and Caleb wondered if there wasn’t some young love going on down there.
“Anyone else?” Mike said, scanning the group.
“Aw, hell,” Richo said. “Put me down.”
“Excellent,” said Mike. “Thanks, all. Okay, back to work.”
Caleb turned to Richo, horrified that the one guy in the crew who knew him best, the one he spent the most time with in the gym and the one who had the best chance of recognising him in Ava’s paintings, even if headless, was going to be there. “You, donating your time for a worthy cause on a Friday night when you could be at the pub? What’s come over you?”
Richo shrugged. “Yeah, I thought the same thing at first, but I’ve never been to an art gallery. I reckon it might be a good way to meet some new chicks.”
Caleb just shook his head and headed back to the showers.
Great. Just great. Three guys from his station there on the opening night, with not one but four pictures of his naked body on display. Okay, so torso, rather than body. But Ava better have been right about nobody being able to tell who it was.
Now he was really sweating.
Caleb left the station after his shower, heading for a catch up with Dylan down at the Maylands Hotel, felt the sting of the sun in the sky and instinctively looked up at the hills, thinking of Ava, alone in her little stone cottage perched overlooking the Uriarra Gorge.
Summer was really turning up the heat, with no signs of relenting any time soon. The forecast looked ominous, with talk of catastrophic conditions looming across several areas of Southern Australia, and everyone at the station, it seemed, had one eye permanently checking the range of hills that bordered one side of Adelaide, simultaneously fearing the worst while hoping for the best.
In nineteen eighty-three, two years before Caleb and Dylan had been born, fire had ravaged the Adelaide Hills, in what had become known as the Ash Wednesday bushfire. Twenty-eight people had died that February day. There’d been other fires since then too, Cherryville in 2013 and Sampson Flat in 2015, and they’d caused plenty of grief and loss of property too. But in in the back of everyone’s mind loomed the memories of the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria in 2009 where 173 people had perished, and the fact that since Ash Wednesday, there were more than two thousand new homes built by tree changers wanting to live in the Adelaide Hills amongst the bush that made it such a beautiful place to live, and that it was a disaster waiting to happen.
Because one day, it would burn again.
He chewed his lip, thinking of her up there alone if the worst happened, glad he’d checked the diesel pump the other day but knowing that the sprinkler system he’d had her install and even the little retreat room behind her studio were sensible precautions but by no means silver bullets. When you were faced with monstrous bushfires, nobody was going to give a guarantee, whatever precautions you took. He’d talk to her about her bushfire plan, make sure she was getting right out of there if the forecast predicted catastrophic conditions. He didn’t want her taking any chances. Not with her life.
Caleb and the crew had a call out to a brush fence fire the next day, that, in the stinking hot and windy conditions, had quickly spread into an overhanging roadside tree and the two cars parked underneath it. By the time the first appliance arrived, the fence, trees, and cars were well alight and a carport attached to the house was in danger. To the pistol shots of car windscreen and side windows exploding, the crew got out the hoses and set to drenching the burning cars and fence, and towing a third car clear before it too could catch alight.
“That’s the third brush fire in the eastern suburbs in as many days,” said Richo when the flames had been doused and they were rolling up the hoses. “Reckon we’ve got ourselves a firebug on the loose.”
Caleb nodded. These kinds of fires always seemed to come in spates, made all the more worrying by idiots inspired to carry out similar copycat attacks. “I think our police buddies agree with you, too.” They were already on the case, interviewing the neighbours to seek out witnesses and, best of all, any neighbourhood security videos.
“Dylan’s crew got called out to one the other day. He reckons—”
“Hey,” Caleb interrupted, slamming the hose door, “when were you talking to Dylan?” He’d had drinks with his brother just last night and he hadn’t mentioned anything about having deep and meaningful conversations with any of his crew mates. The thought was decidedly discomforting. It was bad enough Richo had his phone number.
“Hey, don’t get touchy. He might be your brother, but he is allowed to talk to other people.”
“Yeah? Well, what else did you talk about? You didn’t call him up to talk about brush fence fires, I take it.”
“I didn’t call him up,” he huffed. “I dropped by my old station for farewell cake because one of the guys in my old crew was leaving and Dylan happened to be there. Is that allowed, Peppa?”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Sorry, forgot, should have said Peppa Pig. Won’t make that mistake again.”
Caleb rolled his eyes. “You’re an idiot, Richo.”
He snorted. “I know. That’s why you love me.”
If Caleb didn’t know his life
