September (3 page)

‘C’mon, Gabbi,’ I said, helping her up. We weren’t out of danger yet. I had to check our
surroundings
. I had to find out what had happened to my friends. And I knew that the criminals could still be in the area.

Gabbi stumbled and fell to her knees.

I bent over to pick her up and was met with a wet, teary face. ‘Cal, what’s wrong with me?’ she whimpered between sobs. ‘My legs feel like jelly and I still have no idea how we got here!’

I took her face between my hands. ‘You’ll just have to trust me for a minute,’ I said. ‘I’ll answer all your questions as best I can a little later, but right now we have to move. I have to check out some things. OK?’

She looked at me hopefully.

‘OK?’ I repeated. ‘You can trust me, can’t you?’

‘OK,’ she said, grabbing onto my arm to steady herself.

‘Hop on,’ I said, before pulling her up onto my back.

When we’d reached a high rocky outcrop, stopped and let Gabbi slide off my back. I sat her on the grass and told her to wait while I looked down at the Spindrift River Bridge, from a spot just a metre or so away.

The lights that lined the bridge below were flickering on and off, swinging in the wind. There were still no signs of Boges, Winter,
Sharkey
or the kidnappers. The bridge was empty. Not a car was in sight.

I knew the kidnappers could still be in the area, hunting me. The thought of them being out there, lurking somewhere in the dark, was
making
me really nervous.

I turned to Gabbi and lifted her onto my back again.

Just as she looped her arms around my neck, I heard the sound of someone stealthily
picking
their way through the scrub. Immediately I started creeping backwards.

In the dim moonlight, I could just make out
the figure coming our way, head down, moving towards us.

I spotted a boulder and quickly lowered Gabbi behind it. I signalled to her that she should stay still, and placed my finger over my lips, hushing her before she could ask any questions. ‘Don’t come out till I tell you it’s OK,’ I whispered.

I flattened myself against the front of the rock, peering ahead. I was a metre or so higher than the intruder, so I had the advantage.

Whoever it was must have been heading this way to make use of the higher ground too, intending to look around, survey the land, just the way I had. I needed to take action before they walked straight into us. No way was I going to risk losing Gabbi now!

I sunk down and my hand closed around a fist-sized rock. The figure approached,
broad-shouldered
, but not very tall. As the figure came within two metres of me, I dropped on top of him, crashing us both to the ground, the rock raised in my right hand ready to crack it down if I needed to.

‘What do you think you’re doing?! It’s me!’

I caught a whiff of the familiar perfume.

‘Winter?’

She rolled me over and stared down into my face. Some of her hair slipped out of the black
beanie she was wearing and onto my cheek. The beanie belonged to Boges. I didn’t know where the leather jacket she was wearing had come from.

I realised I was still clutching the rock in my hand. I let it fall.

‘I had no idea it was you. I saw the shape of the leather jacket and thought it was a guy. Maybe one of the kidnappers. I didn’t get a good look at either of them. Are you OK? Are Boges and Sharkey OK?’

‘I’m fine, they’re fine!’ she gushed. ‘Thank goodness you’re alive! Boges and I have been searching up and down the banks. We’d just about given up! We were going out of our minds!’

She fell on me again and hugged me tight. Her hair was damp on my neck.

‘This is Nelson’s,’ she explained as she sat back up, pulling at the collar of the leather jacket. ‘He had it in the back of his car. My clothes got soaked when I went in after you.’

‘You came in after me?’

‘I had to. Boges couldn’t leave Nelson. He’d been injured in the fight and was bleeding badly. I didn’t even think about it. I just dived in.’

‘You crazy girl,’ I said, amazed she was so brave, and secretly stoked that she’d dived into Spindrift River because of me. ‘You could have drowned.’

‘
You
could have drowned,’ she repeated back to me, with a suddenly solemn tone. ‘That river was impossible. It swept me along like I was a twig, and it was only good luck that I managed to grab onto some willow branches hanging over the river. You must remember that, Cal,’ she said very seriously. ‘The river was too strong for
anyone
. You couldn’t have saved Gabbi. Nobody could have.’

‘But, Winter—’ I began, before being
interrupted
.

‘Cal? Are you OK?’ Gabbi’s voice called out from the darkness.

Winter’s eyes opened wide. Surprise, joy and relief shone on her face, even though much of her was in shadow. Without words, her eyes seemed to ask me,
Is it really her?

I nodded.

‘I’m fine, Gab,’ I called back. ‘Just wait there for me, OK?’

‘OK,’ she agreed.

Winter leaned in close to me. ‘She’s alive?’ she whispered.

I nodded my head again and grinned. ‘She made it. I don’t know how she survived the fall, but she made it!’

‘And she’s awake!’ Winter cried.

Winter leaped up and pulled me off the ground
with surprising strength. She started dancing me around in circles.

‘Boges!’ she shouted into the sky. ‘I found him! He’s right here! With Gabbi! They’re both alive!’

My little sister crawled out of her hiding place and knelt there staring at the two of us, her eyes huge in her pale face, looking as if she was about to cry.

‘Who’s that?’ she whispered to me. ‘What is she talking about?’ she asked.

‘It’s OK, Gab. Winter’s here to help. She’s our friend,’ I said.

We sat around a warm campfire defrosting our fingers and toes, while our clothes steamed on tree branches near Nelson Sharkey’s car.
Boges
had returned my backpack so I was able to change into dry clothes.

Sharkey was recovering from his injuries. Boges had patched him up pretty well. They assured me the kidnappers were long gone. ‘What would they stick around for?’ Sharkey had said to me. ‘As far as they know there’s nothing left here for them to take.’

The pre-dawn chorus of birds trilled, fussed and squabbled around us in the trees.

Even though I’d had no sleep and felt totally
trashed, I wanted to sing with those birds. Gabbi was safe, Gabbi was with me. My friends were here, Boges and Winter. Winter had dived into the flooded Spindrift River to save me.

The leather jacket was now wrapped around Gabbi who was snuggled up to me, with Boges close on her other side. She was napping while Boges filled me in on what had happened after I leaped into the river, chasing after my
fast-vanishing
little sister. In front of us, the small fire glowed.

‘After you jumped, one of them was really getting stuck into Sharkey, while the other one—the one who threw Gabbi off the bridge—ran back to the car. Before I knew it, Winter had dived into the river, after
you
. That girl is nuts. Then I yelled out that a cop car was coming, and that made both of the kidnappers abandon the scene real fast.’

‘Leaving Boges free to help me out,’ said
Sharkey
, indicating a bandaged arm. ‘I think I nicked my radial artery in that struggle. The guy had a knife. It’s a long time since I’ve had to do any hand-to-hand combat,’ he admitted with a shrug. ‘I’m a little out of practice.’

‘We watched them drive away,’ Boges
continued
. ‘I think the kidnappers just wanted to get out of there really fast. They took what they
came for and had no need for your sister any more. They thought they’d rid themselves of you too, dude.’

‘Wishful thinking,’ I said.

Boges softly ruffled Gabbi’s drying hair—she was curled up in his lap.

‘How good is this?’ said Sharkey. ‘To have your sister back.’ From the way he was looking at me I could tell his words were about to take a more serious tone. ‘Enjoy it while you can, Cal. You know we’re not going to be able to stay here with her for long. We’re going to have to alert the authorities. She needs to be checked over by medical staff. And your mum and your uncle need to know she’s safe.’

I nodded, sadly.

‘She must be really tired,’ said Boges. ‘Poor thing.’

‘No, I’m not,’ came her muffled voice. She lifted her head. ‘I feel like I’ve been asleep for days.’ She rubbed her eyes and looked around at the four of us. ‘Who had a knife? How come I can’t stay with you?’ Her pale face scrunched up and I could see she was trying hard not to cry. She looked from Boges to me, and back to Boges again. She squinted hard at him and reached for the short, brown fuzz on top of his head. ‘Where did all your hair go?’

I knew when Gabbi was trying to be brave and right this minute she was doing it as hard as she could. I tightened my arm around her, trying to work out how to begin to explain everything to her.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Winter beckon to Sharkey and Boges, calling them away from us so we could have some quiet time together—just Gabbi and me. The three of them wandered off and stood in a circle a few metres away, chatting softly.

‘Tell me what you remember, Gab,’ I said. ‘Start with what happened tonight, if you can. What do you remember about being in the river?’

‘Well,’ she began, ‘I was in the water and it was freezing. I know it doesn’t make sense, but I don’t know how I got there—I was just suddenly … in the water.’

‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t need to make sense. Anything you say is OK.’

‘I thought I was dreaming that I was being carried out on a rip in Treachery Bay. I was so scared. I felt trapped in something. I didn’t know what was happening. Everything was mushy in my mind. But then I realised it was night and I wasn’t at a beach. And it wasn’t a dream—it was real. The water really was rushing me along!’

‘It’s OK, Gab, you’re safe now. Keep going.’

‘I was stuck in something, a sleeping-bag? I couldn’t breathe. Somehow I wriggled out of it and then I collided with this log that was sticking out over the water. After a few
seconds
of scrambling to get my head above water, I used the branches to pull myself up and onto the bank. I was really scared. It was dark and I was wet and I didn’t know where I was. I was crying out but no-one could hear me. I saw some lights in the distance, so I just started heading that way. I started walking back along the
riverbank
but it was really weird—I kept falling over like my legs had gone to sleep. They were shaky and tingly like I had pins and needles, but it wasn’t that. My legs just wouldn’t work properly. I kept stumbling and falling over like a little baby. But then one time I fell over and that’s when I found you!’

Gabbi had reached the limit of her bravery. I felt her small body heaving as she started crying, and I squeezed her tight.

She looked up again, her face streaked with tears. ‘I thought you were dead, Cal,’ she wailed. ‘You were just lying there. You were so cold. I was trying to wake you up but you wouldn’t answer me!’