Anahera didn’t speak until Nikau was out of earshot. “You’re planning to talk to Daniel, aren’t you?”

Glancing at his watch, the cop said, “Might as well wait till morning now. Probably have a better chance of getting his cooperation if I don’t wake him up at two a.m.”

“Daniel wasn’t always an ass,” Anahera felt obliged to say. “If Nik’s your only source on him, well, they have a ­history…”

“No. I’ve had dealings with Mr. May myself.” He left it at that, and she knew she’d get nothing if she attempted to dig deeper.

Hard gray eyes met hers. “I’ll drop you home, but I need to detour to the station first and send through an information request to Miriama’s cell phone provider.”

“To check if her phone is still active?”

“Or when it was last active,” Will said. “I assume you want to help with the search in the morning?”

“Of course.” She wouldn’t be able to breathe easy knowing Miriama was out there alone, likely hurt. “What will you be doing?”

“The same thing.” The cop began to turn off the fire station’s internal lighting. “And hope we find some small fragment of her. Because even in the dark, you can’t miss an entire woman.”

The last light went out.

15

Will drove up to the May estate twenty minutes before dawn, while the sky was steel gray brushed with smoke at the edges. He wanted to talk to Daniel before light broke over the horizon, so that if the other man agreed, they could get the chopper up in the air as quickly as possible.

If Daniel turned him down, Will had a few other strings he could tug, a few friends who’d step into the breach; the problem was, most of them didn’t live near the coast. It’d take time for them to fly here, and every instinct he had told him time was critical. He didn’t listen to the voice that said it was already too late.

Reaching the gate at the start of the long drive that led up to the house, he pushed the buzzer twice in a row. The male voice that came on was ­wide-­awake and distinctly irritated. “No, this isn’t a public road and no, you can’t hike through.”

“Mr. May,” Will said before Daniel could hang up, “it’s Detective Gallagher. I need to speak to you on an urgent matter.”

A little to his surprise, the electronic gate began to draw back at once. He waited only until it had pulled back enough to allow his vehicle through.

Like all the properties in this area, the estate was surrounded by rich native ferns and ancient trees that blocked out the sunlight to form a lush green atmosphere reminiscent of a primeval rain forest. With dawn on the horizon, everything was soft and misty and colored in myriad tones of gray. It was eerie, he supposed, but there was also a stark beauty to it as long as you knew that this landscape could kill you if you weren’t careful.

The house that appeared out of the ­gray-­shrouded green wasn’t the showy monstrosity you might expect from a man who liked to flash his wealth, but then Daniel May hadn’t built it; the house had been built by his parents, who’d both passed on a few years back within twelve months of each other. A graceful architectural creation constructed of glass and wood that had been polished to a honeyed shine, it rose just high enough above the treeline that, from the top of the house, you could see the ocean. Otherwise, it was designed to blend into the landscape.

The helicopter pad was set to the right of the property, some distance from the house itself. In between, there was a tennis court and a swimming pool. A guesthouse the size of an average family home sat to the left of the main house. None of these things on their own would’ve made Daniel a pariah in town; the Baker family had the same kind of wealth, though from a different source, and they were well liked. It wasn’t money that divided Daniel from the others in Golden Cove, it was Daniel himself.

Parking his vehicle, Will got out. Daniel had already stepped out of the house and was walking toward him, a slender man of about ­six-­two with ­shoulder-­length brown hair tied back in a queue. His features were fine, his ethnicity difficult to pinpoint. According to the locals, Daniel’s mother had been Korean, his father ­white—­of English descent. May Senior had apparently been very proud that the family history could be traced all the way back to the first settlers in this region.

Despite the early hour, Daniel was dressed in crisp black pants and a raspberry pink shirt. The color should’ve looked ridiculous on a grown man, but somehow, Daniel pulled it off. “What’s this about?” he asked, a frown between his brows and a steaming mug of coffee in one hand. “Does it have anything to do with all those flashlights I saw on the beach last night?”

Will didn’t particularly like being talked to as if he was the hired help, but as he needed the man’s assistance, he decided to keep it civil. “Miriama is missing.”

“Missing?” Daniel took a sip of his coffee, not making any move to offer Will a cup. “Are you sure she hasn’t just taken off to see the sights somewhere else? The girl’s too beautiful to be happy stuck in a ­dead-­end town.”

“She went missing while out for a run.” Will’s temper had never been a hot thing of rage and ­fury… not until the night of the fire. It had cooled again in the aftermath, and he could handle Daniel’s smug sense of superiority without losing control. “I came to ask if you’d help with an aerial search.”

“I’ve got meetings out of town today. What about the police helicopters?”

“There’s another ongoing case involving children.” He’d checked in with his commander, been told the choppers would be going up again at first light, along with a massive army of search volunteers. Will could be frustrated with the allocation of resources while agreeing with ­them—­the children had to be a priority.

“If you won’t help, just say so. I’ll have to call in private aerial teams from outside and they’ll take time getting here.”

He thought it was the word “outside” that did ­it—­Daniel might turn up his nose at the town, snubbing all the social events to which he was invited and making it clear he didn’t think most of the residents were fit to lick his boots, but he also considered himself the most important man in Golden Cove. It was his town; he couldn’t stomach the idea of outsiders coming in and taking over.

That, of course, was part of his problem with Will. Daniel had expected Will to fall in line. His first month here, Will had accepted a dinner invitation from Daniel and his ­sulky-­faced wife. In a place this small and remote, the local cop had to make an effort to build bonds no matter his own desire to keep a distance.

It had been toward the end of the night, as Daniel walked him to his vehicle, that the other man had made it clear he expected Will to keep him informed of everything that went on in Golden Cove. “You understand?” he’d said in that supercilious master-­to-­servant tone. “This is my town and I like to keep my finger on the pulse. You’ll find I’m a generous man to those who please me.”

Will had simply said, “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” and left.