Free Anarchy by James Treadwell Page B

her, right?”
    She didn’t say anything. She knew with complete certainty that it was Jennifer she’d seen paddling away, just out of reach, just out of her grip. If she hadn’t been sure before she was now. She was the fog girl, the disappearing girl, the one you could never catch up with or ever see.
    What if Jennifer had made the fog happen?
    (This kind of thought came more easily on water.)
    What if she’d made the fog happen the way she’d made the cell door open?
    â€œ ’Nother few minutes east and we can turn into Rupert Bay. Pretty shallow in places there, though.”
    â€œIt’s okay. You can turn back.”
    â€œI don’t mind giving it a try. Know my way around out here pretty good.”
    â€œNah. We won’t find her.”
    Jonas looked at her, surprised.
    â€œWe won’t.” Goose set her jaw. “Let’s go back.”
    â€œHey,” he said. “You okay? This doesn’t sound like you.” He eased the throttle back. The ambient sounds became a presence, the sea’s insidious whisper.
    â€œHow much were you involved in the investigation?”
    â€œWhen Carl died?”
    â€œUh-huh.”
    â€œDepends what you mean. Not much, I guess. But then you couldn’t really avoid it. Contagious.”
    â€œYou ever read the whole file?”
    â€œOh, man. Maybe once I’m done with War and Peace .”
    â€œIf you read the file you’d know we’re not going to find her.”
    â€œWhy’s that?”
    She looked away. “You’d just know.”
    A long muted groan spread from the sea behind them.
    â€œFoghorn at Scarlett Point,” Jonas said, and spun the wheel. “Must be coming down faster ’n I thought.”
    To Goose it had sounded like a moan of defeat. She slumped in the seat, imagining Jennifer paddling still, safely out of sight, secretly, purposefully. Going somewhere even though she had nowhere to go. Now that Jonas had turned back, the fog was dead ahead. Goose hadn’t seen proper sunshine since she’d moved up here. The sun might as well be a myth. This wasn’t the sun’s country. Nothing was sharp, clear, bright. She’d rented a mountain bike on her first afternoon off and taken one of the forest trails, remembering happy autumn weekends in the hills outside Montreal. After an hour she’d returned the bike and gone home. The forest here was endlessly repetitive: straight, wet, evergreen, oppressively quiet, a thick deep wall that looked as if it went on forever, like Jennifer’s silence, like the impending fog.
    It caught them just as they turned back into Hardy Bay. One minute they could see the ferry dock and the town ahead, looking pathetically diminished, blips in the landscape; the next minute they could see nothing. Jonas throttled all the way back and peered at the compass mounted on the whaler’s dash.
    â€œDue southwest should do it. Just have to take it slow. You want to go up front and keep an eye out?”
    Goose did a full turn. The world had vanished. It was like there was no left or right, no up or down even. With nothing to reflect, the water itself appeared to have turned into cloud.
    â€œFor what?”
    â€œAnything. Deadheads.” She’d been warned about deadheads the first time she put her kayak in. They were floating logs broken loose from the giant booms that passed up and down the Inside Passage every day, whole stripped tree trunks heavy as a bus and often drifting upright with only a foot of their length showing above the surface, waiting to punch a hole in your hull. “Hardy. Won’t see it till we’re on top of it.” He pulled a portable horn out of a locker and aimed a single long blast into the fog. Far away, the lighthouse moaned again like an echo.
    â€œWhat’s that other noise?” Goose asked, after she’d been staring uselessly at nothing for a few