Free Wyatt - 06 - The Fallout by Garry Disher

for a while. Hed forgotten it. It used to roll
and flip in the sky above his house behind Shoreham. He watched it sideslip
against the cross-wind and touch down, skipping a little before it settled into
a fast run toward the hangars. It dwarfed the Cessnas and Pipers.

    At 4 oclock Wyatt and six other
passengers boarded a twin-prop, ten-seater commuter plane. During the ascent,
he watched the topography clarify into a school at a crossroads, a trucking
firm, a motel, a sunflash in the distance from the refinery at Westernport, the
wingless, snout-up DC3 in a corner of the airfield, then horse studs, wineries,
small holdings, roads and fences. The plane held a course southeast. This was a
part of the world that Wyatt had crossed and recrossed a thousand times, on
foot, in a car, in the air, often on the run from the law. He had staked life
and a degree of contentment on it, using the little farmhouse somewhere below
as his bolthole, slipping away from time to time to knock over a bank or a
payroll van. That life had failed him in the end. But he knew the place, it had
mapped itself in his brain and on his nerve endings.

    Inverloch and the Victorian coast
slipped by beneath him. King Island was ahead, and a separate flight to Hobart.
The water looked choppy.

    Wyatt allowed himself to think of
Liz Redding again, and of their voyage from Vanuatu in the stolen yacht. For
six days they had managed to forget who they were, but when the coastline of
Australia appeared, Wyatt had found himself planning the next stage, escaping
with the jewels. He hadnt known how to include Liz in his plans, so convinced
himself that she wasnt a factor.

    Liz had been more forthright.
Running with him was out, she didnt want to lose him, which left an impossible
alternative.

    Wyatt, shed said, let me bring
you in.

    Wyatt had shaken his head. Killings
and millions of plundered dollars marked the years of his existence and the
police of every state wanted a word with him.

    Out of the question, he said.

    There was distress in her voice. What
about us?

    Wyatt had been unable to say
anything. Hed stared at the sea, the rising chop on the surface of the water,
the seabirds sideslipping above the white caps. The clouds had been scudding.
There was plenty to be on guard against: the waves, iron shipping containers
floating just beneath the surface, waiting to rip a hole in the hull.

    And his feelings. Liz Redding was
combative, bright, generous. She made him feel wanted, even loved. The word
quivered there in his head, once hed admitted it. Wyatt thought of her
squirming naked energy, her wit and affection. But all that had become a
complication. Old habits of preservation had kicked in.

    Wyatt? Are you deaf? shed
demanded. Have you thought about us at all?

    Into the silence that followed,
Wyatt had muttered, All the time.

    He realised now, far above Bass
Strait, that he was unused to conversation, unused to the slipperiness of a
conversation like the one hed had with Liz Redding. His disposition was built
upon layers of secrecy and preservation, a lifetimes habit of believing that
no-one was dependable but himself. People found him resourceful and cautious, a
man with a dark, rapid mind, who took nothing on trust and who could be trusted
to place his safety before anything, but they always wanted more, a man with
ordinary doubts and scruples and impulses. What they got was a man who shut
himself down. They looked for the doors and windows in him but few ever found
them. Liz Redding had come close, in those seven days. He liked that, but it
scared him. Hed seen that a life with her might be possible. She was his way
out, if hed wanted that.

    But hed decided that he didnt want
it. As the storm rose in intensity, hed charted a course for Westernport Bay, a
place he knew better than his own face in the mirror. It wasnt imperative that
they dock in Westernport, but Wyatt hadnt told Liz Redding that. Old habits
were kicking in and he was going to betray