Chapter 89

89

Outside, Elin finds herself in the eye of the storm. Though it's past dawn, the sky has barely lightened. Rain is torrential—coming at her sideways, lashing her face and neck. She can even taste it, the ground giving up what remained of the dry and dust, a heady, earthy scent.

The storm has wreaked devastation: chairs tossed around the terrace, broken branches scattering the path. Trees are ominously creaking around her, their trunks bending in the gusts.

On reaching the beach, there's more damage: a pine uprooted and snarled across the sand, a Medusa. The rack Tom described has tipped over, the boards being lifted by the wind on one side before slamming hard back down to the beach on the other.

Looking around, Elin has the feeling that the retreat won't survive this—that the storm and the island, the rock itself, won't be sated until it's swept the place clean, all traces of the man-made removed.

Slowly, she makes her way up onto the rocks leading to the wooden bridge. On the first, she hesitates, finding them slick with water. Each step is carefully taken, arms outstretched for balance. It takes several minutes before she reaches the start of the bridge. The thin slats are slippery, too, and Elin watches with trepidation as it sways violently from side to side.

Clamping her hands tightly around the ropes of the handrail, she tentatively begins moving forward. Fine spats of rain whip her face, into her eyes, blurring her view of the islet, but she keeps her gaze fixed ahead, determined to avoid looking down through the gaps. The water between them is no longer flat, the beautiful minty green of before, but dark and angry, frothing thin spumes of white into the air.

Fear pulses relentlessly in her chest, and it's a relief when she finally steps onto solid ground on the other side. She rushes up the path and through the trees, the dense canopy a respite from the rain but not the wind, the branches above shaking furiously.

Through the gloom, the villa appears. It looks like it's barely holding on; the structure seems too fragile for the storm raging around it. Stopping by the front door, she peers through the rain-splattered glass. The space appears to be empty, a scene undisturbed from when she'd come to the islet with Farrah, searched the room.

Fumbling for her security pass, she holds it up to the door. It opens with a click. Breath high in her throat, Elin walks slowly into the room—instant relief from the storm—but there's no one there.

"Farrah?" she calls.

No response.

She checks the bathroom. Empty.

Elin's heart is pounding, the isolation she felt the last time she was here even more acute. Moving back to the center of the room, she keeps looking, but listens this time too, straining her ears over the sound of the storm.

It's then that she feels a tingling at the base of her neck.

Though the room is deserted, she has the distinct feeling that she's being watched. Her thoughts dart to the photograph in the tweet.

Could someone be watching her at this very moment?

Uneasy, she heads for the door, walking around the side of the building to the terrace. Waves are thrashing against the decking, water pooling in the wooden slats, washing through the legs of the chairs and table. No one would be out here, she thinks, not unless they had a death wish. One surge and you'd be in the water.

She plunges into the copse on the right of the terrace, but the higgledy-piggledy line of trees reveals nothing except muddy puddles and damp, slippery shadows of leaf litter.

Elin keeps moving. The tree cover gets denser; she's having to force her way between the trunks. The darkness beneath the canopy plays tricks with her mind. As she fights her way through, she glimpses a shadow dissolve into the thicket, but she puts it down to the storm, the sense of relentless motion it's created.

A few steps on and the land starts sloping downward, fast-moving streams of rainwater flowing toward the sea. It meets resistance in broken branches and stones, forming winding tributaries.

Within minutes, she's sweating heavily, breathing hard. It's taking all her concentration to remain upright on the slippery ground.

She's nearly at the waterline.

Inching forward, all she can see through the trees is the sea—choppy, slapping peaks surging onto the rocks then sucking back with such force it's as though it's trying to take a piece of the island with it.

Glancing around her, she's about to turn back when she notices something in the very periphery of her vision.

A leg, protruding from behind a tree, a pale slice of calf.

Elin's heart is in her mouth as she pushes forward.

No.

As she rounds the tree, she can see all of her: Farrah, lying on her back on the dirty, sodden ground, a blindfold tied around her head.

No movement. Nothing at all.

An ugly, dogged panic fills her chest.

Elin's stomach twists, her heart beating furiously as she sees a dark smear of blood matting Farrah's hair. She steps closer. A large head wound is now visible, more blood, on the left-hand side of her temple.

Caleb had hit her, just like he hit Jo Leger.

But any disgust she has for him is superseded by disgust with herself.

A sob escapes her throat. She'd let Farrah down. Failed her.

Moments flicker in Elin's head: when Farrah had tried to confide. She'd pushed her away, made the wrong call. Elin pictures herself a few hours ago, her naivete as she'd torn around the island.

Had she really thought this would end any differently?

With a shaking hand, she lightly touches Farrah's neck.

A small flicker of hope shimmers, then rapidly fades to nothing. No rise and fall, nothing at all except the hot, relentless pulse of her own blood inside her.

Another sob breaks loose. Grief is already there, taking shape inside her, a grief not just for Farrah but for Will, because she knows what this will do to him. How the sadness will take root inside him and grow and keep growing until it changes him irrevocably.

"I'm sorry," she murmurs. "I'm so sorry."

Elin is about to pull her hand away when something stirs, so faint that at first she thinks it's her own heartbeat.

Shifting closer, she presses her finger slightly harder against Farrah's skin.

A pulse?