Chapter 44 Camilla

44 CAMILLA

NOW

She’s woken by a clamor.

At first, she thinks it’s a bat. Those things make the most godawful racket. She’d never have guessed that bats are the loudest bloody creatures on the planet until she came to the Maldives, but they really are, particularly in the middle of the night.

She pulls a pillow over her head and tries to go back to sleep. A few moments later, there’s shouting, several voices outside. She hears footsteps racing along the wooden causeway, and the sound she heard before grows louder. A man’s voice, wailing.

Camilla sits upright, all her senses on high alert.

Something is really wrong.

She gets out of bed quickly, throwing on the linen dressing robe provided by the resort.

Outside, it’s a cloudy day, a canopy of glaring white making her squint across the wooden causeway. She sees the Italian family, the one with the cute four-year-old, standing outside Jade’s villa. They’re all in their pajamas, staring at something behind the house.

“What’s going on?” Camilla asks the woman.

“It is… a person in trouble,” she says, in hesitant English. “In the water.”

Camilla steps forward a little, trying to see behind the row of shrubs at the side of Jade’s villa. Her stomach drops. What if something has happened to Jade? Perhaps she was wrong to doubt her.

But it’s not Jade—it’s Salvador, Antoni’s nephew, farther up the causeway. He’s wearing only his boxer shorts, his face red from crying. Two police officers are trying to coax him to come with them, but his hands are raking high in his hair and he’s pacing, as though he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He looks devastated.

Camilla finds herself running toward him. “Salvador!” she calls. “Salvador! Where is Antoni? Where is he?”

He’s weeping and shouting in Spanish. A police officer tells her to step back—they need to bring Salvador to the main office.

“What happened?” she asks, but the officer shakes his head.

“His uncle has been found dead,” a voice says behind her, and she spins around to face another guest, a woman with a Spanish accent. “They found him this morning in the sea, close to the sister resort.” She nods at Emerald Island in the distance.

“Antoni’s dead?” she says, the ground beneath her suddenly tilting.

“His nephew was shouting ‘drowned,’?” the woman says. “But—”

“Drowned?” she whispers, and the woman leans in.

“Well, they haven’t confirmed it.” She turns her eyes to two men standing at the edge of the causeway. “But they found the body, and one of them said his throat was cut.”

Camilla stares at the woman, blood roaring in her ears, wondering if this isn’t real, if she’s just in the grip of a nightmare.