“Ah, yeah. I should get back,” Sawyer replied, quickly grabbing a few things to get him through the first few days: some bread and butter, pasta, cheese, milk, and his favourite brand of peanut butter.
He put everything on the counter, and Otis rang it up.
“So,” Sawyer said, trying to sound casual. “That guy doesn’t like newcomers in general, or cops, maybe?”
Otis laughed. “Who, Ciaran? Nah. He’s fine.”
Hm. Ciaran.
Didn’t seem fine, but okay.
Otis said nothing else, and Sawyer didn’t push. He paid for his items, thanked Otis for being so welcoming, and went back home.
He walked past the antiques store, but it now had the Closed sign on the door, and it made Sawyer smirk.
That guy definitely had a problem with him. He’d glared at him from the jetty earlier this morning, the same way he’d glared at him just now. Sawyer had thought it was a bit odd for people to be swimming early morning in the freezing cold water while wearing just swimming trunks and not thermal wetsuits, but what did he know? Maybe that’s what people did these days. Maybe it was some invigorating fitness thing.
But the tattoos up his right forearm weren’t flames as Sawyer had mistaken them for from a distance. They were tentacles. Red tentacles from his wrist up toward his elbow. They kinda matched his hair, which, now dry, looked more copper than brown.
And now he had a name.
Ciaran.
Sawyer had to wonder what that guy’s story was.
Why he’d despised Sawyer on sight.
Probably just the usual cop-hating guy. Though, Sawyer reasoned, the only people who had issues with cops were those who didn’t like rules, who believed that laws were an oppression and not an institution to keep the peace and civic order.
Maybe Ciaran had a crop of weed in the national park. Maybe he ran a meth lab. Maybe Tobin delivered the goodsto Southport or Strahan twice a week. Maybe they ran a huge distribution ring.
Afterall, people didn’t live in such remote towns for no good reason.
They were usually running or hiding from something. Trying to fly under the radar, go unnoticed.
But an antiquities store? In Tenebrae Cove?
Something didn’t add up.
Sawyer tried to let it slide for now—he had nothing but time to look into things—and he put his groceries away, then set about cleaning the fridge and defrosting the small freezer compartment.
There was ice build-up and a funky stale water smell, so, not wanting to turn it off lest the fifty-year-old fridge never start again, he put a plate of hot water in the bottom, then took a butter knife and began to gently pry the caked-up ice from the ice tray. He was making some progress when he noticed something stuck to the roof of the freezer, embedded in the ice.
Was that plastic?
What the hell?
Not knowing what it was and not wanting to damage it, he carefully chipped away and pried at the ice before he could finally make out what the plastic was.
A Ziploc bag.
Someone had stuck a Ziploc bag to the roof of the freezer. Had whoever hid it assumed that people would go through the police station and accommodation searching for… what? What the hell needed to be hidden in a police station?
After more careful extraction, he finally freed the plastic sleeve and could see what was inside it.
Two pages of handwritten notes giving detailed account of the residents of Tenebrae Cove. Notes left specifically for thenext police officer to find, and Sawyer couldn’t believe what he read:
They call themselves “the consortium.” They don’t know I heard that. I’m hiding this analysis because they will search this place when I go. They don’t need keys to any building. They will get rid of any evidence.
