Maddocks was at her side, watching. His presence was like a rock. They were in the living room at Semko Fishing Lodge, and afternoon sun streamed through the windows. The weather had finally broken, and outside bald eagles wheeled against a clear blue sky. Bennett, Maddocks’s pilot buddy, was waiting to fly Angie and Maddocks back to Vancouver.
Maddocks had explained to Angie how he’d located her, and she was humbled. By him. By her own recklessness and drive. But she had what she’d come for now. Answers. How she would yet process everything would be new territory, but her relief was profound. She knew who her mother was, and how Ana and Mila had likely ended their lives, and where the rest of their remains might lie—deep in the cold waters below Kaganov’s old fish pens. It was the resting place from where the little shoe had probably disarticulated from Mila’s foot, floated to the surface of the ocean, and begun its journey, bobbing in currents and winds and storms until it ended up on the beach in Tsawwassen.
The ERT guys had taken off earlier in a chopper with Kaganov in cuffs after the paramedics had flown in to treat him. Crime scene techs were now present and were combing through the lodge. RCMP detectives had also come in via helicopter and were questioning guests, who’d been corralled in another area of the lodge. The old woman in black had been taken away crying. She, too, would be interrogated. A massive forensics dive operation would soon commence at the old fish pens site. If there were remains down there, the team would eventually find them. Police were currently trying to locate Ivanski Polzim and Sasha Makeev. Now that they had names, warrants had been put out for their arrests, and it hopefully wouldn’t be long before they were taken into custody. The DNA profile of one of them would likely match the blood of the 1993 cop killer as well as the DNA from the second semen stain on Anastazja Kowalski’s purple sweater. The ballistics evidence from the drug bust shoot-out would now be examined in conjunction with the ballistics from the 1986 cradle case. Polzim and Makeev were also key persons of interest in the Squamish arson that had killed Stirling and Elaine Harrison. They were all finally going to go down.
As the paramedic exited the living room, Angie said to Maddocks, “Guess I’ll have to go back and face the music myself now.”
He smiled, and it lit up his blue eyes like the clear, sunny sky outside. A pang went through Angie’s heart. Love. It was love, she thought. What else could it be? For this man who continued to save her in so many ways. He had not given up on her when she was so broken that she’d tried to destroy everything good around her. Including him. And what they’d shared.
“Yeah, I’ll need to face the shit, too,” he said, “after splitting in the middle of the Club Orange B bust and taking off after you. But I’ve had a few words with Takumi on the phone. I have a feeling he’s going to want take all the glory himself for leading an international human trafficking op that cut off the head of the North American arm of the so-called Red Octopus.”
Angie’s thoughts shifted to the octopus she’d seen in Anders’s underwater footage, and a small shiver went through her.
“Nailing Kaganov,” Maddocks said, “is also going to send fissures, potentially fatal ones, all the way up through the Prague operation. My gut says Takumi is not going to pursue the fact that I went rogue there for a while, because if I hadn’t, this would not have turned out to his benefit like this. RCMP probably won’t want to proceed with any charges against you, either.”
“I can only hope.”
He held his hand out to help her up from her seat. “Let’s cross our fingers, then, shall we?”
She managed a smile, but it hurt her face. She clasped his hand and came to her feet. “And engage good lawyers, I suppose.”
“That too. You ready to go home?”
“I need to visit that cedar grove one more time first.”
“You sure?”
“Dead sure.” She hesitated, feeling a little silly, but she said what was on her mind anyway. “That’s where they are, Maddocks. My mom and Mila. Not their bodies but their spirits—in the wind that drifts through those ancient trees. I feel as though their voices reach me there. It’s from that place that they called me back to find the answers. From that bay that Mila’s foot floated south, setting everything in motion. I need to go and say goodbye.”
Yellow afternoon sunshine dappled down through the tall cedars as Angie and Maddocks slowly walked hand in hand through the soft, long grass and over the springy moss of the dell. Angie stopped and inhaled the sense of the place once more. Wind rustled, and she felt them—Mila and her mother. Tears filled her eyes.
“It really is beautiful,” Maddocks said, sliding his arm around her waist, drawing her closer. Small birds darted through the boughs. It was not the season for blackberries or dandelions, but the berries and flowers were here, beneath the winter earth, pushing up and getting ready to burst forth in the spring and then fall.
“I want that photo of Ana when the techs are done with everything,” Angie said.
He nodded. “I told them you’d want it.”
“She was so young. She didn’t abandon me, Maddocks. She was trying desperately to save us both. I can’t tell you how much that means.”
They stood in silence for a moment. Just the two of them. The sensation of the old-growth trees surrounding them like ancient sentient beings was humbling. The sound of the whispering wind through their boughs was haunting, spiritual, a murmur of voices in a language not understood by mere mortals. These trees would have been tiny saplings when the construction of the Notre Dame cathedral had commenced, and the mood beneath them was no less reverent.
“If we do find Mila and my mother’s remains,” Angie said softly, “if the divers manage to bring them up, this is where I will bury them. Lay them to rest. In this cathedral of trees. I did once feel happy here. I—” She swallowed as her throat tightened with emotion. “Maybe I’ll return to this island from time to time to just sit with them. To pick the berries and dandelions.”
“Only if I come with you.”
She glanced up into his deep-blue eyes that had so mesmerized her when she’d first seen him at the Foxy. The look in his features made her heart swell with a warmth, a poignancy that both scared and excited her. “Maybe,” she said softly, “we can use that birthday present you gave me. I mean, when things finally wrap up.”
His eyes changed. His features tightened. “You mean the voucher? The one for the wilderness lodge? Just you and me, far away?”
She smiled. “Well, seeing as I don’t have a job or anything.”
His eyes glistened. He swallowed, reached up, and touched his palm gently, so gently, to the side of her face.
“Marry me, Angie,” he whispered.
“What?”
“Marry me.”
Her brain spun. “You . . . you mean, be your . . . wife?”
“That’s generally what getting married means, Angie Pallorino. I don’t ever want to lose you. I came too close. When I thought . . .” His voice hitched as emotion strangled his words.