That case on the dock in Hobart and the men at Tenebrae Cove were definitely related.
It was why Hadeom had wanted him for this job.
He knew. That fucker knew.
Like Carpenter had known.
With little hope of going back to sleep, at barely three o’clock in the morning, he pulled on a hoodie and his Ugg boots and made himself some coffee. He went into the police station, keeping the lights off, parked his arse in front of his computer, and began to work.
Trackingdown a man who didn’t want to be contacted wasn’t exactly easy, and by all accounts, Ricky Carpenter did not want to be found.
Sawyer could trace his last known verified location to Melbourne, where he’d purchased a plane ticket to Alice Springs, of all places.
What happened to him, or where he went after that, was unknown. His phone number was disconnected, and his bank account was closed.
He didn’t appear to rent or buy anything, so maybe he was living with a friend or relative. Maybe he’d bought a camper van and was travelling around Australia. So then Sawyer looked into purchases and vehicle registrations.
Nothing.
Then he looked into name changes. He looked into academic records. He looked into Ricky’s history before he was posted to Tenebrae Cove and his old friends. He searched their names and current whereabouts.
Ricky had no next of kin listed, but Sawyer did find a cousin from Launceston who had used a bank card in an Alice Springs supermarket...
Bingo.
Ginny McIntyre.
He searched that name and found that credit card was cancelled shortly after that one-time use, but Ginny’s name had shown up at a caravan park in Alice Springs before she appeared to have gone back to Melbourne.
No trace of Ricky, though.
Sawyer now had a lead: a name and a contact number.
He sat back in his chair, his back aching, surprised to see it was after seven in the morning. He’d need to give Ginny another hour or two before calling, so he went back into his flat and was making more coffee when he heard a soft scratching at the back door.
What the hell?
He opened the door to find a black cat sitting there as if it’d been waiting for an unacceptable length of time. It meowed angrily at him before sauntering inside like it owned the place.
“Oh, hello to you too,” Sawyer said, closing the door behind it. “No, please. By all means, come on in. Make yourself at home.”
The cat meowed again before jumping up onto the table, then meowed angrily at him again.
“Yeah, I don’t think so.” Sawyer promptly picked it up and plonked it gently on the floor. “No cats on the table.”
The cat looked at him in such a way that, for a split second, Sawyer considered apologising.
Was that a death stare?
“I take it you got fed here,” Sawyer said instead. He went to the fridge to see what might suffice. “I dunno what I’ve got for ya.” He pulled out the cheese, and the cat changed its tune; it offered a soft, sweet meow this time. “Ohhh, I see how it is.”
He gave the cat some cheese, which it devoured, and then he pulled out the cold chicken meat and gave it some of that. “I’ll have to buy some tuna or something. Maybe one of the fishing boats that comes in will have some bait offcuts or something.”
The cat looked at him as if offended.
“Or you can have nothing.”
There was definitely a death stare, but then it gave a superior sniff and began to lick its paw.
