by Nalini Singh
Will had long ago stopped wearing regulation police wear to work this remote town, favoring work boots and jeans paired with a shirt, over which he currently wore a waterproof jacket. He had no trouble clambering down one of the paths from the cliff.
Kyle didn’t hear him until Will was nearly by his side. Jerking, he looked at Will with pale brown eyes identical to his brother’s, but unlike Vincent’s shining gold, Kyle’s hair was a light brown threaded with blond. “I think the ocean’s taken her,” he said in a calm voice. “It does that. Just takes people. She’ll never be found.”
“You seem very sure.”
Kyle smiled, as if Will had made a joke. “I didn’t do anything to her,” he said. “I didn’t need to. I knew she’d fuck up her own life sooner or later.”
So, Dominic de Souza had been right. Kyle Baker, it seemed, had more in common with Daniel May than his own brother—and he’d decided that it wasn’t worth turning on the charm for Will. No doubt because Will hadn’t let the graffiti incident just slide.
“You don’t have a positive opinion of Miriama’s intelligence?” he asked in the same even tone he’d used to date.
Kyle shrugged, his slightly overlong bangs sweeping across his forehead in a way that had the town’s teenage girls swooning. “Look, no offense to Matilda, but she likes to date losers. I guess they’re the only ones who’ll go for a used-up old chick like her, but whatever.” Another smile. “With that as an example, you really think Miriama was going to finish the placement and become a world-famous travel photographer like she wanted?”
Was. Wanted.
“You don’t believe people can rise above their circumstances?”
“You kidding? Look at Anahera Rawiri. Everyone thought she’d made it, was living it up in London, but she’s back with her tail between her legs, sleeping in the same crappy shed where her mother kicked the bucket.”
Anger licked Will’s spine. He suffocated it as fast as it had flared, depriving it of the oxygen it needed to grow. He’d almost beaten a man to death the last time he’d given in to the red haze of anger.
Will still didn’t know if he’d done the right thing in allowing that monstrous bastard to live, but he couldn’t go around killing every asshole he met—the world, unfortunately, was full of them. “How exactly did you think Miriama would mess up her life?”
“Hook up with some loser who beat her, get pregnant, and live in this town until she died.” Kyle’s smile never faded. “Looks like she proved me wrong by drowning while still a success.”
“Let’s talk about that success.” The wind whipped at Will’s hair. “You both applied for the internship, but she won it.”
No flicker in the smile, but Kyle’s voice turned ice-cold. “The board that decided it fell for her tits and ass.”
“Must’ve pissed you off.” Money was one thing, but being invited into an industry fraternity quite another—Kyle couldn’t buy his way into the environment that had warmly embraced Miriama. “Seeing someone like Miriama be welcomed by people you view as your peers.”
“I knew I’d get there,” Kyle said. “I have the drive and the staying power.” Another smile, this one lighting up his eyes. “I also know how to make people want to be around me.” It was like watching a switch being turned on. Kyle was suddenly the town’s golden boy again, all politeness and down-to-earth personality. “Even you’d like me if I wanted you to like me.”
It was too bad you couldn’t arrest people for being psychopaths. Because many psychopaths ended up never committing a single crime, instead becoming successes in fields that rewarded a lack of empathy. Maybe Kyle would head in that direction.
And maybe he’d already killed.
“Did Miriama like you?” He deliberately used the past tense to feed into Kyle’s mentality.
Kyle sneered, switching off the charisma as easily as he’d switched it on. “I didn’t need to lower myself to a piece of trash. I’ve got much better meat gagging for it.”
He was pushing it now, Will thought, using deliberately crude language in an effort to provoke Will. Why? What would that get him? Was it possible the nineteen-year-old wanted a reason to complain to Will’s superiors?
Given Will’s history, such a complaint could lead to his suspension or removal.
And without Will here to keep it active, Miriama’s case would slowly slip off official radar, just another woman who’d taken off for a more adventurous life. It wouldn’t be malicious and it wasn’t that his fellow cops were bad at their jobs, but they didn’t know Miriama, hadn’t seen the light in her expression when she spoke of her upcoming internship.
The last time Will talked to her had been when she’d brought him a piece of carrot cake, which felt like a lifetime ago. He’d told her she’d make him fat. She’d laughingly said it wasn’t a possibility, not with all the “long, angry walks” he took on the beach. “We have to make sure you don’t waste away, even if you are a cop.”
He hadn’t known until then that anyone had spotted him striding down the beach during the early morning hours before true dawn. She’d probably seen him from along the clifftop running route, a long-legged young woman who dreamed big and who was well on the way to achieving those dreams despite a bleak start in life.
“Anything else you want to tell me?” he asked the young psychopath in front of him.
“Just to stop wasting your time. It’s not like you have the budget.”
“Thank you for the advice,” Will said with deliberate mildness.
Kyle’s face tightened a fraction before he turned to stare back out at the water.
“By the way, Kyle.” He waited until Vincent’s brother turned toward him before he finished what he had to say. “Perhaps you should talk to Anahera about her failures.”
Walking away before Kyle could ask him any questions on the topic, Will allowed himself a faint smile. It faded in the next wave of wind, the sand gritty in his teeth . . . and the ghost of a three-year-old boy whispering in his ear.
22
The rain began to pound down around four that afternoon. It still took an hour for everyone to return to the fire station, the toughest of the tough staying out till the last possible moment. Despite having been gone for eight years, Anahera recognized pretty much everyone from before she left.
The only exceptions were three outsiders who’d moved in during her time away. Strangely enough for a self-absorbed and pretentious ass, Shane Hennessey had joined in the search, pairing up with a local who knew the area like the back of his hand. The soulful, moody-eyed novelist straight out of a gothic drama was drenched to the skin when he came in.
Anahera passed him a mug of hot coffee, having become Matilda’s assistant in the task. The other woman had rallied and was once again making coffee and ensuring everyone logged their searches on the map Nikau had put up.
“Thank you,” Shane said with a smile, Ireland rolling through his words so thickly that Anahera could almost see the velvet green hills. “It’s pissing down, isn’t it? But that’s the rage of the wild for you.”
“You don’t strike me as the outdoors type.”
“I grew up walking over some green hills of me own.”
If he laid on the Irish any thicker, she’d be drowning in shamrocks. But Anahera played along. “Do you know Miriama?”
His smile deepened to reveal dimples in both cheeks. “I’m guessing you mean in the biblical sense.” Dancing eyes. “She’s too clever for me, alas. Not that I didn’t try to rob that particular cradle.”
Amused despite herself, Anahera was about to tell him to grab a towel when Shane shoved back his dripping hair again and said, “She knows what and who she wants, does Miri. And it isn’t a washed-out novelist drinking himself to a slow death on some excellent whiskey.”
“The doctor, you mean?”
Shane lifted one shoulder in a move t
hat could mean anything. “Doc’s only been around for a year. Pretty girl like that, I don’t think she was sleeping alone before he came along.”
“Shane!”
Looking up at the sound of his name, Shane said, “I’ll be off, then. Seems you’re too smart for me, too.”
“Wait.” Anahera put a hand on the rain-soaked sleeve of his jacket. “Do you know who she was dating before the doctor?”
“No, but she had a watch with a platinum band that she started wearing a couple of months after she turned eighteen.” He absently tapped his wrist. “Most people took it for a pretty fake with colored stones, but I was born in the ‘right circles,’ as my sainted mother used to say—that watch is real and those stones are pink and blue diamonds.”
As Shane went to join the group that had hailed him, Anahera thought about what might lead a man to give a woman such an expensive gift . . . and was hit by the memory of the diamond pendant Edward had given his mistress two months before he simply dropped in the street and never again moved.
The insurance documents for the pendant had been in his desk drawer, a drawer she’d had to empty after his death. He’d also bought the other woman a car around the same time, and begun to pay the rental on her home. The mistress had said it had all been done out of love. Maybe it had been, but Anahera wasn’t so sure it was for his mistress that Edward’s heart had beat.
Miriama, though . . . she was as bright as a star. A shining creature who could make a man fall so deep that he’d lay treasures at her feet.
“The watch?” Matilda frowned when Anahera asked after the item of jewelry Shane had mentioned. “Yes, I remember it. She told me she picked it up at a market, but I knew it was a gift from that man she dated before settling with Dr. de Souza, the one she used to go to Christchurch to see.”
“Does Miriama still have it?” It should be simple enough to confirm if Shane was right about its value.
“I haven’t seen her wearing it lately.” Matilda poured another mug of strong black coffee. “But I don’t think she would’ve got rid of it. She loves that pretty thing, used to wear it all the time before she and the doctor became a couple.”
Not wearing one lover’s gift while with another? It was a sensitive thing to do. “Do you think you could look for it for me?” Anahera asked. “I want to show it to the cop, in case it helps him track down the Christchurch man.”
Matilda’s jaw firmed. “My girl wouldn’t just have gone off with him and left me to worry.” The words were censorious. “But I’ll look for you, Ana. You make sure you give it back for when Miriama’s home again.”
“I will.” Anahera picked up the fresh tray of coffees, drifted back into the crowd to make sure everyone had a mug. And she listened as she’d told Will she’d do.
Most people were despondent.
“I even went off-track,” one of the gray-bearded locals was saying. “Did the parts I knew you buggers might not be able to. Didn’t find no sign of her.”
Kyle Baker, his hair wet, murmured, “Do you think the water took her?” He directed the soft, worried question at Nikau.
Anahera was surprised. Not by the question—everyone was wondering if the sea had taken Miriama, if she’d slipped and fallen in the wrong place and been swept out without a trace. No, what surprised her was Kyle’s deferential tone.
Last time she’d seen Kyle Baker, he’d been a boy of eleven, but he’d been a boy well aware of his “station in life,” as one of Edward’s more pompous friends had used to say. A private-school boarder during the week, he’d come home to Golden Cove for the weekends. Where he’d made sure the local children knew he had the best of everything—the best music player, the best shoes, the best education.
Anahera had thought him an obnoxious prat.
From what she could recall, Nikau had shared her opinion. Today, however, he gave the younger male a tight smile. “Miriama’s too respectful of the ocean to get so close to the water.”
“Yeah, yeah, she is,” Kyle said, his relief open.
Eight years was a long time. Maybe Kyle had grown out of his prat nature.
“What about those hikers from back when we were kids?” Tom said, his beard glittering with droplets of rainwater and his callused fingers closing gratefully over the last mug on Anahera’s tray. “Josie was saying last night how it was strange, so many women going missing in the bush near here.”
“I’ve heard the stories,” Kyle said. “It was three women, right?”
Nikau nodded. “Pretty young women.” Unspoken were the words “just like Miriama.”
After drinking down half the mug of coffee, Tom said, “We should tell the cop.”
“I’m pretty sure Will already knows.” Dark clouds rumbled across Nikau’s face. “You realize what it would mean if Miriama’s disappearance is connected to the missing women?”
Puzzled expressions all around.
Anahera, unblinded by fresh bonds and able to look at things as an insider who’d turned outsider for a while, said, “It would have to be one of us. A stranger who came back fifteen years apart would’ve been noticed—and there are no strangers in town.”
Tom, Kyle—everyone but Nik—all stared at her before Tom swore under his breath.
“This has nothing to do with those lost hikers.” Vincent’s voice. He’d come to stand beside his taller younger brother. “Golden Cove has its problems, but a serial murderer?” A hard shake of his head. “Even the police back then said it was just bad luck and coincidence.” His tone was calm, practical. “We’re not kids making up scary stories now, and Miriama is alive, probably hurt. I, for one, am going to keep looking.”
Several heads nodded at his firm statement, but Anahera caught the bitter truth in too many eyes—most people thought Miriama was gone, never to be found.
As she began to move on, Kyle stepped out of the group and toward her. “It feels weird to say this now”—an uncomfortable teenage shrug—“but welcome back to the Cove, Ana.”
“Thank you, Kyle.” Leaving him with a small smile, she headed back to the table that held the large coffee urn.
A slender woman stood nearby: blonde, with lovely green eyes, she had the kind of face and bearing that shouted private schooling and wealth. Or maybe it was her waterproof jacket. Though that, in itself, wasn’t unusual in this crowd. All the old-timers as well as many of the younger crew had brought along waterproof gear when they saw the clouds on the horizon.
What made the blonde stand out was that her waterproof gear likely cost something like five times—no, that was being conservative—it was probably more like ten times the price of what everyone else was wearing.
She also wore a black knit cap, which had survived being soaked through, so she’d been smart enough to pull the hood of her jacket over it while outside. Her facial bones were the kind that would age beautifully. But she wasn’t beautiful, this woman. She was . . . elegant. That was when it clicked, the woman’s identity.
Jemima Baker, Vincent’s wife.
Anahera had seen her in the photos Vincent had posted on his social media page. In those photos, however, Jemima was always dressed to the nines and out at some charity gala or other black-tie event. Her hair was usually a sleek blonde sheet, glossy and without a strand out of place, her makeup flawless.
In the last image Anahera could remember seeing, the other woman had worn a black sheath dress, a string of pearls around her neck. In her hand had been a little clutch with the double C logo that defined Chanel.
No wonder Anahera hadn’t immediately recognized her; today, despite her expensive gear, Jemima Baker stood as damp and bedraggled as everyone else. On her feet were worn-in hiking boots suitable for this climate and area, and the backs of her hands bore fresh scratches, as if she’d pushed through the dense growth looking for Miriama.
Shame pricked Anahera—she, along with all thei
r friends, had just assumed that Vincent had married Jemima because she fit the mold of what his parents would’ve wanted for him: an educated, lovely woman who’d be the perfect hostess, but who was also smart and intelligent enough to rise with him as he climbed the political ladder. The timing of the marriage—a bare year after the elder Bakers’ deaths—had only cemented that general opinion.
None of them had ever considered that Vincent might’ve fallen for his wife because she had a heart as down-to-earth as his own. Seeing Jemima as she stood looking at the search map with worry carved into her features, Anahera resolved to do better, to get to know this woman her friend had married. “Here.” She handed Jemima a mug of freshly poured coffee. “You look like you could use this.”
Jemima’s fingers brushed hers as she took the mug. They were like ice. “I hope Miriama isn’t out in this,” the other woman said in a soft tone that wouldn’t reach Matilda. “It’s getting cold out there. Really cold.”
“Which section were you in?” Anahera asked, and was surprised when Jemima mentioned a location quite distant from Vincent’s. As if reading her surprise, Jemima said, “I arrived a little after Vincent—I wanted to make sure the children were settled.”
Anahera kept forgetting Vincent was now a father. “I’m Anahera, by the way.” She held out her hand. “The one who’s been in London for a while.”
Jemima’s face softened as they shook hands, her grip firm but not crushing. “I was so sorry to hear about your husband.”
Anahera still didn’t know what to do when people offered their sympathies about Edward; it wasn’t as if she could open her mouth and say, “I’m not sure I’m grieving for the bastard. You see, I found out he was a lying, cheating piece of scum two hours after I stood trembling over his body in the morgue.”
His lips had been blue, his face so waxy he hadn’t looked real. A mannequin shaped like Edward, that’s what her brain had kept trying to tell her. Just a mannequin. Not real. Nothing to do with her.
One hundred and twenty-seven minutes later, forty-nine minutes after news of Edward’s death hit the media, she’d opened the door of their home to a sobbing stranger who’d collapsed into her arms with a wail of grief.