Through the gloom, the villa appears. It looks like it’s barely holding on; the structure seems too fragile for the storm raging around it. Stopping by the front door, she peers through the rain-splattered glass. The space appears to be empty, a scene undisturbed from when she’d come to the islet with Farrah, searched the room.
Fumbling for her security pass, she holds it up to the door. It opens with a click. Breath high in her throat, Elin walks slowly into the room—instant relief from the storm—but there’s no one there.
“Farrah?” she calls.
No response.
She checks the bathroom. Empty.
Elin’s heart is pounding, the isolation she felt the last time she was here even more acute. Moving back to the center of the room, she keeps looking, but listens this time too, straining her ears over the sound of the storm.
It’s then that she feels a tingling at the base of her neck.
Though the room is deserted, she has the distinct feeling that she’s being watched. Her thoughts dart to the photograph in the tweet.
Could someone be watching her at this very moment?
Uneasy, she heads for the door, walking around the side of the building to the terrace. Waves are thrashing against the decking, water pooling in the wooden slats, washing through the legs of the chairs and table. No one would be out here, she thinks, not unless they had a death wish. One surge and you’d be in the water.
She plunges into the copse on the right of the terrace, but the higgledy-piggledy line of trees reveals nothing except muddy puddles and damp, slippery shadows of leaf litter.
Elin keeps moving. The tree cover gets denser; she’s having to force her way between the trunks. The darkness beneath the canopy plays tricks with her mind. As she fights her way through, she glimpses a shadow dissolve into the thicket, but she puts it down to the storm, the sense of relentless motion it’s created.
A few steps on and the land starts sloping downward, fast-moving streams of rainwater flowing toward the sea. It meets resistance in broken branches and stones, forming winding tributaries.
Within minutes, she’s sweating heavily, breathing hard. It’s taking all her concentration to remain upright on the slippery ground.
She’s nearly at the waterline.
Inching forward, all she can see through the trees is the sea—choppy, slapping peaks surging onto the rocks then sucking back with such force it’s as though it’s trying to take a piece of the island with it.
Glancing around her, she’s about to turn back when she notices something in the very periphery of her vision.
A leg, protruding from behind a tree, a pale slice of calf.
Elin’s heart is in her mouth as she pushes forward.
No.
As she rounds the tree, she can see all of her: Farrah, lying on her back on the dirty, sodden ground, a blindfold tied around her head.
No movement. Nothing at all.
An ugly, dogged panic fills her chest.
Elin’s stomach twists, her heart beating furiously as she sees a dark smear of blood matting Farrah’s hair. She steps closer. A large head wound is now visible, more blood, on the left-hand side of her temple.
Caleb had hit her, just like he hit Jo Leger.
But any disgust she has for him is superseded by disgust with herself.
A sob escapes her throat. She’d let Farrah down. Failed her.
Moments flicker in Elin’s head: when Farrah had tried to confide. She’d pushed her away, made the wrong call. Elin pictures herself a few hours ago, her naivete as she’d torn around the island.
Had she really thought this would end any differently?
With a shaking hand, she lightly touches Farrah’s neck.
A small flicker of hope shimmers, then rapidly fades to nothing. No rise and fall, nothing at all except the hot, relentless pulse of her own blood inside her.
Another sob breaks loose. Grief is already there, taking shape inside her, a grief not just for Farrah but for Will, because she knows what this will do to him. How the sadness will take root inside him and grow and keep growing until it changes him irrevocably.
“I’m sorry,” she murmurs. “I’m so sorry.”
Elin is about to pull her hand away when something stirs, so faint that at first she thinks it’s her own heartbeat.
Shifting closer, she presses her finger slightly harder against Farrah’s skin.
A pulse?
90
Elin presses again.
There. A pulse. Thank God. Relief surges through her.
“Farrah,” she says quickly. “Can you hear me?”
She’s unconscious. Breathing but unresponsive.
Elin kneels down on the ground beside her, carefully moving her into the recovery position. Easing the blindfold off, she gently tilts Farrah’s head back, lifts her chin, checking that nothing is blocking her airway.