“I hope not.” Tania stroked her sister’s back. “I’m sorry we can’t help more,” she said to Will. “I’m so worried.”
Taking his leave of the two sisters after asking Tania a few more questions focusing on what she knew of Miriama’s favorite routes, Will drove slowly down the coastal road, scanning it on all sides as he went. He saw nothing and Miriama had been brightly dressed, would’ve stood out if she’d fallen—or even if a car had clipped her and she’d been thrown. But it was dark, no streetlights to penetrate the gloom. And if she’d headed down to the beach, then the only way to spot her would be on foot.
Jaw clenched, he turned around and made his way to the fire station, which someone had opened up. He was more than half hoping to arrive and find that the call-up of volunteers had unearthed Miriama—the news would’ve spread through the town like wildfire. If she’d been in anyone’s kitchen or living room, she should’ve turned up. But he arrived to find the volunteers milling around with anxious looks on their faces.
“No sign of her?” he asked Nikau.
The other man shook his head. “I had everyone do a bit of calling around before they came here. Nothing. Couldn’t get hold of Dominic de Souza—the message on his voice mail says he’s been called out to one of the more remote farms and to contact emergency services if there’s an urgent medical matter. He’s probably out of cell range.”
Will nodded. “From this point on, we assume Miriama is down and needs assistance.”
He and Nikau both knew there could be a far more unsavory reason for Miriama’s disappearance, but Will had to go with the most likely option first. Crime in Golden Cove was generally limited to domestic aggression, kids playing up, and a bit of petty thievery. Accidents, however, were more common, the rugged landscape intolerant of mistakes.
“Okay,” he said to the gathered group, “listen up.”
Waiting until they’d all turned to look at him and the murmuring had died down, he started with a detailed description of what Miriama had been wearing when she went missing. “Keep an eye out for any sign of her clothing, shoes, phone, or iPod. Report everything you find. We’ll make the call as to what’s relevant and what’s not.”
He saw a few people taking notes, but most would remember; like Will, they’d probably seen Miriama running in the same outfit multiple times. “I’m going to hand it over to Nikau to coordinate the search because he knows this area a hell of a lot better than I do.” Will ran with the other man nearly every day, but he’d still only explored a small part of the wilderness that surrounded Golden Cove. “Before I do that, however,” he said, “I want to make it clear you’re to take safety precautions—we can’t help Miriama if one of you gets injured as well.”
It was a point he had to drive home because many of the volunteers were hard-living types used to toughing it. “The more time we have to waste rescuing one of you,” he said, “the less time we have to help Miriama.” He got a few nods, knew that peer pressure would do the rest. They’d look out for one another, make sure people didn’t act stupid.
Nikau stepped forward. “What Will is too polite to say is don’t be fucking assholes.” His voice was harsh. “First up, we need someone to stay here and act as base command.”
A female voice sounded from the back. “That’ll be me.”
Will immediately recognized Matilda’s form moving through the crowd. “I’m too fat and slow to be any real help out there,” she said bluntly after thrusting a piece of paper into Will’s hand. “But I know how to run things like this. This isn’t the first time one of us has gotten into trouble.”
When Nikau didn’t dispute Matilda’s claim, Will realized once again that there was so much more he needed to know about Golden Cove. He’d never have thought that Matilda, gentle and with a tendency to fall for abusive men, had that kind of steel to her.
As he scanned down the written list of the people she’d called and what they’d said, Nikau parceled out the various areas, focusing the search in the direction Miriama had last been spotted. But, as there was a slight chance the young woman had decided to circle back and run on another route, he also sent a smaller number of volunteers in other directions. “Does everyone have flashlights and phones that will work through town?”
Nods all around.
“You’re dressed for the weather?” Nikau asked, and though it might have seemed like an obvious question, Will knew why the other man was asking it—the weather around here could change in a single roll of thunder. If a volunteer did manage to injure themselves and got stuck out there in the dark, the rest of them needed to know that person wouldn’t succumb to exposure.
That was also what was worrying him about Miriama; if she’d become disoriented as a result of an injury and wandered off into the landscape around them, she’d be vulnerable not only to any injuries she’d sustained, but also to the cold. She was only wearing running gear, had no jacket or anything else that might protect her from the elements.
He saw the same solemn realization on the faces of all those gathered around. It was quiet Vincent Baker, an unexpectedly decent guy for being born with a silver spoon in his mouth, who said, “We’ll be careful.” Expression drawn, he asked, “What should we do if we find her, and we’re out of cell range? Signal can be patchy when the clouds move in.”
“That’s why I’m sending you out in pairs,” Nikau said. “One of you stays with her, while the other one heads back until you either get a signal or you meet up with someone else who has a signal. At that point, pass on the message, then go back to your partner. I don’t want anyone out there alone for a long period. Is that understood?”
Everyone nodded; Nikau might have a bit of a reputation in town, but no one would argue against his deep knowledge of the land in and around Golden Cove.
“Let’s go,” he said into the silence. “You get tired, you come back. No matter what, we all meet back here at dawn. If you need to leave earlier, tell Matilda so we don’t waste time looking for you.”
Matilda spoke up. “I’m going to do a roll call. If your name’s not on this list, give it to me before you leave.”
The teams began to disperse three minutes later.
Nikau had assigned himself and his partner one of the toughest and most treacherous trails. He hadn’t assigned Will a search area—as they’d agreed on when Will first talked to him about how to handle such situations. Will needed to be open and available to respond to any possible sighting.
Nikau handed over a copy of the search assignments. “You going to see Ana?”
Will nodded. “If Miriama ran along the coastal route or went down to the beach, it’s possible she might’ve spotted her.”
Hands on his hips, Nikau nodded. “Look,” he said, “sorry about this morning. Not your fault you didn’t know.” With that, he jogged off to join his partner in the truck they’d drive to the entrance of their particular track.
Obviously, Nikau was assuming that Will must’ve done some research, figured out what it was that had set off Anahera and Nikau that morning.
He was right.
Getting into his SUV, Will turned in the direction of Anahera’s cabin just as Matilda came to stand at the entrance to the fire station, a strong woman who’d made some bad choices, but who knew how to love. Spotlit by the lights of the fire station behind her, she grew increasingly small in his rearview mirror as he drove away into the dark.
11
Flashlight beams cut through the pitch black on either side of the road, voices rising into the air as the searchers called out for Miriama. Will spotted several volunteers on the roadside itself, their task to check the ditches for evidence that Miriama might’ve been clipped by a car.
After that point, the world glowed red, lit by the taillights of the people who’d been assigned to the coastal area. All those Nikau had told to work the clifftop and the beach were either fishermen, ex-Navy, or people who lived along the coast. They respected the ocea
n while not being intimidated by it.
Will turned off to the left when he came to the graveled drive that led to Anahera’s home. The others continued on straight, but he knew they’d be stopping within thirty seconds. That was as far as you could go in a vehicle; after that, the volunteers would have to search on foot, careful not to get too close to the cliff edge unless they wanted to use one of the narrow paths to scramble down to the beach.
That, too, would be a dangerous trip, but all these people had done it several times at least, probably in the last month. Dark and untamed and merciless though it was, this was their home.
His headlights spotlighted Anahera halfway up the drive. She was carrying an unlit flashlight, her body clad in jeans, boots, and a heavy outdoor jacket. Stopping his vehicle, he got out. She was the one who spoke first. “What’s happened? I figured something must have when I heard all the activity on the road. And don’t say you told me so about the phone. I’ve already put in a request for a transfer.”
Will didn’t waste either of their time. “Miriama’s missing. Last seen going for a run, and probably heading in this direction. Did you see any sign of her?”
Skin going tight over the fine bones of her face, Anahera shook her head. “I spent most of the afternoon inside, cleaning out the place. What time would she have passed by?” When he told her the estimated period, she shook her head. “I went for a walk to clear my head around then. I must’ve just missed her.”
“Is it possible she might’ve run along the front of your property, along the cliffs?” It was technically private land, but no one in Golden Cove much bothered about things like that—the only people who seemed to were Daniel and Keira May with their mansion on the hill. Vincent Baker owned an equally large chunk of land, but he usually had no problem with hikers utilizing the walking trails that ran through his property.
“I noticed a strip of slow grass growth along the edge where I think people run,” Anahera said. “Let’s go have a look.”
She jumped into his vehicle for the short drive back to her cabin. Getting out afterward, flashlights in hand and the lights of his running vehicle illuminating the darkness, they began to examine the area around the cabin. While he could see the path Anahera had mentioned, there was too little grass to tell if it had been recently crushed. He and Anahera checked regardless, all the way along, until they got to the point where a steep climb snaked down to the beach.
Farther on was a more dangerous stretch of clifftop they simply could not search in the darkness. The risk was too high. He and Anahera ran their flashlight beams over the area as well as they could regardless, but the grass was taller and hardier there and the lights not enough to penetrate the blackness. “We have to wait for dawn.”
Anahera pressed her lips together but nodded.
Contacting the people who’d been assigned the first section of clifftop as part of their search radius, he told them that he and Anahera had checked it out and that they should focus on the rest of their assigned area.
“I’m going to go down to the beach,” Anahera said after he hung up. “Can you climb down?”
Will just nodded. Golden Cove natives tended to assume he was a city slicker who didn’t know his way around this land and he hadn’t done much to disabuse them of the belief. “You should go first,” he said. “I haven’t used this path before.”
“I didn’t need your permission,” Anahera responded, but the words held no heat. It was obvious her attention was on the search for Miriama. They made the climb down in silence, ending up on the farthest side of the beach search area.
Another fifty meters and the sand disappeared under a flow of water that turned into a whirlpool surrounded by rocks as black as obsidian and as jagged as broken glass. Everyone knew to keep their distance from the spot—there was simply no hope for anyone who fell into that water; they’d be smashed up against the rocks and sucked out to sea long before a witness could hope to summon help.
Growing up in the area as she had, Miriama would’ve been well aware of the danger, would have never run too close to it, or ventured near enough to the edge of the cliff to fall. Still, he and Anahera had to check. They swept their flashlight beams along the sand as they walked, looking for any sign of footprints. The tide was coming in, but it hadn’t crept far up the beach—yet all they saw was a smooth ripple of sand.
No sign of man, no sign of anything but nature’s fury.
Waves crashed in a black maelstrom only meters away, and then they were at the edge of the whirlpool, the white froth of it angry in the beam of their flashlights and the center a brutal black maw.
Turning in silence, they made their way back up the beach with just as much care, in the hope that they’d spot something, anything, that would lead to Miriama’s whereabouts.
“I almost hope we don’t find anything here,” Anahera said into the silence stretched taut as a wire. “This is probably the most dangerous stretch of the beach.”
“From comments she’s made before when we spoke about running routes,” Will said, “Miriama prefers the route along the other side of the cliffs.” Decades of runners had created a well-worn path through there, and it looked out over the part of the beach where locals most often lit bonfires or picnicked. No one swam in the water, not given its ferocity—even the extreme surfers stuck to the next beach over—but it was still a hauntingly beautiful area in which to linger away a day.
“Good.” Anahera didn’t say anything else for the next ten minutes, the two of them intent on the search. “She have a boyfriend?” she asked when she did speak.
“Yes, Dominic de Souza, the town doctor.” He told her what Nikau had shared about Dominic’s whereabouts. “It’s probably good he doesn’t know, especially if he’s on the road.” The last thing they needed was for the young doctor to crash his car because he was rushing to get home.
“I asked,” Anahera said, “because a lot of the men around here have resentments about how their lives have gone and they get drunk and take it out on the women.”
Will wondered what to say—she had to know he would’ve done a background search. But at the same time, what right did he have to bring up her mother’s death, or that it was Anahera who’d found Haeata Rawiri three days after her fatal fall?
“Let’s hope I don’t have to take the investigation in that direction,” he said at last, because if he had to ask those questions, it meant that either they hadn’t found Miriama… or they’d found her body.
12
Anahera walked down the beach with worry heavy in her gut and the taciturn cop by her side, the world quiet around them but for the pounding of the waves and, in the distance, the shouts of fellow searchers.
She and the cop called out, too, in the hope Miriama would answer. Maybe she’d fallen and broken her leg, or hit her head, and the shouts would rouse her. But they didn’t rely only on that, both of them scrambling up and around any rocks that might hide a body. They even checked near large pieces of driftwood, on the faint chance that Miriama had fallen on the beach and the sand had brushed itself across her, camouflaging her injured body.
But they’d found nothing by the time they met up with the searchers walking toward them from the other end of the beach. “Anything?” Anahera asked before realizing who it was that she was facing. The darkness, the way his face had filled out, his thick white beard, it had all served to obscure his identity until she was nearly within touching distance.
Deliberately breaking eye contact with her father, she fixed it on the grizzled man who stood beside him: Matthew, one of the old-timers who’d been around so long that he was part of the foundations of Golden Cove.
Eyes crinkled at the corners and heavy lines carved into skin she knew to be a dark mahogany after years out in the sun, Matthew shook his head. “No sign of her,” he said in that smoker’s voice she remembered. “But we haven’t got a signal down here, eh. Maybe one of the others found her.”
; Beside her, Anahera was aware of the cop taking out his phone and checking. He shook his head. “I have a signal and there’s no word so far.”
Everyone went silent.
“Reckon we should search the beach again,” Matthew said. “It’s bloody dark with the clouds so heavy, eh, maybe we missed something.”
“The tide’s coming in,” was the rumbling contribution from the man who’d once been a violent and drunken part of Anahera’s life.
The cop nodded. “Jason’s right. But we have time to take another look behind the rocks and anywhere else where Miriama might’ve fallen if she stumbled on the cliffs.”
Parting in silence, the two teams began their grim task. If Miriama had fallen from up on the cliffs, she’d be in bad shape, especially if she’d fallen onto the rocks. But, on the evidence of other accidents in the area, it was possible she’d survived the fall. They just had to find her in time.
Anahera clambered over rocks, almost slipped twice. The third time, strong hands gripped her at the waist and put her gently on the ground.
“Be careful,” the cop said, his voice mild.
Anahera narrowed her eyes. She wanted to snap at him even though she knew he had nothing to do with this. He was an outsider. How could he possibly know the secrets that tied together the residents of this town? How could he hope to understand the wounds the man they’d just seen had hammered into her with his big fists and cruel words? How could he divine the chill in her blood as her mind tugged at a faint, disturbing thread of memory that had nothing to do with her parents?
He couldn’t. She should cut him some slack. But he was the only one here, and she felt as if she’d explode if she didn’t release some of the tension building and building and building inside her. “I’ve been climbing and falling off these rocks since I was three years old,” she said. “I think I can handle myself.”
He ran the beam of his flashlight over a hollow between two boulders, then went down on his knees to check underneath. “Actually,” he said, “you’ve been away from Golden Cove for years. And you spent that time in a big city, so could be you should give yourself a little time to reacclimatize.” No anger in his tone, the words so even that he was either a psychopath who felt nothing—or he was a man who felt too much and was doing his damnedest to feel nothing.
A Madness of Sunshine Page 5