Amber by Deborah Challinor

Author:Deborah Challinor [Challinor, Deborah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781869507329
Google: 4zIWqD3RwvYC
Amazon: 1869507320
Goodreads: 2615664
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2007-01-07T13:00:00+00:00

Having rather tersely told Daniel to cool his heels and wait until he was given orders before he made a move of any sort, Rian led his crew through the handful of rough streets that made up Kororareka until they came to the last few cottages.

‘Spread out,’ he ordered. ‘It looks like she might have been heading for the hills.’ Where I said I would be, he thought angrily. This is my fault and if she’s been hurt I will never forgive myself.

It was Pierre who found the small piece of pale blue fabric caught on the fence rail.

‘Rian!’ he called. ‘She go this way!’

They drew together and stood scanning the hills above them, hoping to see a flash of blue or even the wave of a hand, but there was nothing.

They climbed through the scrub, calling out every few yards.

‘She would have been heading up and back slightly, wouldn’t she?’ Rian said, talking as much to himself as to Hawk. ‘I think she would have been looking for somewhere with a good view but out of sight. She knew what I was intending to do so she wouldn’t have gone too far into the bush. Would she?’

Hawk patted Rian’s arm as reassuringly as he could. ‘She is not a stupid woman, Rian. And she is not unfamiliar with this sort of terrain. She will have been careful.’

Rian wiped the sweat off his face with his sleeve then stood with his hands on his hips, his shoulders slumped and his head down. Hawk thought he had never seen a man look so dejected.

‘Christ almighty, Hawk, I don’t know what I’ll do if—’

‘We will find her,’ Hawk interrupted, then set off again.

At the summit of the hill they heard a loud explosion and paused briefly to look back down at the town. Polack’s Stockade seemed to have blown up; black smoke poured out of the house, partly obscuring the miniature figures scurrying madly around the conflagration.

‘Mon Dieu, that is where the ammunition be,’ Pierre muttered.

‘Lucky they got the women and kids out, so it is,’ Mick observed.

As they watched, the house next door caught alight, then the one next to that. Soon, all Kororareka would be aflame.

They spread out again and descended into the bush. Once they had entered the dense undergrowth Rian’s heart began to grow cold. If she had become lost in bush like this, she might have wandered for miles. His voice was becoming hoarse from calling Kitty’s name, and he knew the others were having the same problem because there was a lot of throat-clearing and spitting going on.

At the summit of the next hill they discovered that a track ran along the ridge and Hawk squatted to scrutinise the leaf litter and soil for footprints.

He straightened up. ‘There are tracks here, small. They could be hers.’

‘How fresh are they?’ Rian asked.

Hawk shrugged. ‘Four, five hours? These tracks of the horse are the same, but with some more recent.’

Rian frowned. ‘She was on horseback?’ He moved over to Hawk and stared at the ground.

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