by Nalini Singh
Fear and shock could be faked, but Will was no first-year cadet. Dominic’s response had been pure, naked emotion. The other man was devastated. He also had no marks or scratches on his arms or face—and Miriama would’ve fought.
“I don’t know what to do,” Dominic said when he opened the clinic door to Will, the brown of his irises startling against the bloodshot whites of his eyes and his jaw dark with stubble. “Nikau says I shouldn’t be stumbling around out there, that I should sit here and think of anything Miri might’ve said that could help find her.”
Will nodded, aware Dominic wasn’t much of an outdoorsman, and with his head so screwed up right now, he’d be more liability than help. “Can we talk?”
“Yeah, sure.” Looking lost, the doctor led him inside into the examination room. Will took a seat in the patient chair, let Dominic sink into the doctor’s chair, in the hope the familiar surroundings would keep him calm.
The other man’s white shirt was wrinkled, his black pants the same. It might’ve been the same outfit he’d been wearing when Will stopped him on the road in the early morning darkness, but it was hard to tell—Dominic wore the same thing every day to work, almost like a uniform. “When was the last time you saw Miriama?”
“Lunch yesterday.” Dominic leaned forward to brace his forearms on his thighs, his skin holding a warm depth of color.
Evelyn Triskell had—unbidden—shared that Dominic’s father was Indian, his mother Māori from one of the smaller North Island iwi. It was difficult to tell which culture held sway in Dominic; he was oddly colorless in his personality for a man who came from two such old and rich cultures.
“I went to the café,” the doctor added, “and asked Josie if I could steal Miri for an hour. It wasn’t so busy—it isn’t this time of year—and Josie had just come in after having the morning off.”
Will let Dominic ramble; at least the man was coherent this time around.
“Anyway, Josie said yes, even said it didn’t matter if we were a little late back. She was kind of teasing us about not getting caught making out.” He managed a shaky smile. “I’d prepared us a picnic basket with sandwiches and those tiny quiche things from the supermarket deli that Miri likes”—a sudden, harsh sob before he regained control of himself—“and we went to the eastern beach outlook with the little seat.”
“Sounds like a nice date.”
Dominic pushed up his glasses. “I never want her to regret being with me. I always want her to feel like she’s the most wonderful thing in my life.”
“How was her mood?”
“Good. Happy. She liked the picnic and she ate three of the quiches.” Shoving his hands through the tangled black strands of his hair, he stared down at the hard-wearing beige carpet. “She was so happy, so bright. I kissed her and she was smiling and I felt like she was making me bright like her.”
Will took in the other man’s trembling frame and put a hand on his shoulder. “Dominic, you can’t panic,” he said, knowing he was asking the near impossible. “We don’t know anything yet.”
“Right.” It was a wet sound. “Right. I have to keep telling myself that.” Raising his head, he said, “I don’t know what else I can tell you. I’ve been wracking my brain trying to figure out something that might help.”
Will released Dominic’s shoulder. “How about her upcoming move to Wellington to study? Have you two discussed it?”
“Sure. We’ve worked it out so she’ll come home during the holidays, and I’ll fly up to see her some weekends. We know it’ll be hard, but we’re serious about making it work.” He swallowed. “I’m so proud of her for winning that internship.”
“Were there any hard feelings about that? I know Kyle Baker was also on the short list.” A bit of a town golden boy, Vincent’s younger brother had been the favorite going in.
Dominic’s face tightened. “That twat Kyle tried to make it seem like Miri got it because of her looks, but her talent outstrips his by a mile. And the judges were all outsiders—they weren’t biased in favor of Kyle just because everyone thinks he’s the great promise of this town, the shining star who can do no wrong.”
Will had seen that particular bias in action; he’d caught Kyle and another nineteen-year-old tagging a building, both with spray cans in hand. The townspeople had blamed the other boy for leading Kyle astray, asked Will to be lenient so Kyle wouldn’t end up with a record that might blight his future.
Will had given both young males a warning that there would be no second chance. Kyle had been remorseful, had even shut up his mate when the other boy went to mouth off. He definitely hadn’t come across as entitled or a brat, but that could simply mean he knew how to work people in authority. Or it could be that Dominic disliked him for giving Miriama such stiff competition. “Anyone else ever make Miriama uncomfortable?”
Dominic stared down at the carpet with unmoving focus. “You know how men look at her. I got used to that—had to if I wanted to be with her, you know?—but I think it bothers her sometimes. Nikau Martin stares at her all the fucking time.” A grimace. “He thinks he can get any woman he wants, but Miriama isn’t interested. She isn’t into anger or bitterness.”
Will’s mind flashed back to the other night in the pub and Nikau’s unhidden—some might say predatory—interest. Dominic was also right about the effect Miriama had on most of the men in this town. It was possible she’d drawn the attention of the wrong man without realizing it. And small as Golden Cove was, she probably knew that man and wouldn’t have felt any sense of danger if approached.
But there were other possibilities and he’d be a bad cop if he ignored them. No one had ever called him that, not even when his mistakes had led to two deaths. Will’s policework had been stellar; it was his understanding of human nature that had let him down. This time around, he’d dig down to the bone and tear apart shields until he knew every secret in this town.
18
“Have you two recently had a fight?”
Dominic’s head jerked up, shoulders knotting. “I’d never hurt her!”
“I’m not accusing you of anything,” Will said. “I’m wondering if Miriama is the kind of woman who might’ve taken off to teach you a lesson.”
Frown digging into his forehead, Dominic shook his head. “No,” he said. “That’s one of the things I love most about her—she’s straight-up honest.” He dropped his eyes to the carpet again, shoulders going limp. “I’ve never had to worry about lies with my Miri. If she’s mad at me, she just tells me to go take a hike. She’d never just run away and make me worry. And she wouldn’t make her aunt worry.”
Looking up, Dominic exhaled and the air came out in a tremor. “She’s tight with Josie at the café, too, and with Josie so close to her due date, Miri wouldn’t want to cause her any kind of stress. She’s even been talking about learning to knit so she can make socks for the baby.”
All of that meshed with what Will knew of Miriama. “Is there anything else you think I should know? It doesn’t matter if it’s a minor detail.”
“I’ve never felt so useless,” the doctor said softly. “My parents are so proud of me for being so educated, but what use are my degrees now? I know nothing about how to search for someone in the bush. Nik and the others, they’re out there looking for her and I’m sitting in here safe and warm and doing nothing to help.”
“You’re helping by speaking to me.” Will was worried about Dominic’s mental state. As far as he knew, Dominic de Souza had no other family in town. He’d only taken up the position as the town’s GP a year earlier, after the previous doctor retired. “I have one more question.”
Head still hanging low and his hair falling forward, the doctor took off his glasses and said, “What?” It was a soft, jagged, broken statement.
“How long have you and Miriama been going out?” Will tried to keep his tone bland, not wanting to trigger the other man
’s volatile emotions. “Was she going out with anyone else before you?”
“We had our three-month anniversary a week ago. I fell in love with her the first time I saw her, but it took me more than half a year to work up the guts to approach her—I mean, she was so young. I still can’t believe she’s only nineteen and a half now, she’s so strong, knows exactly what she wants.”
The other man put his glasses back on. “Six more months, I said to her at lunch. Then she’ll be twenty and I won’t feel like such a cradle-robber.” Shoving his hands through his hair again, he got up and began to pace around the room. “She said no the first two times I asked her out, but I decided to try again a few months ago. When she said yes, I thought I was dreaming.”
Stopping by his desk, he stared out the window. “I think she was going out with someone before me, but I don’t know who. I’m pretty sure it was a man outside the Cove—she used to disappear for whole weekends and come back all smiley. But they must’ve broken up . . . And she finally saw me.”
Will left the clinic soon afterward, stopping outside to make a call to Pastor Mark. “Dr. de Souza,” he said, “could do with someone sitting with him.”
As he’d expected, the elderly man was ready to help at once.
After making sure the pastor had a way to get to the clinic, Will drove to the fire station under a sky that had thickened with gray while he’d been with Dominic—what little sunlight that got through was weak. He found Matilda pouring mugs of hot coffee for the volunteers who’d come in for a break. One look at their faces and he knew the news wasn’t good.
Matilda gave him a trembling smile when he stopped by the coffee station. “They haven’t found anything,” she said, and the words were hopeful.
Will understood why she was happy, but he couldn’t agree with her. Especially not with rain forecast for this afternoon. If Miriama was lying hurt somewhere, the cold and wet could push her body dangerously close to fatal exposure.
Going to check the map someone had pinned to the wall next to the whiteboard, he ran his eyes over the areas marked with double Xs, meaning they’d been searched twice. “Has anyone gone out here?” He directed the question at an experienced hunter who lived outside of town, tapping his finger on an area that wasn’t anywhere near where Miriama had been seen, but that was a favorite hangout for the town’s younger people.
There was a faint possibility that Miriama had met up with a friend and headed that way for a short period, only for something to go wrong. Bad enough that her friend hadn’t reported it. He knew he was reaching, but they had to be sure.
The hunter looked at the spot Will had indicated, nodded. “Yeah, we should check it out. Might be she got drunk and is just sleeping it off there.” He said the words loud enough to reach Matilda, and Will realized the heavily bearded male was trying to comfort the woman.
But after the volunteers got back in their vehicles and headed out toward their target locations, Matilda shook her head. “Miriama wouldn’t do that. My girl doesn’t drink that way—I always used to worry she’d get bored and be drawn into the drugs and drinking, like so many of the kids in this town, but Miriama, she’s always had big dreams.”
Taking a seat, her hands tight around a mug of coffee, Matilda kept on talking. “Half the time as a child, she had her head in the clouds, dreaming of all the places she wanted to see in the world. She even kept a little notebook full of pictures she’d cut out of old magazines—the Eiffel Tower, the pyramids, Uluru . . .”
Matilda’s smile was fierce with belief, with hope. “I still have that notebook. I’m going to put it in her bag as a surprise when she leaves Golden Cove for the internship. My girl has so much talent—it’ll take her all over the world, to every one of those places in her little notebook.”
Will sat down on a hard plastic chair beside Matilda. “I need to ask you some questions.”
Wild eyes, a face going white under the brown of her skin.
“I don’t know anything,” he said at once. “But while Nik leads the search, I want to check other avenues. Just in case.”
Matilda shoved her untouched mug of coffee into Will’s hands. “I make good coffee.”
He took a sip to keep things as normal as he could before he began to speak. “Here’s the thing, Matilda,” he said quietly. “Miriama is a beautiful young woman, and while we like to think of our country as a safe place in comparison to the rest of the world, we have our predators.”
He’d been worried his plain speaking would further rattle Matilda, but she squared her shoulders and looked him straight in the eye. “You’re taking this seriously,” she said. “You’re not treating her like a stupid nineteen-year-old who couldn’t be bothered to tell her auntie she was taking off.”
“That’s not the girl I know.” Will maintained the eye contact. “I know she ran away as a child, but she had her reasons.”
Matilda’s hands fisted in her lap. “My fault,” she said. “But the sweet girl’s never blamed me for it. She’s always had such aroha in her heart.”
“How friendly would Miriama be toward a stranger?” he asked, staying away from the topic of locals for now. “I’ve seen Cove residents pick up hitchhikers without thinking twice about it. And most people around here are used to helping tourists—would she?”
Matilda nodded slowly. “A normal tourist who came into the café or maybe stopped her on the main street,” she said, “yes, Miriama would help.”
Will nodded and took another drink to show Matilda he was listening, that he was present. He’d had to ask, but he wasn’t truly concerned about the tourist angle; had any strangers been spotted in town, Will would’ve been told within an hour of Miriama’s disappearance. The locals liked the money the tourists brought in, but they also never forgot that these were outsiders.
Mrs. Keith would’ve definitely noticed an unfamiliar vehicle. But, to be safe, he’d also check with the bus that came through Golden Cove twice a day, in case they’d dropped off a passenger in town. He wasn’t expecting a positive answer. The bus stop was in the middle of town, right in front of the tourist center—a new face would’ve been noticed and welcomed, especially with everyone having been rumbling about how few tourists they’d had recently, with the weather so changeable.
“But,” Matilda continued, “I don’t think she would stop if an outsider pulled up next to her while she was running on the road, or if they flagged her down on the beach.” She rubbed at her wet cheeks, her tears silent and slow. “You know when those three hikers disappeared, one after the other, everyone thought they’d just been dumb, walked into the bush expecting it to be like some gentle afternoon walk.”
The latter was a continuing problem throughout the country—people saw the stunning landscape and wanted to explore it. What they didn’t understand was that the beauty had teeth—you had to be ready to handle sudden cold and rain and hail, tracks without guardrails, and isolated areas where you might be the only human being for miles in every direction.
“That was what, fifteen years ago?” Will, a wet-behind-the-ears probationary constable at the time, had been pulled into the search effort as a result of his climbing and hiking experience in the region.
He could clearly remember the television spots about irresponsible campers and trekkers leading to huge search-and-rescue costs; it had been one of those things that became a minor media sensation because the political parties had weighed in with opposing views.
Lost in the noise had been the failure of the search effort. “They never found the missing hikers, did they?”
“They were all women.” Matilda’s voice was raspy.
Will’s skin prickled, a ghost running her fingers across his nape.
19
“I never heard that it was considered anything but coincidence and bad decision-making.”
“The police never said it out loud,” Matilda replied. �
��Not in public anyway. But the man I was seeing at the time, he was a junior detective. Probably one of the few good men I’ve ever dated.” A pause that hung in the air.
Regret, Will realized, had a taste. Poignant and acrid.
“Anyway,” Matilda continued after a jerky inhale, “he let it slip that the cops weren’t sure it was all accidental. Three women walked into the bush off Golden Cove over a single summer and never came out. They got especially worried after the dogs and the searchers and the hunters never even found one body. Not then. Not since.”
If Matilda was right, the theory had been kept very quiet. Not one of his senior officers had ever mentioned the possibility of a human predator. Making a mental note to talk to the detectives involved, he said, “Did the investigators have a specific theory?”
Matilda nodded. “Maybe a serial rapist like they had up in Auckland around the same time, only he was killing the women after. But nothing else ever happened, no other woman ever disappeared the same way, and they figured it had just been an awful coincidence. I mean, it was high season for hikers back when it all happened, and we don’t really have those kinds of killers here.”
Will had always wondered if that was true, because it was equally possible that New Zealand did have serial killers, but that no bodies had ever been found. If you wanted to disappear bodies in a sparsely populated country covered in dense forests and jagged mountains, deep lakes and rivers fed by glacial melt, the landscape itself would be your coconspirator. “Did people in town wonder the same thing?”
“There were whispers,” Matilda confirmed, “especially after they found that one girl’s bracelet down on the beach where the kids used to go.”
Instinct stirred. “The rock cave on the other side of the whirlpool?”
A nod. “Poor babies never went back there. But after the police found no blood or anything, people started saying the girl must’ve stumbled disoriented out of the bush and got herself drowned.”