The woman gestures for him to enter the house. “She’s just gone for a walk, to clear her head; it’s been a tough few weeks: a death in the family.”
Joe looks out across the terrace toward the stairs. He hadn’t thought of that, that she might just be on the beach. No one needs a handbag on the beach.
“Oh yes, of course. I forgot. Nina’s father. Are you part of the family too?” he asks with an appropriate level of sensitivity.
“Me. No, gosh, no,” the woman says delicately.
He wonders now if perhaps he has misread the situation. And with that thought he lets the woman usher him inside. He will go in and wait and perhaps Nina would still like to see him when she gets back.
And as he enters the house, he catches sight of something odd through a half-open doorway leading off from the living room. Dread fizzes through him. The mirror in the room beyond is smashed, the floor beneath it swept but the facts crystal clear that something bad has happened.
But before Joe can turn to confront the woman, who is now calmly in the process of gathering her loose hair up into a neat chignon, a sudden flash of pain shoots through the back of his skull, turning everything into darkness.
CHAPTER 26
MARIA
M aria runs. She runs as fast as she has ever run and it still feels too slow. She pelts across the hot terrace flagstone, her eyes flashing in every direction, certain she will catch the glimpse of another runner as she goes. Somewhere, she knows, the other man is still searching for her. And every second she does not see him, her fear mounts. Because she knows he is out here and as soon as he sees her he will be on her. Every second she does not see him coming is a second of advantage he will have over her. And Maria has nothing if she loses her advantage. At half the weight, strength, and fitness of these men, she knows she only stands a chance if she sees them coming and has time to outmaneuver them.
She skids to a halt as she reaches the steep stone steps leading down to the beach.
There is a chance he’s down there already, that she might meet him coming back up the narrow staircase and be trapped. She glances back to the house and curses herself for not having kept hold of that knife. Instead, she left it as evidence.
Her mind briefly rakes over the coals of what she just did. She killed a man. Not just killed him but really, really killed him. She wonders fleetingly if that level of killing still falls under the banner of self-defense.
One stab would have saved her; twenty or so had perhaps been unnecessary solely for self-preservation. But the animal part of her is the only thing keeping her alive and Maria has absolutely no intention of trying to rein it in until she knows she is safe. Safe back in her home, back in New York, back in her bed, duvet pulled up snug and tight.
She isn’t safe yet.
If he is on the stairs, if she runs into him, she will kill him. She promises herself that. Even if she has to die in the process, she will kill him. Or rather the primal part of her will, it promises her, and she feels safe because it hasn’t let her down yet.
Maria launches herself down the stairs two, three, four at a time in massive leaps, her bones jarring with each. Sharp stones embedding and freeing themselves from her bleeding feet as she flies on.
At the midpoint bend in the staircase, Maria notices for the first time the camera positioned high on the rail post. They can see her still; she is still part of it, she is still in it. She considers again her plan, to swim to the public cove, grab the nearest stranger, and scream until they pull her from the water and call the authorities. That no longer seems safe. How can she know who the people in the public cove are, who they work for, who they know? And the local police: how can they not know what is going on behind closed doors in this house? Maria knows she is not the first and will not be the last.
No, it isn’t safe to scream for help. It isn’t safe to swim to the public cove. As she nears the base of the stairs she slows, her senses heightening, as if already picking up on the presence of another person. There is no one there that she can see, but then she can’t see past the rocky outcrop that blocks the public cove from view and keeps the house’s beach private. She pauses in the foliage and waits, but nothing changes. No figure appears. So she takes a deep breath in and a slow steady breath out to calm her nerves and bolts from her hiding spot toward the water.
Her plan is to swim out, to swim in the opposite direction from the cove, to swim toward the next private beach and the next until she finds an empty stretch of public sand. Then she will clamber out and run.
She is almost at the water’s edge when she sees him and stutters to a halt. He has been crouched by the rocks. As he stands, she sees what is in his hand, and on a cellular level she knows what it means.
A long black rod hangs from his hand. She has only seen them on TV but she knows what it is: some kind of tasing device, but longer, a cattle prod of sorts. Maria watches as the end of it crackles. Even from this distance, she understands the implication.
She turns to look back at the stairs up to the house. She can go back, try another way. But then who is to say there aren’t more men up there. Down here there is only one man and one weapon.
Basic physics tell her that the weapon’s charge will not conduct through water—but if she enters the water and begins to swim and that man reaches her and tases her, she will simply slip beneath the waves. She will in essence be killing herself.
Of course, that would be perfect for them. Her cause of death would appear natural, a drowning—she is sure those happen every day across the islands. The momentary shock of that Taser will not show on an autopsy.
It suddenly seems crazy to her that she has thought even for a second that they didn’t have a backup plan, this whole time, in case of her escape. Crazy that after everything they have shown her already about how they operate, and about their level of efficiency and rigor, she would still think they would let things run on to this degree without good reason. They are going to dispose of her in the simplest way possible: she will kill herself. A solo swimmer who got tired and slipped under, her bruises and bangs explainable by an accident on the surrounding rocks.
Maria feels sick at the cleanness of it all and a new anger begins to rise inside her, an anger at the idea that her pain could be so easily deleted, hidden, erased.
Well, I will not make it that easy. Oh no.
Maria will get her murderer’s blood and hair and cells under her nails and take him with her if she can. She will make their plan an impossibility. And even if she has to die herself just to fuck them over, she will.
Instead of continuing into the waves Maria begins to walk directly toward the man on the rocks.
