Conquer the Flames (Langs Down) (4 page)

“As long as she doesn’t walk up behind me, I’ll live with the mothering,” Thorne said.

B
Y
THE
time they broke for lunch, they had completed half the southern firebreak, and Thorne had spent the morning trying not to stare at Ian. When all the other jackaroos had stripped off their outer shirts, leaving them only in T-shirts, Ian had left his long-sleeved work shirt on.

“Aren’t you hot?” Thorne asked Ian as they all found a place to sit for lunch.

“Better hot than sunburned,” Ian replied with a shrug. He mopped at his skin with a kerchief he kept around his neck for that very purpose. “I have yet to find a sunblock that can keep me from turning the color of a lobster. It’s long sleeves and a hat or skin cancer.” Ian had a shock of red hair and very pale, freckled skin. Thorne could see how the sun was a serious problem.

“Why stay, then?” Thorne asked. “Why not go somewhere you could work inside?”

“Because Lang Downs is home,” Ian replied simply, and the smile that graced his face as he said it was the most beautiful thing Thorne had seen in years. “I’ve been here since I was twenty, and I’ll stay here until I can’t work any longer.”

“Is that typical?” Thorne asked, since he couldn’t ask the questions he really wanted to. “I had the impression sheep stations were more transient than that.”

“For the seasonal workers, it is,” Ian said, “but every station needs a skeleton crew that stays year-round, and Lang Downs has a very loyal one. Macklin has been here for more than thirty years, Kami for even longer than that. Neil, Kyle, and I all arrived about fifteen years ago. Jesse and Chris have been here for six years, and Sam and Jeremy for five.”

“And Caine?” Thorne asked. “He wasn’t born here.”

“Seven years,” Ian replied. “He came after his uncle died. Caine’s great-uncle founded the station in the 1940s and ran it until he died. It passed to Caine after that.”

Ian mopped at his neck again, and as he donned his hat, Thorne caught sight of a small cut oozing blood. “Did you cut yourself?”

Ian looked at his hand and then wiped it on his jeans. “A couple of days ago. I was working on a chair for Sam and Jeremy’s veranda and the chisel slipped. I must have knocked it while we were working today and not realized it with my gloves on.”

“You should wash it and put some Savlon on it,” Thorne said. “You don’t want it to get infected.”

“It’ll be fine until tonight,” Ian said.

“Emery!” Thorne called. “You got a first-aid kit with you?”

“Yeah, are you hurt?”

“Ian is.”

Neil came over and joined them with the first-aid kit in one hand. “What did you do to yourself, mate?”

“I nicked it in my shop a couple of days ago,” Ian said. “I must have knocked it on a shovel or something today. It’s fine, really.”

“Don’t be a drongo,” Neil said as he pulled out a bandage and antibiotic cream. “Give it here and let’s have a look.”

Ian rolled his eyes but held out his hand without further protest. Thorne grabbed it before Neil could, examining the cut carefully. “It looks shallow and clean. An alcohol swab to make sure and a bandage to keep it that way.”

Neil surrendered the first-aid kit. Thorne ignored the expression on his face. Whatever background Neil had, it didn’t compare to what Thorne had learned from the field medics over the years. He wiped the area clean and patched it up. “Be careful with it for a few days and it’ll be fine.”

“Mate, there’s no such thing on a station like this,” Ian said. “I don’t know what you think we do, but a cut like this is nothing. I don’t need to take it easy,” Ian said, “so back off.”

Thorne let the matter drop when Ian stalked off with Neil not far behind, but he resolved to keep an eye on the cut. The worst scar he had—and he had plenty—was from a minor injury that shouldn’t have been anything… until it got infected and nearly cost him his leg. Even the bullet wound to his shoulder hadn’t required as much recovery time as that infected scratch on his calf.

He ate his sandwich in silence until a kid came and flopped on the ground next to him. “Why are you eating by yourself?”

“Because I don’t know anyone,” he replied honestly. “They’re all friends. I’m just here to help with the firebreaks.”

“Caine always says strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet,” the kid said. With the braces and the short hair beneath the baseball cap, Thorne couldn’t decide if the kid was a boy or a girl, but either way, the openness of the statement took him aback. He didn’t think he’d ever been that at ease with himself, much less when he still had a mouthful of braces. “I’m Laura. What’s your name?”

“Thorne,” he said. “Do you live here on the station?”

“Yeah, my mom came a couple of years ago. I like it here. Everyone’s really nice.”

“You don’t miss having other kids around?”

“Nah,” Laura said. “Teenagers are a pain. I like hanging out with the jackaroos better. They don’t look down on me because I’m a girl who’d rather work outside than do girly things.”

“I can see how that would be frustrating.”

“So what’s your story?” she asked.

“My story?”

“Yeah, everyone who comes to Lang Downs has a story. Neil was a hothead who couldn’t keep a job anywhere else. Chris was bashed and Caine and Macklin took him in. Jeremy beat his brother up for being an arsehole and his brother kicked him off the station. So what’s your story?”

“I don’t have a story. The fire brigade captain sent me to help protect the station. That’s all,” Thorne insisted.

Laura looked at him like he was full of shit, but she was too kind to call him on it. “If you say so. Why do you keep staring at Ian?”

“I’m just checking on him,” Thorne said. “He has a cut on his hand, and I don’t want it to get worse.”

“Ian always has cuts on his hands,” Laura said. “He’s always making something in his workshop. He made the furniture on our veranda and now he’s making us a new coffee table for our living room. It’s going to be beautiful. He lets me watch sometimes.”

“That sounds really interesting,” Thorne said. He looked down at his hands. They bore their share of scars, but always from destruction, never from creation. He wondered what it would be like to create something out of nothing, to pour himself into something good for once rather than into death, even death for a cause.

“Hey, are you all right?” Laura asked, poking at his arm. Thorne didn’t think. He couldn’t. His body reacted without his brain’s permission, the grassy tablelands blurring until he was back in the jungles of East Timor, the pressure against his arm a machete, not a child’s finger. His hand shot out and encircled her wrist, twisting her arm until she cried out in pain.

The sound broke the trance and his vision cleared as he dropped her hand, horror filling him when he realized what he’d done.

“I’m sorry,” he said, scrambling to his feet. “I didn’t mean to….” Nausea rose up in his throat, and he stumbled away behind one of the tractors they were using to build the firebreak. He leaned against the huge tire and lost his lunch. That girl, that sweet, fresh-faced child, was no threat to him. She hadn’t deserved to be attacked that way.

“What the hell, Lachlan?” Neil demanded as he rounded the back of the tractor. He stopped when he saw Thorne bent over, but Thorne could sense him standing there still, waiting for an explanation. When he finally trusted his stomach not to betray him again, he straightened and faced the foreman.

“I was in the Commandos for twenty years,” he said. “I was trained to react instinctively to any threat without even having to think about it. I’ve been out for three months. That training hasn’t worn off. When Laura poked my arm, I had a flashback. I’m sorry. She didn’t deserve what I did. I’ll stay away from her.”

“What sets them off?”

“What?”

“You’re going to be here for a few more days, anyway,” Neil said. “You stopped this time, but if you don’t next time, someone could be seriously hurt. If we know what sets you off, we can avoid it.”

“Don’t walk up behind me and don’t touch me unexpectedly,” Thorne said. “As long as I see things coming, I can assess the threat and deal with it rationally. It’s the things I don’t see coming that set me off.”

“I’ll tell the others, but you owe Laura an explanation yourself.”

Thorne felt bile rise in his throat again at the thought of the sweet girl who had tried to befriend him only to fall victim to his instability. He would apologize and explain because Neil was right that she deserved to hear that from him, but then he would keep his distance. He wouldn’t put her at risk again. His time in East Timor had eliminated age as a mitigating factor in his automatic risk assessment. He’d faced too many child soldiers for Laura’s age to protect her now. He found a canteen and rinsed his mouth out and then went to find Laura.

His stomach rolled again when he saw she was sitting with Ian. They both tensed when he approached, but he stopped well outside touching distance, hoping to reduce the stress on them. “I… don’t do well with unexpected touches,” he said, knowing it was a lame excuse. “When you poked my arm, I had a flashback, and I reacted the way the military trained me to react to threats. That training saved my life more times than I can count, but you didn’t deserve it. I’ll stay away from you from now on. I don’t want you to feel unsafe in your own home.”

Laura looked at him with tear-stained cheeks, but her expression seemed less haunted than when he’d first approached. “What about expected touches?”

Thorne blinked a couple of times. “What?”

“If you know someone is going to touch you, do you still get flashbacks?”

“Not usually,” Thorne replied. “As long as there isn’t a threat, anyway.”

“So if I gave you a hug right now, you’d be okay with that?”

Thorne felt the world tilt on its axis. He’d attacked the child and now she wanted to hug him? “I guess so.”

“Laura, this isn’t a good idea,” Ian said. Thorne didn’t even bristle. He’d already proven how dangerous he could be.

“Look at him, Ian,” Laura said. “He’s more upset about this than I am. He didn’t mean to hurt me, just like I didn’t mean to startle him. It’ll be fine.”

Thorne stood perfectly still when she stood up and closed the distance between them. He kept every muscle under rigid control as she put her arms around his waist and rested her head against his chest for a moment and just squeezed. Awkwardly he patted her back a couple of times, not trusting himself to do more, but that seemed to be all she needed. She gave him a bright smile, released him, and bounded off, calling for one of the other jackaroos.

“You don’t deserve her forgiveness.” Ian’s glare cut Thorne as deeply as any knife.

“You think I don’t know that?” Thorne spat. “I’m a cold-blooded killer. That’s what the army trained me to be. And then three months ago, they dumped me back into civilian life. Why do you think I’m out here in the outback? Fewer people to hurt and more of a chance to protect someone, for once. I’ll never get all the blood off my hands, but maybe if I save a few lives now, it’ll erase some of the debt I owe the universe.”

He’d only eaten half his sandwich before Laura had triggered the flashback, but Thorne knew he wouldn’t be able to swallow the rest of it even if he tried. “I’m going back to work. Tell the others to join me when they’re done with lunch.”

Three

“
L
ACHLAN
has flashbacks,” Neil said without preamble when he next saw Caine and Macklin. “He says they’re triggered by someone coming up behind him or touching him expectedly. He attacked Laura.”

“Is she hurt?” Caine asked immediately.

“She’ll have a bruise on her wrist, but he stopped before it went beyond that,” Neil said. “He made himself sick when he realized what he’d done.”

“He was a soldier, wasn’t he?” Macklin asked.

“Twenty years with the Commandos, he said.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Caine said. “Maybe we can do something to help.”

“No,” Macklin interrupted. “I’ll talk to him.”

“I don’t need protecting,” Caine protested.

“And he doesn’t need smothering,” Macklin insisted. “He’s already feeling weak and vulnerable. If you go to him with all your kindness and sympathy, he’ll either break completely or lash out at everything and leave. Neither of those helps us. We need his experience with the fires, which means we need him here and functional. I’ll talk to him. You talk to Laura.”

Caine muttered some more, but Macklin ignored him. He grabbed his hat and pulled on his boots. “Bring me a plate of dinner if I don’t make it back to the canteen. I have to find the man before I can talk to him.”

Thorne wasn’t in the canteen or the bunkhouse, which didn’t surprise Macklin at all. The man’s ute was still with all the others, so he hadn’t left the station. Macklin took that as a good sign. The pack that had remained in the back of the ute was gone, though. Thorne had gone to ground to lick his wounds. Macklin turned his gaze away from the buildings, searching for a tent.

He found it after a moment, about a mile up the road that led out of the valley, off to the side, so it didn’t block the road, but close enough to hear any traffic. Whistling tunelessly but loudly enough to be heard prior to his approach, Macklin hiked up the road, making sure his boots crunched on the gravel. Any other time, he’d have walked in the grass on either side, but he wanted Thorne to hear him coming. He wanted to talk, not fight.