He decided to talk to Miriama’s rival for the scholarship next, wanting to clear that possibility before he moved on, but he had some trouble tracking down Kyle Baker, as Vincent’s younger brother was out with a search team. When Will did finally find him, it was on the beach. Kyle was just standing there staring out at the crashing waves.
Will had long ago stopped wearing regulation police wear to work this remote town, favoring work boots and jeans paired with a shirt, over which he currently wore a waterproof jacket. He had no trouble clambering down one of the paths from the cliff.
Kyle didn’t hear him until Will was nearly by his side. Jerking, he looked at Will with pale brown eyes identical to his brother’s, but unlike Vincent’s shining gold, Kyle’s hair was a light brown threaded with blond. “I think the ocean’s taken her,” he said in a calm voice. “It does that. Just takes people. She’ll never be found.”
“You seem very sure.”
Kyle smiled, as if Will had made a joke. “I didn’t do anything to her,” he said. “I didn’t need to. I knew she’d fuck up her own life sooner or later.”
So, Dominic de Souza had been right. Kyle Baker, it seemed, had more in common with Daniel May than his own brother—and he’d decided that it wasn’t worth turning on the charm for Will. No doubt because Will hadn’t let the graffiti incident just slide.
“You don’t have a positive opinion of Miriama’s intelligence?” he asked in the same even tone he’d used to date.
Kyle shrugged, his slightly overlong bangs sweeping across his forehead in a way that had the town’s teenage girls swooning. “Look, no offense to Matilda, but she likes to date losers. I guess they’re the only ones who’ll go for a used-up old chick like her, but whatever.” Another smile. “With that as an example, you really think Miriama was going to finish the placement and become a world-famous travel photographer like she wanted?”
Was. Wanted.
“You don’t believe people can rise above their circumstances?”
“You kidding? Look at Anahera Rawiri. Everyone thought she’d made it, was living it up in London, but she’s back with her tail between her legs, sleeping in the same crappy shed where her mother kicked the bucket.”
Anger licked Will’s spine. He suffocated it as fast as it had flared, depriving it of the oxygen it needed to grow. He’d almost beaten a man to death the last time he’d given in to the red haze of anger.
Will still didn’t know if he’d done the right thing in allowing that monstrous bastard to live, but he couldn’t go around killing every asshole he met—the world, unfortunately, was full of them. “How exactly did you think Miriama would mess up her life?”
“Hook up with some loser who beat her, get pregnant, and live in this town until she died.” Kyle’s smile never faded. “Looks like she proved me wrong by drowning while still a success.”
“Let’s talk about that success.” The wind whipped at Will’s hair. “You both applied for the internship, but she won it.”
No flicker in the smile, but Kyle’s voice turned ice-cold. “The board that decided it fell for her tits and ass.”
“Must’ve pissed you off.” Money was one thing, but being invited into an industry fraternity quite another—Kyle couldn’t buy his way into the environment that had warmly embraced Miriama. “Seeing someone like Miriama be welcomed by people you view as your peers.”
“I knew I’d get there,” Kyle said. “I have the drive and the staying power.” Another smile, this one lighting up his eyes. “I also know how to make people want to be around me.” It was like watching a switch being turned on. Kyle was suddenly the town’s golden boy again, all politeness and down-to-earth personality. “Even you’d like me if I wanted you to like me.”
It was too bad you couldn’t arrest people for being psychopaths. Because many psychopaths ended up never committing a single crime, instead becoming successes in fields that rewarded a lack of empathy. Maybe Kyle would head in that direction.
And maybe he’d already killed.
“Did Miriama like you?” He deliberately used the past tense to feed into Kyle’s mentality.
Kyle sneered, switching off the charisma as easily as he’d switched it on. “I didn’t need to lower myself to a piece of trash. I’ve got much better meat gagging for it.”
He was pushing it now, Will thought, using deliberately crude language in an effort to provoke