Free Dark Moon Walking by R. J. McMillen

him.
    Rosemary, Mike’s secretary, answered. She was a fixture in the department, had worked for Mike for longer than the sixteen years Dan had known him, and he had never seen her flustered, but he thought she sounded flustered now. “Dan! Good to hear from you. Where are you?”
    â€œI’m on the boat. Still up north. What’s up?”
    â€œOh, nothing really. Same old stuff. Short of staff. Too many meetings. Too much happening. Not enough time.” She laughed. “I guess I don’t have to tell you. It’s not like it’s anything new. Are you looking for Mike?”
    â€œYeah. Is he there?”
    â€œNo. He’s over in Vancouver—in yet another meeting! Lately he’s been spending more time there than he does here in Victoria. This damn UN thing is taking up all his time, and everyone else’s too. And then there’s the concert . . . Sorry, I’m ranting. He won’t be back here until tomorrow at the earliest. Is there a problem? Can I give him a message?”
    â€œNo. No. It’s fine. Just checking in. I’ll be back down in a couple of weeks anyway.”
    No use worrying her. Maybe by tomorrow he would have a better idea of what was happening.

NINE
    Three days later Walker still hadn’t found her. He was following his instincts and the current, searching for the faint trail she had left. Like Claire, he was traveling mostly at night, using the soft, purple light of dusk and dawn to check shorelines and search the rocks. Several times he heard an outboard, although it never came close. Still, it was enough to tell him they had not given up. Enough to keep him cautious.
    On the evening of the third day, the sun low on the horizon and streaking the cloud bank with liquid fire, he reached an island well to the east of Darby Channel. The telltale signs started halfway up the bank, just below the high-tide line. They were partially covered, as they had been made when the water was at its highest point and a later high, lower than the first, had washed over the lower ones.
    He pushed the canoe into shallow water and struggled out. There was no place he could hide it, but it sat low in the water and the dark hull would be hard to see with the daylight fading.
    Earlier in the day he had found a handful of salmonberries the raccoons had left, and he had put them into a small deer-hide bag along with some dried salmon from his food stash. He thought about eating them now but decided against it. It would take him a while to clamber up the bank, and he would have to use the stunted trees that twisted out of the rock to pull himself up. Better to save the food till he reached the top. He didn’t think Claire was still there. The signs were a couple of days old, and it was hard to tell if the most recent led in or out of the water, but he hoped that from the highest point he would be able to get a wider view of the islands that lay still farther to the east. That was the direction she was traveling, and it would give him a better idea of where she might have gone.
    It was slow going, but finally, he reached the summit. An outcropping of rock blocked out the south, but otherwise the view was clear. A scattering of small islands lay both east and north, none of them more than half a mile wide and almost all of them low. Beyond them the rugged shore of the mainland heaved up in steep tiers to the jagged peaks of the Coast Mountains. Could Claire have made it that far? It didn’t seem likely. The nearest point was probably two days away by kayak, and the currents here would be against her at night.
    And even if she had, there was no place to land. Once past the islands, the inlet became a fjord: steep cliffs dropping straight down into a deep underwater trench. But the islands didn’t look promising either. None of them was big enough to provide decent shelter, and he doubted that any of them would have water.
    He sat down and let his