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 wildness. “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