Free Anarchy by James Treadwell

her?”
    â€œKeep what quiet?” A patrol car sped past in the other direction at the airport turn, lights flashing.
    â€œâ€˜Keep what quiet?’ What do you think? Didn’t we talk about this?”
    â€œOh. No, sir, no one saw Jennifer. Identified her, I mean.”
    â€œThen who— You’d better start from the beginning, Maculloch.”
    No, she’d better not. She’d explain later. “Emergency, sir,” she mumbled, and cut him off.
    In the few seconds of relative silence while she pulled out her own phone, she seemed to hear a larger stillness, the emptiness of water, the solitary tlatch tlatch of paddle blades.
    â€œJonas?”
    â€œGoose! What’s up? Mountie got her man?”
    â€œOkay, listen. I need your help. I’m in a hurry.”
    â€œYou’re always in a—”
    â€œThis is serious. The kid’s out in the strait. I need your boat. Fast. You hear me, Jonas? Really fast. Like sirens and actual running, that kind of fast.”
    â€œYou’re kidding, man. I’m on duty here.”
    â€œI’ve got maybe an hour to save my ass. This is what you’re going to do, Jonas. Are you listening? You run outside, get in the car, floor it over to Hardy, meet me at the pier. You’re going to do that for me, right away. Okay? Right as soon as I hang up.”
    â€œIt is kind of a nice ass.”
    She hung up.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    Time ached as she waited by the half-abandoned waterfront condos. She recognized the feeling from the last three minutes of games her team was losing, when the other girls had the ball and whatever you did, however hard you hit, you knew you weren’t going to get it back. She listened distractedly to the unusually heavy chatter on the radio. Janice called her.
    â€œHi there, Marie.” Her schoolmistressy voice. “I’ve just had a phone call from Mrs. Sampson. I guess she’s a little unhappy.”
    â€œThere’s an emergency. Something’s come up.”
    â€œOh, okay. We have procedures for an emergency. I’ll get some backup to you right away.”
    â€œIt’s not like that. It’s, ah.” She could feel the whole situation getting worse around her, underneath her; she was sinking into something embarrassing and stupid without quite knowing how she’d got there. “It’s personal.”
    â€œOh. Oh, I’m sorry. Is there anything—”
    â€œI’ll get to Rupert later. Tell them we have a suspect, okay? I need to go.”
    Which was true. She needed to go. There was still time before the ferry was due to leave; it hadn’t even come in yet. She knew it sat at the dock in Hardy Bay for two or three hours while they turned it around. She had a misty recollection of the map. There were three or four small islands in Rupert Bay, and beyond them just the open water of the Queen Charlotte Strait. Nowhere a yellow plastic kayak could hide for long, whichever direction it went. They’d just have to round the headland between Hardy and Rupert and cruise along the coast and they’d see the boat before long. The shore was all forest and rock as far as she knew. No roads, no hiding places, nowhere to go.
    Nowhere to go. ( Tlatch, tlatch, tlatch, tlatch. What was she doing out there? Where was she going? What if it hadn’t even been her?)
    Jonas tried to call once too, but she decided he’d probably come faster if she didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure what to tell him anyway. She still hadn’t settled on an explanation by the time she saw the patrol car cruise, unhurriedly, down from the roundabout and pull up in the disintegrating oversized nine-tenths-deserted parking lot that served the dock. Mercifully, Jonas was that rare kind of person who could do things without perpetually asking why (no drive, Goose had thought to herself on their first day together; no curiosity; I hope I don’t end up like that