by Nalini Singh
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.
Nikau had told her Will was a good guy after the cop left this morning. She’d also seen that for herself in his determined search for Miriama. Many outsiders would’ve shrugged and waited for morning to come, for Miriama to just turn up. Will had initiated a full-scale search. And at this instant, he was crawling his way under a bunch of rocks that formed a shallow cave, even as the sea waves inched closer.
She turned her flashlight beam on him, giving him as much light as possible.
“Nothing.” Getting to his feet, he dusted off the sand from his jacket and swung his own beam out toward the ocean. “We have to go up.”
Anahera wished she could argue with him, but he was right. Stay on the beach any longer and they risked being trapped. With the waves so violent, they probably wouldn’t survive to morning even if they managed to climb onto the highest rocks. “Follow me.” She led him to a path closer to their current position than the one by her cabin.
Despite what he’d said about her being away for years, some things didn’t change; these rocks had been here for untold decades before she was born and would probably be here for untold decades after her death. The path was exactly where she’d remembered it being.
Anahera took care as she began to climb—going up was actually easier than coming down with this path, but all it would take was one slip and she’d be falling. There wasn’t much to grab onto here, maybe a few grasses or jagged edges of mostly buried rock. She’d never thought about that as a child, had just assumed she was safe because her mother and father were watching.
At her weakest, she’d wished she could return to that carefree childhood when she hadn’t known the truth, when she hadn’t understood that her happy family was a mirage that would one day shimmer out of existence. Until she’d realized those years had been her mother’s prison and that going back would be to put Haeata behind bars again.
Hearing a scrape behind her, she paused and glanced back. “You okay, cop?”
When he ran his flashlight beam behind him, she realized he was standing on the path loo
king down at the beach. “I’m making sure no one else is still on the beach.”
Anahera hadn’t thought to do that—she just expected the locals to not be stupid. But she should’ve remembered that people were people and emotions were running high. Joining him, she looked out for any other sources of light, but all the ones she spotted were of searchers climbing back up from the beach. “I don’t see anything,” she said. “You?”
He turned off his flashlight, then did a second careful scan. “No,” he said, switching his flashlight back on before he turned cliffward again. “Let’s keep going. I need to get a report from Matilda, see what areas have already been covered and what hasn’t. The beach searchers can be reassigned.”
Anahera moved quickly up the path, aware of the cop keeping up with her, his breathing even and his stride steady. Not a total townie, she thought with a corner of her mind. He’d done some climbing at least.
After reaching the top, the two of them made their way to his police vehicle and got in. They saw several others driving back into town when they turned onto the road, and by the time they arrived at the fire station, at least fifteen others had reported in.
“No one’s had any news,” Matilda told them, her voice firm, her fear held back with a strong hand.
Behind her was a whiteboard on which someone had written out a detailed description of Miriama’s clothing, shoes, phone, and iPod. No mention of a watch or earrings and Anahera couldn’t remember if the girl’s ears had been pierced. But the other items were distinctive. Anahera took note.
“The ones doing the bush tracks are still out,” Matilda continued, “but we haven’t got anyone really searching the rest of the town. What if she got hit by a car or something like that?”
Anahera knew that was unlikely. Someone would’ve spotted Miriama if she’d been on or near a road, especially with search volunteers having come in from every corner of Golden Cove.
The cop didn’t crush Matilda’s hopes. “It won’t do any harm for a volunteer to drive through the streets Miriama might’ve cut through,” he said.
Vincent, who’d just returned and come to join them, put up his hand. “I can do it.” His blond hair—like gilt when in the sunlight—was wind tousled and messier than it ever was in the publicity stills used for the family charity or his business interests. “My car’s got those special high beams and they cut pretty well through the dark.”
“I’ll go with Vincent,” his search partner said, her face seamed with life but her gaze alert. “Better to have two sets of eyes than one.”
Anahera smiled tightly at Vincent as he moved past her, thinking that this wasn’t how she’d wanted to run into her former schoolmate again, but Vincent didn’t even seem to see her. Likely, he was already planning his route for maximum coverage. That was Vincent for you—he’d been the cleverest of them all. Always turned in the cleanest reports, had the most thoughtfully worked-out equations.
It was a wonder they’d all liked him as much as they had. But Vincent had a way about him—he was so quietly easygoing that he could fit into almost any environment and, as a friend, he was reliable. Back when they were eleven, before he was sent to boarding school, he’d once lent Anahera a copy of his completed math homework, after a night when she simply hadn’t been able to concentrate because her parents were screaming at each other.
She’d gone out to sit on the beach in an effort to find focus, but it turned out she’d brought the screaming with her, her head full of violence. In the end, she’d settled in a spot on the cliffs from where she could watch the waves come in and stayed there till dawn. Maybe Miriama’d had one of those days, too; maybe she was just sitting somewhere, waiting for dawn to come.
“Let me have a look at that list of search areas,” the cop said to Matilda. After scanning it, he began to hand out more assignments, covering little-used tracks and areas of the town that Nikau had marked as unassigned. “If I’ve given any of you an area you’re unfamiliar with, speak up now. It’s no good to Miriama if you’re stumbling around.”
Two groups spoke up, ended up swapping tasks.
“You’re the only person without a partner except for me,” he said to Anahera, then subtly angled his head in the direction of the doorway.
She went with him after catching the quick flick of his gaze toward where Matilda was speaking to another searcher. The cop wanted them out of earshot of the older woman. “What?” she said quietly once they’d moved.
“I have to make a call, then I’m going to check out that unofficial dumpsite outside of town. You happy to come along?”
Anahera’s stomach clenched, but she nodded. “I’m surprised the dump’s still there,” she said after the two of them were back in his SUV. “I know when I left, the town busybodies were up in arms about it for the millionth time.” As an adult, she could see their point; that particular area was an ugly blight on an otherwise striking landscape.
So, for that matter, was Nikau’s house, which they passed on the way out of town. What the hell was he up to?
“It pisses off his ex’s new husband,” the cop said quietly, even though she hadn’t spoken aloud. “The new husband owns four plots around Nik’s place that he’s trying to sell.”
Anahera went motionless; she’d have to be careful around this man. She’d left her past behind in London and didn’t intend for it to follow her here. That part of her life was done and would stay in the hole in which she’d buried it, the same hole that held Edward’s lifeless body.
13
“Nikau did always know how to hold a grudge.” Anahera had once accidentally kicked over his sandcastle when they were five or six. He hadn’t forgiven her for two months.
“As for the dump,” the cop added, “the business council hired a waste removal company to clean it up a few years back, but people apparently took that as an invitation to dump even more rubbish. Now the council’s trying to get in touch with the owner of the land with the aim of buying it so the town can do something with it that’ll stop the dumping for good.”
Anahera shook her head. “Affordability aside, the land’s too far out to be useful for any kind of a public building.” Some Golden Cove residents might live deep in the darkness of the trees, but all essential services were centralized. It was the only way such a small and remote settlement could work.
“There’s talk of establishing a greenhouse.” The cop drove through the night with an unsmiling concentration that told her he missed nothing. “Area already has a few small organic growers who are starting to do well, and they’ve indicated an interest in possibly helping to finance the purchase.”
The side of Anahera’s face burned, as if she’d taken a brutal backhand to the cheek. When had that happened? Organic produce from Golden Cove? But the reality was, she’d been away a long time. Time didn’t stand still even in the Cove. And Josie couldn’t tell her everything. “Are they locals?” she asked. “The organic growers?”
“One of them is—Susan Perdue.”
Anahera vaguely remembered Susan; born in a different generation, the other woman had already been a mother of two by the time Anahera left town. “Her kids must be teenagers by now.”
“Fourteen and sixteen.”
Spotting an unexpected light through the trees by the side of the road, Anahera leaned forward. “Isn’t that the old Baxter place?”
“Shane Hennessey’s father inherited it, but he wanted nothing to do with it. Shane’s got it now.”
“Right, I remember. Josie mentioned it when he first moved in.”
Instead of driving past, the cop turned into the driveway of what Anahera remembered as a ramshackle property surrounded by out-of-control grass.
“Shane doesn’t always answer his phone. Doesn’t like to be interrupted when he’s working.”
Though the cop’s voice held no judgment, Anahera detected what she thought was a not
e of cynicism underneath. Curious about the new owner, she stepped out of the vehicle after Will brought it to a stop. The old place had definitely been spruced up and was unexpectedly charming now, complete with white paint and leadlight windows instead of the broken and gaping holes of her childhood.
The house also featured a new porch stocked with a number of whitewashed rocking chairs. Nubile young women occupied two of those chairs.
“Oh, hello,” one said in a cheerful way. “Shane’s writing, so he can’t see you right now. But we’d be happy to visit.”
“Interrupt him,” the cop said in such a flat tone that the cheerful girl blanched. “This is important.”
The girls looked at one another at this departure from the script.
When neither made a move to enter the house, Will did so himself. Staying outside, Anahera took in the girls in their short shorts and flannel shirts. One was blonde and perky, the other dark eyed and sensuous with a stud in her eyebrow, but they both had the dewy-eyed look of creatures who hadn’t yet had the shine rubbed off them. Nineteen, twenty at the most. “You’re Shane’s students?”
The blonde nodded, while the dark-eyed one gave Anahera an assessing look—as if checking out the competition. That one was tough and far more likely to survive life than the blonde bunny. Unless, of course, the bunny was fortunate enough to find someone who wanted to preserve her wide-eyed naïveté.
“We’re so lucky.” The bunny actually pressed her hands together in delight. “Shane is one of the most well-known novelists in the world and we get to have a residence with him.” Joy sparking off every word. “My book’s taking shape in ways I could’ve never imagined.”
A thirty-something man followed Will out onto the porch before Anahera could respond. All messed-up black hair and stubble along his jaw, Shane Hennessey was the epitome of the suffering artist. He had soft full lips, flawless skin the color of cream, a height two or three inches under the cop’s, and a build that said there was muscle beneath his ragged jeans and black shirt—a shirt he wore with the sleeves shoved carelessly up to his elbows. Only it wasn’t careless. He was a man who knew he was good-looking and who took full advantage of it.