Fire in the Stars. Barbara Fradkin
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The journalist, Matthew Goderich, had become a friend over the course of their ordeal and its aftermath. A stringer for the Canadian Press, he’d been ordered to return to Lagos by his employer when the Islamist insurgency worsened, but instead he’d insisted on staying on in the north as a freelancer. These stories need to be told, he’d said. No matter how many people back home don’t want to hear them.
Despite the passage of time and the warm safety of the RCMP office, Amanda felt that familiar vice pressing her chest. Sensing it, Kaylee nuzzled her fingers.
“I dug this up when I first met Phil,” Tymko said. “What you two did was incredibly brave.”
She pasted a blank expression on her face. “Foolhardy. You don’t have time to think.”
“Not everyone reacts like you did. Lots of people would have run for their own lives.”
“Those children were like family.” She paused, loath to revisit the memories. To perpetuate the great lie of her heroism. “You never know how you’ll react until the threat is right there. The guns, the smoke, the blood … It’s all instinct. Fight or flight.”
Or freeze.
“I know.” He spoke as if he did know. As if he too had faced the devil head on. Well, he was a cop after all.
“I guess it’s not all speeding tickets in your line of work, either,” she said gaily to change the mood.
He obliged her with a smile but it was fleeting. “Afterward, though, when you’ve had time to think …”
“About how you almost died? Yeah.”
“And about who you didn’t save.”
No doubt he was speaking about himself, but her heart hammered. The coffee cup shook in her hand. Seeing that, he looked stricken. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I know the memories must still be very raw. They are for Phil. He was really looking forward to your trip.”
Grateful for the opening, she steered back to safer ground. To the reason she had come. “But something went wrong. Corporal Tymko —”
“Chris.”
“Chris. He’s taken his son with him. That wasn’t part of the plan. And his wife had just told him there is someone else. She thinks he’s just taking time to sort things out, but I’m scared it’s more. He’s been betrayed —”
“In more ways that you know.”
Amanda hesitated. Chris’s lips were a grim line, his eyes hooded.
“You mean Jason Maloney?”
He nodded.
“Sheri says she didn’t tell him.”
Chris shifted. His bony knee jiggled. “Jason did.”
She sucked in her breath. Even worse!
“Jason said he had a right to know, said he didn’t feel right sneaking around behind his back.”
“Oh right! So why not spit in his face instead?” Amanda thought back to the exchange of cryptic text messages on Phil’s phone, setting up a meeting. Was that when Jason had told him? Was that the last anyone saw of Phil before he packed up his son and took off?
She revisited Jason’s behaviour from the night before, including his determination to handle things quietly, ostensibly to spare Phil the public humiliation of a full-fledged police hunt. She felt her blood pressure rise. Like hell. More to spare himself the censure. Or Sheri’s wrath should she find out.
“Sheri doesn’t know that Phil knows,” she said. But even as she spoke, she remembered Sheri avoiding Jason’s touch the night before. Was that just guilt, or did she have an inkling of what he’d done?
“No,” Chris said, “and I told Jason he should tell her.”
So that was the argument she had witnessed between Jason and Chris in the truck. Amanda stood up. “This makes it even worse, Chris. Everything Phil believed in, everything he hung on to, has been turned upside down.”
She walked over to the large map of Newfoundland tacked to the office wall. “I’ve got to find him. Where would he go?”
No sooner had the question left her lips than her eyes settled on the remote, northern section of the island. A desolate finger where villages were few and far between, and where the North Atlantic, the Arctic, and the inner Strait of Belle Isle collided. The end of the earth. She tapped the peninsula with her finger.
He followed her finger. “Yes. I think you may be right.”
Chapter Five
Amanda wanted to set off right away, for it was a huge area to cover, encompassing the twin UNESCO world heritage sites of Gros Morne and L’Anse aux Meadows where the Vikings had settled, as well as numerous fishing villages in between. From the map she could identify at least six government campsites, but there were surely smaller local ones tucked near the coastal villages. Phil had already had far too great a head start.
But Chris Tymko’s pragmatism prevailed. “It’s a big place,” he said. “And much of the interior mountain range has no road access. If Phil is looking to get away from it all, he could be on foot in the mountains or in a boat on the ocean.”
“He’s not much good on the ocean. Prairie boy like you said.”
He didn’t smile. “In his mood, that might not stop him. If he’s looking for freedom, or oblivion …”
Sobering, she studied the map. There was only one road running north up the coast, dipping in and out of the fishing villages along the way. In each village, there might be boats available to rent. If Phil were trying to disappear, he would not choose an obvious path.
“Are there little roads leading up into these mountains?”
Chris was at his computer, fiddling with the keys. He glanced over briefly. “Just a few old logging trails. There’s not much up there but moose and trees. Oh, some salmon rivers and logging camps, mostly abandoned.” He swore softly at the computer. “Jason hasn’t even put out an alert on Phil’s licence plate.”
She grimaced. “Part of his low-key approach. To spare himself.”
“Right. I’m going to give it to the local detachments up there. The more eyes we have on this, the better.”
She thanked him and headed toward the door. “I’ve got all my gear. All I need are some groceries and a good map —”
“Forestry maps. Much more detailed. I’ll print them out for you here.” He was already tapping on his computer again. “You’ve got a good smart phone and a GPS?”
She nodded. “My cellphone has a GPS. I’m not going into the real wilderness, am I? There are people around? Villages, fishing boats?”
“The people will help you, yes. But you’ll need a satellite GPS. Cellphones can be useless, and one fishing village looks pretty much like another, at least to this Prairie boy. Nothing but boats, pickup trucks, and lobster traps.”
She laughed. As he typed and the printer hummed, she studied the wall map. Newfoundland had essentially one highway, the Trans-Canada, running across it from Port aux Basques in the west to St. John’s in the east, with local and community roads branching off like ribs from its long, curved spine. Deer Lake not only served as the gateway to Gros Morne National Park, but also as the juncture where the main road heading north up the peninsula forked off from the Trans-Canada. The first major campgrounds in the park itself were near the town of Rocky Harbour.
Chris saw her tracing the route with her finger. “Rocky Harbour’s the main tourist hub for the park,” he said. “That and St. Anthony’s at the northern tip. They’re full of motels and RVs and kids. Phil’s not going to find his wilderness and solitude there.”
“No,