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They gave him an official folder containing the report of the assault and the thefts, plus a return ticket from Vancouver to Darwin via Sydney leaving in three days. They also lent him a car for the afternoon as the float plane wasn’t available to take them back until later in the day.
With the help of a constable, Dan got Walker into the car and for an hour they drove aimlessly around Vancouver until they found themselves parked at a beach in Kitsilano, staring through the windshield at the rain.
“You’re awful quiet.” Walker’s voice broke the silence that had lasted since they left the station.
Dan shrugged. The beach was empty, the ocean beyond obscured by rain, but the air was filled with the raucous call of gulls.
“Plane ride bothering you?”
Dan leaned back against the seat and nodded. Yes, contemplating the plane ride was bothering him. It scared the hell out of him.
“Free trip. Probably have better weather over there.” Walker gestured out the window at the slanting grey rain. “Get to see Claire.”
Dan nodded again. “Yeah.”
He knew he should be excited about that, but the truth was he couldn’t get past the idea of having to sit in a metal tube, forty-thousand feet above the earth, crowded into an uncomfortable seat and breathing recycled air.
“Don’t seem too happy about it.”
Dan stared out at the rain some more, then looked at the man who sat beside him. This was a side of Walker he had never seen, but then neither of them had ever been in this position before. It had always been Dan supporting Walker—or had that just been his perception? His ego?
In any case, he owed both Claire and Walker an explanation. He hadn’t been honest with either of them. Worse, he hadn’t been honest with himself. And he had been downright dishonest with Walker about his motive for bringing him here. While he had admitted to Claire that he was afraid of flying, he hadn’t told her why, and he certainly should have been open with Walker about his reasons for asking him to come to the city. He had brought the man down here under false pretences, and although it was certainly good to have the descriptions of the stolen items shared with the museum, Dan was in essence holding him hostage, deciding he knew what was best.
“There’s a few things you don’t know Walker,” he said. “And I owe you an explanation—and an apology.”
As he talked, the rain slowly eased and a few hardy souls made their way down onto the beach where a flock of shore birds probed the sand.
“So that’s all of it,” Dan said almost an hour later. “And I don’t know which bothers me most, flying, leaving the folks in Tsatsquot hanging, or interfering in your life without your permission. Doesn’t matter anyway. None of it’s right, and for what it’s worth, I apologize.” He reached for the ignition. “Guess we might as well head back. Maybe we can find something we both consider edible on the way back to the airport.”
They wove their way back through the wet streets in silence. Dan almost wished Walker would yell at him, swear at him, call him an asshole, anything to ease his guilt, but Walker only sat, staring quietly out of the window at the traffic.
They were approaching the airport again when he finally spoke, his voice sounding unnaturally loud after the long silence.
“So when’s the appointment?”
“What?” The car swerved as Dan turned to stare at the man sitting beside him. “Why?”
“I’m already here, aren’t I? Might as well go through with it. How about you?”
“How about me what?”
“You hate flying, right?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Scares the hell out of you?”
“Yeah, it does.”
“But you’re going to get on that plane anyway?”
Dan sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “I guess I don’t have much choice.”
“Then it sounds like we’re both in the same boat.”
***
THE CAPILANO RESERVE was a good hour’s drive from the airport, but Walker said he had a cousin living there he could stay with. It was getting late by the time they arrived, and later still by the time they got Walker into the house. Dan was reluctant to leave but the floatplane wouldn’t wait around once it returned.
“I’m sorry about setting up that appointment without your permission, Walker. I had no right to do that.”
“True,” Walker said, but there was no anger in his voice.
“If you have any problems, call Bryce. He’s a good man. He’ll sort everything out.”
“Yeah.”
“You need any money?”
“No.”
“Okay, well take care. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks, but I’ll stay in touch with Bryce while I’m gone.”
“You keep talking any longer I’ll be thinking you’re trying to miss that plane.”
***
A FEW HOURS LATER, back aboard Dreamspeaker with only the slap of the waves against the hull to keep him company, Dan put a Mingus CD on the stereo, got a beer out of the fridge, and wandered out onto the deck. The jagged rhythms and harmonies of the music echoed his mood as he stared out over the water, watching its movement, hoping it would calm him as it had so often done before, but it didn’t help.
The gibbous moon hanging above his head, its light diffused by a thin mist, lit a family of otters playing out on the float, and the soft calls of birds roosting in the trees above the marina played a counterpoint to the piano. Everything was as it should be—except for him.
He had promised Charlie and his people that he would do all he could to find the murderer and bring him to justice, and to bring the stolen regalia back to them, and while he hadn’t actually said those same words at the other villages, it had been implied. If word got out that he had gone to Australia, would they all feel betrayed? Would he lose the trust he had built up? Worse still, would he lose that first hint of a trail?
If that helicopter was, in fact, linked to the thefts, and if it came off a yacht, then it would probably be long gone by the time he returned. A yacht big enough to carry that kind of dinghy would be capable of good speeds. It could easily be down in Central America somewhere and impossible for him to track down.
And what about Walker? Dan had deceived the man, coerced him into seeing the surgeon and then abandoned him in a city that Dan knew he both hated and feared. Hated because of the memories it carried, and feared because of the temptations it offered. If the specialist recommended surgery, would Walker be able to handle being in a hospital again? Perhaps learning to walk again?
And then there was the flight.
There it was simply his own fear he had to deal with. Even the thought of stepping into that plane and hearing the doors close sent a cold shiver of dread through his body. Just hours before he had shared the reason for his fear with Walker, the first time he had ever spoken it aloud, and it had been both easier and harder than he had thought it would be. Easier because the explanation was straightforward and Walker was a great listener. Harder because it was something he had locked deep inside himself for over thirty years, unwilling to revisit or even acknowledge the anguish he had experienced at the time.
His mother had died in a plane crash. There. Not difficult to say. Nothing to be ashamed of. So why had he buried that memory for all that time? Mary Connor had been heading to Ireland to see her own mother, a trip she had saved for and dreamed about for years, but she never arrived. Her plane disappeared into the ocean somewhere over the North Sea. It happened in late August when the sockeye were running along the west coast. After seeing her off at the airport, he and his father had headed out on their boat and they had received the news over the ship’s radio. Dan was ten years old and he’d never seen his father cry before.
For weeks, the two of them simply drifted along the coast, stopping only when the supply of whiskey and beer ran low, surviving on whatever meager supplies were in the galley and the fish they caught. Winter storms finally drove them back to the safety of the marina, but still they stayed aboard, refusing to go back to the house where they’d lived as a family—the house they never lived in again because his father put it up for sale.
Dan closed his eyes and let the old memories wash over him. There was his mother, her black hair tumbling over her shoulders, laughing as he struggled to escape a hug he considered himself too old for. There was their boat, the Mary Jean, the boat they had all cherished, once bright with fresh paint and sparkling with polished metal, now slowly decaying until it became, like them, grubby and unloved. There was his father, aged fifteen years in a single month, bent under the weight of his sorrow.
It had aged Dan too. He had been a happy ten-year-old when it happened, carefree, excited by the idea of skipping a few weeks of school to be out on the boat with his father. Overnight he became the adult, caring for a man who no longer cared—or perhaps cared too deeply—to care for him.
He touched each memory tentatively, teasing it like a sore tooth, preparing himself for the raw pain he had once felt. It didn’t come. Each one still hurt, yet they were softer now, further away, the faces and events blurred by time, the sorrow and the inevitable anger and resentment that followed blunted by the years.
And then, even as the images swelled and faded, another very different image imposed itself. Himself eight years ago, quitting the RCMP, disappearing onto a boat and losing himself in alcohol, and suddenly it all became clear. He had reacted to Susan’s death exactly as his father had done when his wife had died. Had it been a learned behaviour or something genetic and why had it taken Dan so long to recognize it? And if he had been so blind to something so obvious, were there other things he had not seen or recognized? Other buried memories that might surface unexpectedly to trip him up?
His harsh laugh sent the otters diving into the safety of the dark water below. Just hours ago he had been told his solve rate was so good they were sending him to investigate the theft of items he knew nothing about from a culture he didn’t understand in a country he was unfamiliar with. Hell, he couldn’t even solve his own issues. How was he going to sort out problems in Australia?
And first he had to get there!
Seventeen hours. Seventeen hours locked in a plane. Another five to Darwin. Although acknowledging where his fear came from might be a step in the right direction, it didn’t solve the problem. That was going to take time. A lot of time. Time he did not have.
It was the thought of Claire that finally brought him back to some semblance of sanity. She would be there to greet him, smiling, laughing, the sun dancing off that tousled mop of blonde hair. The sound of her voice, the scent of her skin, the feel of her hand in his. The curve of her hip as they lay together. The rise and fall of her breathing.
She answered his call on the second ring.
“Dan! It’s so good to hear your voice! Are you back at the marina?”
They talked for hours and he told her everything: Walker, the plane crash, his father, the case . . . on and on. And she listened. And listened. And then she spoke. She said he might be thinking he was not the man he had thought he was, a man with strength and confidence, but she knew better. And he was the man she loved.
By the time they signed off he was calm enough that he thought he would finally be able to crawl into his bunk and sleep. He only had two days before his flight, but with her help he had figured out how he was going to use them.