by Nalini Singh
Going through the gate and up the drive lined by those roses that appeared dead, he knocked on the front door. The woman who opened it was sixty and well preserved, her skin a smooth, unblemished white as a result of a liberal dusting of powder and her eyes an acute blue, her silkily white hair pulled back in an elegant knot. She wore a string of small pearls against a long-sleeved knee-length dress in a dark navy wool. “Yes?”
“Siobhan Genovese?” Will held up his identification.
The woman took his ID, scrutinized it carefully. “If you wouldn’t mind,” she said, “I’ll ask you to wait here while I verify that you are who you say you are.” She shut the door in their faces without waiting for an answer.
“Not the trusting type.” Anahera’s tone was bone-dry.
“If she has the kind of gems I suspect she has in there, that she even opened her door is surprising. As is the fact she doesn’t have a security grille. On the other hand, not many people know she exists.”
One minute, two, before the door opened again.
“Thank you for waiting,” Siobhan Genovese said. “Please do come in, Detective Gallagher.” A questioning glance at Anahera. “I assume you can vouch for this young woman?”
“Yes.”
Apparently satisfied with that, Siobhan Genovese led them into a beautifully appointed living room, the colors shades of blue and gray. It was the kind of tasteful and quietly wealthy arrangement with which Anahera had become intimately familiar in Edward’s London home and in the homes of his friends.
To be fair to her gifted liar of a husband, he’d told her she could redecorate as she liked, but Anahera had hesitated over even the heavy damask curtains she’d hated.
God, she’d been so young.
So conscious of her poverty-stricken past and lack of knowledge about the moneyed world in which she found herself, a lone Māori girl far from a thundering turbulent sea that sang a song of home and of grief both.
“Please sit,” Siobhan said, taking a seat of her own in a lush gray armchair with curved edges of a dark gold that bore the patina of age. “How may I help you?”
Will told her why they were there before handing over the watch. “I know this is one of yours,” he said quietly in that way he had, so that you felt as if you were the entire focus of his attention. “What I need from you is the name of the buyer.”
Siobhan Genovese examined the watch with care, running her fingertips over the glittering hardness of the blue stones that edged the face, then flipping it over and brushing her thumb across the tiny ruby embedded in the back. “Very few people recognize my signature,” she said as the much larger ruby on her right ring finger shone bright as fresh blood. “I handmake all of my pieces, which means there aren’t many around for people to compare.”
Will shook his head, the action gentle. “My sources are mine, but I will tell you that you do stunning work.”
Frost in her responding words. “Part of the reason I’m still in business despite my astronomical prices and slow production rate is that I value my clients’ privacy.”
Taking the watch back, Will said, “A young woman is missing.” He held those searing blue eyes. “Someone you know gave her this watch. You need to tell me the identity of that person.”
“If I ask you to get a warrant?” was the soft rejoinder that held a steely will.
“I’ll do it—but such things have a way of going public. I’ll need to list your address and why I’m seeking the warrant.”
“That could be counted as a threat, Detective.” Siobhan crossed one leg over the other.
Watch now safely stored in the inner pocket of his jacket, Will leaned forward with his forearms braced on his thighs. “I have no desire to play a game of one-upmanship, but I’m looking for a young woman who doesn’t deserve to be gone. If you get in the way of that, I won’t hesitate to take whatever steps are necessary, no matter how messy.”
Siobhan’s expression didn’t change. “You realize most of my business is by word of mouth?”
“I’m sure you’ve earned more than enough by now to buffer you against any momentary dip—we both know that, as good as you are, the clients will come back even if it gets out that you shared one of their names with the police.”
An amused smile from the older woman. “People always want the best.” Her eyes went to Anahera. “And who is she?”
“Her identity doesn’t matter to you. Give me a name, Ms. Genovese.” There was something so unbending in his tone that Anahera’s back muscles tightened.
This man, she realized, could be ruthless.
Siobhan didn’t seem to have come to the same realization. “William Gallagher,” she murmured, “why do I know that name?”
“I was accused of beating a suspect.” No change in Will’s tone or expression. “There was an inquiry.”
“Ah.” Siobhan gave a small nod. “The fallen hero. Yes, I remember.”
Anahera had no idea what the two were talking about—whatever the inquiry had been, it hadn’t appeared as one of the top hits when she typed Will’s name into a search engine. She’d read only about his heroism.
“And do you have the support of your superiors for this investigation?” Siobhan asked, reaching to the small table beside her to pick up a tiny porcelain cup that seemed to hold tea. She didn’t offer any to either Anahera or Will. “I have people I can call, ask.”
“You might not have noticed,” Will said, “but the police department doesn’t like having inquiries. Especially not corruption inquiries dealing with wealthy and connected people who might’ve gotten away with murder.”
The slightest tinkle of porcelain on porcelain. “Murder?” Siobhan put aside her tea. “You didn’t say anything about murder.”
“How many young women do you know who’ve disappeared mysteriously while going about their everyday lives, and then have been found alive?”
His words hit Anahera in the gut. She knew he was right; part of her had always known the most likely outcome, but she’d hoped. And she continued to hope. Maybe Miriama was being kept captive. A horrific thing to wish, but at least it would mean she was alive, that they could rescue her.
“I see.” Siobhan placed her hands very carefully on the wool of her dress. “Well, I will likely lose a rather significant client because of this, but murder is where I draw the line.”
Then she told them the name of the man who’d commissioned the watch.
39
“What will you do?” Anahera asked Will an hour later, after they finally broke free of the gridlock caused by a three-car accident. No fatalities, thankfully, but the tow trucks had taken their time getting there and hauling the wrecks off the road.
Now, they drove through the autumnal darkness. It had fallen with quicksilver speed, a black curtain sweeping across the world. With the lack of light had come a call from Nikau confirming the day’s searchers had found no signs of Miriama.
“Talk to him again,” Will answered, “try to get the truth.”
Anahera shoved her fingers through her hair, her heart a drum in her chest that hadn’t stopped thudding since Siobhan Genovese’s revelation. “Vincent’s always been such a straight arrow.” With a wife who didn’t have a single friend in town and whose online presence was doll-like perfection.
Her stomach churned.
“I’m more likely to get the truth from him if I can talk to him alone.” Will took a corner, his headlights flashing off the reflective barriers. “I’ll see if I can convince him to meet me tonight, but if not, it’ll be tomorrow.”
“I won’t say anything.” Anahera might be loyal, but she’d never again be foolishly trusting and blind. “Some of us used to wonder if Vincent felt trapped by his parents’ expectations, but he always did such a good job of appearing happy that we bought it.”
Will increased his speed to pass a tanker rumbl
ing along the road. “Everyone has secrets,” he repeated after completing the maneuver. “It’s often the people who look like they have no secrets at all who turn out to have the biggest ones.”
Anahera’s mind returned to Siobhan Genovese’s elegant living room and to the conversation she hadn’t fully understood. “Tell me about the inquiry,” she found herself saying, the hushed darkness of the night enveloping them in a cocoon where questions could be asked and secrets revealed.
Will’s hands tightened on the steering wheel to the point that his bones pushed white against his skin. “I was in charge of keeping a woman and a three-year-old child safe in the buildup to the woman giving testimony against a man.” His words were clipped, a cop giving a report. Nothing but the facts.
“He was her husband and the father of her child, but he also happened to be a serial rapist who got careless—his wife began to notice the washing machine running in the middle of the night, after her husband got home ‘from work,’ saw rope, gloves, and duct tape in his car, and lined up his absences with the violent rapes in the area.”
He passed another tanker, this one festooned with lights that turned it into a traveling star. “When she questioned him about it, he punched her five times, knocking out three front teeth, then kicked her in the stomach and left the house. She took her son and came to the station with blood on her shirt. I was the detective on the case. I told them they’d be safe. I was wrong. Daniella and Alfie are buried in a private family cemetery on a vineyard in Marlborough.”
So many things not said, so many truths buried in the details. “Their killer’s the one you were accused of beating?”
“I did beat him.”
“Did your superiors cover it up?” She wouldn’t blame them if they had—because sometimes, the law didn’t work; sometimes, lines had to be crossed.
“No. He refused to testify.” Will’s smile was grim. “Apparently, he found God two months into his time on remand, right as the inquiry began. He called me, said he deserved what I’d done to him and he not only wouldn’t be cooperating with the inquiry, he was recanting his statement about police brutality and blaming his injuries on a bar fight earlier that night. I told him I didn’t need the fucking favor.”
Will’s jaw worked. “I was ready to walk into the inquiry and say I did it. Only reason I hadn’t already done that was because the prosecution team on the rapes was worried it’d bring my credibility into question, give the defense a way to attack my work on the case.”
He released a harsh exhale. “In the end, I never had to talk to the inquiry board. My superior officer got the entire thing dismissed for lack of evidence. The official letter came this week, closed the book on the whole thing.
“No one much argued with the decision—turns out rapists who carve up their elderly victims, then murder three-year-old boys aren’t popular with anyone. Even the media barely reported on it. Nobody asked me what it felt like to know I owed my continued career to a murdering rapist.”
She got it, saw why he was in Golden Cove. “Alcohol? Drugs?”
“I almost beat up another asshole, then another. My partners had to hold me back. You can work out the rest.”
Anahera had the niggling feeling she was forgetting to ask something important, but the shape of it stayed frustratingly out of her reach. And since she understood about nightmares and about not wanting to look back, she took Will’s lead and dropped the subject. “I think Siobhan would’ve made a good murderer.”
Will’s fingers eased on the black of the steering wheel. “Most people wouldn’t think so.”
“That’s exactly why she’d be a good one. She’s cold, ruthless, but she looks the part of the rich old lady. No one would ever suspect her.” Pausing, she looked out at the blackness beyond; they were well out of civilization and in the heart of an unforgiving landscape that offered no second chances. “Have you looked into her dating or marital history?” She returned her attention to the cop who told no lies but didn’t tell her everything all the same. “Any suspicious disappearances or deaths?”
Will’s grin was a sudden thing; it changed his whole face. “Never married, self-made woman. Tough as granite.”
“And with a strange sense of morality,” Anahera said. “She balked at murder, but a suspicious disappearance didn’t even register on her radar.”
A smoky ballad poured out of the radio as the night grew darker around them, the singer’s voice husky and soulful.
Anahera’s skin rippled with a sudden cold. “This was the song we danced to at our wedding.” Will didn’t care about her and Edward and maybe that was why she could tell him. “I wore a long white dress that I used all my savings to buy and he wore a tuxedo. We got married in a small hotel ballroom decorated like a winter wonderland, with thirty of Edward’s family and friends who’d flown over, and my closest friends, in attendance.” She’d had no family by then, no one she acknowledged anyway. “And we danced to this song.”
It had been a fairy tale come to life, one against which Anahera’s battered and scarred spirit had no defense. “Have you ever been married?”
“Came close once, but then Alfie and Daniella were murdered, and I wasn’t quite right in the head for a while. She couldn’t handle it. I don’t blame her for that. She didn’t sign up for a messed-up cop who was placed on administrative leave while the inquiry ran its course.”
“What happened to in sickness and in health?”
“We hadn’t taken any vows yet. And we all have our breaking points.”
“Yes.”
“What’s yours?”
But Anahera shook her head. “Enough confessions in the dark, cop. You keep my secrets and I’ll keep yours—but let’s not pretend that we’re anything but two broken people who happened to run into each other.” There was nothing else, no strong foundation on which to build.
“No,” Will said, his eyes on the dark beyond the windshield. “But I’m still going to ask if you want me to come in tonight.”
Anahera hadn’t yet decided on an answer by the time he brought the SUV to a stop in front of her cabin. Then the high beams of his headlights picked up the figure slumped on the porch, and the question was moot.
Getting out, they ran over to find a chilled Nikau drunk off his ass and slurring his words. “Saw her today,” he mumbled as Will hauled him into the cabin and Anahera got to work starting the fire. “Wearing emeralds. Guess pounamu wasn’t enough for her.”
He kept on rambling about his ex-wife while Anahera got the fire going and Will wrestled the mostly empty bottle of whiskey from his hand. Giving the bottle to Anahera, Will told her to get rid of what alcohol remained. Anahera had no compunction in pouring it down the sink. If Nikau had wanted to save his expensive whiskey, he shouldn’t have come drinking on her porch.
“Just leave him in front of the fire,” she said to Will. “It won’t be the first time he’s slept on a floor, but I do have a spare pillow for his head.” She went into her bedroom and found it—another little gift courtesy of Josie.
Taking it to the fire, she placed it under Nik’s head, then covered him using a throw she’d had on one of the chairs. When he mumbled again, she sat down beside him and began to brush her hand over his hair.
Sitting down in a chair across from her, Will just watched. A patient wolf, she found herself thinking. Not a dog, because he’d never come to anyone on command. But a man who was a hunter, and who could be dangerous if he slipped the tight leash he kept on himself.
The next time she looked over, she found him staring into the flames. It gave her a chance to examine him without being watched in turn. He was all craggy lines carved into his skin, experience woven into his bones, and pain stamped onto his features. Life had been hard on him, but he was still moving, and he was still working, and he was still fighting for those who couldn’t fight for themselves.
Sudden
ly, Anahera didn’t care that Nikau was here. She wanted to steal some of the cop’s fire, that smoldering heat that kept him going, that dark anger deep inside him that called to her own fury. But leaving Nik wasn’t an option—he might throw up in his sleep, end up choking to death.
Frustrated, she got up and went to the cop. His eyes turned to take her in. He didn’t stop her when she shoved her hands into his hair and tugged back his head as she bent down and took a kiss as harsh as it was needy. He accepted her demand, his hands coming to settle at her hips and his body heat sinking through her clothing to scald her flesh.
Beside them, the fire crackled . . . and Nikau moaned.
Wrenching back from Will, Anahera looked over her shoulder to see that her friend was asleep but restless. “Consider this an IOU,” she said to the cop with the fogbound eyes. “Come for dinner tomorrow night.”
40
Will knew he shouldn’t be getting in deeper with Anahera, but he also knew he’d return to her cabin tomorrow. Tonight, as he sat in his kitchen again while a new band of heavy cloud blotted out the stars outside, it was time to read more of Miriama’s journal.
Finding out the identity of her lover was no longer the reason why. He had Vincent’s name, would talk to the other man tomorrow. Even as that thought passed through his head, Will second-guessed his choice.
What if Miriama was alive?
What if, by delaying until morning, he cost her that life?
Decision made as soon as those questions formed in his head, he got up and, popping the journal into a plastic bag, slid it into the inner pocket of his outdoor jacket, then went out to the SUV.