A Madness of Sunshine

“How seriously are you hurt?” He’d automatically grabbed a flashlight as he left his vehicle, now focused it on Vincent’s head wound.

Blue and red flickered against the night around them, the police lights incongruously like neon flashes in a bar.

“It doesn’t look too bad from here.” Will could see a little blood along Vincent’s hairline, but there was no sign of a gash.

“It’s fine.” Vincent raised his hand to his forehead. “I’ll probably have a headache tomorrow, but that’s about it.”

“We still need to get you in front of a doctor,” Will began.

“Dominic de Souza isn’t in any condition to help anyone.” Vincent’s tone was tight. “And I don’t think you’re going to be driving me out of Golden Cove for treatment. We’ll be in more danger from the weather than I am from this shallow cut.”

The other man was right. With Dr. de Souza crushed by Miriama’s disappearance, and the town cut off by the heavy rain and rising winds, Vincent would have to wait until tomorrow to get any medical care. That was, if the rain let up. “Come on,” Will said, “I’ll run you home. Grab your stuff.”

Vincent didn’t seem to be in any hurry, but Will had things to do. And as far as he could tell from Vincent’s speech and general mental responsiveness, it wasn’t the head injury that was slowing him down; Vincent just seemed oddly unmotivated. When the other man made no move to get the sports bag he had in the backseat, a bag most likely filled with outdoor gear he’d used during the search, Will opened the back door and grabbed it himself.

Returning to the sedan after dumping the bag in his SUV, he turned off the car’s lights, then took the keys out of the ignition before leaning down to look into the other man’s face. “Look,” he said, his patience at an end, “you want to sit out here all night, fine. But I can’t sit with you and I can’t leave you here. So get off your ass. There are a lot of other people who might need me tonight.”

Vincent blinked, as if becoming aware of his situation for the first time. Swearing under his breath, he got out into the rain. “Will the car be safe here?” he asked, blinking water away from his eyes. “I mean for people on the road.”

Will had been thinking the same thing himself; he had accident alert beacons with him, but they’d be washed or blown away in this weather. And calling Peter at the garage to tow this would just put another man at risk from the worsening weather. “How’s your back?”

“I haven’t got whiplash, nothing like that. The car slid very gracefully into the ditch.” Vincent raised his fingers to the cut on his head. “This is from me leaving a metal ­business-­card case on the dash. It flew up during the slide.”

Trusting the other man’s analysis of his own injuries since he gave every appearance of being fully lucid, Will handed the keys back. “Put the car into neutral. Let’s see if we can push it farther into the ditch so it’s not half hanging on the side of the road.”

The heavens seemed to open up even more as the two of them attempted the maneuver. The one good thing was that the rain made the land slippery. Peter Jacobs’s younger and far more hotheaded brother would probably bitch about the work involved in towing the sedan back out of the ditch, but they got it safely off the road and into the depression. No one should hit it unless they themselves went off the road.

Drenched to the skin and with fingers like ice, the two of them finally got into the police vehicle. Vincent reached into the backseat for his sports bag, pulled out a towel. He offered it to Will. “This is the least you deserve after coming out to get me.”

“No, that’s fine. Dry your forehead so we can check that cut. Head wounds aren’t something to just shrug off.” His headlights cut fleetingly across the wreck of Vincent’s Mercedes as he did a U-­turn; the Baker property was situated relatively close to town, off a long drive. “What the hell were you doing out here anyway?” Vincent’s car had been pointed away from Golden Cove and his home.

“Just driving.” Vincent’s words were muffled by the towel, came out sounding oddly thick. “Trying to get my head on straight. Trying to understand how something like this could happen in Golden Cove.”

Will shot the other man a look, but Vincent’s head was conveniently covered by the towel. So he waited to ask his next ­question—­it took a while, as if Vincent was deliberately attempting to wait him out. But the other man couldn’t keep on rubbing his hair forever without it becoming a noticeable point on its own.

When he did finally lower the towel to push back the ­rain-­dark strands of his golden hair, Will made him check his wound in the mirror on the back of the ­passenger-­seat sunshade. Only after Vincent confirmed it was shallow, with no sign of bruising, did he say, “Do you know Miriama well?”

“She’s the kind of person everybody knows. You can’t miss Miri.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

The other man sighed. “I like her,” he said at last. “She makes me think about being young and hopeful and going after your dreams.” A wistfulness that made it pretty obvious Vincent harbored a crush on Miriama.

“You ever say any of that to her?” He chanced a quick glance at Vincent, to see him staring out the window, his classically handsome profile shadowed by the darkness outside.

“I’m just a foolish married man who likes talking to a pretty girl, Will.” Vincent’s voice wasn’t aggressive but sad. “She’s so beautiful and so full of life. The idea that I might never again walk into the café and see her smile is a nightmare.”

Will had put his eyes back on the road a split second after his ­glance—­he couldn’t afford to be distracted in this kind of weather. It frustrated him not to be able to see Vincent’s face, gauge his reactions. “Be honest with me,” he said. “Lies won’t help Miriama.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Did it ever go beyond talk with you and her?”

“No. I wouldn’t do that to my wife.” A long inhale followed by an even longer exhale. “I love my wife. But Miriama has something inside her that I lost a long time ago and it makes me happy to flirt with her a little and fantasize. I’d never shame my family by crossing that line.”

Had anyone asked Will a week ago about Vincent Baker, he would’ve said that Vincent was one of the most straight-­up men in town, honest to a fault despite his political ambitions. He was no longer so sure of that belief. There’d been so much want in Vincent’s voice when he spoke of Miriama, so ­much… Greed wasn’t the right word. It was softer than that. A desire almost to cherish.

But, as Vincent had pointed out, he was a married man with two young children. And Miriama wasn’t the right kind of woman to be the wife of a future prime ­minister—­she was too wild to accept the strictures of a political life, too much a free spirit. Still, that kind of thing had never stopped a wealthy man from making a ­less-­than-­honorable offer to a beautiful younger woman. Was it possible Vincent had approached Miriama, been rebuffed, and decided to take what she didn’t want to give?