They walked on in silence and then words just came tumbling out of him.
‘My motel booking comes with parking. You could use that if you want. I’ll tuck the bike forward.’
‘Really?’ Gratitude flooded her pretty face. ‘That would be great, thank you.’
‘Come on.’
He followed her to the right, and walked back through Norseman’s quiet main streets. Neither of them spoke. When they reached her bus, she unlocked the side window and reached in to activate the folding front door. He waited while she crossed back around and then stepped up behind her into the cab.
Forbidden territory previously.
But she didn’t so much as twitch this time. Which was irrationally pleasing. Clearly he’d passed some kind of test. Maybe it was when the beard came off.
The Bedford rumbled to life and Eve circled the block before heading back to his motel. He directed her into his bay and then jumped out to nudge the KTM forward a little. The back of her bus stuck out of the bay but he was pretty sure there was only one other person in the entire motel and they were already parked up for the night.
‘Thanks again for this,’ she said, pausing at the back of the bus with one of the two big rear doors open.
Courtesy of the garish motel lights that streamed in her half-closed curtains, he could see the comfortable space he’d fallen asleep in bathed in a yellow glow. And beyond it, behind the door that now stood open at the other end of the bus, Eve’s bedroom. The opening was dominated by the foot of a large mattress draped in a burgundy quilt and weighed down with two big cushions.
Nothing like the sterile motel room and single country bed he’d be returning to.
‘Caravan parks can be a little isolated this time of year,’ she said, a bit tighter, as she caught the direction of his gaze. ‘I feel better being close to...people.’
He eased his shoulder against the closed half of the door and studied her. Had she changed her mind? Was that open door some kind of unconscious overture? And was he really considering taking her up on it if it was? Pretty, uptight girls on crusades didn’t really meet his definition of uncomplicated. Yet something deep inside hinted strongly that she might be worth a bit of complication.
He peered down on her in the shadows. ‘No problem.’
She shuffled from left foot to right. ‘Well...’night, then. See you in the morning. Thanks again.’
A reluctant smile crossed his face at the firm finality of that door slamming shut. And at the zipping across of curtains as he sauntered to the rear of the motel.
Now they were one-for-one in the inappropriate social reaction stakes. He’d gone all strong and silent on her and she’d gone all blushing virgin on him.
Equally awkward.
Equally regrettable.
He dug into his pocket for the worn old key and let himself into his ground floor room. Exactly as soulless and bland as her little bus wasn’t.
But exactly as soulless and bland as he preferred.
‘THIS BUS NEVER stops being versatile, does it?’
Eve’s breath caught deep in her throat at the slight twang and comfortable gravel in the voice that came from her left. The few days that had passed since she’d heard his bike rumble out of the motel car park at dawn as she’d rolled the covers more tightly around her and fell back to sleep gave him exactly the right amount of stubble as he let the beard grow back in.
‘Marshall?’ Her hand clamped down on the pile of fliers that lifted off the table in the brisk Esperance waterfront breeze. ‘I thought you’d headed north?’
‘I did. But a road train had jack-knifed across the highway just out of Kal and the spill clean-up was going to take twenty-four hours so I adjusted my route. I’ll do the south-west anti-clockwise. Like you.’
Was there just the slightest pause before ‘like you’? And did that mean anything? Apparently, she took too long wondering because he started up again.
‘I assumed I’d have missed you, actually.’
Or hoped? Impossible to know with his eyes hidden behind seriously dark sunglasses. Still, if he’d truly wanted to avoid her he could have just kept walking just now. She was so busy promoting The Missing to locals she never would have noticed him.
Eve pushed her shoulders back to improve her posture, which had slumped as the morning wore on. Convenient coincidence that it also made the best of her limited assets.
‘I had to do Salmon Gums and Gibson on the way,’ she said. ‘I only arrived last night.’
He took in the two-dozen posters affixed to the tilted up doors of the bus’s luggage compartment. It made a great roadside noticeboard to set her fold-out table up in front of.
He strolled up and back, studying every face closely.
‘Who are all these people?’
‘They’re all long-termers.’ The ten per cent.
‘Do you know them all?’
‘No,’ she murmured. ‘But I know most of their families. Online, at least.’
‘All missing.’ He frowned. ‘Doesn’t it pull focus from your brother? To do this?’
Yeah. It definitely did.
‘I wouldn’t be much of a human being if I travelled the entire country only looking after myself. Besides, we kind of have a reciprocal arrangement going. If someone’s doing something special—like media or some kind of promotion—they try to include as many others as they can. This is something I can do in the big centres while taking a break from the road.’
Though Esperance was hardly a metropolis and talking to strangers all day wasn’t much of a break.
He stopped just in front of her, picked up one of Travis’s posters. ‘Who’s “we”?’
‘The network.’
The sunglasses tipped more towards her.
‘The missing-persons network,’ she explained. ‘The families. There are a lot of us.’
‘You have a formal network?’
‘We have an informal one. We share information. Tips. Successes.’
Failures. Quite a lot of failures.
‘Good to have the support, I guess.’
He had no idea. Some days her commitment to a bunch of people she’d never met face to face was the only thing that got her out of bed.
‘When I first started up, I kept my focus on Trav. But these people—’ she tipped her head back towards all the faces on her poster display ‘—are like extended family to me because they’re the family of people I’m now close to. How could I not include them amongst The Missing?’
A woman stopped to pick up one of her fliers and Eve quickly delivered her spiel, smiling and making a lot of eye contact. Pumping it with energy. Whatever it took...
Marshall waited until the woman had finished perusing the whole display. ‘The Missing?’
She looked behind her. ‘Them.’
And her brother had the biggest and most central poster on it.
He nodded to a gap on the top right of the display. ‘Looks like one’s fallen off.’
‘I just took someone down.’
His