Christ. Had he made her cry? Of course he had. He’d said a horrible thing to her and she’d slapped him. Gentle, loving, giving Prita had been driven to such anger by his horrible words that she’d slapped him. He’d deserved it. He would have slapped himself if she hadn’t done it. In fact, he wished he had. Then she wouldn’t have run from him, feeling bad for having done something he fully deserved.
He was the worst man ever. He’d never wanted to hurt her and yet he’d done the best job of it that anyone could. And now she wasn’t just hurting, but was embarrassed and had run from her own party. He had to try to make amends. To make her see the problem was him, not her. She was blameless. He should have never suggested otherwise.
He’d just been so shocked to hear she was married. Not just shocked. Jealous. Which made no sense at all. He didn’t want to be with her and she didn’t want to be with him. There was nothing to be jealous of. And yet, he had been more insanely jealous in that moment than he’d ever remembered being.
Bloody hell. She’d got him so mixed up and turned around. He was even driving after her without actually knowing where she’d gone. She said she had to go to the police station, so that’s where he’d start.
His fingers clenched on the steering wheel as he turned towards Wilson’s Bend. If Bob Thompson was responsible for her having to go to the police, he was going to do more than punch the bastard’s smug pug face. The fact the man shared a first name with his father was even more of an irritant than ever before. If that bastard had done anything to hurt Prita, he was going to find a way to make him pay.
As he rounded a bend in the road, he noticed a strange glow just over the rise.
It was too early for sunset and besides, that orange glow was the wrong direction. Coming right from where Prita’s house nestled at the far end of Wilson’s Bend.
Fire!
He almost slammed on the brakes, fear leaping up and clutching his chest so that he could barely gasp in a breath. Instead, he hit the accelerator, the rear of the ute fishtailing on the gravel that sided the road as he took the corner over the rise and drove straight into a scene from his greatest nightmares.
Her home was on fire.
Where was her car? Please, let her not be here. She couldn’t be here. If she was here, she would have called 000 and a fire truck would be on its way from Walhalla or the CFA would have been called in from Rawson. But there was no truck and no wail in the night of one on its way. She couldn’t be in there. She just couldn’t.
He had to check.
He almost dropped his phone, his hands slick with fear-sweat as he called 000 and drove past the blazing front of the house to make sure her car wasn’t there.
He came to a screech at the side, fear ratcheting up a notch when he saw her car.
‘Hello? What’s your emergency?’
‘I need a fire truck at 6 Main Road, Wilson’s Bend. Now. The doc’s surgery is on fire,’ he shouted as he leaped out of the truck and around the back of the house. The voice kept talking to him, asking him for more information, but he could hear nothing above the roar in his ears—fear or fire, he didn’t know. Didn’t care. He could see no sign of Prita, but the back door was wide open, smoke crawling out of the upper part of the doorway and escaping into the night sky. A hose pulled tight from the tap on the back porch to the right of the door, leading inside.
She was inside? Trying to put it out? Was she insane?
He managed to take one step forward, and almost slipped in something dark and sticky on the back porch. A dead animal lay there—a possum—its guts spilled out, the head almost cut clean off the body, but not quite. What the hell? First the bird and now this.
There was red writing on the door that was swinging open. ‘You’re next, bitch!’
No cat had done this.
Had Prita seen it? Of course she had. She couldn’t enter the house without seeing it. And she was inside the house.
Hell.
He took a step forward.
Smoke billowed in a puffed cloud out of the doorway, catching in his nose, his throat, his lungs and he stopped cold. Sweat poured down his face and his legs trembled, the animal part of his brain screaming at him to run, challenging the thinking part that told him he had to get inside to help Prita. She was in there. Fighting, by herself, a fire that was obviously already out of control. As stupidly brave as Anna.
Anna.
He bent over and vomited where he stood. Hands on his knees, he tried to steady himself, to gulp in a breath, but the smoke coming out of the back door was thicker now and he choked on the breath, his panic and fear ratcheting up another notch, images of his wife’s soot-smeared face ravaging him as they played behind his eyes.
He had to move, but he was so afraid if he did, it would be in the opposite direction. What kind of a person was he? ‘Fuck!’ He blinked madly, trying to clear the water out of his eyes, to ignore the stench of his own vomit. He was a coward. A weak coward. How the hell could he face his son after this?
Aaron! He couldn’t let his son know this about him. He managed to straighten, his muscles clenched tight against the
