Fire in the Stars (21 page)

She searched frantically along the shore, but there was no place to hide. No way to escape. Out on the water, they would be easy targets, but with Tyler's injury they couldn't possibly outrun the killers on land.

A growl bubbled deep in Kaylee's throat. Slow, deliberate footsteps swished through the leaves, and Amanda peered up the embankment to see a trio of men moving toward them through the tangled woods. She saw their legs first, then their ragged jackets, and finally the rifle. Pointed straight at her head.

M
atthew Goderich was on the phone, making yet another futile effort to reach Sheri Cousins in Grand Falls, when he glanced out Casey's window and spotted her driving past the house. He slammed the phone down and raced outside.

She was driving an ancient Cavalier that threatened to disintegrate as it rattled along toward the harbour. She must have seen him chasing her because she pulled over and climbed out.

He had only met Sheri Cousins once, when Phil had been home from Nigeria barely a month and Matthew had gone to Grand Falls for a follow-up interview. She'd struck him as a capable, no-nonsense woman, none too pleased with the public airing of her husband's struggles. Today she'd done her best with makeup and a styling brush, but she looked as if the past week had dragged her through the thickets of hell. Deep charcoal bruises circled her eyes, which searched his with the hope of the desperate.

“Do you know anything? They won't tell me anything!”

“Sheri, you know Phil is —”

“Dead. Yes, I know that. They just had me identify his body.” She shook her head impatiently. “But what about Tyler? Where's Tyler?”

“Still missing.” Rain was threatening, so he slipped an arm around her shoulder. “Let's go inside where we can talk.”

“Fuck you, Goderich, I don't want a goddamn interview! I want my son. Goddamn it! How dare he?”

He eyed her warily. “Who?”

“Phil!” She checked herself. “I'm just so angry, I don't know at whom. God, maybe? Is this some goddamn big punishment He's decided to lay on me?”

He wanted to keep her talking. The woman was trembling like a volcano about to erupt, and it might do her some good to release the molten rage. Not to mention that he might get some excellent material for the piece he was writing. As the first national-calibre reporter on the scene, he'd persuaded the Canadian Press wire service to pick up not only his ongoing blog updates, but also a longer background feature.

But the Mounties were being their usual tight-assed, uncooperative selves, and so far he had few details on Phil's death itself, let alone the missing-persons search. He had managed to glean, from a disgruntled civilian ground SAR member who worked in the local
convenience-store
-
cum
-post-office, that the civilian team had been blocked from the search for Amanda and Tyler because of an ongoing threat from persons unknown. From which she, and Matthew, had deduced that there was still a killer at large.

Which meant that Phil had not died by accident or suicide. Someone had killed him.

As if Sheri could read his mind, she shook her arm free. “Don't print that, Matthew! Help me. I know you care about Phil. What do you know about Tyler?”

“They have a massive search out for him. Police combing the woods, eyes in the sky, police dogs tracking him from the site of Phil's body, although I gather that's proving difficult because dogs can only follow the freshest scent. So the police don't know whether they're tracking Tyler or Amanda.”

“Amanda!” Sheri's rage bubbled up again. “This is her fucking fault in the first place. If she hadn't signed on for Nigeria —”

“That's a long way back, Sheri.”

“Is it? It's a chain reaction, don't you see? If she hadn't gone, he wouldn't have gone, and they would never have met those fucking Islamic thugs, and Phil and Amanda wouldn't have made this blood pact to heal each other. Which ended here!” She flung her hand to encompass the ocean. “With Phil dead and my son in jeopardy.”

“Amanda is taking care of him.”

“Is she? Isn't that just peachy! How do you know that?”

“Because she hasn't come back. And if anyone can keep Tyler safe, it's her.”

Sheri stared out toward the harbour, where a handful of locals worked on their boats and stages. Despite the ominous clouds, pickup trucks trundled up and down the harbour road as people went about their daily chores. Phil's body had been taken away, the ERT team was out in the field, and the village had returned to some semblance of normal. An alert and watchful normal. Sheri's jaw worked as she fought to bring her storm of emotions under control.

“You know she will,” Matthew added quietly.

“Amanda told me to start a Facebook page for them, so I did. Now Tyler is all over the goddamn Internet, and someone started another one — Prayers for Tyler. That's my son, not some new fad!”

Matthew nodded his sympathy, deciding now might not be the best time to mention his own blog. “Every little bit helps, Sheri,” was all he said. “That's what matters.”

“He must be so scared,” she whispered, tears crowding in. “I hope he didn't see his father die. I hope Phil shielded him at least from that.”

Matthew didn't know how to counter that, so he didn't try. “Did they tell you how he died?”

She shook her head. “I only saw his face. He looked peaceful. No bullet hole to the temple, but I … I assume he killed himself.”

“I don't think so.”

She frowned. “Accident?”

Matthew feared he might have gone too far. He wanted to ask whether she had any theories about who would kill him, but he risked unleashing a further, futile wave of panic and terror once she realized Tyler was out there in the sights of a killer.

But Sheri wouldn't stand for half-truths. She grabbed him and shook him. “What? Fuck, Matthew! Don't leave me in the dark. I'm sick of being left in the dark! Phil did that for months! Was he involved in something that got him killed?”

He shrugged. “Can you think of anything? Do you know any reason someone would want to kill him?”

“This is Newfoundland! No one kills anybody in Newfoundland. Jesus fuck!” She clutched her head and spun in a circle as if trying to shake off the idea.

“Has he been doing anything that might …? I mean, mixing in anything that might get him in trouble?”

“You mean like drugs?” She lifted her shoulders in disbelief. “I don't know what he's been up to the past year. He could have joined a cult of hermits for all I know. He was seriously disillusioned with his fellow man.”

Noticing that villagers were watching them curiously from their yards and shop stoops, Matthew placed his hand in the small of Sheri's back to guide her along the road out of earshot. “There's been some excitement in this area about a possible boatload of foreign nationals who crashed their boat and disappeared into the woods. And another whose body was found at sea. I can't get any confirmation, but the police may be operating on two theories. Either they were smugglers, maybe forced to ditch at sea —”

“Smugglers of what?”

“Well, most likely drugs destined for the U.S. market. Guns are another common item, but most of those come the other way, up from the states to cities in Quebec, Ontario, and B.C. Smuggling a bunch of guns into northern Newfoundland doesn't seem very likely.”

She scoffed. “Smuggling anything into northern Newfoundland doesn't seem very likely. What's the other theory?”

“People smuggling.”

This time she didn't scoff. She grew very quiet as she stopped to search his face. “Phil wouldn't care about drugs. He wouldn't like the guns, but I can't see him sticking his oar in. He'd just report it and carry on. But people smuggling …”

“He'd want to help.”

She raised her hands in a helpless gesture. “The mood he's in, I don't honestly know. But old habits die hard. We saw a lot of poverty and oppression in the countries we worked in, and people trapped in countries they had no way of escaping. We saw them falling prey to the promise of a good job and better prospects somewhere else. Paying an international employment agency their life savings to get a job in a factory in Phnom Penh or a cotton farm in Vietnam or the oil fields of Nigeria, only to discover they were paid almost nothing, locked in by debt, and sold to another company across the border. Or worse. Slavery, in plain English. Human trafficking — both the sex trade and the forced labour trade — is a big problem in all those impoverished, little countries that broke off from the Soviet Union too. It infuriated Phil — well, it infuriated all of us — but it's rampant in the poor parts of the world. Look at all those desperate migrants drowning in the Mediterranean. That was tying Phil in knots!”

“What about the Middle East?”

She shot him a look. “You know something.”

He shrugged. “Chris Tymko has some suspicions. Africans or Asians would stick out like sore thumbs on a Canadian fishing boat, but some lighter-skinned Arabs or Afghans might not.”

“I've read the same headlines you have, Chris. Four million Syrian refugees alone. People are desperate to escape war and chaos, and they're paying smugglers thousands of dollars to sail on rickety boats to Greece. But most of them are seeking asylum in Europe.” She paused. Her haggard blue eyes searched his with growing fear. “It's a long way from Greece to the North Atlantic, but wherever there is desperate need, there's shameless exploitation. If Phil encountered it here, in this sheltered little pocket of Canada … yeah, he'd go ballistic.”

Chris drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and watched the approaching rain uneasily as he waited for the comm coordinator at Incident Command to run the plate number. A couple of pickups tried to turn off the highway onto the gravel road, but veered back when they spotted him.

“Vehicle is registered to a company, Acadia Seafood, based in New Brunswick,” the coordinator said.

“Who are the listed drivers?”

“It's part of a fleet, sir. Employees probably sign it out.”

“Can you dig a little deeper? Find out from the company who signed it out and for what purpose?”

The coordinator didn't answer, and Chris could almost hear her hesitation. “Is it busy there? Any new developments?”

“Very busy, sir. All the teams, including K9, are in place, but there have been no sightings yet.”

“Any clues to narrow down the search area?”

“No, but with weather conditions worsening, both from the air and on the ground, we're in high gear, racing against time.”

“This may mean nothing, but someone from Acadia Seafood has entered the search area, Helen. We need to know quickly who it is and what he's up to.”

“Probably moose-hunting, sir.”

Chris gritted his teeth. Newfoundlanders and their goddamn moose! “We need better than
probably
. Radio me the minute you find anything.”

The coordinator muttered her grudging acceptance, tacked a reluctant “sir” after it, and signed off. Chris had been waiting less than five minutes when he remembered where he'd seen the name Acadia Seafood before — in St. Anthony, at the pier of the fish plant. Acadia Seafood was the owner of the freezer trawler Phil was interested in. Phil had planned to talk to the captain about taking a tour on it, but Chris hadn't been able to confirm that he had, because the captain was away, ostensibly down the coast looking for a mechanical part for the ship.

Had he taken the company truck to pick up this part? If so, what was he doing in the wilds of the east shore? Not many parts for a trawler, or even smaller boats, in these small villages.

Something felt wrong. Phil had been discussing the shrimp fishery with a bitter, foreign-sounding fisherman on the west side, and later he'd been asking the campground operator all sorts of questions about foreign trawlers and workers. At the same time, a boatload of possibly foreign illegals had gone ashore near Grandois, and the illegals had fled on foot toward the south.

Not so far from where an unidentified employee from the seafood company had supposedly gone to pick up his moose- hunting partner.

This time, figuring there was no need for the entire search team and the local press to listen in, Chris phoned the communications coordinator back on his satellite phone. Before he could even ask about her progress, the woman interrupted. “I have nothing to report yet, sir, and I can't talk now. Noseworthy and Vu have us all hopping.”

“Look, whoever this guy is, I think we should apprehend him. At least question him and verify his story. I'm prepared to do it. Is Corporal Jason Maloney there?”

“Not yet. He radioed he was grabbing some breakfast in Roddickton.”

“Radio him back, ASAP. Tell him I need him back here with me, and send someone to relieve me at this roadblock —”

“Noseworthy won't authorize that, sir.”

Chris rolled his eyes. He flicked on his wipers to clear the rain misting his windshield, and peered down the empty road for the tenth time. Each moment, the visibility worsened and the fine rain washed away more tracks. “Can I talk to her?”

The coordinator's voice grew muffled as if she had turned away and covered the phone. It took her less than ten seconds to return. “Sergeant Noseworthy is tied up. I'll have her call you back the minute she's free.”

“Tell her it's urgent. Please.” Frustrated, Chris hung up and located the number of the Roddickton detachment. He was relieved when Willington himself answered the phone. “Willie, have you got an officer there who can take over the Croque Road roadblock?”

“Are you kidding? I haven't got anyone for anything! Everyone who's awake is out on the highways.”

“Can you run your detachment from the junction of 432 and the Croque Road? I have to check out a potentially suspicious intruder in the search area —”

“You can't go in there! Radio ERT.”

“The weather is worsening fast, and ERT is stretched thin as it is. If I don't want to lose the man altogether, I have to go ASAP.” He listened to Willington dither. “There's a whole case of QV Premium in it for you when it's over.”

Silence descended on the line. Finally Willington grunted. “Make it two, you cheap bastard, and I'll be there in twenty.”