Triskellion 3: The Gathering Read Online Free Page B

night before. Five hundred kilometres had been the most she had been able to manage and she had checked into the Nelson Hotel at nine, exhausted and in need of a drink. Laura always stayed at the Nelson when she passed through Kalgoorlie, partly because it was quiet and private, but mainly because she and Kate had made a pact that, should anything happen to them, this hotel was to be their emergency refuge. It would be a meeting point and somewhere they could lie low for a few days. Being a mining town, plenty of people came and went in Kalgoorlie, and it had a reputation for turning a blind eye to people’s indiscretions.
    It was a good place to hide.
    Laura now wished that she and Kate had told Rachel and Adam about their back-up plan, but they had always assumed that they would be with the kids if anything ever happened. Besides, they hadn’t wanted to burden the twins with the fear that they might be under any kind of threat.
    She had tried calling Kate again that morning to let her know where she was, but the tone had told her that the phone had been disconnected, and that had made her anxious.
    Laura revved the engine of the old Jeep and headed out on the road from Kalgoorlie. As she drove, she willed herself to see a pair of twins and an Aboriginal boy on the road, repeating the words “Rachel” and “Adam” over and over to herself, as if by speaking their names she might summon them into existence.
    She turned on to the Great Central Road that ran east towards Uluru, Australia’s best-known natural landmark. As a child, Laura had become obsessed by the isolated mountain. She had been fascinated by the way it stood alone in the desert, squarely in the middle of the continent. It was as if someone looking down from outer space had stuck a pin at the exact spot that marked out the centre of Australia.
    She still loved the mysterious way that the rock changed colour with the climate and the light. It could be silver-grey in the rain – streaked with black where algae grew in the damp crevasses. It could glow red at sunset, partly from the light and partly from the iron oxide particles rusting among the sandstone. At dawn it could appear violet as the early light caught the quartz that made up twenty-five per cent of its composition.
    But it was not just the unique structure of the giant rock that had captivated Laura’s imagination, or the fact that three-quarters of it was underground – iceberg-like – a piece of information which had made early geologists think it was a meteor. For Laura, it was more to do with the primal feeling she got every time she looked at the mountain. She could never suppress a flutter of excitement at its great age and the myths that surrounded it.
    The legend of the Anangu, the Aboriginals who traditionally owned the area, said that before the world was fully formed, two creator beings – brothers – had fought in the wet mud, creating the table-topped mountain. The Aboriginal belief was that the spirits of these warring brothers still inhabited Anangu land.
    Given her research credentials and the special relationship she had built up over many years with the local tribes, the Anangu had given Laura almost total freedom to continue her study of the monolith. She knew where the Dreamtime tracks ran. She knew the sacred areas that could not be photographed and she respected the traditions.
    And she knew the perfect spot to hide something very valuable.
    The most obvious place in Australia.

S ome time must have passed before Levi spoke again, because as he did so Rachel and Adam suddenly became aware of their surroundings again, as if awakened from a daydream. Looking behind them, they could see that they had already walked a very long way. It was like they had been mesmerized by the heat and the sunlight and the soporific buzzing of the insects.
    “How far have we walked?” Adam asked.
    “Why do you need to keep counting?” Levi laughed. “Let’s just say a fair