by Nalini Singh
Steve scratched at his belly. “Nah, don’t think so. Had her iPod that she wears strapped to her arm and her phone in that pocket thing built into the back of her tights.”
“Purple stars,” Matilda blurted out. “She put stickers of purple stars on the iPod, uses it with a set of black earbuds. And her shoes are black, too, with orange stripes.” She rubbed her forehead. “I got her a new shell for her phone. Black with specks of silver.”
Will returned his attention to Steve after noting down those distinctive details. “Did you look out to see where she went?”
“Nah, game was on. Couldn’t be bothered.”
Deciding he’d get nothing else useful from the man, Will turned his attention to Matilda and managed to get the exact model of Miriama’s phone as well as the number. “I need you to write down who you’ve called and what they said. I’m going to drive out to Tania’s and check the coastal road.” If he’d had other officers, he could’ve stationed one with Matilda, but he was alone—and finding Miriama if she was injured was a priority.
Leaving Matilda scrambling for a pen and paper, he headed out to his SUV but made two calls before he started the engine. The first was to Miriama. It got redirected immediately to the same message Matilda had heard, so either Miriama was in a dead zone, the phone battery was dead, or the phone had been destroyed.
His second call was to Nikau. “Nik, I need you to scramble the volunteer fire department and anyone else who can help in a search at night.” It could be he was acting too soon, but Will’s gut said otherwise. “Miriama didn’t make it home after a run, might be lying hurt somewhere.”
“Shit. I’ll get them together.”
“Gather everyone in front of the firehouse.” The relatively large building with a single aging appliance was an easy central location, and it had enough space that the volunteers could all gather inside for instructions if the weather turned. “I’ll be there after I chase down some information. I’ll call if I catch a scent.”
“You want me to rouse the bushmen?”
Will considered it. The generally unsociable folk who preferred to live deep in the wilderness that surrounded Golden Cove would be of invaluable help if Miriama had turned onto a forested track later on during her run. “Yes.” He’d get cursed out soundly should this be a false alarm, but Will was willing to live with that.
“Call everyone,” he said, and tried not to listen to the voice in the back of his head that whispered his response had nothing to do with Miriama, that he was attempting to fix a mistake seared in hot red flame.
The scars on his back felt suddenly stiff.
10
The porch light was on at the Meikle house, and when he got out of his vehicle, he heard loud music pouring through the upstairs windows. Probably courtesy of Tania Meikle’s teenage sister. Tania herself opened the front door to his knock. The twenty-four-year-old carried a blond toddler on her hip, lines of worry marking her face. “You haven’t found her?”
“No. Can you tell me what you saw?”
She tucked back a strand of pale brown hair. “Come in.”
Walking inside because he figured she might want to sit, he tried to avoid stepping on the colored children’s bricks scattered on the floor. “When’s Gary back?” Tania’s husband made his living on long-range fishing trawlers.
“A month. Can’t wait.” Tania tried to put her boy down, but he wailed at the idea and clung.
Snugging the red-faced toddler back to her hip, she rocked him out of the tears. “It wasn’t much, you know? Just normal. Miri running by on those long legs of hers. I called out to her and she waved.” A shaky smile that didn’t reach the faded blue of her eyes. “I was thinking of sitting out there for a bit and asking her in for a visit in case she returned the same way, but the baby was fussy, so I brought him inside to play and forgot all about keeping an eye out.”
The boy decided to wail again right then.
“Here, I’ll take him.” The voice was young and female. “He probably just wants to be walked around.”
“Thanks, hon.” Tania handed over the toddler to her teenage sister, a short girl with curly brown-blonde hair. “Alice, did you see Miriama today?” she asked as the teenager began to move around the room with her nephew in her arms.
“Yeah, when you yelled out to her.” A roll of the eyes. “Totally interrupted my call with Lisa, but whatever.”
“Were you upstairs in your room?” Will asked.
Making nonsensical noises at the baby, Alice nodded. “Yep.”
“You had a better view than your sister. Did you see where Miriama went?”
Alice scrunched up her nose, making the baby giggle. “Down the coastal way. I watched for a little bit because she’s pretty awesome to watch move. Like a dancer or something.” Flushing at that, she shrugged. “Then Lisa started telling me about the total loser she has a crush on and I got distracted.”
“Is it possible Miriama might’ve turned off the road onto one of the bush tracks?” What the locals casually called “the bush” was heavy old-growth forest, the interior dark green and difficult to navigate if you wandered off the rough dirt paths.
“Maybe, I guess,” Alice answered. “But she was going pretty straight.” A glance at Tania, youthful insouciance fading into shaky disquiet. “Tans? Did something happen to Miri?”
“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 wilder
ness 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 ocean 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 s
imply 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.