She stayed on the picnic table and punched in his contact number, hoping the cellphone signal remained strong enough for a proper conversation. The smallest cloud or puff of wind seemed to defeat it.
The line crackled to life almost immediately. “Amanda, thank god! What’s going on?”
Matthew’s voice sounded even more ragged than usual. Decades of smoking and bad air had left his lungs starved and his throat lacerated, but she wondered whether he was taking enough care of himself. Like herself, he was a global wanderer with no place to call home and no one to nag him. She pictured his short, fireplug body and the perpetual five-o’clock shadow that lent him a seedy air, and she felt a rush of affection. How like Matthew to forget everything, even hello, in his headlong pursuit of a story.
“Hello to you too, Matthew. What do you mean — ‘going on’?”
“Are you with Phil?”
“No, why? What’s up?”
“I just got it off the police scanner! There’s a province-wide alert out on him. What the fuck has he done?”
“I don’t think he’s done anything, Matt. What does the alert say? Wanted for questioning? Suspect?”
“Wanted in connection with a suspicious death. They say he may be armed and dangerous.”
She drew a sharp breath. “That’s ridiculous! Armed with what? A Swiss Army knife?”
“It didn’t say. You know how these things are — cop bafflespeak. The alert covers all of Newfoundland and Labrador, land and sea. What happened, Amanda?”
Amanda hesitated. Matthew was a friend, bonded by their shared horror, but he was also a reporter hungry for a story. In the silence, she heard his whispered curse.
“I’m not looking for a story! Trust me, I’ve been worried about him for months. What the hell has he got himself into?”
She took a deep breath. She had few friends and allies in this part of the world, and none, except Chris Tymko, who would understand Phil’s struggles and his lines in the sand. But Chris was also a cop.
“An old fisherman was found murdered. He lived alone out on a remote cape and Phil was last seen heading in his direction.”
“Murdered how?”
“Axe to the head. But that’s not public knowledge, Matt, so keep it zipped.”
“Oh god,” Matthew breathed.
“It makes no sense. Even as desperate and screwed up as Phil was, you know how much he hated violence.”
“Did he and this man have an argument? Could he have gotten angry?”
“They didn’t even know each other.”
“Then why was Phil going to see him?”
“I think to borrow a boat.”
Matthew was silent a moment and when he spoke again, his voice was tentative, as if he was loath to venture further. “What if the man refused?”
“What are you getting at, Matt?”
“Has Phil been having any weird PTSD symptoms recently? Beyond the usual mood swings?”
“He gets anxious, yes. He gets short-tempered. So do I.”
“No, I mean worse than that. Flashbacks, hallucinations.”
It took a moment for the implication to catch up with her. She had vivid memories that flooded in due to the most unexpected triggers. Darkness could make her mortally afraid. Fires still made her tense. Running footsteps, the smell of meat … all those triggers could throw her right back into that awful time. But she recognized them as such. She wasn’t reliving the nightmare, just remembering it. Sometimes she heard screaming that she thought she might have imagined. But true flashbacks? Not in a few months. And hallucinations, never. But she had sought professional help and, although she knew she would always be haunted by them, she’d insisted on confronting and trying to conquer those dark days.
Phil had not.
She scrambled to formulate an answer. “Honestly? I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since we got back. But I can’t imagine … No matter how upset he was, no matter what bad memories were triggered … an axe to the head? Never.”
Silence crackled for so long she wondered whether she’d lost the connection. “Matt?”
“I was never going to reveal this,” he said, so softly she had to cover her other ear. “But last fall in Nigeria, Phil told me he killed a man.”
It was Amanda’s turn to be speechless. Literally robbed of breath to force out words. “Who?” she managed eventually.
“One of the Boko Haram fighters he encountered in the desert.”
“Oh! But … but in self-defence, then.”
“No. In a rage.”
“How? Why?”
“Fog of war, Amanda? He wasn’t sure. It was dark, he was trying to sneak through the grasslands, keeping to the shelter of a wadi. He smelled smoke and heard sounds of a group somewhere in the night but he didn’t know whether it was a village or a fighter’s camp. Creeping forward, he came upon a sentry beside a fire. He recognized him — a kid from the security force you’d hired to protect the village. Now with an AK-47, bandana, camo, the whole Boko Haram shit. Ahead, Phil could hear screams and see fires burning. In a split second, Phil was on him.”
The image was as vivid as if she were still there. The betrayal of those they’d paid to protect them. The howls, the shooting flames, the thunder of fire consuming the flimsy wood huts. The mingled cries of pain and protest and triumph. The staccato of gunfire. Save them, had been her only thought. Whatever it takes.
And yet …
Fighting back the memory, she forced herself to focus. “But the sentry would have killed him.”
“He didn’t even turn around.”
“Still … how did Phil kill him? We never even had weapons.”
“An axe he found lying at the fireside. Still bloody from killing people,” he said.
As she absorbed this final shock, she spotted Bradley down below by Phil’s truck, on his radio again, nodding and taking notes.
“Matt, I gotta go.”
“I’m coming there. I’m looking up flights to Deer Lake as we speak.”
“Okay, but cellphone coverage is bad here. If you can’t reach me —”
“Don’t do anything until I get there.”
She had no time to lose. The police search was kicking into high gear. Phil would be a fugitive once again, fleeing through unknown territory, driven by a single goal. Escape. Safety.
Would he even know where he was, and what he was fleeing? “I can’t promise that, Matt.”
Amanda raced back down the hill and through town, keeping a sharp eye out for Constable Bradley, who was no longer in sight. She had left Kaylee playing ball with the children, and now the dog came bounding up in delight, panting happily from the game.
There was still no sign of Casey, Chris, and the rest of the crew from Stink’s place, but Amanda knew she didn’t have much time before they returned. She spotted Thaddeus, the fisherman who’d been helping Casey work on the boats earlier.
“Is there a spare boat I can rent for a few hours?”
The fisherman jerked upright, his eyes narrowing. “What for?”
“To go down