Fifty Fifty (Detective Harriet Blue #2)(20)

‘We don’t have time for the tough-guy games.’ I strode forwards. ‘Get in the car.’

‘Should I resist?’ He jutted his chin at me, grabbed a handful of his junk. ‘Would that be exciting for you?’

‘That’s it,’ I heard Kash mutter as he came up behind me. He pushed me aside and grabbed Zac, slamming the kid into the dirt.

‘Stop! Stop!’

Zac was squealing with terror, all his bravado gone. Kash had a knee in the kid’s back and both hands in his pockets, scooping and dumping detritus on the ground around us: cigarettes, joints, condoms, a pocketknife, scraps of paper. Kash got the boy’s phone and let Snale and I drag him off the wailing teen.

Zac rolled in the dirt. ‘Fuck you! Fuck you, po-lice piece of shit!’

‘Let’s have a look,’ Kash was saying, swiping through Zac’s phone. ‘Recent photos.’

‘Stop, Kash.’ I grabbed at him, just missed the phone. ‘This is an illegal search. Anything you find on there is going to be tainted.’

‘Says who?’ He held me back with a massive arm, worked the screen with the thumb of his other hand. ‘I see … naked teen girls. I see kids sucking on bongs. What’s this?’ Kash showed me the phone screen. I glimpsed a mess of wires and tools and glass jars on a sprawling, cluttered table. ‘Bomb-making in progress?’

‘ Give me the phone,’ I told Kash. ‘Or I’ll take it from you.’ He was trying to zoom in on the photographs, backing away from me. I gave Kash a few seconds to comply, then strode forward, lunged and grabbed the hand that held the phone. He was fast, catching my other wrist as I went for an open-handed slap to the side of his head. I dropped and hooked a leg around his, pulling him off balance. He let go of my wrist to save himself from hitting the dirt and I got my slap in, wrenching the phone from his fingers as he was distracted by the blow.

‘Oh shit!’ Zac was laughing, pointing at me. ‘Bitch has got some moves!’

I threw the phone at the boy, who only barely caught it against his chest. ‘Call me bitch one more time,’ I seethed, ‘I’ll shove that phone so far up your arse you’ll be able to Skype your spleen.’

Kash watched the teen run off into the bush. His face was slowly flushing with colour, one hand steadying himself against the ground.

‘That was a big mistake,’ he told me. ‘Assaulting a federal agent is a minimum two years’ prison.’

‘Conducting a search without a warrant is a serious service violation,’ I said. I was rolling up the sleeves of my shirt. ‘But neither of us is going to make a report.’

‘We’re not?’

‘No.’ I set my feet apart, cracked my knuckles. ‘We’re going to sort this out right here, right now.’





Chapter 27


‘OH, COME ON,’ Kash snorted, rising to his full height. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Harry.’ Snale put a hand on my arm. ‘This isn’t a good idea.’

‘Victoria, our special agent friend here thinks in very simple terms.’ I kept my eyes on Kash. ‘He’s not a complex man. He understands strength and weakness. Good and evil. Winning and losing. He needs to be shown that he isn’t the alpha dog here, and when he knows that he can fall the fuck into line.’

Already I could see Kash’s interest in my challenge piquing, the way it had the night before when I ragged on his workout. A smile was playing about the corners of his mouth.

‘I don’t hit women,’ Kash sneered. ‘So you can back down right now before you overexert yourself.’

‘You don’t have to hit me. You just have to pin me.’

‘And what exactly will that achieve?’ he asked.

‘Whoever gets their face pinned against the dirt loses all jurisdictional authority over this investigation.’

‘ Oh, bullshit,’ Kash snorted. ‘I’m SAS–combat trained, sweetheart.’

‘Then this should be over quickly.’

‘I’m not involved in this.’ Snale backed off towards the truck, her head down.

‘I need you as a witness!’ I called.

‘So, what? I pin you against the dirt, and I’m the boss.’ Kash’s eyes wandered over my body, measuring, underestimating, the way everybody did. ‘And you’ll fully accept that. It’s my investigation to run from start to finish.’

‘It’s got to be the face.’

‘Right,’ Kash said. ‘I put your face in the dirt and your arse is mine.’

‘You put my face in that dirt and I will trawl this town for Islamic terrorists until the cows come home.’ I put my hand on my heart. ‘I will speak operational jargon so pompous and ridiculously over-official that not even you will be able to understand me.’

He didn’t even ask me what I wanted him to do if I won. The possibility never entered his mind. He rushed towards me, huge hands out, ready to break me.





Chapter 28


KASH FAKED LEFT, swept to my right and gathered me up in a chokehold, his hairy arm wrenching me backwards. I let him take me, pushed off the ground and rolled over him, shocking him with how fast I had him on his back.

We both twisted, righted, kicking red sand. His glasses had been knocked off. He ignored them. My heart swelled with a sick kind of joy. I liked to fight. I’d been fighting since I was a kid. Trying to claw some corner of existence for myself in houses where I was the cuckoo invading the nest.