He didn’t have an answer. He sat on, staring into the night, and finally Rob left him to his silence.
Leaving Jake alone with half a bottle of beer, a starlit sky and a silence so immense it was enough to take his breath away.
A faint rustle came from beside him. A wallaby was watching from the edge of the garden, moonlight glinting on its silvery fur.
‘Hi,’ Jake said, but the wallaby took fright and disappeared into the shadows. Leaving Jake alone again.
He should go inside. He had journals to study. He didn’t do…nothing.
But the stars were immense, and somewhere under them, alone up on the mountain, was Tori.
A woman with shadows?
She was nothing to do with him. So why did a faint, insistent murmur in his head tell him that she was?
CHAPTER THREE
HE ARRIVED at the farmhouse at nine the next morning and nobody answered the door.
He knocked three times. The same van he’d seen yesterday was in the driveway but there were no sounds coming from the house. There was no dog on the settee.
He tried the door and it opened, unlocked and undefended. ‘Hi, Tori,’ he called. ‘It’s Jake.’
Still no answer.
She’d been expecting him.
Should he come back later? He hesitated and then thought maybe she was in the surgery again, doing something that couldn’t be interrupted. He went through cautiously-and stopped at the open door.
Even from here he could tell the koala was dead. The little animal was facing him, curled on her side, still. The cage door was open.
He crossed to the cage and stooped, putting his hand on her fur to make sure. But yes, she was gone. Simply, he thought. There was no sign of distress. The IV lines Tori had attached yesterday had been removed but were lying neatly to the side, as if they’d been removed after death.
She looked as if she’d hardly moved since yesterday.