Soon to Be Released
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Coming Soon: "By The Horns"
Professional Bull Riding, fierce rivalries and revenge
Chapter 1
He’d lived on this patch for fifteen years, but this morning felt different. Something was wrong. He limped down to the dam, his boots squelching in the soft mud, eyes scanning the herd of Brahmans as they moved slowly and contentedly through the slick grass. But then he saw it.
Something half-buried near the edge of the water, pale and swollen. At first, he thought it was a tree root or perhaps a twisted branch. But no, his gut told him before his brain did.
It was an arm. Human. Decomposing.
He staggered back, his heart thudding, the image seared into his mind. His fingers fumbled for his phone. This wasn’t just a bad dream; someone was buried out here. The rain uncovered a secret the outback had tried to keep.
His hands trembled as he dialled the number for the police station in Winton, his heart pounding against his ribs as if it wanted to escape. Static crackled on the line before a disinterested voice responded, “Winton Police.”
“This is Rocky Barnes, Moray Downs. I’ve found…” He swallowed, glancing again at the bloated limb half-covered in soil. “There’s a body. Or part of one. By the dam.”
Silence on the other end. Then: “We’re sending someone now. Don’t touch anything.”
He hung up and stepped back, wiping a hand across his weathered face. Years of sun and dust had carved lines around his eyes and across his brow, but nothing had aged him like today. He had seen dead things before: cattle struck by lightning, the occasional roo tangled in barbed wire. He even found a bloke once who had rolled his ute out past Mt Isa. But this? This was different.
He gazed out across the paddocks, the rain now merely a fine mist clinging to the horizon. His land. His cattle. His peace. Someone had buried a body on his property. And whoever they were…they hadn’t anticipated the rain.