shadows by the firelight, her ghosts loud tonight.
She woke to the sound of movement. Her eyelashes lifted, her body heavy with the kind of sleep she hadn’t had for a long, long time. Still drowsy, she watched Will put on his clothes and boots, and wondered if he’d sneak out of the house, doing his version of a walk of shame.
But, of course, that wasn’t Will. She saw him grab a small notebook she’d left on the counter, begin to write a note.
“Will.”
Abandoning the note, he came to crouch by the mattress. Brushing her hair off her face with one hand, he said, “I have to go. A local found something not far from the rubbish dump. The call just came in.”
Anahera had a vague memory of hearing an annoying buzzing.
Sitting up, she let his hand drop away, her attention fixed on his face. It gave her nothing. “What do you mean they found something? Is it Miriama?”
“I hope not.” Hard lines bracketing his mouth. “Because that area was heavily searched. I asked Nikau to send extra teams out there.”
Anahera sucked in a breath. “That means if it is her, somebody deliberately returned to put her there.” She had to say it out loud to get the horror of it straight in her mind. “I’ll come with you.”
Will shook his head. “You’d just have to sit in the car. I can’t take a civilian into a possible crime scene.” He rose along with her. “I’ll call you the instant I know anything.”
Frustration gnawed at Anahera, but she didn’t argue. This might be a small town, the rules not as hard and fast, but Will was a cop, a good one. And Anahera wasn’t about to mess up a future trial by being where she shouldn’t be; evidence mattered, blood splatter mattered. “I’ll keep my phone with me.”
Walking him to the door, she thought about if she should kiss him good-bye, but what they’d done in the night wasn’t quite settling in the pale dark before dawn.
“I’ll call you,” Will repeated before heading out across the porch. He was halfway down the steps when he turned and came back. Closing one hand around the side of her face, he pressed his lips to hers.
Embers low in her belly ignited, but this was no long burn. Will drew back almost at once and jogged over to get into the police SUV. She watched him reverse into the mist, her lips burning from his kiss and her face bearing the imprint of his palm.
47
Will’s radio crackled as he drove away from a woman for whom he’d never planned. Despite not having any staff who might contact him, he wasn’t surprised by the static. Something about the area did funny things to his radio every now and then. One of the old bushmen had been with Will during a previous static burst; he’d immediately made the sign of the cross.
“Ghost,” he’d muttered. “Never figured one would want to haunt a cop car.”
Will wasn’t afraid of ghosts. It was the real-life monsters walking around that terrified him. Not for the first time, he thought about Vincent Baker and how his mask of grief had slipped when Will mentioned speaking to his wife, how quickly Miriama had changed from his true love to an object he’d used and discarded.
Then there was Kyle Baker.
Both hiding in plain sight. But where Kyle’s ego led him to flip off authority, Vincent had played the part of a trustworthy friend and neighbor his entire adult life. He’d never let the mask slip in public. Which, to Will’s mind, made Vincent the more dangerous of the two brothers.
And Will had nothing on either Baker.
What he did have—courtesy of an email that had come through last night after dinner—was a disturbing report about Tom Taufa: Assault on a girlfriend when he was thirteen and spending the summer with his grandparents in Tonga. Bad enough to have left the girl with a broken nose.
All of which Will only knew because of that scribbled anonymous note telling him to “look into Tom Taufa’s record in Tonga.” He’d followed it up to cross it off the list, never expecting his contact to confirm the allegations.
Boy was never officially charged, the other officer had written. Families sorted it out between themselves. Felt sorry for Tom because his father had been in and out of prison since he was a baby, and his mother had mental health problems.
But the villagers have long memories, and it was a