Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
SAWYER
Sawyer didn’t believe them for one second.
Maybe he could have believed the whole Nordic heritage thing. Fraser was tall, blond, striking blue eyes. But the fact that he said what Tobin had said earlier, verbatim, made Sawyer believe something was very off.
“Nordic heritage. Swimming in ice water is good for the circulation system.”
When Sawyer had gone to the jetty to look out across the dark water he’d seen Ciaran and Fraser disappear into hours earlier, looking at a possible two-body recovery for all he knew, Tobin had come over.
“The water’s too cold to be in it for that long,” Sawyer had said. The wind was coming directly from Antarctica, for fuck’s sake. Sawyer didn’t need to touch the water to know it was cold. It looked dark and deep—and freezing.
Tobin had laughed him off, dismissing the idea with a wave of his hand. “Nah. Nordic heritage. Swimming in ice water is good for the circulation system.”
They’d both said it too easily, too the same, like it was a rehearsed line.
Something to tell the outsiders when they questioned why anyone would swim in such frigid, black waters.
The whole interaction was off.
Then, at Fraser’s place, Ciaran had just stood there, far too tense and seemingly unable to speak. He’d met Sawyer’s gaze, and he’d winced, jaw clenched, as if he was in physical pain, his naked torso, muscular and still wet, trembling with barely contained restraint.
And oh boy, had Sawyer noticed his body.
Pale skin, strong lines and hard planes of muscle, trim waist, and a happy trail of copper-coloured hair. And that tattoo. Red tentacles weaved up his forearm. Sawyer had never really gone much for tattoos, but he had to admit, he liked that one.
And Fraser.... When he’d gone to the fridge to grab a beer, Sawyer had noticed the tattoo on his back. A giant blue octopus covering most of his back, the tentacles reaching up over his shoulders.
It was striking. Menacing, almost.
Was it cool?
Sure. Maybe not as cool as Ciaran’s red sleeve, in Sawyer’s opinion. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe the red tentacles were more discreet than a giant back piece. Something about Fraser’s tattoo seemed oddly familiar, though. Maybe he’d used a picture that Sawyer had seen somewhere.
Maybe it was a generic octopus image.
But what was with the octopuses?
They both had tattoos of them. Maybe it was a low-key gang thing. Maybe that’s what they were. What had Carpenter said they called their little group?
A consortium.
Sawyer sat there at his work computer, tapping the desk....
Hmm.
He slid the keyboard closer and typed in a question: “What is the collective noun for octopus?”
A consortium.
Sawyer almost smiled.
“Figures,” he mumbled to himself.
They thought of themselves as a group, a gang.
How many of them were there?
He counted off the names on Carpenter’s list.
There were eight.
Hmm. Eight members, eight arms.
So that explained that.
He’d yet to meet Aurin, Dylan, or Hendrix yet, though.
Or whoever the hell Salem was. Or Mr Brown.
He hadn’t met the doctor officially, either, but he’d seen him in the doctor’s office and in the café.
He’d been the guy reading some papers, the one who’d picked up all the sugar sachets when Ciaran had dropped them.
Ciaran...
Sawyer couldn’t figure out what his deal was.
He was the supposed “leader” of their consortium, or so Carpenter had noted. But he didn’t seem to be the leader type.
To Sawyer, he seemed too flippant, too erratic, to be a leader. Too moody, too angry, too unpredictable, too... too something.
With a deep sigh, Sawyer shut the computer down, locked up the police station, and got himself ready for bed.
He lay in his strange bed, staring at the strange ceiling, listening to the strange silence, trying not to think about Ciaran Brenner.
Or his pale skin, the way water clung to him like diamonds, running rivulets down the lines and valleys of his strong form. His tattoo, how the tentacles seemed to shimmer under the light.
Sawyer hadn’t allowed himself to think of a man in a long time.
He’d closed that part of his life down after one too many failed relationships and a string of empty, unfulfilling one-night stands. He was done putting himself out there, making vain attempts at having his needs met and being disappointed every time.
He’d closed that part of himself off so good and proper, he no longer missed sex.
He’d never missed the company. He preferred his own company over that of others anyway.
But something stirred in him when he thought of Ciaran. Which was, Sawyer understood, probably because Ciaran could only glare and sneer at him. Sawyer could appreciate there was comfort in self-sabotage and heartache; he knew what to expect, and it validated his desire for solitude.
But I wouldn’t mind being wrecked by Ciaran Brenner.
No.
Nope.
Don’t go there.
Sawyer groaned, frustrated at himself, at his overthinking mind, and decided rolling over and trying to sleep was a much better idea.
Instead, he drifted off to visions of Fraser’s back tattoo and what had seemed so familiar about the blue octopus. He couldn’t place it, couldn’t remember where he’d seen something like it...
And when he finally slept, he dreamed of chasing that guy along Macquarie Pier and onto Constitution Dock. His heart was hammering as if he was chasing him all over again, through the dark night to the ink-black water of the harbour.
Not unlike the dark waters of Tenebrae Cove.
Not unlike it at all.
Only, in his dream, Constitution Dock became the jetty in Tenebrae, and the man he was chasing was Ciaran. And Fraser. Both of them running, wearing only board shorts, and Fraser’s tattoo...
The blue octopus, its tentacles writhing up to Fraser’s neck—and then the octopus tattoo opened its eyes.
Familiar eyes. Eyes he’d seen only once before.
Then dream-Sawyer was back on Constitution Dock, chasing the guy with the shimmering skin and weird eyes.
Eyes like a goat. Elongated, horizontal slits for pupils that were not human.
The same eyes on Fraser’s back tattoo.
The man’s eyes became Fraser’s tattooed eyes as he morphed into the same being, which made no sense, but that was the peculiar logic of dreams.
And then Fraser’s tattoo blinked at him.
Sawyer sat bolt upright in bed, wide awake, heart thumping painfully, and he was panting. He felt cold all over, clammy and sweating, icy realisation crawling down his spine and over his skin like a hundred tiny cold spiders.
The eyes had been familiar, all right.
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.
Tracking down 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.