by Nalini Singh
“Just driving.” Vincent’s words were muffled by the towel, came out sounding oddly thick. “Trying to get my head on straight. Trying to understand how something like this could happen in Golden Cove.”
Will shot the other man a look, but Vincent’s head was conveniently covered by the towel. So he waited to ask his next question—it took a while, as if Vincent was deliberately attempting to wait him out. But the other man couldn’t keep on rubbing his hair forever without it becoming a noticeable point on its own.
When he did finally lower the towel to push back the rain-dark strands of his golden hair, Will made him check his wound in the mirror on the back of the passenger-seat sunshade. Only after Vincent confirmed it was shallow, with no sign of bruising, did he say, “Do you know Miriama well?”
“She’s the kind of person everybody knows. You can’t miss Miri.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
The other man sighed. “I like her,” he said at last. “She makes me think about being young and hopeful and going after your dreams.” A wistfulness that made it pretty obvious Vincent harbored a crush on Miriama.
“You ever say any of that to her?” He chanced a quick glance at Vincent, to see him staring out the window, his classically handsome profile shadowed by the darkness outside.
“I’m just a foolish married man who likes talking to a pretty girl, Will.” Vincent’s voice wasn’t aggressive but sad. “She’s so beautiful and so full of life. The idea that I might never again walk into the café and see her smile is a nightmare.”
Will had put his eyes back on the road a split second after his glance—he couldn’t afford to be distracted in this kind of weather. It frustrated him not to be able to see Vincent’s face, gauge his reactions. “Be honest with me,” he said. “Lies won’t help Miriama.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Did it ever go beyond talk with you and her?”
“No. I wouldn’t do that to my wife.” A long inhale followed by an even longer exhale. “I love my wife. But Miriama has something inside her that I lost a long time ago and it makes me happy to flirt with her a little and fantasize. I’d never shame my family by crossing that line.”
Had anyone asked Will a week ago about Vincent Baker, he would’ve said that Vincent was one of the most straight-up men in town, honest to a fault despite his political ambitions. He was no longer so sure of that belief. There’d been so much want in Vincent’s voice when he spoke of Miriama, so much . . . Greed wasn’t the right word. It was softer than that. A desire almost to cherish.
But, as Vincent had pointed out, he was a married man with two young children. And Miriama wasn’t the right kind of woman to be the wife of a future prime minister—she was too wild to accept the strictures of a political life, too much a free spirit. Still, that kind of thing had never stopped a wealthy man from making a less-than-honorable offer to a beautiful younger woman. Was it possible Vincent had approached Miriama, been rebuffed, and decided to take what she didn’t want to give?
The only problem was that scenario didn’t fit with what Will knew of Vincent—but he wasn’t about to rule out anyone or anything at this point. As soon as the weather cleared, he planned to go into Christchurch to talk to jewelers about Miriama’s watch. Someone had given it to her—and maybe, just maybe, it hadn’t been an out-of-towner.
Vincent had that kind of money. So did Daniel May.
And Christchurch was where Miriama had traveled to meet her mystery lover. It was possible she’d had a hand in designing the watch.
“I’m going to make a stop,” he said to Vincent. “I need to check on Mrs. Keith.” She was older, might be in bed if he waited till after he’d dropped Vincent off.
The other man said nothing in response to Will’s statement.
Pulling up beside the small white-painted house minutes later, Will jumped out and ran up the steps. He couldn’t see any lights, but he knocked nonetheless. Then he waited. He knew how long it took Mrs. Keith to get to the door.
A light finally came on several minutes later; the door cracked open two minutes after that. “I knew it would be you.” A smile that made her wrinkles fold in on themselves, her makeup yet in place. “I’m all fine and snug in my house. And if it hasn’t fallen down in the past forty years, it’s not going to fall down tonight, either.”
“Do you have everything you need?” Will knew the people in Golden Cove were self-reliant, but Mrs. Keith wasn’t in the best health. “Emergency supplies just in case?”
“Why are you asking this old dog if she knows all the tricks?” It was a chiding question. “I’m fine, honey.” She patted at the bouffant perfection of her hair, the color a pure, impossible black. “You get yourself to your own house before you catch a chill.”
Will waited until Mrs. Keith had shut her door and locked it before he ran back down to the flashing red and blue of his vehicle.
Not long afterward, he turned into the long drive that led up to the Baker homestead. The electronic gate was wide open despite the stormy darkness, probably because Vincent’s family was waiting for him to come home.
Will glanced at Vincent halfway up the drive. “I don’t want you driving until you’ve got clearance from a doctor. Make sure you show me that clearance before you get behind the wheel.” Stopping the car before they reached the house, he pulled out a Breathalyzer he had in a small case behind his seat. “You know what to do.”
Vincent didn’t argue.
“Reading’s clean.” Will hadn’t really expected anything else. He’d never seen Vincent drunk—the other man only ever had one beer when he came to the pub.
“I just slid on the road,” Vincent repeated as Will drove the rest of the way up the drive. “Misjudged how slick it was.” It almost sounded like he was practicing what he was going to say to his wife.
Pushing open the passenger-side door once the SUV had come to a standstill, Vincent looked over at Will. “Thank you. For doing everything you can to find her. She deserves that.” He shut the door on those words and walked up to his front door, in which a lovely blonde woman stood silhouetted by golden light.
27
Will wished he could see clearly through the rain that crashed against his windscreen—he’d be very curious to see the look on Jemima Baker’s face. Because if something had gone on between Miriama and Vincent at any point, the wife had to know. That was something Will had learned on one of his first cases as a detective—the wife almost always knew.
The only problem was, in a town as small as Golden Cove, the town also always knew—and not a single person had pointed Will in the direction of Vincent Baker. Right now, Vincent remained a “foolish married man” with a crush on a young woman who’d always flown free, in contrast to Vincent’s own mapped-out life.
As for the other wealthy man in town capable of affording that watch, he’d already proved willing to indulge in an affair with another man’s wife. Not many people knew that. Will only did because he’d driven a drunk Nikau home once, and the other man had angrily blurted out the truth.
It turned out that Nikau and Keira had still been living together in Wellington and trying to work on their troubled marriage when Daniel entered the picture. “While I was speaking at a conference in Paris,” Nikau had said, “that motherfucker was sleeping with my wife and selling her on a life I could never give her. I came back home to find her wearing a necklace she told me she’d bought on special from a local shop, and I was stupid enough to believe her.”
It wasn’t a stretch to imagine Daniel giving another woman jewelry as part of a new affair.
But though Daniel and Vincent made convenient targets, Will couldn’t afford tunnel vision. Miriama could as easily have met a rich tourist. There was also the slim chance that someone in town had more money than Will realized. Shane Hennessey, for one. The novelist had a habit of saying he w
orked for “love, not money,” but he’d had enough cash to tidy up the old Baxter place. Then there was the residency he offered. According to the listing on the creative sites, it came with room and board and a stipend.
Will would do nothing to narrow the focus of his inquiry yet.
He’d switched on the heat when he and Vincent got into the SUV, but he wasn’t appreciably warmer or drier by the time he turned the vehicle around and headed down the drive. The gate began to close behind him straight after he passed, so someone at the house had been watching the feed from the discreet security camera trained on the gate.
It was a fairly unusual thing in Golden Cove, that gate, but Will could understand Jemima’s need to keep her and Vincent’s kids from running out onto the main road. They’d have to get down a long drive to do so, but kids had fast little legs and could easily tumble out, and on these quiet roads, people didn’t always think to watch their speed.
The Bakers certainly didn’t begrudge anyone who wanted to walk the trails that cut through their sprawling property, only asked that any walkers or hikers remain outside the wire fences that marked the family’s residential area.
The trees were opaque shadows around him as he drove through the road unlit by anything except his headlights. The wind howled beyond, bending the trees as the rain began to batter the landscape in slashing punches.
Golden Cove seemed even more deserted when he went through this time. Only the police station glowed with anything but basic night lighting—Will had left the station lights blazing and the door unlocked so that if anyone got caught outside, they could stumble out of the rain and into shelter. He wasn’t worried about damage. The safe was empty, the filing cabinet was locked—and didn’t contain sensitive documents anyway—and his computer was hardly cutting-edge.
As for the gun safe, it was heavy duty and concealed under his desk. Will was qualified to handle both a Taser and a gun, but he had neither of those at the moment. His Taser had acted up the last time he’d checked it, so he’d sent it in for repair or replacement. As for the gun, the paperwork was still going through—or that was what he’d been told when he inquired.
Will had a feeling his superiors weren’t sure he could be trusted with a deadly weapon. He didn’t know why. A gun had nothing to do with why he was in Golden Cove. He’d beaten that murderous bastard’s face to a bloody pulp with his bare hands.
Those hands tightened on the steering wheel.
The upper windows of the bed-and-breakfast blurred gold in the rain as he passed by. The place had only three guests right now, all seasoned hikers who came regularly enough to Golden Cove that they were honorary locals. Will had run them anyway, found nothing. All three had been helping with the search.
He looked in his rearview mirror out of habit to make sure there was nothing problematic in town as he left, was surprised not to see any lights in the supermarket. Usually, the Lees left on their bright green sign if nothing else. Could be Shan and Pat had decided to switch to backup generators to make sure their fresh goods didn’t spoil should the power go out tonight. He’d talk with them tomorrow, find out how it had gone.
For now, he drove on through a Golden Cove that was silent and cold and dark.
It got even colder and darker once he hit the far edge of town and left behind what few lights were burning. He drove with care, his eyes on alert for a patch of pink or orange. He didn’t even realize he was doing it until his headlights flashed on something and he stopped the vehicle . . . To see it was only the silver underside of a wind-tossed candy bar wrapper.
It blew away with the next gust.
Putting the car back into gear, he carried on and made the turn into Anahera’s drive.
His SUV rumbled along the gravel, pulling up to a stop next to her Jeep. She’d left on the porch light, and he was grateful for it as he got out and jogged toward the cabin. He’d locked the watch and tin safely inside a special compartment he’d built himself in back of his vehicle, hidden beneath the well for the spare tire. He’d also made sure the sirens would go off if anyone tried to get into the vehicle—and they were loud enough to penetrate even this weather.
The door opened before he reached the porch. “I heard your car,” Anahera said as his boots hit the wood. “You’re drenched.”
“Accident on the road out of town,” he said, shaking himself off as well as he could.
“Everyone okay?”
“Yeah.” He wiped his face. “I should leave my jacket out on the porch. I’ll dribble all over your place otherwise.”
“The wind will rip it away and down to the water.” Anahera waved him inside. “There’s a little area here where you can hang it up. My grandmother didn’t like mess, had this put in when my grandfather built the cabin.”
Will saw what she meant when he stepped inside. The cabin had what might be called a mudroom in some places. Except it wasn’t that big. It was more like a shallow pre-entrance. On the left side was a board with hooks. Anahera’s anorak hung on one. On the other side was a large shoebox bench seat with a pair of boots already underneath.
Will undid his jacket and hung it on a hook beside Anahera’s anorak, the orange color and white high-visibility stripes bold next to the olive green. Then, taking a seat on top of the bench seat, he bent down to unlace his boots and get them off his feet. He chucked his soaked socks beside his boots, having placed the boots under the seat. By then, Anahera was back with a thick yellow towel.
“Thanks.” He began to dry his sopping wet hair.
“You can thank Josie. She’s the one who supplied me with extra towels—sometimes, I think that woman sees the future.”
Will still couldn’t see how Anahera and Josie’s friendship had endured—Josie might have a business, but the café wasn’t her focus. She was the kind of woman who made a packed lunch for her husband and who doted on her son; she’d been known to shut the café if her son’s school needed a parent volunteer and she didn’t have staff to manage the café while she was gone. She’d no doubt bestow the same maternal attention on the child she was currently carrying.
For Josie, her life was complete. She felt no need to ever leave this small town.
Anahera couldn’t be more different. Not only had she left Golden Cove to carve out a life so unique that many here would never understand it, she had a hardness to her that Josie would never have. Anahera, Will thought, knew more about the dark side of human nature than her friend could even imagine.
“I’ll be sure to thank her,” he said after rubbing his hair to some semblance of dryness. “I don’t suppose you have a heater out here?”
Arms folded over the thick cable knit of her chocolate brown sweater, Anahera leaned against the edge of the doorway into the cabin proper. “Townie. Soft as they come.”
“That’s me. Can’t do anything without my fluffy slippers and cup of tea.”
Anahera laughed as she walked into the cabin, the sound unexpectedly husky. When he followed, still using the towel in a vain effort to dab himself dry, he found the place warm and snug. A fire crackled in the fireplace, a pile of logs stacked to one side of it. “Did you get the chimney cleaned?”
“Are you always this way?” Anahera asked. “Annoying?”
“It’s my job. And if you burn down this place, I’m the one that’s going to have to do the paperwork.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence. And yes, the chimney’s fine. My mother taught me how to take care of that myself.”
Will looked around the room, taking in the cleanly swept surfaces, the old wooden table that stood neatly in one corner, two rickety chairs tucked in underneath. There was no bed, which meant there had to be more to this place than met the eye. “You have another room?”
Anahera used her thumb to point over her shoulder. “Facilities down that way,” she said, misunderstanding the reason for his question. “I don’t hav
e anything for you to change into.”
“I’ll dry out.” To make that go faster, he took off the gray shirt he was wearing over a white T-shirt and, dragging one of the chairs close to the fireplace, hung the shirt on the back. While his jeans would no doubt remain heavily damp until he made it home, his lightweight tee should dry quickly enough.
Deciding he needed to wash his hands, he walked down the small hallway hidden behind the kitchen area and found himself facing the partially closed door to another room. Prior to that and on the right were the toilet and shower. On the left was the open door to an empty room that had probably been Anahera’s mother’s bedroom.
He was more interested in the other bedroom. It boasted a bed, from what he could see, and not much else. And Anahera isn’t a suspect, he reminded himself when his brain began to scan automatically for signs of trouble. He supposed that, technically, she was as viable a suspect as anyone in Golden Cove, but she had no motive that he could see. She’d returned only days earlier and he was beginning to get the feeling that whatever had happened to Miriama, it had to do with the town—and with secrets.
28
Stepping into the bathroom, he washed off the traces of black grit that had sunk into the lifelines on his palms, probably while pushing Vincent’s sedan off the road.
When he examined his face in the cracked mirror above the sink afterward, the man who looked back at him had a haggard edge to him, dark stubble having appeared on his jaw and his cheeks still a little sunken. “You’ll never be a poster boy, Will.”
The scent of coffee was warm in the air when he returned to the living room.
“Have you eaten?” Anahera asked from where she stood at the compact kitchen counter that ran along the back wall.