by Nalini Singh
He didn’t call Vincent until he was nearly at the other man’s home. Then, he just said, “I need you to come down the drive. We have to talk about Miriama.”
The smallest pause before Vincent’s reply. “I’ll be there.”
The lights of his vehicle cut through the pitch-blackness about three minutes later. Will flashed his own lights from where he’d parked a little off the drive.
“Thank you for not coming up to the house,” Vincent said, after they’d both gotten out to stand between the cars—under a sky so dark that a few more feet of distance and they wouldn’t have been able to make out each other’s faces. “I told Jemima I was heading out to have a quick drink with you, said you sounded down about the lack of progress on the disappearance.”
Will didn’t care what lies Vincent had told his wife; he was already well aware the man was a better liar than any of them had ever expected. “I know you had an affair with Miriama.”
Smart enough to read the situation, Vincent didn’t feign shock. “She was the most honest thing in my entire life,” he murmured. “If I’d known who she’d grow up to be to me, I would’ve never married Jemima.” He dropped his gaze to the ground. “Back then, I thought it was time to get the right kind of wife, create the right kind of family, begin building the profile that would help me advance in politics.”
When he looked up, his eyes shimmered with wetness. “That’s what I’ve always done—the right thing, or the right thing as mandated by whoever it is that decides the rules. In my case, that happened to be my parents.”
A mocking smile. “They wanted the perfect son and I was happy to give them one. It was easy when I had no other passion in my life—not like Anahera with her music or Nikau with his academics, or even Daniel with his lust for money. Following my parents’ script gave me direction.”
“How did it start with Miriama?” Will took nothing Vincent said at face value. The other man’s tears could be window dressing, his anguish perfectly pitched to arouse Will’s sympathies. It was also equally possible that Vincent had been deeply in love with Miriama and unable to stand her rejection.
Vincent blew out a shuddering breath. “It began the first time I saw her after she went from being a girl to a woman.” Gritty words. “It took me two months to build up the courage to speak to her about anything but how I liked my coffee, even longer before I dared kiss her. I was terrified the entire time that she’d slap my face and tell me I was reaching above myself, but my beautiful Miriama never did that. She loved me as much as I loved her.”
“What about Dominic de Souza?” Will had deliberately thrown in the question cold, with no buildup; he wanted to see Vincent’s unvarnished reaction.
He wasn’t disappointed.
Hands fisting, Vincent spun on his heel to stalk down the narrow space between the two cars and all the way to the tree line. He stood staring out into the pitch dark for at least two long minutes after Will joined him before he spoke. “He’s not good enough for her. He’s promised her a life of travel and adventure. But what his small mind conceives as travel and adventure will bore her within the space of a year.”
“Did you offer better?”
Vincent turned, his face haggard. “I should have. But, heaven help me, I didn’t.” Legs crumpling, he fell to his knees. “I should’ve said to hell with political aspirations and the perfect ‘family man’ image and just divorced Jemima. Only then . . . I would’ve had Miriama, but I would’ve lost the chance to watch my children grow up. My wife would’ve fought tooth and nail for sole custody and it wouldn’t have taken much for her to prove that she’s always been the main parent.”
Dropping his head into his hands, Vincent choked back a sob. “But dear God,” he said afterward, his voice rough, “much as I love my children, not breaking up my marriage so I was free to be with Miriama is the biggest regret of my life. If anything’s happened to her, if I’ve wasted my one chance at true happiness, I’ll never forgive myself.”
It was a believable performance, but conversely, Will had once believed that Vincent was a happily married man with a wife he appreciated, even if they didn’t appear to share a passionate love. Today, however, he’d heard a disturbing offhandedness in Vincent’s voice when he spoke of Jemima, as if she was no more than an unwanted piece of furniture.
Which opened up a whole other can of worms. “Does Jemima know?”
Vincent wiped away his tears and struggled to his feet. “No, of course not.”
He had the confidence of philandering men everywhere, and just like them, he was probably wrong. Though, when you factored in how well Vincent had insulated his family from the locals, it was possible that Jemima had no idea. But if she had worked out the truth . . .
“I’ll need to speak to Jemima at some point,” Will said.
Vincent’s face turned to flint. “You’ll have to get through my lawyers first.”
“That’s how much you love Miriama?” Will asked softly. “Enough to block me from talking to someone who might know what’s happened to her?”
“Miriama left me. She chose Dominic de Souza.” The words were like ice. “She’ll still choose him when she comes back. I’m not going to lose my wife, too.”
There it was, the rage. Deep and black and violent. The kind of rage that came from passionate love. “Do you know where Miriama is, Vincent?”
“Go to hell, you bastard.”
Will didn’t stop the other man when he got into his car and sped off down the drive, away from the house. Right now, he had nothing with which to further push Vincent.
That didn’t mean he was about to give up.
Starting his own vehicle after a short delay but not turning on his headlights, he followed Vincent. As it was, the covert surveillance ended up a bust: Vincent parked in front of the pub.
Going around to the back of the local drinking hole, Will managed to get hold of the manager, a great bearded man who was a well-known hunter and who’d spent hours searching for Miriama. When Will asked him to keep an eye on Vincent and to let him know if the other man said or did anything out of the ordinary, the manager stared at him with hard eyes.
But his response wasn’t the stonewalling Will had expected, wasn’t the town protecting one of their own against an outsider. “I saw the way he looked at her,” the other man said, twisting a tea towel in his nicked and scarred hands. “Also saw the way she looked back. Miri’s too good for the likes of him and I’m glad the girl was smart enough to see that. Using her, that’s what he was doing.”
“Did you know,” Will said, “or did you suspect only?”
“Didn’t know for sure. Was hoping I was wrong.” He slapped the tea towel over his shoulder, his black T-shirt branded with the fading emblem of a metal band. “Her thing with the doctor? That’s got a real future—he’s a townie but he respects little Miri enough to want her to be his wife.”
“So his plan to propose is open knowledge?”
A faint smile. “Mattie isn’t too good at keeping happy secrets. She whispered it around when the doctor asked her to sneak away one of Miri’s rings so that he could have the engagement ring made the right size.” Smile fading, he folded his arms over muscle gone to hard fat. “I’ll keep an eye on the rich boy, don’t worry.”
“Don’t do anything,” Will warned. “He’s not the only one I’m looking at.”
“When you know for certain, you sure as hell better drive whoever it is out of here before I get my hands on them. But Vincent’s safe for now.”
The journal sat heavy against Will’s heart as he drove off after that exchange.
He knew he wouldn’t be getting any sleep tonight.
Before he returned home, however, he’d do a sweep of the town, make sure no trouble lurked in the shadows.
Though the air was clear of the scent of rain, the cloud-heavy sky held no stars, no moon, a
nd it felt to Will as if the entire town was suffocating under a blanket of darkness. Miriama’s disappearance had stained Golden Cove’s heart. Nothing would scrub away that stain until they found her or discovered what had happened to her.
Spotting a huddle on one particular corner, he came to a stop by the curb and rolled down his window.
41
“You should all be at home,” he said to the teenagers loitering outside the closed fire station.
Kyle Baker flicked off some ash from his cigarette. “We were just discussing Miriama. Thinking about what else we could do, where we could search.” Insolence in his eyes but pious worry in his tone. Kyle was putting on a show for his fans, and, interestingly, many of those fans were younger than him.
“That’s a good thing,” Will said, “but, if anything happens to any of you, it’ll make a bad situation even worse.” He wasn’t surprised to see a number of faces familiar to him from the other night—in a place this small, “hanging out” was a popular nighttime activity for the underage crowd. “The town can’t afford to squander its resources right now. I need you to follow the rules so I don’t have to worry about that and can focus on finding Miriama.”
One of the girls bit down on her lower lip. “Sorry,” she said softly. “It’s just that we’re so worried about Miriama and Kyle said maybe we could meet up and come up with some ideas.”
Kyle shot the girl a narrow-eyed look that she didn’t notice but Will did. He made sure his own eyes caught Kyle’s on the return journey, the message in them clear: anything happened to that girl and Will would come for Kyle.
Shrugging her off as unimportant, Kyle took another drag of his cigarette. “You’re absolutely right.” He slid back into his golden boy persona without missing a beat. “We’ll all go home. But we want to join in the search tomorrow.”
“The search has been suspended.” When he’d spoken to—then sober—Nikau on the drive back to Golden Cove, he’d agreed with the other man’s call that there was nothing and nowhere left to search.
“Do you think she’s dead?” Kyle asked, eyes devoid of empathy mocking Will.
“For Matilda’s sake, and the sake of everyone else who loves Miriama, I hope not.”
His words made several of the teenage girls tear up, the boys nearest them taking the opportunity to put their arms around the girls’ shoulders. “Claire, Mika,” he said, “hop in. I’ll give you a lift home.” The sisters lived the farthest away. “Kyle, I know I can trust you to see the others home safely.”
The nineteen-year-old stilled, realizing too late that he’d been led into a trap. “Of course,” he said at last and Will knew he’d keep his word. Kyle Baker might be a psychopath, but he was a psychopath who liked being the top dog in teenage circles in town.
Nodding good-bye to the other kids, Will turned his SUV in the direction of Claire and Mika’s home. They were quiet on the ride but thanked him when he dropped them off. Will, however, wasn’t done. He spent the next ten minutes getting in touch with the adults in charge of the other teenagers and alerting them their kids should be home within the next quarter hour.
Not all the adults who answered the phones were sober.
After hanging up, he swung by the two homes where a missing child might not immediately be noticed or reported. Catching sight of a teenager’s lanky form through the open window of one, and spotting the other sitting safely on the back stoop of her home sneaking a cigarette, Will continued on his way. He felt no surprise when a low-slung car with its headlights off fell in behind him as he turned into his own street.
Kyle Baker didn’t like being told no.
Halting the police vehicle in the middle of the otherwise empty road without warning, Will got out and pointed a flashlight directly at the driver’s seat of the car sitting on his bumper. Kyle jerked up a hand to block the glare before backing up and screeching into a U-turn to head back the way he’d come.
The rest of Will’s drive home was unremarkable.
Once inside, he made himself a cup of coffee, then opened Miriama’s journal. This time, he read sequentially, his focus no longer on discovering the identity of her lover.
Many entries were simple descriptions of her day, or of something she’d seen that had caused her to pull out her camera, but she’d also filled the pages with dreams. Of travel, of passionate love, of creating a better life for her children than she’d had herself.
I love Auntie, but I’ve always missed having a mother. A proper one. One who’d take me shopping for my school shoes, and teach me how to cook and put on makeup.
Auntie did a lot of that, and I’d never disrespect her by saying how much I wanted my mother—except without the drugs and the men—but it’s a hole inside me, that need. I can’t ever have a real mother, but I can be one. I’m going to have babies and I’m going to do all those things with them. Not just yet, not before I’m ready and strong enough to take care of a child, but one day.
It was months later that she mentioned the topic again—after her breakup with Vincent, and soon after she’d begun to see Dominic.
I asked Dominic if he wants children. It’s a scary question so early into a relationship, but it’s important to me. I can’t be with a man who doesn’t want to build a family.
He said yes. His face glowed because I was talking about our future. I asked him if he’d be okay with it if we had four kids—he looked a little petrified by the number, but he said that if that was what I wanted, then he’d figure out how to look after four little ankle biters.
I can see it, see how much I’ll love him one day. Not the way I love the man I shouldn’t, but in the way of a dear friend. Dominic will never hurt me, never treat my dreams as anything other than important.
We’ll create a family, and we’ll be happy.
Dominic turned up again several pages—and a couple of weeks—later.
Dominic made me a picnic today. I asked him how he had the time—I know he’s busy at the clinic. He admitted that he’d asked Auntie to help him, and it was so cute, the way he blushed.
The other day, I wrote that I’d never love Dominic the way I do someone who’ll never be mine, but when he does things like this, when he treats me so wonderfully . . . I think my feelings for him will grow and grow. I’m so glad to know that. I never want to hurt Dominic. I’m going to be the best wife. I’m going to make him so happy.
And I’m going to leave this town. Leave the man for whom I broke God’s commandments. Leave the memories of his smile and his kisses and his promises. I’m going to fly free and I’m not going to look back.
42
Anahera spent hours thinking while Nikau snored in his drunken sleep.
Sometime in the midst of it, she took out the card that Jemima had given her and sent the other woman a quick email asking if Jemima was free for coffee midmorning the next day.
The answer was waiting for her when she woke:
Ten o’clock will be perfect. Vincent has to fly to Auckland on company business and our nanny has the week off, so the children and I will be alone all day. Vincent won’t get back till after nine tonight.
Anahera found it worrying that the other woman had so deliberately pointed out that her husband wouldn’t be around, but that might just be her suspicious mind at play.
After kicking out a badly hungover Nikau—though she did have mercy enough to give him coffee first—she looked at the work emails she’d been ignoring for weeks. All about her music, music that she’d played for hours and hours and hours the day she saw Edward’s body, so pale and motionless. Like a wax mannequin of the man she’d loved.
She hadn’t played since.
Anahera glanced down at her hands, flexed them. And decided to take Pastor Mark up on his offer.
The church door was open as always, the pews empty and the interior cold. Exposed timbers arched above her head, while the floor beneath
her feet was worn down by the passage of thousands of feet over tens of years. No fancy stained glass for this church on the edge of nowhere, but the quiet within was as profound as in the greatest cathedrals in Europe.
Sitting down at the old piano, she lifted the lid . . . and put her fingers to the keys.
It was the sound of tears that brought her back to earth. Letting the notes fade, she looked at the pews to see that she had an audience of three. The pastor, Evelyn Triskell, and a man with a sea-battered face she thought might be the uncle of Tania Meikle’s husband. “Thank you for getting the piano tuned.” She knew it must’ve been done for her.
“Ana, dear, what a gift you’ve given us in return.” Pastor Mark patted Evelyn’s shoulder.
Sniffing, the older woman looked at Anahera with red-rimmed blue eyes. “You play with such sadness. It breaks my heart.”
What could Anahera say? In this house of God where anger seemed a sin and forgiveness was cherished. “I played my first-ever nocturne on these same keys.” She ran her fingers across them, the touch featherlight.
The man who might’ve been related to the Meikles said, “Will you play more?”
So she did.
Her hands ached by the time she left for the Baker estate, and the sun had banished any lingering clouds, the sky a crisp blue. Jemima had messaged her to say she’d leave the gate open. As a result, Anahera didn’t have to stop at the foot of the drive. The landscape looked far different in bright sunlight than it did in the moody gray that so often swathed the area.
Sunshine glimmered and glinted on the dewdrops that had survived the morning sun, and speared through the green of the leaves to turn them translucent, and she could hear the distinctive song of the tuis with their white ruffle at the throat and iridescent black feathers.
Sometimes, Anahera could imagine no more beautiful place in the world.
Other times, she wondered why she’d come back to a place she’d always wanted to escape. Maybe it had never been about the place at all.
