Jed’s heavy silence was confirmation of the latter. It was all the proof Miles needed that Tara had been taken.
Holly looked over at Alex, who was rigid and pale-faced. His eyes kept darting everywhere as though his brain was firing off thoughts and theories that flitted like dragonflies, dancing and uncatchable. Holly had seen the look that bloomed on his face when she’d told him Tara hadn’t come back here . . . It was a look she knew all too well. She saw it all the time at work when parents brought in their sick and injured children, husbands their wives . . . It was pure fear. Pure love.
‘It can’t be William,’ Alex muttered. ‘It can’t.’
There was a silence as everyone tried to work out who William was.
‘. . . Who’s William?’ Dev asked blankly, on behalf of them all.
‘The shaman in Alto Uren. He’s a friend of mine.’
‘How good a friend?’ Holly asked sceptically.
‘I lived in the village for nine months shortly after I moved over here. He was my mentor. There’s no way he could be involved in this.’
‘So then why are you suggesting he might be?’
Alex hesitated. ‘Because he wasn’t at the village yesterday morning either.’
They all looked at one another in horror.
‘But that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s with Tara,’ Alex said quickly. ‘He could have gone picking leaves for his medicines. He often gets up before dawn and goes into the jungle alone.’
Holly stared at him. ‘But when you realized that Tara had gone, and then him too . . . what was your initial instinct?’
Alex swallowed. ‘That they were together. I assumed she’d asked him to help her get back here.’
‘That would seem to be the logical thing,’ Rory said evenly. ‘As we all know, Tara is a rational woman. She lives by order and rules. Anything . . . unpredictable frightens her.’ His words were loaded, his gaze openly hostile. They both knew what he’d done to startle her.
‘It’s weird that she would leave without you, though, Alex,’ Dev said. He had missed Holly and Rory’s initial conversation about Alex. He had only come out of the sea when he’d seen Rory punch Alex to the sand, a figure from all their pasts. ‘I mean, after you went to all the trouble of helping her get there, why leave while you were still asleep? That would surely suggest she was . . . taken, rather than that she left of her own accord.’
Holly sighed, knowing this wasn’t the time for tact. ‘What Rory’s referring to is that Alex kissed Tara the night before she left,’ she said with her usual brevity.
Dev’s eyes widened. ‘Oh fuck.’
Miles’s eyes narrowed, for he had missed the revelations earlier too. ‘You did what?’
Rory’s hand had pulled into a fist again too, but Holly reached an arm out and patted his arm. ‘Not right now. You can all knock ten bells out of each other later. We need to concentrate on finding out where Tara is first.’
Zac stepped into the conversation: an impartial observer, he knew nothing of Tara and Alex’s traumatic history. ‘Okay. Let’s look at what we know,’ he said, trying to summarize with his usual legal clip. ‘She left the village at some time in the night, either voluntarily or she was taken. This William guy is also gone, so he may or may not be involved. But you think not, Alex.’
‘Not in a sinister way, no.’ Alex shrugged. ‘As soon as I realized they’d gone, I took off. I didn’t see anyone else, it was still early. I thought I might be able to catch them up.’
Zac thought for a moment. ‘Is there any way William could have been helping her back here, but they got lost?’
‘Would it be possible for you to get lost walking down one end of Sloane Street to the other?’
Zac frowned. ‘Of course not.’
‘Precisely. That’s what this place is to William. Getting lost is not an option.’
‘. . . Okay. I’m just trying to cover all angles,’ Zac muttered, not appreciating the sarcasm. ‘Could they have had an accident?’
Alex stared at him for a moment and Holly could see the panic swimming in his eyes, his face paling before them. He looked away sharply and began to pace. ‘I would have . . . I would have seen them.’
‘Would you, Alex? Surely there’s more than one way up or down those mountains?’ This time it was Miles throwing sarcasm.
Alex shook his head, as though he didn’t even want to hear the suggestion. ‘You don’t understand. William is a part of the jungle; he knows the animals that live in it, the trees and flowers and bushes that grow in it. He knows what heals and what poisons. He knows the gorges and the rivers. The seasons. The weather. He can read it all.’
‘But accidents can happen to anyone, at any time. That’s what makes them accidents.’
Alex stared at Miles darkly. Their bad start ten years ago hadn’t mellowed with time. No one spoke for several moments, all painfully aware they were completely blind as to Tara’s predicament. She might have been kidnapped, or maybe not. She might be safe with William and injured, or unsafe with him and injured; she might be uninjured and safe with him, or uninjured and unsafe with him. She might be alone and lost and injured . . . The possibilities were endless.
‘We should get a chopper up there, looking for them,’ Miles said decisively. ‘Start covering some ground.’
‘Miles, even if you were standing in the trees immediately beneath the helicopter, you wouldn’t see it,’ Alex sighed. ‘The canopy cover is absolute. You won’t see anything at all from the sky.’
‘So then what?’ Miles cried, throwing his arms out in frustration. ‘We just do nothing and wait here for her to come back – or not? My parents land in an hour. What am I supposed to tell them? That she’s lost and we did nothing?’
‘Of course we’re not going to do nothing,’ Holly said, stepping in again to calm frayed nerves. ‘We just need to keep coming at this logically. Tara’s not an impulsive person. There
