I scouted around outside, working out where Bob would come from, where the shadows would fall once the sun dropped behind the rocks and the cave mouth went dark. I dragged the duffel of cash up against the back wall and opened the zipper. There was nothing like bundles of cash to draw Bob’s eye. If he got past me, which he damn well wouldn’t, the money could be the distraction I needed.
I stretched lengths of fishing line between the trees outside and tied a couple of bottle tops on the ends. If anyone touched those lines, I’d hear the rattle in the cave before they came inside.
I set up a few traps, like I’d used to catch feral pigs.
Old tricks. Stockman tricks. Like the things my old man taught me when I was nine and we chased off a dingo pack from the calving paddock.
Some ideas I’d come up with myself over the years. Some I’d used on blokes Bob had asked me to sort out for him.
Now, I was going to use them to sort him out. I felt mighty fine about that.
With all that done, and my gut twisting as if it were playing with barbed wire, I moved to my fallback position deeper in the cave, just before the fissure that led to the back exit.
If Bob came at me from the front of the cave, I’d make damn sure I took him with me.
If everything went to plan, I’d fall back through the fissure, come out the back, circle round, and put a shotgun blast through his spine.
Either way, Bob was already sucking in his last breaths.
I sat down at the mouth of the cave with the shotgun across my knees and watched the sun drop behind the western ridge. The country went orange, then red, then that purple-orange the Outback got just before dark, then dark proper.
A bird I couldn’t see called once from the rocks above me.
A long way off, a dingo answered.
The land settled around me the way it always did at this hour, heat coming out of the rocks, cold creeping in behind it.
This place felt like the right place to die. I don’t know what I’d been thinking when I went to Willy’s place to end my days. That house was a shithole.
I’d been born on this land. I’ll die on it, same as every Branson before me, except for Willy, but he hadn’t counted.
I loved this place harder than I’d loved any woman. Harder than I’d loved any of my own sons, and no crooked cop was gonna take it from me.
I was halfway through the second-last bottle of Bundy when a thought hit me.
Hit me hard.
What if Bob walked in here and I missed, and he didn’t?
Bob would take the cash and leave me to rot right here.
Then, when the stink from those bodies at Willy’s house got the neighbors’ attention, Bob would be the cop who went to that scene first.
He’d find my notes in the Chivas box, and he’d burn the lot.
Nobody would know Bob was a lying, thieving, murdering bastard.
My sons would never know what I’d done to protect them. They’d just go on thinking Frank Branson had been a mean old bastard who’d gotten himself killed and good riddance.
Mitch would pour a beer.
Declan would go back to the books.
Kayden would saddle up Meteor and ride till he stopped all feeling.
And Bob would have it all—the coverups, the cash, the victory.
I sat there with the shotgun across my knees, the dark coming in fast and a cold that had nothing to do with the night settling deep into my bones.