Then the chopper was up and at an angle that made it impossible to see Keira May any longer. Dismissing Daniel’s wife and Nikau’s obsession, Will raised the binoculars to his eyes and began to scan the landscape. It looked even more unforgiving from up here. Serrated black rocks that thrust up from the sand in huge broken shards, foaming water that took no prisoners, and a wilderness so tangled and thick that it was difficult to see beneath the canopy.

Daniel went down low without prompting, low enough to give Will the best possible chance of spotting a woman lying injured below. The one thing in their favor was Miriama’s bright choice of running gear.

“Did you try on the other side of the whirlpool?”

Will didn’t look away from the trees below, intent on spotting even a hint of hot pink or orange. “What’s on the other side of the whirlpool?”

“A kind of cave formed by the way the rocks fell there,” the other man said, his voice echoing through the headphones. “We used to hang out in it as -teenagers—-it’s safe at low tide.”

Daniel angled the chopper back over a particularly dense patch of trees so Will could take a second look. “There’s a running trail right above the cave that hardly anyone uses. It was totally overgrown the last time I overflew it, but Miriama likes to run and she’s good at it. Maybe she went -there—-it’s definitely a more challenging track.”

Will calculated how long Miriama would’ve had to run to get to that spot, knew it was far too long, but they had to check every possible option. Could be she’d been enjoying the run so much she’d gone far beyond her normal distance. “Let’s go.”

From above, the whirlpool looked like the mouth of hell, spilling and crashing and so dark that it felt as if its depths went on forever. Bones cold with the knowledge that if Miriama had fallen anywhere near the dangerous spot, she was gone, Will continued to scan through the binoculars.

But if he hadn’t known to look for the rock formation that formed a cave, he’d have missed it, it was so well camouflaged to match the neighboring rocks. A second later, he realized Daniel wasn’t the only one who’d thought of the spot. A male body stood in front of the stone archway, one hand on the rock.

Nikau.

Though he looked up at the sound of the chopper, Nikau didn’t wave. Instead, he ducked under the stone to disappear inside. “We should focus on the cliffs above,” Will said to Daniel. “Nikau can check out the cave.”

Fine lines bracketing his mouth, Daniel didn’t argue for once. They skimmed along the top edge of the cliffs back to the other side of the whirlpool and, while most of it was tangled growth that hadn’t been disturbed for years, Will did spot what might’ve been a disturbance in one small section. Using his phone, he asked one of the nearby searchers to have a look.

“Definite signs someone stood or walked through here,” the man confirmed. “But it’s not churned up like if Miriama went over the edge.” A small pause. “Almost as if a pig hunter maybe walked out of the trees behind me and came to stand here, look at the view.”

“Okay, leave it as it is,” Will said. “I want to have a look myself.”

Hanging up, Will considered the cave again and frowned. That cave was exactly the kind of secretive and private spot teenagers loved. It should’ve passed from teenage group to teenage group in a town like this, but for whatever reason, it had been abandoned. Forgotten.

It made him wonder what secrets lay within, what secrets tied Daniel to Nikau, Nikau to Anahera.

16

Anahera trudged through the forested track beside Vincent, conscious of the sound of the chopper fading into the distance. Nikau had designated her and Vincent a search team after they were two of the earliest people to turn up at the fire station. Peter Jacobs had also turned up around the same time, but thankfully, Nikau had matched the garage owner with one of the more experienced hunters.

“You look bad, Vincent.” Always his full name or Vin, never Vinnie; he simply wouldn’t respond to anyone who tried to call him that. “Do you know Miriama well?”

“I love my coffee, you know that.” A -self--deprecating smile that didn’t reach the arresting tawny shade of his eyes. “When I’m in Golden Cove and working from home, I see her pretty much every morning and every afternoon. She always has that smile. So bright. So much life to her.”

Anahera thought again of the lovely young creature she’d met and felt a shivering chill within. The world had a way of crushing things that were beautiful and so bright that they glowed. “Is there any chance she might’ve just taken off?”

“Matilda says all her stuff is still in her room. Her wallet, her favorite jeans. She only took her phone and the -iPod—-just what she normally takes on a run.”

Anahera had been afraid that would be the answer. She looked desperately into the trees, in the hope she might magically spot a flash of cheerful orange or brilliant pink. But there was only verdant green and healthy brown, the curling fern fronds delicately lit by the morning sunlight that speared through the canopy.

She’d missed this so much, this primeval landscape unlike any other place on Earth, but she knew the beauty around her could be deadly. There’d been more than one lost hiker over the years she’d lived in Golden Cove. The tourists came, saw the initially unthreatening lushness of the bush and didn’t listen to warnings to be careful, to stick strictly to the marked paths.