Chapter 19: Brisbane Docks

The captain unbolted the wine cellar himself, with two Coast Guard officers standing behind him.

Rhys came up the steel stair with his split lip, Abel's oilskin and the gray case still strapped against his ribs.

I was waiting at the top with Junie, and I didn't say anything.

He looked at me, and then he put his forehead against mine in front of eight strangers.

We stood like that until the cutter's engines slowed.

They took us into Brisbane under escort.

By the time the yacht came alongside the commercial wharf, word had gone ahead of it.

There were three hundred people on the dock.

Reporters, camera crews, police in vests, and behind a rope line a crowd of ordinary people holding up phones.

The Mayday had run on the morning news for two hours.

A second cutter had landed at Sorrel Island an hour before us.

Abel had stepped off it on his bad knee, with my empty flare gun stuck in his belt.

He had two prisoners in front of him and a great deal to say to the sergeant who met him.

I saw him at the foot of the gangway, grey beard and grim face, and I almost cried.

"Good lass," he said, as I hugged him. "You made enough noise."

Veda came down the gangway behind us.

She had put on lipstick.

She had a lawyer on her left, in a charcoal suit.

She wore a small, sad smile for the cameras.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the lawyer began, "Ms. Lorne is deeply concerned for her friend Mrs. Vandeleur."

He put a hand on his heart.

"She has suffered a severe trauma and is having a delusional episode. This morning's distress call was a symptom of it."

"It wasn't a delusion," Rhys said.

He stepped out in front of the microphones.

He was bruised, barefoot and unshaven, and no one on that dock had ever seen him look worse.

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