Reuben’s cabin, the great yacht’s master suite, was astonishing. Stretching from port to starboard, it was decked in gold and brown, home to a massive bed with sumptuous gilt headboard, a pearly ceiling lit with tiny bulbs and a zebra-skin rug.
Alone, Aurora explored. She was reminded of the trip to Capri and shrank from her memories of the Devereux boat, the French couple’s cabin as she’d stood beneath the hatch and listened in on that shocking conversation that had turned her inside out.
An old photograph on the dresser caught her eye. It was black and white, a bare-chested boy in shorts holding up a caught fish that was nearly greater in length than he was.
Reuben as a child?
Her anger was refreshed. How could he advertise his youth when he’d stripped so many of theirs? Blindly she kicked the bed, then the wall, so hard that she bit her lip and drew blood. The taste of it matched the red of her fury and she was fired with a destructive energy, the urge to obliterate everything in sight.
Aurora ripped off his bed clothes; she smashed his
objets d’art
; she punched a gilt mirror till it smashed, cracking her frantic reflection; she slashed his curtains, wrenching them from their fastenings; she hauled a chair and sent it crashing into the window; she flung open drawers and closets and tore out their contents, flinging them to the floor and trampling them, with each movement imagining it was him beneath her feet, hand, fist.
That was how she found it.
A smooth .357 Magnum revolver.
She reached into the cabinet, fingers locking round the grip.
Dirk was getting impatient. Where was Reuben? It was his gig and he’d only gone and done a vanishing act.
A sea of faces looked up at him expectantly. He caught sight of Stevie Speller. Her eyes were locked on him, daring him to do the impossible.
Fuck it.
He’d have preferred to offer the information as a small farewell, an
adieu
, but the main man’s absence left him with little choice.
‘I’m afraid I have some troubling news,’ Dirk began. ‘It pains me, but this is a truth I feel the good people of Hollywood should be made aware of.’
‘It’s now.’
Xander attempted to pull her back.
‘Stevie,’
he hissed.
‘No.’
‘I’m an honest man,’ Dirk was saying. ‘And ours is an honest town …’
The crowd was murmuring. A frisson of interest rippled round the room.
‘And so it is my duty to reveal to you what I’ve been holding back for some time.’
Stevie fought her way through the bodies. The stage seemed a million miles away.
‘This is going to come as a shock to many of you. Even, I’m sorry to say, my wife. You’ll be aware that this has been a tough couple of years for those of us in the industry …’
Rage was boiling, hot anger that had simmered in Stevie ever since Bibi had become involved in their venture. It spilled over in a scalding rush.
‘We’ve lost friends, loved ones. The impact of that has been considerable.’
She wasn’t going to make it in time. He was going to blurt it out before she could—
‘So it is with heavy heart that I am forced to tell you—’
‘That’s enough, Dirk.’
Stevie stopped. Dirk blinked, confused, as though he’d been woken from a dream in which he wielded absolute supremacy, reminded now that he hadn’t and never would.
JB Moreau was next to him. Smoothly he claimed the mic.
‘I’m going to have to stop you there.’
His blue eyes found Xander’s in the crowd and held them.
‘Reuben’s on his way,’ he said. ‘Show’s over.’
The sky somersaulted. Rebecca’s wound was seeping, sticky, gushing through her fingers.
Reuben pushed her. Once was all it took.
Her body tumbled over the edge of the ship like a rag doll, hitting the waves tens of feet below with a fierce slap. She was dead on impact.
She didn’t have time to see the man running at her from inside the boat. Screaming a name that wasn’t hers.
63
Reuben whipped round as the man came charging. Distantly, he recognised him.
The man took a swing, punching him hard in the face. For a moment Reuben was dizzy, immobilised, and felt a trickle of blood escape his sinus and course a line through his nose and out his nostril. He crumpled to the deck.
Enrique threw himself against the metal bow. Down below, her body drifted like wood on the waves, moonlight gleaming off her skin.
Lori
.
There was only one thing he could do. He jumped.
As Lori hurried past the main deck, she thought she heard a splash. The rest of the ship was so empty that every sound was wide open.
JB was walking too fast.
‘What was that about?’ she demanded.
‘Go back downstairs, Lori.’
‘No. Not until you talk to me.’
He turned on the stairwell. His gaze was ice on fire. ‘Go downstairs,’ he repeated. ‘I don’t want to see you. I never want to see you. Get back to your boyfriend.’
She was undeterred. ‘Wait.’
He waved a dismissive hand.
‘Don’t walk away from me.’
They emerged at the top deck, elevated above the rest of the ship, totally deserted. An oval pool shone aquamarine beneath a starlit sky, on the bottom of which gleamed the VDM crest, magnified through the water.
JB was looking for Reuben. He checked round the side of the ship. Where the hell was he? He was meant to be in the saloon thirty minutes ago. Guests were becoming anxious, especially after Dirk’s curtailed display.
Lori stopped. ‘You have to give me this much.’
‘I don’t have to give you a thing.’ He spun to face her. ‘What happened between us, it was a mistake.’
‘A mistake,’ she repeated flatly.
‘Forget it. I have.’ His voice made her sad. She’d lost him.
‘You really have no clue, have you?’ she whispered.
JB’s eyes were glass, azure as the pool behind. ‘Leave,’ he told her. ‘Leave this island and don’t ever come back. You’re not welcome here.’
‘How dare you?’ Lori’s hair billowed in the wind. ‘How
dare
you after the way you’ve treated me?’
‘The way
I’ve
treated
you
?’ At last, he reacted. Thrusting his hands in his pockets, he turned to go, thought better of it and turned back. ‘You’re pretty unbelievable, you know that.’
‘Coming from you?’ she sputtered. ‘You’ve played me since the moment we met. You lied to me from day one!
Everything we had was built on a lie. And if it wasn’t a lie it was cowardice. I’m not sure what’s worse.’
‘I wouldn’t know how to be a coward.’
‘Give me a break. Where were you, JB? It’s been
a year
. How do you think I felt, endless months trying to contact you and all you gave me was a wall of silence?’
‘You know nothing,’ he growled. ‘You’re a baby.’
The words flew free. ‘I know about Cacatra. I know what you’ve been doing on this island and I know what you meant me for.’
His expression was blank.
‘Don’t deny it,’ she said. ‘Don’t even try. I know everything.’
‘Wrong. You could never even guess.’
Her dress rippled like liquid gold. ‘Then have the decency to tell me.’
‘There’s no point. You wouldn’t understand.’
‘I’ve understood everything else you’ve told me. I’ve believed everything you said and I still do. Maybe I’m wrong about that. Some might tell me I was.’
‘Keep away from this,’ he warned. ‘You’re not involved.’
‘I am. Because all you said about the way you felt—’ her voice faltered but she caught it ‘—I have to know if that was true. That I wasn’t just …
merchandise
. That I wasn’t just an opportunity to make money.’
‘Women in your position are precisely the reason I do this.’ She had never seen him so full of passion and in spite of her temper she wanted him. ‘They need intervention. They need someone to answer for them because no one’s ever bothered before. Are you saying if I’d offered you this you would have turned it down?’
‘It’s wrong.’
‘It’s a humanitarian project, the first of its kind. It changes people’s lives. It gives them hope. It makes things right.’
‘It doesn’t sound like the first time you’ve justified it to yourself.’
‘I don’t lose sleep over it.’
She laughed. ‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’
He took a moment to scrutinise her. ‘Did someone tell you?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘That’s for me to decide.’
Lori thought back to the discovery of her documents on Cacatra and the uncertainty that had vexed her since. She realised she had known long before Rebecca Stuttgart had visited.
‘The night we spent together. Afterwards, in your villa. LA864. Except my file shouldn’t have been there. It should have been with the others, the women you have lined up but for whatever reason the prospect falls through.’
In a flash she envisioned where the paperwork was kept. An image of the island lighthouse sprang to mind: abandoned, paint cracking, sea-washed walls thick and hard with salt.
‘In case you want to reopen further down the line,’ she murmured. ‘But I was the exception … because there was no further down the line.’
JB’s suit jacket flapped in the cold. It was a while before he spoke.
‘Not for me,’ he said quietly. ‘There was no way I was going to watch you carry another man’s baby.’
The statement hung in the air between them. Lori was
shaking. Her breath was visible in the night, escaping in short, hard bursts, blooming then dissolving.
JB spoke. ‘I’ve never found anyone who does to me what you do to me.’ His voice slipped. ‘But I cannot forget what you’ve done. You betrayed me.’
She could hold it in no longer. ‘I didn’t.’
‘It doesn’t matter how you express it. The evidence is there.’
‘What evidence?’
‘Don’t make me say his name.’
‘Let me explain. You need to hear this—’
‘No!’
He sliced the night air with his hand, the word soaring up into the universe. She’d never heard him raise his voice before and the volume of it frightened her. ‘How could you do it? How could you be with him? After us?’
‘I—’
He was on her, his lips on hers, his hands in her hair.
Kissing her like it was the last kiss on earth.
The waves hit Enrique with a stinging slap. Salt water rushed into his lungs, making him choke. He was a strong swimmer but not against this tide. The ocean tossed him like a child’s plaything, fathoms of space below and around him as empty as they were full. He gasped for air, with each undulation battling to keep his head above the surface.
He caught sight of Lori’s body, not fifty strokes away. It was impossible to tell through the pitch if she was moving. An arm thrashing, a hand in the air—or was it a trick of the swell? In the next flash, utter stillness, as if she was dead or drowned, facedown on the oil-black sea or faceup to the charcoal sky, cracked with stars, observers to the moment of her expiry.
Arms slicing, crawling through the distance, Enrique swam. The waves buffeted and rocked, throwing him off course, and it seemed with every stroke she only drifted further away.
The yacht was behind them now. His chest was burning, his limbs on fire. By the time he reached the body, he clung to it like a raft.
Reuben van der Meyde staggered indoors. He was dazed, catatonic from an assault beyond his comprehension. Somehow, his inbuilt sense of purpose found a way through. He was meant to be somewhere, doing something.
Oh yes … there were guests. This was a party. His party.
Better patch up quick.
Thoughts whirled through his mind, hot and fast like flames licking up a chimney. It felt like his head was exploding. Maybe he had concussion.
Shock numbed him as he lurched to his private quarters, veering into walls and stumbling as he fought to regain his balance.
He reached his cabin and opened the door.
And came face to face with the barrel of his own gun.
Enrique rolled the body. Dark hair was plastered across the face, obscuring her features. With a wet groan he realised she had been long dead: her skin was pale and she was cold, freezing cold, to touch. He put two fingers to her neck and felt nothing.
Lori
.
He pulled her into his arms, a slopping pocket of water between them, and the movement brought a rush through his parted lips. It was not the saline that stung but a new
taste: the unmistakable iron of blood. Her corpse floated like an empty sack, a wreck of driftwood, and his hands travelled down till they dipped into the still-warm puncture in her soft, yielding flesh. For a second his fingers disappeared and he gagged, shoving the body away.
The motion washed the hair from her face. Straining to see through the darkness, Enrique saw a woman he did not recognise. He thought he must be wrong, reaching out to touch her, the chin he had cupped so many times before, and felt it was entirely different.
Blindly he thrashed, twisting back towards the yacht, whose lights seemed now immeasurably far away. The coast, ahead of him, an equal distance.
A shape slid across his vision. It came out of the night, several feet away, then swiftly vanished. He blinked. Fear crept up from his toes.
There it was again, unambiguous this time.
A fin, black and huge. Enrique whipped round, caught sight of another. Two fins, three, four, circling him and the body.
Enrique’s legs pushed uselessly at the depths, numb and bone-tired. Around him a cloud of red blossomed as he hung suspended in the tepid residue of a stranger’s blood.
They kissed frantically, each second of their months apart driven to this point and now his hands were on her body and her face and the smell and feel of him was heaven. He held her body to his, drawing her into his heat, arms encircling her waist so he could kiss her better. Lori fell into the hardness of his chest, the stiffness of that part that told her his want was as real as hers. Moving blindly, peeling off his jacket, unbuttoning his shirt, they reached the rim
of the pool and, in a flash, felt the ground disappear. Cool water erupted as its silver sheet was shattered.