“Oh, now you’re done for!” Chris laughed. “How many hours do you have to spare?”
Another stick, another gleeful dive. Amanda shifted her binoculars to the nearby islands and shoreline beyond the village, searching for signs of habitation. For Phil’s truck. For any clue. The land stood empty and untouched as far as she could see. Nothing but scoured rock, grassy heath, and tangles of spruce, battered and misshapen by relentless time.
A twitch of movement shot across the lens. A moose browsing the shore? A bear? She focused harder. Rocks and scrub hid her view, but then the figure emerged again. Two, three, maybe four separate figures, leaping nimbly across the open rock before disappearing behind spruce again.
Human. Running full tilt toward the village. She waited with her binoculars trained until they came into view again. Closer now. A faint shout drifted in on the wind.
Kaylee perked up her ears and turned in the direction of the sound. Spotting the figures, she grabbed her stick and raced toward them. The fishermen turned to watch the figures approach. Running, leaping, flailing over the rocky shore.
“What in the love of …? What have those boys got on their tail?”
Amanda could see now that they were children, gangly-
limbed and fearless on the treacherous rocks. She thought they looked more excited than afraid, but the fishermen were frowning in apprehension. When the boys finally splashed through a shallow tidal pool and came within earshot, Tom held up his hand.
“Where you to, Bobby?”
The lead boy reached them and bent over, panting to catch his breath. Before he could speak, a second one arrived and managed to blurt out, “’Dere be a boat!”
“A boat? Yes, b’y. Das an ocean out there.”
“No!” exclaimed the first boy. “On the shore, washed up in the bush.”
“Lots of stuff washes up on the shore over the years, son.”
“No, Dad! This weren’t there last week when we went clam-digging. And it’s not a fishing boat. More like a lifeboat, with a big hole punched in its side.”
Chris was instantly alert. “What kind of lifeboat?”
The boy shrugged. “Can’t tell, but maybe it’s that boat the cops are looking for.”
Chris was already on the move. “Show me.”
The boat was upside down under an old spruce whose spreading branches shielded it from view until the group was almost upon it. Chris tramped around it, fighting the spiky spruce branches as he looked for a registration number. Amanda could see that a section of the siding had been smashed and broken off where she figured the number should be. Deliberately or victim of the ruthless sea, she wondered?
Beneath her curiosity, dread needled into her gut. What if Phil, in his single-mindedness, had taken this boat, and foundered on the rocks? She wasn’t even sure he had lifejackets, let alone other survival gear. Were he and Tyler lying on the bottom of the sea, or washed up on the shore somewhere farther down?
Chris raised his head to study the stony shore. It was low tide, but the wavering line of broken shells and seaweed clearly marked the high water mark, at least fifteen metres below the boat. His face was a mask of dispassion. “Could the waves wash it up here?”
Bobby’s father shook his head. “There been some big storm surges this summer, but none strong enough to toss the boat that far.”
“Looks like it’s been hidden, then.”
The boys were dancing around, excited now that Chris had identified himself as an RCMP officer, each eager to impress him with their detective skills.
“We never seen anybody,” Bobby said, “but there are footprints in the sand.”
Chris whirled around. “Where?”
“We’ll show you!” The boys raced off.
“Stop!”
The boys froze in place until Chris reached them. “Stay on the rocks and don’t go close. You point out where they are and I’ll check.” As if seeing their disappointment, he smiled. “We don’t want to destroy evidence, do we?”
Amanda called Kaylee over and leashed her so that she wouldn’t add excited dog prints to the scene as well. Together the small posse worked its way farther along the shore, careful to stay on the rocks. Chris bent his head to scrutinize each small patch of silt and mud in the crevices between the rocks. Amanda recognized bird tracks and small mammals, but no humans.
Farther along in a sheltered inlet, a swath of natural sand beach sparkled in the sunlight. Surf had washed seaweed, shells, and other ocean flotsam up to the high tide line. Below that line, the sand was washed smooth and clean, but above it footprints and other gouges were easy to make out. Some were the boot treads of small children, but at the far edge of the beach, larger prints had dug deep holes in the soft sand.
Amanda felt a rush of relief. Whoever this was, they had survived the wreck. Chris signalled for them all to stop while he walked cautiously forward, staying in the soft wet sand below high tide. Amanda watched with frustration and anxiety as he circled the patch of sand, clambered up on the nearby rocks, and took out his camera. He snapped a dozen shots, fiddling with the zoom and the angles, before disappearing over the ridge ahead. Kaylee strained at her leash, mirroring the impatience they all felt. Gulls wheeled overhead and sandpipers returned to capture the minute creatures the waves lapped up. The wind rippled through the low-lying bushes, where bright coral berries nestled among glossy leaves. Amanda idly wondered if they were Newfoundland’s famous partridge berries.
After an apparent eternity, Chris’s tousled head bobbed into view above the ridge and a moment later he came back along the edge of the rocks to the safety of the beach. He signalled Amanda with a slight shake of his head before skirting the footprints and returning to the group.
“No more sign of them. I have to report this boat, but there’s no signal here. The town of Roddickton has the closest RCMP detachment, so we’ll go there and give them these photos. Meanwhile I need to rope off this section of the shore until the police arrive. We have to protect the evidence. It could be our friend and his son, or it could be those potential fugitives.”
He sent two of the boys back to the village for a long length of rope. The other boys had a dozen questions. Will the police bring dogs? A helicopter? Trackers? Can Kaylee track? Chris teased them with bets that Kaylee could find every last ball in the village. Once they realized that he was not going to speculate further, the boys sensed the drama was over and began drifting away. Amanda and Chris were left to the silence of the surf and the gulls.
“What do you think?” she asked.
His brow furrowed unhappily. “I don’t like it. That boat’s not a regular fishing skiff. Possibly a lifeboat, although it’s pretty small to be out on the open sea.”
“Phil might have settled for any boat in the mood he was in.”
He nodded. “But the fugitives were also in what looked like a lifeboat. And they were spotted in the sea only about thirty kilometres north of here.”
“What about the footprints? Could you tell anything from them?”
He nodded. “Two people at least.”
Her eyes widened.
“Both adults, I’d say.”
“But Tyler is eleven. He might be at that age where his feet have outgrown the rest of him.”
“I know.” He gazed