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“What is it?” Landry asked.
She wanted to tell him about what she’d seen in the pool. About what had happened when the boy had appeared. But she couldn’t bring herself to say the words.
“Can we please get off this island?” she said instead.
He smiled and nodded. “The rain sounds like it is letting up. We should be able to see well enough to make it up the coast.”
She started to pull away from him, but he drew her close again and kissed her.
“I’ll get the disk,” she said. Everything else could stay here. She could buy new art supplies. If she ever painted again.
* * *
THE RAIN HAD STOPPED by the time they were dressed and ready to leave. Landry got the gun from under the couch, insisting she keep it on her. “Just in case.”
She tried to tell him she wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger even if she had to. Not today. But she’d taken the gun and stuffed it into the pocket of her jacket.
Landry led the way out of the apartment. Willa glanced down at the pool and quickly looked away. She felt a chill as she followed Landry down the stairs, and when she looked up she wasn’t surprised to see the face at the window on the third floor.
Alma Garcia looked terrified, her eyes appearing even more crazed in the glow of the lamplight. She was staring at the pool as if hypnotized. Willa shuddered as she realized that the elderly woman had seen everything. Even the child in the water who had drowned thirty years ago?
Willa grabbed Landry’s arm as they hurried from the courtyard. The boat was at the dock. She could see a strip of green in the distance as the other islands appeared from out of the storm.
“Don’t get in yet,” Landry said as he began to bail the water out of the boat.
She stood, afraid to turn around and look back at the villa for fear of what she might see. Landry was bent over, scooping rainwater from the bottom of the boat. She could tell by his movements that he wanted off this island as badly as she did.
The dock swayed. Willa froze as she realized that someone had just stepped onto it. No. She squeezed her eyes shut, shoving her hands deep into the pockets of her jacket. No. This was going to be over as soon as they reached the mainland. It had to be over. She felt powerless, too close to the edge. She couldn’t take any more today.
She opened her eyes as the dock swayed again. Landry was still bent over, unaware they were no longer alone.
Slowly she turned and gasped as she recognized the ghost moving down the dock toward her. It was the man who’d come into her art studio that night before her gallery showing.
“Hello,” Simon
Renton said.
Landry swung around, his hand going for his gun.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Simon said.
Landry froze, his face a mask of shock and then slow realization. “No.”
Simon laughed. “Sorry to disappoint you. I’ll take that disk now.”
“Why?” Landry asked on a breath, not moving to give him the disk.
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m dead and that disk is worth a small fortune on the market.”
“You’d sell it to Freddy D.’s competitors?”
“Or Freddy D. if he can come up with enough money.”
Neither man seemed to have remembered Willa was even there. She could understand why. She felt small and insignificant, huddled in her jacket, standing on the end of the dock next to the boat watching the two as if all of this was nothing but a very bad nightmare. Any minute she would wake up and be in her art studio apartment upstairs planning her showing that coming night.
“You were the dirty cop,” Landry said with a shake of his head. “Not Zeke. But why did he try to kill me?”
“Could have been because of the information I leaked to him about you. I told him not to trust you. That I’d heard you were shopping the disk and that if you got your hands on it….” Simon shrugged.
