Edward had been like that, though it had taken her far too long to see the truth.

“I’m sorry, Will,” the suffering artist said in an Irish accent so beautiful it couldn’t be real, even as his eyes scanned Anahera then came back for a second look; obviously she’d fulfilled a list of basic prerequisites and deserved closer inspection. “I’ve been consumed by my characters since ­lunch—­the girls can tell you. I wouldn’t know if a flying pig went past, much less some local girl.”

Anahera saw Will’s face tense, his shoulders bunch. “Let’s go,” she said to him before he punched the pretentious asshole. “We have to check the other places.”

A curt nod, but he wasn’t done. “Did either of you see Miriama run past here today?” he asked the two groupies.

The girls shook their heads. Then they looked as one toward Shane Hennessey, as if waiting for him to tell them what to do next.

Anahera’s skin prickled.

She was glad to get out of there. “Is it always like that?” she asked after they’d pulled out of the drive and were back on their way to the dump. “Him with a harem?”

“I have it on good authority that the people who win Shane’s residencies are always young, female, and pretty. Such a strange coincidence.”

Anahera snorted. “You have a gift for understatement, cop.”

He didn’t reply, the lights of his SUV cutting through the inky blackness in front of them as he slowed down just before the ragged dirt track that led to the cleared but never developed patch of land that had become a dumping ground.

The tourists never saw this part of Golden Cove, never glimpsed the slick black rubbish bags torn open by feral cats, never had any idea of the abandoned couches ­and—­“Is that a refrigerator?” Fury punched through her. “Even the worst asshole knows to take off the doors before dumping a fridge.”

Face grim, the cop brought his vehicle to a halt on the edge of the dump. “That wasn’t here last time I did a ­patrol—­which was yesterday, just before I saw you on the road. I’ve got tools in the back.” Unsaid were the words that he’d take care of it before they left.

But first, they had to search for Miriama. That was when Anahera had a horrible thought. Heart thumping, she walked through the scattered debris to that fridge that hadn’t been there yesterday and that had appeared right when a girl had gone missing.

“Wait,” the cop said. “We need to preserve evidence ­if—­” Leaving the rest of the chilling words unspoken, he grabbed a pair of thin rubber gloves from the kit he had in the back of the SUV.

Anahera’s pulse thundered as he closed the distance to the fridge, images of Miriama’s sunny smile playing across her mind. Please, God, if you have any mercy at all, don’t let her be there in the cold and the dark. Around her, the dump emanated a sickly sweet smell that would usually turn her stomach, but at that instant, all she could see was the scratched white of that dented fridge.

“Keep the beam of your flashlight on the edge of the door.” Again, the cop didn’t say what they were both thinking: that if Miriama was in there, she was dead. She’d been gone too long and there wasn’t much air inside one of those things.

14

Not reaching for the ­handle—­saving any prints that might be ­there—­the cop put his gloved hands carefully on the bottom edge of the door and managed to break the seal. Anahera’s heart slammed like a bass drum as the door swung ­open…

To reveal emptiness.

Exhaling in a harsh rush, she bent down, her hands pressed against her knees. “Shit,” she said. “Shit.” It was sheer relief that made her muscles tremble, mixed in with a great big dose of adrenaline.

Rising, the cop opened the freezer compartment, and she wondered what he was looking ­for—­it was hardly as if you could fit a woman inside there. An instant later, she realized you could fit a head or an arm or a foot and fuck, why was she thinking like that? Probably because she was with a cop who thought like that. And it made her wonder what he’d seen that he knew that such horror was possible.

“I’ll detach the doors before we leave,” he said when the freezer section proved thankfully empty except for an abandoned bag of peas. “We have to work the site in a grid. We’ll start from the car and walk straight through a foot apart from each other, then back until we’ve covered the entire area.”

Anahera followed him to the starting point and they began their methodical search. When his flashlight beam swung across the bleached white of bones, they both froze, but it turned out to be the carcass of a ­long-­dead cat.

Its bones glinted in the flashlight beam, tiny and perfect.

They carried on. At least there hadn’t been any blood. Anahera tried not to think of another time when she’d found a body. There had been blood then, old and congealed and drying blood. And other things.

Three days dead was a long time in summer.

“What are you expecting to find?” she asked when they turned to retrace their path.

“Nothing,” he said. “A cop who expects things is a cop who misses what’s right in front of him. But even if we don’t find Miriama, if we locate some trace of ­her—­a shoe, the iPod, a piece of fabric from her ­clothes—­it would give us a direction and a place to concentrate the search.”

Anahera nodded and they carried on, piece by piece by piece by piece. Three long hours later, they were at the SUV and had found nothing. Not saying a word, the cop went to the back of the vehicle and grabbed his tools. She trained light on the fridge so he could see what he was doing. It didn’t take him long to dismantle the doors from the fridge so that no inquisitive kid or animal could get stuck inside.

That done, he trained the beam of his own flashlight on what turned out to be a serial number, snapping a photo of that with his phone.

Dawn was still four hours off when Will and Anahera arrived at the fire station. Nikau was the only one there. “I sent Mattie home,” he said. “One of the other women went with her and knows to stay the night. That fuckwit she’s hooked up with isn’t exactly going to be any help.”

Will nodded. “The search crews find anything?”

“No. I told everyone to go home, come back when it’s light. No use going over and over the same areas in the dark.”

“I’ve called in the situation,” Will said, having taken care of that prior to heading for the dump. “We’re not going to get any air support. They’ve got two missing children just outside Greymouth.” An adult woman missing less than ­twenty-­four hours couldn’t compare to two children under ten who hadn’t been seen since they left school the previous day. It didn’t matter what Will’s gut said about Miriama being in serious trouble.

“Daniel has a helicopter,” Nikau bit out with a curl of his lip. “Maybe if you ask, his lordship will deign to help.”

“Grab some ­shut-­eye, Nik.” Engaging the other man in a conversation that involved Daniel would never have a good outcome. “I’ll need you at full capacity come morning.”

Teeth gritted and blood in his eye, Nikau said a terse good night before leaving to walk home.