Chapter 3

3

When Elin reaches the apartment, sweat is pouring off her, a damp ring marking the neck of her tank top a deeper shade of blue. Her skin is burning, not from the exercise but the conversation she'd had with Anna walking back up the hill. They'd exchanged small talk, but Elin knew the real reason for her call. Steed had been in touch. Told Anna he'd seen Elin.

She replays their exchange in her head: "Steed messaged you, didn't he?"

"Yes, he was concerned—"

"It's Hayler, isn't it? He's back."

It's like a pulse in her head: Hayler. Hayler. The first case to work its way inside her like a parasite, scrape her clean. Hayler had murdered two young girls, tied their bodies to a boat, let the propeller do its work. She'd let him slip away. It broke her: the Hayler case triggered her career break, the rapid, brutal excision from the MCIT, the Major Crime Investigation Team, the job she loved. Marked the start of her panic attacks, her anxiety.

It was only when she found her brother's fiancée's murderer in Switzerland that the darkness haunting her loosened its grip. Though devastating, the experience reaffirmed the question she'd grappled with for months—that she did still want to be a detective. She made the decision to come back, but so had Hayler. The worst possible timing: her slow return to the MCIT will become a crawl. They won't want her anywhere near...

Her mouth was thick, her words clumsy. "I can cope with it, Anna. If I come back on the team, I don't have to be involved, I can sit it out."

A weighty silence. Anna's embarrassed. "No, it's not Hayler. That kid you saw on the beach went missing a few days ago. Suicide. Already dead when the boat went over him."

It wasn't Hayler.

She'd leaped in, jumped to the wrong conclusion. She'd panicked, like she always did. The thought snags in her mind, but Elin forces it away as she opens the door.

She walks down the hall of the apartment. She can't yet refer to it as home, still feels as though she has to treat it carefully, a precious object that belongs to someone else, and she knows it isn't right. Two months in and it should feel like hers.

It isn't the apartment's fault. It's spacious, beautiful—part of a Regency-style crescent overlooking the sea. She and Will had made the big decisions together: a simple design, neutral palette, carefully chosen soft furnishings—an L-shaped sofa, a jute rug, a love seat in egg-yolk yellow.

All of it, Elin had raved over—wanted to make a fuss of her flexibility—prove to Will that she'd turned a corner, and that this time, there was no looking back. But she is looking back, can't help it. She misses her place: her squashy two-seater, watching the rain fall on next door's apartment, book time while eating, uninterrupted.

Will's on the sofa, his laptop propped open. Elin catches bits of sentences: "award prep now the priority..." The phone is pressed to his ear; he's talking in a low, urgent voice.

Will's an architect, his job both a career and a passion. His love for his role is one of the things she admires most about him: how he perceives the world in a different way, privy to a level of beauty that for her will always be just out of reach. Walking to the kitchen, she pours a glass of water.

A few moments later, Will turns. "You're back early."

"Cut the run short in the end." She sips her water. "Who was that?"

"Jack. The project in Stoke Gabriel has passed planning." Tilting his head, he scrutinizes her. "Something up?"

He knows her too well. "Could say that." Her voice wavers. "Made a bit of a fool of myself." She explains what happened: following Steed, the awkward call with Anna.

Will's face softens. "I wouldn't stress—Hayler was your last case. It'd be odd if you didn't think about it."

"But it wasn't just that, I panicked... it made me think about Sam."

"Elin, you got the answers you needed. You can move on." Will's right, but while she got answers about her brother's death, they were ones she'd never, in her darkest imaginings, considered—her older brother, Isaac, wasn't there when Sam died as a child, as she'd believed . It was her. When he fell in the water, hit his head on a rock, she froze. Did nothing to help. "No one blames you. You were a kid."

"But... I think my dad did—" Her voice catches. "Isaac said he's planning a visit. It made me think about something I never thought was significant at the time, but now..."

"What?" he says gently.

"The day Dad left, he'd planned a scramble up to these rocks where you could jump into the sea. I couldn't do it, burst into tears at the top, ruined the whole thing. After, Dad said: You're a coward, Elin. A coward. Turned out to be the last words he ever said to me. Later, my parents had an argument. Dad left in the night."

"But what he said wasn't about Sam—"

"No, it was . That's the real reason Dad left, and he was right. I am a coward. I ran today."

"You're not. You're making progress. Steady steps."

Elin nods, but the old her didn't need steady steps. She was sharp, ambitious. Going places. The old Elin wouldn't have been reassigned to Torhun. The work is repetitive, grinding; coordinating door-to-door inquiries, CCTV, witness statements. No real meat on the bone.

"I know it's not the same," he says softly.

She shrugs. "Nothing is." It would be hard to match the high stakes of the MCIT, the furious pace in the incident room, the intellectual rigor in teasing apart the subtleties of a case, identifying strategies, the plan of attack. Nothing else comes close, but what if it's too much for her now?

Will scans his phone. "My last meeting's at four. Fancy dinner out? Talk properly?"

"Sounds good. By the way, I heard you mention an award. Good news..."

A flush creeps up his cheeks. "Oh, a project's been shortlisted for an award."

"That's great." Elin's surprised to find herself having to force a smile, a small, mean part of her envious. In her head, her career should be soaring like his, but it isn't. Will's the one surging onward, motor at his back, while she's treading water.

He stretches out, the hem of his T-shirt pulling upward, trying to be nonchalant, and it all becomes devastatingly clear. He's trying to minimize it. Worse than him being oblivious.

"Which project?"

"The retreat. LUMEN." He smiles, his pride obvious. "Really unexpected."

LUMEN. Will's baby: a luxury retreat that he designed on an island a few miles off the coast. The retreat has given the island a new face, Will's firm bulldozing the past away in a bold mix of blocky, modernist-inspired architecture and Mexican color. A passion project, one of the first things he mentioned when they met: " We're reinventing, but we've worked with the landscape too, using stone from the old school, quarried on the island..."

"National award, it'll put the firm on the map."

Not only that, Elin thinks. It's the creative recognition—a verification of his vision to turn around people's perception of the island. "Congrats, and you don't have to play it down for my benefit. My stuff, it shouldn't put a dampener on you. I've got to learn to deal with it."

"Easier said than done, I know." He smiles. "Fancy a quick coffee? I've got time in between calls."

"Yes, let me write down my times—only got the first half, but..." Elin reaches for her notebook on the coffee table. Her watch records her stats, but she still likes putting it down on paper. The one area of her life where she's making tangible progress.

Elin looks up, feeling Will's gaze on her. She finds pity in his eyes.

He looks to the floor—found out, embarrassed.