Wingnut

'I need to go to the house and get Kyle,' Jason said. 'I'm going to find you somewhere to hide before I do that. Don't move, okay? And if Quentin and Shelley show up, call the police.'

'Maybe I should call the police now,' Audrey suggested. 'It'll take them a long time to get out here.'

'What would you tell them?' Jason asked. 'We'd need them to believe that there was a threat, otherwise they'll just tell us they'll come around in a few hours.'

Audrey grimaced. 'You're right,' she admitted. 'It took them two hours to respond to my call about the break in next door. But I can try, can't I?'

'Sure. It won't hurt.'

'We're going to die, aren't we?'

'You won't. I might, but I'm really hoping for a miracle.'

They got out of the car and Jason took Audrey over to a small shed. He opened the door, told her to hide behind some empty drums, then shut the door and ran to the farmhouse. He needed to hurry. Who knew how long he had?

He hammered on the door of the farm, hoping against hope that it would be Kyle that answered and not his wife. His prayers were opened and within a minute the farmer was standing at the door in flannel pyjama pants and an old shirt.

'Is something wrong?' Kyle asked, standing in the weak, entryway light.

'Yeah, mate, there is,' he replied. 'Robbie's missing and I believe Quentin and Shelley are down the road and on their way here. I believe they planted a tracking device on one of the items of machinery I sold you, and now think I'm living here. I've got Audrey hiding in one of the sheds.'

'What's she doing here?'

'She showed up on my doorstep looking for Robbie.'

Kyle leant against the doorway. 'Fuck,' he swore. 'Am I being too optimistic if I assume you have some plan on how to deal with this?'

'I was hoping you had a high powered gun.'

'I have a twelve year old Browning rifle.'

'I take it that isn't going to go the distance?'

'It's probably not the best choice,' Kyle replied drily.

'How about you get it and load it, and I'll wait out front and try and meet Quentin as he arrives? You can cover me. Audrey's called the police so hopefully they'll be here soon.'

'The police?' Kyle laughed. 'The local station is only staffed during business hours. We'll be waiting for them to drive out from Toowoomba.'

'Forty-five minutes away?'

'Probably not for them. Let's assume it takes them thirty.'

'Christ,' Jason swore in despair.

His desolation only increased when he realised a car had turned into the farm. He and Kyle watched as it sped towards them, bringing their fate ever closer.

'Go inside,' Jason said. 'Leave the light on. If you turn it off, they'll know you're awake.'

'What are you going to do?'

'I'm going to try speaking to them,' Jason said. 'Mate... I'm so sorry. I never meant for them to come here.'

'What's done is done,' Kyle said. 'I'll go and get my rifle, but I'll try to avoid letting them know I'm here. I'll try and provide cover, but I've never been a good shot, so keep that in mind.'

Jason resigned himself to dying. He walked down the farmhouse veranda, reaching into his phone and quickly texting one last message to Mandy. Just as he pressed 'send' his phone started ringing. He could only presume it was Quentin, whose car was not just a few hundred metres away and quickly closing in on him.

'What is it?' he asked, answering the phone.

'Jason? Holy shit, mate, I'm so glad you're alive,' Robbie said. 'Quentin's looking for you. He came to my house a few hours ago, but I hid out until I was sure he was gone. You need to get in your car and go.'

'Too late. He's just arrived at the O'Sullivan's farm.' Wingnut glanced up. He was close enough to see Shelley was in the driver's seat, with Quentin, predictably, taking the passenger side. 'He's with Shelley. They've just parked oh, maybe ten metres in front of me.'

'Shelley?'

Jason didn't have time to answer. He hung up the phone and shoved it back in his pocket. He was shaking with fear as he picked his way over the gravel path towards the elderly Holden that the enforcer and hoe had arrived in. The panel van had obviously been dumped.

Wingnut held up his hands in a show of surrender.

'It's me,' he said, as Quentin got out of the car. 'Jason Hobbs. The man you're looking for. I'm unarmed.'

Quentin was also unarmed. Whether Shelley was or wasn't remained to be seen, but she remained in the car, with the ignition on and the car still in gear. Clearly the couple weren't planning on hanging around at the O'Sullivan farm.

Quentin pointed to his vehicle. 'Get in.'

Jason knew that if he did as ordered, he was done for. On the other hand, he was not at his house, but at Kyle's, and inside the farmhouse was Kyle's wife and kids. If he tried to put up a fight, he'd be dragging Kyle and his family into a potentially life-threatening situation.

He stood at the gateway of an enormous decision. A braver man would just have got in the car. Jason was not brave.

'No,' he said. 'I'm not getting in that car until Shelley gets out, and you both prove to me you don't have any weapons.'

'Don't make this difficult,' Quentin warned. 'There's a big difference between a quick death and a slow one. You'd be surprised how long fifteen minutes can feel.'

Jason quickly summed up the situation. Quentin was unarmed. Shelley was still in the car. If she had any sort of firearm, she'd need to get out of the car, aim and shoot. How long would that take? A minute or two? It wasn't much, but the farm was dark and he had the advantage of knowing this property almost inside out. Quentin didn't.

Wingnut began to run.

He didn't run towards the house, or to the shed where he'd hidden Audrey, but to the largest shed on the property, one that would be locked up tight, but would also provide him with a good barrier between him and the bikie.

Jason bitterly regretted wearing work boots. Sure, they were great for protecting his feet, but they weren't designed for sprinting. With each step he took, his toenails were crushed painfully against the steel caps. The combination of fear and physical exertion made his chest constrict, and the cold night air aggravated his throat, but he continued to run, knowing that when Quentin caught him he was going to beat him to death.

Quentin was undoubtedly stronger and more skilled in hand to hand combat, but Jason was lighter and quicker on his feet which gave him an immediate advantage. The back of the Queenslander was bathed in darkness and Jason easily slipped between sheds and machinery, careful to keep as much distance between himself and Quentin. It seemed like hours that they played cat and mouse, and yet it can't have been much more than five or ten minutes before Quentin stopped hunting for the elusive greenkeeper.

When the enforcer spoke, his words made Jason's blood freeze in his veins.

'I'm going to kill the people who live in that farmhouse,' Quentin announced. 'Sooner or later they're going to hear this commotion, wake up, and come out to find us. So I'll just nip that little problem in the bud first, then come back for you.'

Jason panicked. 'No!' he yelled. 'No, don't do that. I'll go with you.'

He walked out from behind the shed and towards Quentin. Quentin laughed, knowing he'd won and Jason wished he was big enough and strong enough to smash the cunt's pie face in. But his rage quickly turned into absolute terror as he realised he was about to die, and probably not very slowly or pleasantly at that.

This was it. This was how it ended. All because he dared ask a few questions. All because he was scared that his wife would come back from a four week trip to China to find her husband incarcerated. He was an idiot. A fool. He should have let the police arrest him. At least if he'd gone to jail he'd be alive.

Then, out of nowhere, two things happened. Firstly, someone – Audrey, fuck, Audrey - threw a Molotov cocktail. Jason knew what it was because one of his ex-colleagues had thrown one at the workplace after he'd got sacked for sexual harassment. The bright spark had done it at five thirty on a Wednesday morning and on a wet, rainy day no less. This night was cooler and drier, but the earlier rain had left the ground too wet to catch fire, so the petrol bomb didn't do much more than create a diversion and to temporarily light up the yard, but it was enough to entirely change the course of the evening.

The light provided by the Molotov cocktail wasn't much, but it allowed Kyle to see who was where, and to quickly set his sight on Quentin and fire a single shot. Jason didn't know much about guns, but he figured Kyle was about fifty metres away from the bikie, and it was obviously close enough for the bullet to connect and cause a bit of damage. Quentin clutched at his hip and screamed.

In the distance, Wingnut heard an engine start and a car make a swift manoeuvre. It was a Commodore engine. Jason recognised it in the way that people with an affinity to machinery often recognise such things, and he waited, panicked, for Shelley to drive into view, pull out a gun, and exacerbate the istuation.

That was not what happened. Instead of driving around to save Quentin's skin, it sounded as if she were driving away from the house.

Kyle, Jason and Quentin all stopped, shocked, as they realised Shelley was abandoning her lover.

'Stop her!' Quentin screamed. 'Stop her.'

From the veranda of the farmhouse, Kyle turned on a spotlight. It lit up the yard more clearly than the Molotov cocktail could ever have done, though the farmer was clearly still concerned about the remains of the fire, because he ran down the veranda stairs, yelling at Jason to get a hose.

Jason ran past Quentin, who was leaning against a shed, his jeans and shirt sodden with blood, and grabbed a hose. Wingnut turned on the tap, then yanked the hose from the reel and made his way to the remains of the fire. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kyle approach Quentin, rifle poised.

Jason quickly extinguished the fire and turned off the hose. He nearly jumped out of his skin as Audrey emerged from a shed, phone to her ear, talking to the police.

'Sorry,' Audrey apologised.

'I'm just jumpy,' Jason admitted.

The two of them walked to where Kyle had Quentin cornered.

'Please let me go,' Quentin begged. 'I was never going to kill anyone. I just needed to talk. This is all just a misunderstanding.'

'You've got to be fucking kidding if you think we're letting you go,' Jason snorted.

Fuck, did this complete flog actually think they were just going to let him walk off the farm? Did he really think they were stupid enough to believe he hadn't meant any harm?

'You don't understand,' Quentin implored. 'This isn't my fault. None of this is my fault. Please. Just let me go. I can't go to jail. I'll be killed.'

'I'm not sure Jason's going to be feeling much sympathy,' Kyle said, in what was clearly the understatement of the year.

Nope, Jason didn't feel sympathy. He felt disgusted. He wasn't brave, but he wasn't a whiny little shit like Quentin. No way would he have been begging and pleading and carrying on. As he mulled over what a wuss the enforcer actually was, the sound of a car approaching the house reached their ears.

'She's back,' Quentin said.

'Bullshit she is,' Jason snorted. 'That's a van, not your VP Commodore.'

'It's Robbie's van,' Audrey exclaimed, pulling her phone from her ear. 'I'd know that sound anywhere.'

Before Jason or Kyle could react, she raced around to the front of the house to greet her lover. That left the three men standing on the cold, frosted grass, with Quentin continuing to bleed.

'You want to check out his wound?' Kyle asked Jason.

'Nope. If he dies, he dies.'

Kyle shrugged. 'Fair enough.'

Quentin began to ramp up his pleas to be set free, which set Jason's mind free of any concerns that Robbie was somehow involved with the bikie, and that his arrival might hark danger.

Minutes later, Robbie and Audrey appeared. Robbie was stressed, tearing at his hair and asking Jason and Kyle if they were alright. His dark eyes darted towards Quentin but he didn't seem to care too much about the bikie, just about the greenkeeper and the farmer.

'We're fine,' Kyle assured him. 'How about you?'

'Fine, I'm fine,' Robbie replied anxiously. 'I'm so sorry. So sorry. This is all my fault.'

Kyle turned to Audrey. 'How far away are the police?'

'They're on their way,' she said. 'They're also sending an ambulance but the ambulance won't enter the property until the police are confident that situation is under control.'

'Well,' Kyle said sardonically, smirking at Quentin. 'You'd want to behave then, huh?'

'Please man, please, please let me go,' Quentin pleaded. 'I'll tell you everything. Everything.'

'Unless you're going to tell us what happened to Jock, nobody cares,' Jason said. 'And if you're going to tell us about Jock, you'd better tell us the truth.'

Quentin nodded. He glanced at Robbie.

'Tell them,' Robbie said. 'I can't keep living this lie any longer. I can't cope with the guilt.'

Quentin shuddered and clutched at his bullet wound. He peeled his shirt back to inspect it, and Jason saw automatically that the wound wouldn't be fatal. The bullet had struck the edge of his hip; it had only caught him by centimetres, but it would be painful. Jason remembered Kyle telling him he wasn't a good shot, but in Wingnut's eyes he was fantastic. How many men would be able to aim and fire – accurately – in a splitsecond?

Robbie, sensing that Quentin wasn't going to spill the beans unless he was guaranteed freedom, began to talk. He didn't look at Quentin as he spoke, nor Jason or Kyle. Instead, he looked sadly to his fiancé as he explained the series of events.

'I was sick of being broke,' Robbie confessed. 'I was so sick of working my arse off and getting stiffed at every turn. I just... I just had a breakdown. I thought 'I can't keep living like this'. I can't keep letting everyone screw me over. Jock was only one of my creditors. He was the biggest, but there were others; people I'd done work for, and who Tim had contacted to tell lies about me. Then there were the jerks who hired me knowing they couldn't pay me, and not caring, because they felt I'd wronged one of their community and I owed them all.

Jock had told me he was going to shoot me if I went around his house one more time. I believed him. I knew where he kept his gun. I thought I'd beat him to the punch. I'd bust open his door, fire a few rounds, and yell to him that I was there to get my money. I knew he'd never go to the police about it. He'd be too embarrassed. So on the Sunday night he disappeared, at around nine o'clock, I went around to his house.'

Robbie stared helplessly at his girlfriend. 'I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.'

'It's okay,' she whispered, shocked. 'You didn't... you didn't kill him, though, did you?'

Robbie shook his head. 'No, I didn't even end up following through with my plan. I parked outside his house, loaded my rifle and tried to work up the guts to go inside. I wanted the money. I needed the money. But...'

'...he was scared,' Quentin interjected.

'Yeah, I was,' Robbie agreed, refusing to bite. 'I also felt bad. Jock was an old man. I thought about going home when there was a tap on my window. It was Quentin.'

'What were you doing at Jock's house?' Jason asked the enforcer.

'I'd tracked Shelley to Luke's house next door,' Quentin explained. 'Shelley and I had had a deal; she'd take off to Queensland and she'd fit a tracking device to the car she was in so I'd be able to find her. We didn't want to use our phones as we knew the cops would be tracing them.'

'You and Shelley planned to run away together?' Jason exclaimed. 'I thought she was running away from you. I thought you must've been beating her or something, and when you were released on bail, she was scared you'd come and kill her.'

Quentin snorted. 'No. I never hit Shell. We were running because she stole money from my boss. The boss was happy for me to repay the money I owed, so long as I cut ties with Shelley, but... I loved her. I couldn't give her up. We agreed I'd skip bail, and we'd go to go to Queensland to start again.'

'How did you get to Luke's house?' Jason questioned.

'I had an associate in Sydney who owed me a favour. He drove me to Brisbane, then he organised for a friend who lived there to loan me a postie bike and a prepaid mobile phone. I tracked Shelley and drove out to meet her. I was going to put the postie bike in the back of the panel van, and from there we were supposed to go to Cunnamulla.'

Audrey frowned. 'And when you got to Luke's place, you saw Robbie in his van outside the neighbouring house?'

'Yep,' Quentin agreed. 'I saw his van as I was riding down the street to where Shelley's van was. I was immediately suspicious. I thought maybe there were cops, waiting to bust us. I didn't want Shelley getting mixed up in any trouble. I figured if I made myself known to the pigs, they'd arrest me and we'd go on our merry way. It wasn't as if the cops would have cared about Shelley. She hadn't done anything wrong in the eyes of the law.'

'He made me shit myself,' Robbie acknowledged, glancing at Quentin. 'I thought he was a cop. He asked me what I was doing, and I confessed everything. Quentin told me he was there because Jock owed him money, too, and I believed him. Why wouldn't I? Jock owed everyone money.

Quentin made me a deal. He'd take my rifle, carry out my plan, and we'd split any proceeds fifty-fifty. I told him the max I'd take was twenty-two hundred. That was what Jock owed me. I wasn't a thief; I just wanted the money I was owed.'

'I took the rifle,' Quentin agreed. 'I went to Jock's house. Fired two rounds into the ceiling. Yelled out that I wanted Robbie's money. That's when I heard Shelley call out 'is that you, Quentin?''

'Shelley was in Jock's house?' Kyle asked. 'What was she doing there?'

'Working,' Jason guessed. 'She went there for a job. Luke would have gone to bed early, because he would have had to get up early to prepare for the farmer's market. Shelley would have slipped out and gone to service the neighbour. Jock would have realised she was a whore. He probably pre-booked her at some point during the day.'

'Sex worker,' Quentin muttered quietly. 'Don't call her a whore.'

'Yeah, and I'm follicly challenged,' Jason retorted. 'Let's just call a spade a spade. She's a whore. I'm betting that's how you met her, isn't it? You bought a fuck, and she played you better than anyone else has ever dared to.'

The expression on the enforcer's face told everyone Jason was correct. Jason was secretly flabbergasted that even the tough guys weren't immune to being cunt-struck.

Luke had commented that Audrey wasn't very good at being a victim. Not good at being a convincing sexual assault victim, and certainly not good at hiding out in a shed without making a bloody petrol bomb and lobbing it at a bikie. Audrey wanted to be strong and independent and stand up for herself.

Shelley was different. Shelley knew how to play men. She knew how to be needy, throw a smile here and there, whimper, and blush. The hooker was older and wiser than her younger counterpart when it came to playing the game of life, so good that even Quentin hadn't been able to resist her charms.

'She wasn't working when Quentin went into Jock's house,' Robbie said. 'She'd already finished and had told Jock she'd see herself out.'

'And Jock the gentleman didn't insist on seeing her safely to her car, I take it?' Kyle inquired drily.

'No,' Robbie agreed. 'He just stayed in bed. That was exactly what Shelley had wanted him to do. She went to his kitchen and took the money from his tin and from his wallet. She'd seen the tin because he'd opened it and got the money out to pay her.'