Death is Forever
vehicle behind them. As no side roads had come in, the other car must have come from Derby. He frowned, looked in the side-view mirror, and picked up the speed so subtly that the average driver wouldn’t notice and would gradually be left behind.
Scattered termite mounds began to appear, sometimes thickly, sometimes not. There was no obvious reason for difference between many and few. Most of the mounds were knee-high spikes that looked like the air roots of mangrove trees. The bigger mounds were six feet or more tall and wide at the base. The great dry blobs of reddish earth looked for all the world as though miniature castles had been built of rust-colored wax, only to have the punishing weight of tropical sunlight warp the wax until nothing remained but the slumped ruins of the original design.
The air simmered with heat and moisture. To the right and to the left of the Rover, the sky was a heat-misted blue. Directly behind was a distinct river of clouds of every color, from white to blue-black. As it moved, the river widened until it resembled a huge, barely opened fan laid across the empty sky. And still the clouds came on, churned out by an invisible source.
“There aren’t any mountains or storms, so where are the clouds coming from?” Erin asked finally.
“The Indian Ocean.”
Absently she plucked at the tank top that had become a damp, faithful shadow over her body from neck to waist.
Cole caught the motion from the corner of his eye and turned for a better look. She’d taken his advice and kept her clothes to a minimum. That minimum didn’t include a bra. The damp cotton top clung to the full curves of her breasts and peaked unmistakably over her nipples. The temptation to slide his fingers between cloth and skin was so sharp that he looked away.
More sensed than seen beneath the brilliant sunlight, lightning danced behind the Rover. No rumble of thunder followed.
“I thought this was the dry season,” she said after a time, looking over her shoulder.
“It is.”
“Then why is it raining?”
“It isn’t.”
She blew a wisp of hair out of her eyes with unnecessary force. “Not here.” She waved a hand over her shoulder. “Back there.”
“Just a tease. When the wet comes to stay, clouds and lightning go from horizon to horizon and the rain comes down like high-mountain thunder.”
“A tease.” She sighed and pulled at her damp, clinging tank top.
“Don’t do that. It’s too hot to think about what I’m thinking about.”
She gave him a sideways look and a remembering kind of smile.
“Quit distracting me and get familiar with the country,” he said, handing a map to her.
But he was smiling too.
She opened the map against the sixty-mile-an-hour wind coming through the open windows. Holding the paper across her knees, she matched the map with the landscape of sparse trees and thin grasslands that flashed by on either side.
Finding where they were on the map was easy. The Great Northern Highway was the superhighway of Western Australia, linking Darwin and Perth through almost five thousand kilometers of uninhabited land. The road was only one lane wide. It was better than the only other road that penetrated the interior of the vast western state.
Out beyond Derby the road divided. The Gibb River Road went north. The Great Northern Highway went east. Once that basic choice was made by a motorist, there was nowhere to go but forward or back. There weren’t any other through roads. The Gibb was also one lane wide, but that lane was dirt. It ran north, up onto the Kimberley Plateau, where it dead-ended. There was nothing but scattered stations and mineral claims from one end of the Gibb River Road to the other.
When the time came to make the choice, Cole turned onto the Gibb River Road. Dust began to boil up from the tires.
“I thought Abe’s station was closer to the Great Northern Highway,” Erin said.
“It is. But we’re tourists going to Windjana, remember?” What he didn’t add was that it was a lot easier to spot a tail on a dusty road than on a paved surface.
She went back to studying the map. Every thirty to fifty kilometers, the map showed spur roads taking off from or merging with the two highways.
“What are these dirt roads named?” she asked. “I haven’t seen any signs, and there aren’t any numbers on the map.”
“They don’t have names or numbers. Most of them dead-end out at some station or mine.”
A boil of dust ahead caught her
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