Will understood why she was happy, but he couldn’t agree with her. Especially not with rain forecast for this afternoon. If Miriama was lying hurt somewhere, the cold and wet could push her body dangerously close to fatal exposure.
Going to check the map someone had pinned to the wall next to the whiteboard, he ran his eyes over the areas marked with double Xs, meaning they’d been searched twice. “Has anyone gone out here?” He directed the question at an experienced hunter who lived outside of town, tapping his finger on an area that wasn’t anywhere near where Miriama had been seen, but that was a favorite hangout for the town’s younger people.
There was a faint possibility that Miriama had met up with a friend and headed that way for a short period, only for something to go wrong. Bad enough that her friend hadn’t reported it. He knew he was reaching, but they had to be sure.
The hunter looked at the spot Will had indicated, nodded. “Yeah, we should check it out. Might be she got drunk and is just sleeping it off there.” He said the words loud enough to reach Matilda, and Will realized the heavily bearded male was trying to comfort the woman.
But after the volunteers got back in their vehicles and headed out toward their target locations, Matilda shook her head. “Miriama wouldn’t do that. My girl doesn’t drink that way—I always used to worry she’d get bored and be drawn into the drugs and drinking, like so many of the kids in this town, but Miriama, she’s always had big dreams.”
Taking a seat, her hands tight around a mug of coffee, Matilda kept on talking. “Half the time as a child, she had her head in the clouds, dreaming of all the places she wanted to see in the world. She even kept a little notebook full of pictures she’d cut out of old magazines—the Eiffel Tower, the pyramids, Uluru…”
Matilda’s smile was fierce with belief, with hope. “I still have that notebook. I’m going to put it in her bag as a surprise when she leaves Golden Cove for the internship. My girl has so much talent—it’ll take her all over the world, to every one of those places in her little notebook.”
Will sat down on a hard plastic chair beside Matilda. “I need to ask you some questions.”
Wild eyes, a face going white under the brown of her skin.
“I don’t know anything,” he said at once. “But while Nik leads the search, I want to check other avenues. Just in case.”
Matilda shoved her untouched mug of coffee into Will’s hands. “I make good coffee.”
He took a sip to keep things as normal as he could before he began to speak. “Here’s the thing, Matilda,” he said quietly. “Miriama is a beautiful young woman, and while we like to think of our country as a safe place in comparison to the rest of the world, we have our predators.”
He’d been worried his plain speaking would further rattle Matilda, but she squared her shoulders and looked him straight in the eye. “You’re taking this seriously,” she said. “You’re not treating her like a stupid nineteen-year-old who couldn’t be bothered to tell her auntie she was taking off.”
“That’s not the girl I know.” Will maintained the eye contact. “I know she ran away as a child, but she had her reasons.”
Matilda’s hands fisted in her lap. “My fault,” she said. “But the sweet girl’s never blamed me for it. She’s always had such aroha in her heart.”
“How friendly would Miriama be toward a stranger?” he asked, staying away from the topic of locals for now. “I’ve seen Cove residents pick up hitchhikers without thinking twice about it. And most people around here are used to helping tourists—would she?”
Matilda nodded slowly. “A normal tourist who came into the café or maybe stopped her on the main street,” she said, “yes, Miriama would help.”
Will nodded and took another drink to show Matilda he was listening, that he was present. He’d had to ask, but he wasn’t truly concerned about the tourist angle; had any strangers been spotted in town, Will would’ve been told within an hour of Miriama’s disappearance. The locals liked the money the tourists brought in, but they also never forgot that these were outsiders.
Mrs. Keith would’ve definitely noticed an unfamiliar vehicle. But, to be safe, he’d also check with the bus that came through Golden Cove twice a day,