Salt Debt

About this book

When an excavator lifts sand with bones in it, heritage officer Talia Kirwan applies to stop the works. The man who needs them to go on is Cormac Rossiter, whom her family fought for nine years. Then the excavator operator does not come home, and the stakes are no longer money.

He’s the man her family spent nine years fighting. He’s also the only one who can keep her alive.

Talia Kirwan came home to bury her father and stayed to finish his war. As cultural heritage officer for the Corrigan Heads Local Aboriginal Land Council, she documents everything in triplicate — because she watched a single missing survey report cost her father nine years of litigation and, three weeks after the ruling, his life. When an excavator lifts a bucket of sand with bones in it, Talia does what any heritage officer would do: she applies for the stop.

Cormac Rossiter has signed what his father began for fifteen years. The stop means six weeks of standstill, and six weeks of standstill means money he can’t explain to a man in Sydney who doesn’t forgive unusable amounts. He tells himself he never had a choice — and knows that a man who tells himself that is already lying. Then the excavator operator doesn’t come home, and Cormac starts protecting Talia before he admits he wants her. Rerouting a shipment. Erasing her name from a phone call. Talia notices. She hates that she notices.

Someone without her knowledge is not the same as someone on her side. And the record she keeps in triplicate may be the only thing standing between a headland full of bones and a town that would rather not remember.

Start the standoff tonight.