by Nalini Singh
She’d seen him in town as she drove through, the man who called himself her father. He’d seen her, too, had paused on the sidewalk, as if expecting her to stop.
Anahera hadn’t stopped, would never stop for that man.
It was only as she was about to reach the top of the Baker drive that she realized while Vincent was gone, Kyle might well be home. If that turned out to be true, hopefully Jemima would either usher him out or he’d stick to a distant end of the house.
A second later, she saw Kyle pull out of the top of the drive in what looked like a Ferrari, the color a lustrous obsidian. Sending her a brilliant smile, he raised his hand in a wave as he headed down while she headed up. Anahera raised hers back, keeping things friendly. If he was a psychopath as Will suspected—and the cop had good instincts—it’d do well not to let Kyle see that she wasn’t taken in by his act.
Parking, she got out and had just begun to walk up the two shallow front steps when the door opened from the inside. Jemima stood smiling on the doorstep. “Oh, you’re here.” A delighted brightness to her, a hint of surprise.
Because Anahera had kept her word?
“Thanks for having me,” Anahera said with a smile of her own, “but I’m starting to feel a little underdressed.” Jemima was wearing a white dress with little red flowers on the fabric, the bodice nipped in at the waist and the calf-length skirt flaring out below. Her hair was blow-dried to perfection, shone under the sunlight.
Vincent’s wife laughed. “Oh, don’t mind me,” said the woman no one seemed to truly know. “I used to dress up even as a little girl. I don’t get much of a chance to do it when in the Cove. I hope you don’t mind.”
“As long as you don’t mind that I’m wearing jeans and a shirt.” She hadn’t bothered to put on her anorak after leaving the church; the sun took some of the bite out of the air.
“You look beautiful.” Jemima’s face glowed. “Come in.”
When Anahera walked into the living room, it was to see two cherubic children playing on the rug in front of the crackling fireplace. “I always get cold,” Jemima said. “The whole house is heated, of course, but nothing beats a fire, don’t you agree?”
“Mama!” The boy held out his arms.
Not hesitating, Jemima went over and picked him up for a cuddle. Not to be outdone, his younger sister asked for the same.
“They’re so competitive at this age,” Jemima said afterward, “but they do play well together. We should be able to talk without too many interruptions.” She showed Anahera to a comfortable seating area in front of wide windows that looked out over the dramatic untamed landscape beyond.
Anahera didn’t immediately sit. “Damn, that’s magnificent.” It came out as a long exhale.
There were no pathways in this part of the bush, no trails for hikers to follow. If you went into the dense growth so thick it turned the world quiet and dark, you did so on your own steam, knowing the wild could swallow you whole.
Jemima came to stand beside her, her perfume a delicate floral note in the air. “It is beautiful, isn’t it?” she said softly.
Anahera turned to look at the other woman’s unsmiling profile. “It must get lonely, though,” she said. “I used to feel that way in London, a country girl lost in the big city.”
“It’s not so much the country—I grew up in a large game reserve. It’s that . . .” She wrapped her arms around herself, her hands cupping her elbows. “Everyone knows each other already and they don’t seem to want to know me.” A glance at Anahera out of the corner of her eye.
“Small towns,” Anahera said. “They have their good points and bad points.”
Releasing her arms to her sides, Jemima nodded. “We’ve witnessed the good over the past few days, don’t you think? People coming together to search for Miriama.”
“The bad, unfortunately, is the insular nature and the gossip.”
They both moved naturally back to the seating area, with Jemima taking the armchair that would allow her to keep an eye on her children while they spoke. On the small table in between them was a fine china tea set and a plate of small, beautifully iced cakes. “It’s not actually tea,” Jemima whispered with a grin that seemed far more real than any other expression Anahera had seen on her face. “It’s coffee. I hope you don’t mind.”
That was the second time the other woman had used those words: I hope you don’t mind. A nervous habit? Or had someone trained her to be uncertain by being constantly irritated or annoyed at her actions?
It was equally possible Anahera was letting her own past color her reading of Jemima Baker.
“Are you kidding?” she said, determined to get to the truth. “I live on coffee.”
Jemima laughed and poured the rich, dark liquid into both cups. “Cream? Sugar?”
“I’ll do it.” Anahera reached for the sugar bowl as she spoke. “We’re friends—or at least I hope we’ll become friends. Friends don’t stand on ceremony.”
Sea green eyes filled with light. “I’m so glad you’re back, Anahera.” Her hand flew to her mouth almost before the last word was out. “I’m so sorry. That was incredibly thoughtless of me.”
Anahera shook her head. “It’s all right. I’ve had time to accept my husband’s death.” Accept his perfidy and his generosity and his betrayal and the love he’d once had for her. Maybe one of these days, she’d even stop being so angry at him—not for the affair, but for dying and leaving her with no target for her grief, her rage.
“Vincent and I saw one of the shows he wrote when it did a run on Broadway,” Jemima said softly. “The one about Jane Austen’s life, with those amazing costumes and that strange, fascinating timeline.”
“That was always Edward’s favorite.” He’d been so happy when it won award after award, such a kid about showing off the statuettes to anyone who came around.
Old affection stirred in her chest, waking from a long sleep. “We flew over to see its Broadway debut, and the whole time, he sat there grinning while holding my hand.” It seemed a memory of two distant strangers. “We traveled constantly in the first year of our marriage. You and Vincent do a lot of travel, too, don’t you?”
“We used to do a lot more.” Jemima held her teacup of coffee on her knee. “But since the children, I prefer to stay in one place for longer periods and Vincent doesn’t seem to mind traveling alone when needed.”
The Anahera who’d sat next to her grinning husband in that darkened theater wouldn’t have caught the bitterness hidden beneath the unexceptional words. But to the Anahera who’d helped her husband’s distraught mistress from his graveside, the acrid taste was as familiar as the knot of anger and resentment and grief in her own chest.
Jemima knew.
43
The question was if she knew only that Vincent had been unfaithful, or if she had the name of the woman who’d become a silent third party in their marriage.
Anahera liked Jemima, but Miriama also had a call on her loyalty.
And the time for lies and rumors was over.
“You can tell me to shove off and mind my own business if I’m crossing a line,” she said, “but I get the feeling you aren’t happy in your marriage.”
Jemima’s face closed over. “That’s a very personal thing to say.”
“Comes from experience.”
Jemima froze in the act of stirring more cream into her coffee. Looking up after several long seconds, she searched Anahera’s face. “Do you usually tell strangers?”
Anahera felt her lips twist. “I haven’t told anyone. I only found out after my husband died and she turned up at my front door.”
China rattled against china as Jemima nearly dropped both cup and saucer. Putting them down, she stared at Anahera with horrified eyes. “I am so sorry.” Her next words trembled, white lines bracketing her mouth. “My God, why couldn’t she have waited?�
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“She loved him, too.” Anahera had never blamed the woman—it was Edward who’d been married, Edward who’d broken vows, Edward who’d made his lover promises of forever. “She couldn’t stop crying.”
Smoothing back her flawless hair with an unsteady hand, Jemima looked over at her two small children. “Let’s go onto the balcony. It’s so lovely out.”
Only once they were outside, the sliding door mostly shut behind them, did the other woman say, “I haven’t told anyone, either.” A rough whisper. “No one suspects. We have such a perfect life.”
Anahera leaned her forearms against the wooden railing, drinking in the landscape as she inhaled the crisp air. “Is it a woman connected to his business?” She had to know if Vincent’s wife had identified a stunning nineteen-and-a-half-year-old girl as his lover.
“I don’t know.” Jemima’s fingers clenched tight around the railing. “I thought about hiring a private investigator to follow Vincent, but then I’d actually know and have to do something about it.” Releasing a shuddering breath, she said, “Right now, I can pretend that it’s all in my imagination. And we can keep on living this perfect life.”
Anahera turned her gaze from the view to the elegant lines of Jemima’s face. “You love him.” It was written in every tormented inch of her. Whatever Vincent’s reasons for marrying her, Jemima had done it out of love.
“From the moment I first met him,” Jemima whispered. “I always knew he didn’t feel the same way about me, but I thought it would grow. And we were doing okay, were building a strong friendship around our shared determination to get Vincent to the top of the political ladder, and then . . .”
Jemima looked back through the sliding door, making sure her children remained involved in their game and out of earshot. “Then he found a woman who made him feel alive in a way I’ve never managed.”
“That doesn’t give him the right to hurt you.”
“The thing is”—Jemima dropped her head—“even if he came to me today and confessed each and every detail, I’d tell him I’d be willing to look the other way as long as he came back to me. That’s how pathetic I am, that’s how much I love him.”
Anahera closed a hand over the other woman’s, squeezed, but part of her couldn’t help but think that a wife who was willing to put up with that much from her husband might not take it well if she believed her husband’s affair had a chance of becoming real—of coming out of the shadows to disrupt her perfect life. Maybe Vincent had slipped up, or maybe Jemima had hired that private investigator.
Was it possible Vincent had tried to win Miriama back by offering marriage?
“Are you worried that Vincent’s considering divorce?” Anahera pushed off the railing, angling her body to face Jemima. “And again, you can tell me to shove it if that’s going too far.”
“I think you might be the first real friend I’ve made since I walked down the aisle.” A tendril of golden hair whispered against her cheek. “I don’t want to lie to you. The truth is, I used to worry about divorce, but he’s never once mentioned it as a possibility. I keep hoping it’s just a madness that’ll pass and then I’ll have my husband back.” Words raw with hope.
Jemima truly seemed to believe the affair was ongoing.
So either Vincent had already found someone else . . . or he remained obsessed with Miriama despite their breakup.
44
Will fought the urge to slam his fist down on the steering wheel. He’d spoken to everybody he could, run down every possible lead, even quietly checked the whereabouts of a number of different men at the time of Miriama’s disappearance—men who’d looked at her as Nikau had looked at her—and still he had nothing.
Nikau himself, it turned out, had been hanging in the garage with Peter Jacobs. Peter Jacobs, who had no record, but who’d been a “person of interest” in an American rape investigation. Will had discovered that piece of well-buried background earlier today, his blood running cold, but Jacobs’s alibi was solid.
Evelyn Triskell, of all people, had confirmed that she’d walked in on Peter and Nikau “stinking up” the garage with “awful cheap cigars.” She’d been certain of the date and time because she’d come in to have an oil check before she and Wayne left to see a movie in a neighboring town. She’d even had the ticket stubs to confirm the timing.
Another dead end.
The same as the information that had finally come in from Miriama’s cell phone carrier: her phone had last pinged off towers that placed her in Golden Cove—near the time of her disappearance.
Will’s superiors had more than once pointed out that his strongest trait was also his worst weakness: Sometimes, Will, they’d said, you have to give up. Sometimes you can’t save people.
He knew that, had lived the cruel truth as he fought to get inside the blazing funeral pyre of a “safe house” that held a bright-eyed little boy and his mother. But still he couldn’t stop himself, still he couldn’t give up.
Miriama deserved better than that. Golden Cove deserved better than that.
Because he’d also been chasing down the rumors about the three missing hikers from fifteen years ago. Everyone had a theory about what may have happened to the young women. Will had even received an anonymous tip in the form of a note shoved under the station door while he was out. A note full of vague innuendo and speculation. No one had facts.
He’d sent off a query to check the allegations in the note, but right now he wanted to talk to Matthew Teka. The man had been around a long time. If anyone knew the secrets of this town, it’d be Matthew. Which was why Will was driving to the man’s cabin out in the bush.
The hunter called out a hearty “Tēnā koe!” and invited him in for a cup of “gumboot tea.” While it brewed, he regaled Will with a story about the tahr bull he’d been tracking recently. “Sly bugger. I could almost see him laughing as he scrambled up a mountainside like he had crampons on his feet.” He checked the tea he had going on the stove in a heavy teakettle even older than Anahera’s. “You ever tasted their meat? Bloody good kai.”
“Can’t say I have.” Though, having grown up in the south, he was familiar with the goat-like animals. Endangered elsewhere in the world, the introduced species was considered a pest in New Zealand.
“I’ll get you a steak after I bag this bull.” Matthew picked up the kettle and began to pour.
“You supply one of the wild-game restaurants?”
“Yeah, but don’t worry about paying city prices. Your feed’s on me—I always keep aside a bit of meat.”
“Kia ora, Matthew.”
Putting a dented tin cup in front of Will after waving off his thanks, Matthew took a seat at the wooden table—not across from Will, but to the right, next to the window. “So, you want to talk about the lost hikers.”
Will drank down a third of the hot, strong tea heavy with sugar and dark with caffeine. “Anything you can tell me?”
“Those girls didn’t just disappear,” Matthew said bluntly while rolling up tobacco into a thin cigarette. “I tramped through that part of the bush day in and day out, and didn’t see no sign of the girls until I found that water bottle.”
He finished sealing his roll-up, but didn’t light it. “Piri found the pack that belonged to the second wahine later—in the same spot where I stopped for a breather the day before. I got eyes in my upoko. I would’ve noticed a pack. Got put there after.”
“Did you tell this to the original investigators?”
“Sure.” A shrug. “But most of the city cops, they think we’re pōraki, nē.” He circled a finger by his temple. “Living out here in the bush.”
Unfortunately, Will couldn’t disagree with Matthew’s take. Hell, if he hadn’t been assigned to Golden Cove, if he hadn’t gotten to know these people, he might’ve been the same. The brain shied away from the sanity of making a home out here in this primeval wildn
ess. “Did the locals have any suspicions at the time about who it might’ve been?”
“People did look at each other funny after they found the bracelet of the third girl, but it was just fear, eh. We didn’t have anyone acting like a perv or anything.”
In a town this small, someone inevitably ended up a scapegoat. That Golden Cove hadn’t fixated on a single individual told him exactly how difficult the case must’ve been for the cops who’d investigated it. A water bottle, a pack, an identity bracelet. No remains. Not even a single bone fragment.
“What about you?” he asked. “You ever wonder about someone?”
Finally lighting his roll-up, Matthew politely puffed toward the open window rather than Will’s face. “Interesting question, that.”
Instincts prickling, Will just waited.
“You’re a good listener.” Matthew gave an approving nod from behind a plume of smoke. “Would’ve made a great enemy interrogator.”
Will wasn’t the least surprised to learn the other man was a veteran. He got that haunted look in his eyes sometimes that Will had seen in the eyes of others who’d come back from war. “It used to drive my mother nuts,” he said. “For the first few years of my life she worried I was mute.”
Laughing uproariously at that, the older man slapped at his knee. “Ka mau te wehi!” When he finally calmed down, he said, “You’ll think I’ve lost my mind alone out here.”
Will held his gaze. “I’ve learned things during this investigation that make me question everyone in the Cove, so whoever you name, I’m not going to be surprised.”
The name Matthew spoke made the hairs rise on the back of Will’s neck. “Why? I need to know why you suspected him.”
Matthew took a while to think about that, smoking his roll-up halfway down before he said, “Just . . . too perfect, eh.” Another thoughtful puff. “A man—he was a boy back then—who never makes mistakes has got to have a madness trapped inside. And, there was the punua kurī.”
