Smoke Screen

by Emilie Richards

  "Something's very wrong."

  "Please, Granny," Paige begged.

  "You feel it, too, don't you?"

  "I'm only worried about you."

  "You'd feel it if you weren't so angry at Adam."

  "I'm not angry," Paige protested. "He hurt me." She stopped, realizing what she had said.

  "I thought so."

  "It doesn't matter."

  "You didn't want him to go into the thermals. You felt the danger then, just as I feel it now."

  "How do you know that?"

  Mihi sighed. "Haven't you always understood things that others didn't?"

  "No, I'm just like everyone else."

  "You've wanted to be like everyone else."

  Paige tried to understand the cryptic sentiment. "I'm not psychic, if that's what you mean."

  "Psychic?" Mihi gave a harsh laugh. "A Pakeha term."

  "What do you mean, then?"

  "Guided."

  "Guided? Who's guiding me?"

  "You'll have to listen to know. But I can tell you this. You are a Poutapu, and your ancestors have been tohungas, men of knowledge. You have powers you've always denied, powers even Adam won't always understand."

  Paige understood just enough to know that Mihi was talking in riddles. "I'm not like you or Henare," she said sharply. "Adam says I have no Maori blood. He told me I'm my father's child."

  Surprisingly, Mihi defended Carter, not Adam. "Your father isn't a bad man. He's ruthless, and he's frightened of something he doesn't understand. But he loves your mother, and he loves you. In his own way he's always tried to do what he thought was best for both of you. If you were just your father's child, that would be no shame. But you are much more. And no matter what my foolish nephew says, you are Maori. You must not ignore that part of yourself."

  Mihi was still talking in riddles, but Paige felt her bitterness and pain begin to ebb. "I was afraid when Adam told me he was going into the thermals today," she admitted, gazing across the pastures, too. "We fought. I tried to keep him here by telling him Hamish might be right, that maybe the thermals should be developed."

  "That was foolish."

  "Yes."

  "And Adam saw it as a betrayal," Mihi continued. "Since Sheila, he looks for betrayal everywhere, and he sees it in you when you won't make a commitment to him."

  "I love him," Paige said softly. "But I'm afraid. We're so different. We come from two different worlds."

  "Which only means that you have much to offer each other."

  The slam of the front door resounded through the frame house. "Adam is home," Paige said, relieved and frightened simultaneously.

  "No." Mihi clutched Paige's arm with a shaking hand. "Help me to a chair, please."

  Paige guided her to the table and helped Mihi sit just as Hira burst into the kitchen. Mihi held out her arms as if she knew what was coming, and Hira, sobbing, flung herself into them.

  "Granny," she said brokenly. "Oh, Granny."

  The kitchen door swung once more, and Iris and Samuel followed their daughter into the kitchen. The air was charged with tension, but no one said a word.

  Finally, Paige couldn't stand the silence. "Pat?" she asked.

  "He regained consciousness about an hour and a half ago," Samuel said, looking straight ahead as if avoiding eye contact might make his words easier to say. "He'll be perfectly all right."

  "What has he done?" Mihi asked, gently pushing Hira away.

  "First, where's Adam?" Samuel asked.

  "Looking for the mauri," Mihi answered.

  Samuel looked disturbed, but before he could comment, Iris interrupted. "Pat's injuries were no accident," she said, looking at the same point in space as her husband. "Pat has been helping the developer who wants to buy the thermal land."

  "Hamish Armstrong?" Paige asked, confused.

  Iris grimaced at the name. "Yes. Mr. Armstrong wanted information. Pat sold it to him."

  Mihi didn't seem surprised, only distressed. "Tell me all."

  "Pat made a deal with Armstrong," Samuel said. "He told him where Adam was searching for the mauri, and he kept him informed about Adam's relationship with Miss Duvall." He inclined his head toward Paige without meeting her eyes. "In exchange, Armstrong promised to employ Pat when the resort was built."

  "Pat wanted to be someone," Hira tried to explain. "He didn't want to marry me until he was someone—"

  Her father cut her off with a wave of his hand. "Pat believed his actions were harmless enough," he went on. "Somehow Armstrong convinced him that he just didn't want any unpleasant surprises. Then last week Pat discovered that Adam had almost fallen to his death in the thermals while he was exploring. He was afraid it wasn't a coincidence. So Pat set a trap for Armstrong. He told him Adam had narrowed his search to another part of the area, near Kaka geyser. The night of the hui he went into the thermals to see if he'd been right."

  "Right about what?" Paige snapped in frustration. "What did he think Hamish was doing?"

  "Setting explosives."

  "I don't believe it!"

  There was a short silence; then Samuel went on, ignoring Paige's outburst. "When Pat went back, he found Armstrong in the act. It seems he was an opal miner in Australia, and the use of explosives is one of his accomplishments. Apparently at first he only intended to sabotage the areas where the mauri might be found. Then he took a gamble. He got the idea to weaken portions of rock just enough to cause a slide if there was any activity in the area. He hoped to injure or kill Adam and scare off Miss Duvall. His plan worked perfectly the first time, except that my brother has the coordination of a cat and was able to save himself when the cliff crumbled. The second time, Armstrong wasn't as successful. Pat discovered what he was doing and tried to stop him. They fought, and the explosives went off. Armstrong jumped clear, but Pat wasn't quick enough. There was a rockslide, and Pat was caught at the edge of it. That's all he remembers."

  "But that doesn't make any sense," Paige said. "Why would Hamish go to such lengths? He had the advantage anyway, and he knew it. The story is preposterous. I think Pat is lying."

  "Pat's not lying," Hira insisted angrily. "Why would he lie?"

  But Paige's mind was whirling. "Hamish told me his life story. He never said anything about opal mining. I have a friend who's an opal miner in Coober Pedy. I would have remembered."

  "Ring your friend," Mihi commanded.

  Paige looked up. "Now?"

  "You won't listen to your heart. Perhaps you'll listen to your friend. Ring him and ask him about Hamish Armstrong, but do it quickly."

  * * *

  Dillon Ward polished the tip of his pool cue against his white moleskin trousers. The Coober Pedy pub rang with Australia's latest gift to the rock music scene plus the laughter of forty hard-drinking men and six much-ogled women. "Good job it's just me you're playing," he told his partner, Jake Donovan. "Or the Rainbow Fire would belong to a stranger by now."

  Jake, a brawny man with a grizzled beard and a perpetual scowl, ran his hand over his chin and glared at the pocket his last ball was supposed to have fallen into. "You haven't won yet, lad."

  "Watch me," Dillon said with a grin. He was just bending down, steadying his cue with a pool hustler's finesse, when someone tapped him on the shoulder.

  "Telephone. For you."

  Dillon didn't question why the call had come to the pub. The operator usually found him there. She usually found everyone in town there at one time or another.

  Dillon followed the signals of the bartender and took the call in the quiet room behind the wide wooden counter crowded with opal miners.

  "Dillon? Is that you?"

  Dillon struggled a moment to place the voice. But only one of the many women he'd known sounded like his fantasies of a New Orleans night. "Paige? Is that you? Where are you?"

  "New Zealand." On the other end of the line, Paige felt almost sick with relief to hear the familiar Australian twang. It called up images of curling brown hair and shoulder
s wide enough to cry on forever. "Dillon, I can't talk long. I've got an emergency, and I need your help."

  Dillon wanted to strangle the man who had put the fear in Paige's voice. He had the greatest respect for her strength, and he could tell it was nearing an end. "Anything," he said succinctly. "I'll kill the blooming bastard if you want me to."

  Paige didn't question his insight or his loyalty. Together they had survived the crucible of a hurricane named Eve. "Dillon, do you know anything about a man named Hamish Armstrong? He may have been a miner there." She felt rather than heard Samuel come up behind her, but her attention was riveted on Dillon's answer.

  "I've heard of him," Dillon said. "Stay away from the bloke, Paige. If he ever showed his face in Coober Pedy, he'd be a dead man."

  Paige gripped the receiver tighter. "Why?"

  Dillon couldn't think of any way to be tactful. "He killed two men. Blew up the entrance to their mine and sealed them in. They were dead by the time they were found, and Armstrong was in Sydney by then with their opals. No one could find enough evidence to indict him, but everyone knew. It happened years ago, but the old-timers still talk about it. They say Armstrong was the only man in Coober Pedy who could have set the explosives and make it look like an accident." He waited for her response, but when it didn't come, he went on. "Do you need me?"

  "No." Paige swallowed the bitter taste of fear. "No. I'll call you back when I can and explain."

  "I could be there in a day."

  "I have to take care of this myself," she said softly. "But thank you."

  "You'll ring me back?" Dillon waited for an answer, but got a dial tone instead. He slammed his fist against the wall and wished he were in New Zealand.

  Chapter 17

  You're risking your life if you go," Mini said, looking at Paige as if she were following her movements.

  Paige didn't hesitate as she slid fresh batteries into a flashlight. She remembered that Adam had called it a torch, and that silly, endearing detail brought his face vividly into her mind. "I have to go, Granny," she said as she clicked the switch to be sure the light worked. "You understand why."

  Mihi was silent. Paige wondered if she were listening to voices only she could hear.

  "Does Adam keep a gun?" Paige asked when she was satisfied with the light.

  "A shotgun, but it's too heavy for you."

  Paige wished she had something more lethal to take into the thermals than the flashlight and a backpack with first-aid supplies, a rope and a flare gun. After what she had learned about Hamish Armstrong, she knew he would be as dangerous an enemy as the thermals.

  "Your best weapons will be your ears and eyes."

  "I'm going to be careful." Paige checked the contents of her pack once more, then zipped it shut and heaved it to her back. "And Adam's going to be all right. I'll find him before the rescue party does."

  "He's still alive."

  Since Paige had to believe Mihi was right, she simply leaned down and kissed her cheek. "I checked on Jeremy a minute ago. He's asleep in front of the television. If he wakes up before Adam and I get back, tell him..." She swallowed, forcing down the lump in her throat. "Tell him I love him, would you?"

  "You don't have to do this."

  "I do." On impulse Paige pressed her nose and forehead to Mihi's. "Taku aroha kia koe."

  "Give thought to each step you take. If you find yourself in danger, stop where you are and send up a flare so that the rescue party can find you."

  "I'm not going to add to their work."

  "Listen with your ears and your heart."

  "I'll find him." Paige left the room, taking one last look at the sleeping Jeremy before she closed the door. In front of her stretched acres of moonlit pasture, the somber, shadowed expanse broken only by wooden fences and huddles of sheep. She followed a path over the first hill, walking slowly until her eyes adjusted, then gaining speed until her pace was a safe but steady clip.

  She was searching for a needle in a haystack, a changing, mutating haystack that was hazardous in daylight and deadly by moonlight. But somewhere in its depths was the man she loved.

  Her phone call to Dillon had confirmed Pat's story. She had repeated Dillon's warning to Samuel, her eyes pleading with Hira in unspoken apology. But apologies and pleas for understanding had been nothing compared to the undeniable truth that Adam had not yet come home, and that Hamish Armstrong was a desperate man capable of desperate acts.

  Samuel and his family had listened to Paige and Mihi's concerns about Adam, then left immediately to organize a rescue party. Paige had waited just long enough to hear their car pull away before she had begun to organize supplies for her own rescue mission. She didn't know if she was being guided. But she did know that she was too afraid to wait until a rescue party could form. Adam knew the thermals as well as he knew the blueprint of his own house. But he didn't know that Hamish Armstrong wanted him dead.

  She was sure Hamish had counted on Pat's silence. Pat was a confused, unhappy young man, but he had realized something important. Personal disgrace was nothing compared to putting someone in his family in danger. Hira believed that Pat had hung on to his life through the long, cold night in the thermals because he had wanted to tell the truth about Hamish. By doing so, he had made up for his transgressions.

  Paige reached the thermals sooner than she had expected. Rolling green pastures dissolved into a brief stand of forest. As she walked between trees, listening to the distinctive cry of a morepork owl, she faltered. Already she could smell the stench of sulphur and see smoke rising to touch the night sky. Already the moon, which had been bright enough in the meadows, was obscured behind clouds.

  Nothing looked the same. Paige knew exactly where she was: the Valley of Regrets, the place where she had first encountered Adam. Each time she and Adam had approached the thermals from his house or hers, they had come this way. With the onset of night, however, familiar landmarks were no longer signposts but shadowed barriers in a maze that led straight to Hell. Like the stiffened carcasses of dead animals, uprooted trees extended leafless branches to the sky. An innocent rock formation had become a primitive Southern Hemisphere Stonehenge. Thinly slivered shadows were tormented prisoners waiting for pagan priests to emerge from the forest to begin their sacrifices.

  Paige told herself that she would not be a victim of her own imagination. There were enough real dangers here; there was no need to create more. She took one step, then another, letting the beam of her flashlight guide her way. Once she was out of the forest, branches of manuka scrub scraped her bare arms as she twisted carefully to avoid the choking smoke of a fumarole.

  "Hell's chimneys." She spoke the nickname, remembering that it had been Adam's. She wondered what portion of Hell he had found, and the thought made her push on.

  Moving a little faster, she passed the nightmarish Stonehenge and took a sharp detour to avoid a tract of steaming ground. Where had she and Adam always turned? Was it beyond the small antimony-orange pond with its rainbow display of rock? Or was it before it? What had Adam cautioned her about?

  Paige stopped and tried to remember the last time they had come. She could visualize his face. She recalled the way his eyes had warmed as he had spoken, the way he had reached up and touched her hair, then her cheek. His fingertips had been warm, and she had laughed—

  "Because he told me I had to decide whether I wanted a warm shower or a luxurious mud bath," she remembered out loud. If she turned before the pond and sidled carefully along its edge, she would be safe, but damp from the sprays of a spouting spring. If she turned past the pond, she would end up in a bubbling mud pool.

  The powerful beam of the flashlight illuminated her path as she picked her way between pond and spouting spring. To her relief, the wind was in her favor, and she wasn't even damp when she stepped off the narrow path onto a flat shelf of rock that glowed like platinum in the moonlight.

  She knew the path would be easier now—for a while. She remembered no hazards she had
to avoid. There were fumaroles and a short scramble down a ridge, but compared to what would lie ahead when she neared Kaka geyser, the next part of the journey would be easy.

  And it was. Until she dropped the flashlight.

  She had gained confidence, even experienced the elation of someone conquering the elements, when her toe caught on a tree root and she sprawled to the ground. Her light had fallen, too, and landed in three separate pieces.

  Paige lay on the ground and stared, too stunned to believe the obvious. The beam had been snuffed out as soon as the flashlight had fallen. She knew without even trying to reassemble it that it was beyond repair.

  Three minutes of turning batteries and manipulating the bulb proved that she was right. Three more minutes of shaky deep breaths and a pounding heartbeat proved that she was frightened half out of her mind.

  She had tried to prepare for emergencies, even bringing more batteries, although the new ones in the light would have been good for hours of constant use. There had only been one flashlight in the house, however, and she hadn't wanted to take the time to search the outbuildings for others. She hadn't really believed something like this could happen.

  She had been a fool filled with good intentions. Her good intentions and the flares in her backpack might get her out of the thermals in the morning. But nothing she could do now would help Adam. He was alone somewhere in the vast acreage, perhaps injured and dying. And she was trapped on the safest part of a path with a broken flashlight and shattered hopes.

  "Adam!"

  As she had gotten deeper into the thermals, she had resisted calling out to him for fear that the wrong person might answer. Now she was beyond caring. If he were near enough to hear, he might need the comfort of her voice. Forgotten was the way they had parted. Remembered was the feel of his arms around her, arms that she would never resist again if she were lucky enough to hold him tight once more.

  "Adam!"

  She hadn't really expected a response, but when nothing returned to her except the echo of his name, Paige trembled with despair. "Adam," she whispered, tears flooding her cheeks. "I need you."