by Nalini Singh
Will shook his head. “I’ll grab toast when I get back home. We should talk over what you heard tonight at the volunteer meeting.” Will didn’t know Anahera, but he’d run her the day she arrived; it was only prudent to find out if the town’s new resident had a record. The last time a prodigal had returned to Golden Cove, he’d turned out to be a drug dealer who hadn’t quite left his old life behind.
He’d abandoned his plans to set up shop in town after Will made it clear he’d do everything in his power to throw the other man in prison.
Anahera, by contrast, had no criminal record.
What she did have was a glittering career as a classical musician. Yet there was no sign of music in this room. Not even a small radio.
Of course, it was obvious most of Anahera’s belongings hadn’t yet arrived. She’d also have taken everything important with her when she said good-bye to the Cove; no point leaving it here to be stolen, vandalized, or impacted by the elements.
“You can have some of this pasta,” she said, stirring in the sauce. “The sauce is from a packet, but it’s hot and it’ll fill you up. And I won’t have to eat leftovers for three days in a row. I’m so used to cooking for—” She cut herself off with the suddenness of a woman who’d slammed up hard against an emotional wall.
Will didn’t need her to finish her sentence. He knew she’d buried her husband seven months ago. “Thanks,” he said, as if he hadn’t noticed her abrupt silence. “I never say no to pasta.”
“I’m having a glass of red with it.” She lifted a plain drinking glass filled about a third of the way up. “I’d offer you the same in my incredibly elegant stemware, but I’m thinking that you’re probably still on duty.”
“Not officially.” Will moved to lean his hip against the counter on the other side of the portable gas stovetop she was using to cook the pasta. A lot of the locals owned one of those; most used them for camping or hunting trips. Probably a good idea for Anahera to stick to that until she could have all the wiring in the cabin checked out.
“But,” he added, “in a place like this, where I’m the only police officer around, I’m never really off duty.” Will liked it that way. It gave him less time to think, less time to relive the past, less time to apologize to the small ghost who never seemed to hear him.
Anahera took a sip of her wine before saying, “I made coffee, too. Mugs on your right.”
Taking hold of a thick green mug from the grouping of four mismatched ones on the counter, Will picked up the old-fashioned and heavy metal teakettle she’d used to keep the coffee hot. “Something like this,” he said, lifting up the teakettle, “it’d probably set you back two hundred dollars in one of the designer stores in the big cities.”
Anahera laughed, the emotion reaching the darkness of her eyes. “You’re right. But that particular kettle has been in my family for the past fifty years or so.”
“They don’t make them like they used to.” Will put the kettle back down on the large wooden coaster beside the stovetop—that coaster looked like an offcut from a plank, but it did the job.
“Is your electricity from a generator?”
Anahera shook her head. “My mother had the lines put in when she was living here.” Her smile faded. “I asked the electricity company to turn the lights back on and everything seems to work. But I’m not chancing using the stove or oven yet.”
She’d lifted the pot of pasta and taken it to the table before he realized her intent. “Come on, let’s eat.”
Will picked up the wine bottle and his mug of coffee, then walked over to join her. After putting both on the table, he went and removed his sodden shirt from the back of the chair, leaving the garment spread out on the floor in front of the fire.
As he moved the chair back to the table, Anahera picked up a loaf of French bread from the counter. “Courtesy of Josie again.” The smile was in her voice. “She says she didn’t sell it at the café today, had Tom pass it to me at the volunteer meeting. I think she’s afraid I’ll starve myself out of grief if she doesn’t make sure I’m fed.”
Tearing the long loaf in half, she placed one half on the cutting board she’d put on the table beside the pot of pasta, then broke the other half into quarters. She took one quarter and bit into it, as if in silent repudiation of her friend’s assessment.
Will had seen grief manifested a hundred different ways: in the movies, they liked to show people weeping and wailing or going numb and collapsing. But the truth wasn’t always so simple. Some people got angry.
Like Anahera.
* * *
—
The cop ate quietly, Anahera thought. Methodically. As if it was a task that had to be completed, as if the taste of the food meant nothing to him. Anahera might’ve been insulted except that she knew she was a good cook even when limited to packet sauce and the basic spices she’d picked up at the Lees’ supermarket.
However, she had the feeling she could’ve put a cordon bleu meal in front of the cop and he’d have eaten it the same way. This wasn’t a man who took time to enjoy the small pleasures of life.
Had he been born like that, or had life changed him, made him into this?
If she had to guess, she’d say the latter. No one was born without the capacity for joy in the soul. Life leached it out of them, drop by drop.
Lifting up her glass, she took a deliberate sip of the wine. The smell of alcohol used to make her throw up, but she’d refused to be held hostage to the past and to her father’s addictions. So she’d taught herself to enjoy it as it was meant to be enjoyed—in small doses.
Edward had helped; he’d introduced her to a whole new world of fine wines and decadent cocktails. Before that, all she’d known was the cheap plonk you could get down at the local supermarket. But no matter how good the wine, Anahera had never felt the desire to overindulge. To do so would be to spit on her mother’s ashes and that was the one thing Anahera would never do.
“This is really good.” Will’s voice was steady, his eyes watchful.
Anahera was near-certain he was trying to make the kind of conversation he thought he should make. “You eat like it’s fuel,” she said, her tolerance for bullshit at an all-time low. “Are you sure you even tasted it?”
The face that looked back at her wasn’t expressionless as much as opaque. Controlled. Probably a good skill to cultivate when you were in a line of work that involved interrogating suspects. “I tasted it,” he said evenly.
But Anahera was no longer thinking about the food. “Am I a suspect?” It wasn’t something she’d considered, given how recently she’d returned to Golden Cove, but by that same token, Will didn’t know her, had no reason to rule her out. “Is that why you asked me to watch people and report back? So you could compare my report with someone else’s and see if I lied?”
He held her gaze with the flinty, unforgiving gray of his. His eyes reminded her of the ocean on a perfectly still day before a storm—it might appear calm, but turbulent currents dragged underneath. “You have a good imagination,” he said mildly.
Anahera narrowed her eyes. “Don’t try that tone of voice on me.” It came out cold, flat. “I was married to a man who grew up in the British public-school system.” It had taken her time to get her head around that—that what the English called public schools were actually exclusive private schools. “If you want to play the unemotional-tone game, I can do it as well as you.” She demonstrated with her last sentence, saw his eyes wrinkle slightly at the corners in response.
He took his time answering. “Kyle Baker is of the opinion that you ran back to Golden Cove with your tail between your legs because you couldn’t hack life in the outside world.”
That, Anahera hadn’t been expecting. Eyebrows drawing together, she did what he’d done and took a drink before answering. “He was very respectful at the meeting this afternoon,” she said. “Even made a spec
ial effort to welcome me back to Golden Cove.” Anahera thought back, recalling his apparent discomfort with the situation, the way he’d shrugged and moved his feet.
“Kyle is a little psychopath.” This time the flatness of the words was hard, the edge of a blade. “It took me this long to see it and I’ve had experience with the personality type. He does a very good job of covering it up with charm, and with his perfect, shining golden boy act.”
Putting down her wine, Anahera leaned forward with her arms braced on the table her mother had found on the side of the road and polished back up by hand. “You sound sure.”
Chewing and swallowing a bite of bread he’d just torn off with his teeth, Will said, “He’s decided I’m not worth cultivating—I think it gives him a perverse thrill to expose himself to me. He knows no one will believe me if I speak against him.”
Anahera had known Vincent her whole life, which meant she’d known Kyle peripherally since his birth. The rare times she’d ever thought about him, she’d just dismissed him as a spoiled brat, but she did remember Vincent telling her that Kyle was the perfect son—Vincent’s parents had often held up their younger-by-ten-years second child as an example to Vincent. But there were other things.
“Back when I was thirteen, fourteen—so Kyle would’ve been only three or four at the time—Vincent told me and Keira that his brother threw a huge tantrum if he didn’t also get lots of gifts on Vincent’s birthday.” At the time, they’d rolled their eyes and told Vincent his brother was just being a baby.
The only reason Anahera even remembered the conversation was because Keira had suddenly said, “I had a brother. He died when he was three, before I was born. His name was Keir.” Her black hair pushed back by the sea winds, she’d stared out at the water, this girl who even then had struck Anahera as a blank slate just floating through life. “Keir and Keira. My parents think I have his soul, that I came back from the dead.”
Her words had made Anahera’s skin pebble with goose bumps.
Will’s voice fractured the unsettling memory of the other woman’s confession. “Kyle’s gotten better at hiding his need to be the best, to be fawned over and adored and treated as better than anyone else, but it’s still there under the surface. Be extremely careful around him—and if you ever end up alone with him, change that as fast as possible.”
Slate gray eyes locking with her own. “Anyone who lies as well as Kyle and with such a total lack of remorse could be smiling at you one second and shoving a butcher knife into your spine the next. And he’d never lose the smile.”
29
A chill creeping over her despite the fire in the hearth, Anahera pushed aside her half-eaten bowl of pasta. “Do you think he hurt Miriama?”
Will tapped the fingers of one hand on the wood of the table. “According to Kyle, he has no reason to hurt Miriama. He thinks she’ll end up messing up her own life and humiliating herself by crawling back to Golden Cove.”
It was odd. Though Anahera had only met Will recently and had, technically, known Kyle far longer, she believed Will. There was something about the cop that said he didn’t play games, tell lies.
Of course, her instincts weren’t exactly the best.
She’d trusted Edward all those years, especially after they’d suffered a devastating loss and he’d been nothing but loving. She’d believed him when he’d said they’d make it through, that it didn’t matter as long as they had each other.
Such a good liar, her dead husband.
Anahera had never suspected he was having an affair, had always accepted his words as the truth when he said he had to stay late at the office or go out of town for work.
No, she couldn’t trust her instincts; she needed a second opinion on Will. On Kyle.
She’d talk to Josie, get her friend’s take on things. Though, if Kyle did wear a mask, perhaps it had taken an outsider to see beneath it. Anahera would watch him more closely, see if she could spot any cracks in his personality or actions.
“You don’t have to believe me about Kyle,” Will said, proving he was a damn good cop. “Just be careful. And try not to cross him if you can—he’s the kind of man who’ll hold on to that insult, or perceived insult, and get his revenge when no one is looking.”
A cold feather of sensation along Anahera’s spine. “Noted.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
When she just looked at him, he said, “Why did you come back? Your fans are begging for a new album and your record company has said publicly that they’ll back you whenever you’re ready.”
“You did your homework.”
He didn’t back off at her terse response. “You were offered residencies at prestigious schools of music, asked to consider another tour, and yet you came back. Why, when you’d made it out? Isn’t that what you wanted?”
Anahera laughed, the sound as bitter as the tears she hadn’t shed for Edward. “I think we’re both old enough to know that sometimes, what we think we want isn’t what we want at all.” She’d run from Golden Cove full of dreams and fueled by anger. She’d come back to it a disillusioned woman who knew that some ghosts couldn’t be outrun and some nightmares followed you forever.
“I did my homework, too,” she said, turning the tables on this man who had a way of making her face things she didn’t want to face. “You’re pretty famous for a cop.”
“I never wanted to be famous.” Curt words, a flat tone.
Anahera knew she shouldn’t push it, that some darkness a man was permitted to have, permitted to keep secret, but he’d started this and she was in no mood to cut him any slack. “Most cops don’t have a big shiny medal pinned to their chest by the leader of the country. Most cops don’t face off against a violent drug addict holding five children as hostages and manage to take down the addict without loss of life. You’re a goddamn national hero. So what’re you doing in Golden Cove?”
A storm in his eyes. “Don’t believe everything you hear in the media.”
Silence.
“There’s another thing,” she said into the heavy weight of it. “Miriama’s currently the center of attention of the entire town. How would that fit in with Kyle’s pathology, if he is a psychopath?”
Will leaned forward, bracing his arms on the table in an echo of her position. He nodded slowly. “That’s a good point. Kyle really doesn’t like being anything but the center of attention. If he did this, he miscalculated how many people care about her—maybe in his mind, she’d just be forgotten, shrugged off.”
Shadows grim across his face. “The only way Kyle can take back the spotlight is if he’s the one to find Miriama. If he did something to her, even if it started out as a cruel prank, it’s gone too far. He can’t find her alive now and still get away with it.”
“Jesus.” Anahera shoved a hand through her hair and, instead of reaching for the wine, got up and poured herself a mug of coffee. Bringing over the teakettle, she topped up Will’s mug as well, then put the teakettle on the table between them and retook her seat. “Are we seriously considering the possibility that Miriama is dead?”
“No. Until I see a body, she’s alive. Hurt, perhaps badly, but not dead.” He leaned back in his seat. “And Kyle’s not the only person I have on my radar.”
When he didn’t say anything further, Anahera raised both eyebrows. “You’re not going to go all ‘this is confidential police business’ on me now, are you?”
“You’re a stranger I barely know,” he replied in the mild tone she’d warned him against using on her.
This time, she thought it was deliberate, meant to irritate.
Leaning back in her own chair, she took a sip of coffee before responding in a tone exactly as mild. “Shall I tell you what I heard this afternoon?” Then, as he listened, she went through her list of points. Of how most people had talked about continuing the search, but how she had the feeling everyone
thought Miriama was gone. “Kyle said something about her maybe having been taken by the sea. He posed it as a question, kind of hesitant, unsure.”
“That’s what he said to me, too—only he wasn’t uncertain or hesitant.” Will placed his mug on the table. “Interesting, isn’t it?”
The chill yet in her blood, Anahera blew out a quiet breath. “‘Interesting’ isn’t the word I’d use.”
“Did anyone mention the three hikers who disappeared fifteen years ago?”
Anahera frowned. “Yes—Tom brought it up, thought we should let you know.” She had to push past her continued dislike of sharing information about her friends to say that. “Nikau figured you must already have the details.” She held Will’s eyes. “Kyle would’ve been way too young back then.”
“I’m not sure if Kyle has ever gotten his hands really dirty, though I think he’s fully capable of it,” was the quietly controlled response. “But we can’t allow him to twist the focus onto himself—he probably said half the things he said to me today for exactly that reason. To manipulate the spotlight.”
“I also met Vincent’s wife.” Anahera replayed those moments inside her mind. “Doesn’t reflect well on me, but I didn’t expect to see her there. I’d just filed her in the ‘rich ladies who do lunch and attend fancy charity events’ category.”
“Why did you have that impression?” Will asked softly, the mildness in his voice replaced by humming interest. “Have you ever met her before?”
Anahera shook her head. “I couldn’t make it to their wedding—that was when the big volcano erupted and grounded flights.” Even though the wedding hadn’t been held in the Cove, she’d been ambivalent about coming back, not yet far enough from the past to return to it.
“I remember. You didn’t see Jemima Baker at Josie’s wedding?”
Of course he’d assume she’d have returned for her best friend’s wedding. “No, my wedding bad luck continued with Josie. I had an accident, ended up on bed rest for a while.” The lie was so easy to tell now. At first, Anahera hadn’t been able to bear talking about how she’d bled out her dreams on the unforgiving cold of an Italian marble floor, then later, she hadn’t been able to bear the pity. So she’d just kept on with the lie and Edward had never disputed her choice.
