Page 55 of Last Breath (Blood Wine Dynasty #2)

Jett

‘I’m glad your dog’s going to be okay.’

Jett was somewhere in the shadowy passage between awake and asleep. Darkness breathed gently, begging him to return, but pricks of light, of awakeness, stabbed him urgently. Something was tugging at him, begging him to come into the light. But most of him just wanted to sleep.

‘Jett.’ Someone was shaking his shoulder. His head felt twice its size. He was lying. No, sitting. There was a window. His knee nudged something hard – a gear stick. He was in a car. Someone was next to him. He could hear them talking, but the darkness was whispering too loudly, pulling him under.

Memories shifted in blurs. Razor – bleeding. Eliza’s clinic. Eliza took Razor ...

‘He’s fine,’ the voice next to him said. ‘You fell asleep as we drove back from the clinic.’

‘What ... fell asleep?’ He forced his eyes open. How long had he ...

The sky outside the window didn’t make sense.

It had been navy with a tinge of tangerine along the horizon when he’d left the Body Barn.

Now it was ink black. He knew that rock face – that beach.

He was at Devil’s Pool. Against the sky, the cliff jump looked like the crooked finger of a sea giant, frozen for eternity after she’d tried to curse the land.

The wind howled and scratched at the car as he turned to face the figure in the driver’s seat.

More memories surfaced. A white Toyota Corolla. Pink hair. Razor bleeding on the back seat. A bottle of water. Eliza telling him to get some rest. An urgent hand hurrying him back to the car.

‘You’ve been out since we left the clinic,’ Daisy said.

No. He couldn’t have.

A sharper memory: Grey’s voice, Grey’s text message.

Released. Two years ago.

Images. Frantic Google searches as Daisy drove him to the vet clinic. A call to the corrective services department. Bushfire warnings blaring over the radio.

‘I have to get to Nella, have to warn ... I have to ... her stalker ...’

‘Please don’t use that word. It’s very offensive.’

‘What?’ Jett wasn’t listening – he patted his pockets. Phone, where’s my ...

‘Nella thinks I’m at a conference in Perth.’

‘Okay, Daisy that’s ... wait, what did you say?’

‘I said don’t use the word stalker.’ Daisy’s lips were thin, her blue eyes glinting with tears.

‘I’ve worked very hard to remove that toxic word from my life.

You’re undoing years of therapy right now.

I knew I should have gotten rid of you in the forest. But your stupid husky almost took my arm off when I cut him. ’

‘He’s not a husky ... What are you saying? You hurt Razor? You stabbed my dog because I ... because I broke up with you?’

‘It’s got nothing to do with me.’ She looked at him like he was deranged.

Maybe he was. Maybe this was all still a dream.

‘And I didn’t want to hurt your dog, I like dogs.

Didn’t care about screwing up your car though – God, that took a while!

But I needed you distracted. I should have done it then, but you called me.

You freaking called me while I was hidden behind a tree ready to shoot you in the head.

Good thing my phone’s always on silent for work.

So ...’ She shrugged. ‘I adapted. I’m good at adapting. ’

His head was splintering. She was still a bit blurry, her voice wavering in and out of his consciousness. ‘You drugged me.’

‘Yeah, well, you freaking called Corrective Services while I was right there in the car. You still haven’t got it, have you?

’ She laughed – a soul-shivering, schoolgirl cackle.

‘You were so distracted in the clinic with all your typing and calling, you didn’t see me put the sleeping pills in your water.

You literally couldn’t have made it easier. ’

He fumbled for the door handle, jiggling it.

‘What do you want? I’m sorry about how everything ended with us Daisy, I’m really, truly sorry.

’ The door was locked. He reached down, flattening his palms on the floor of the car, searching blindly for his phone.

He had to get out. Get to Nella. Find her before Sally Sue did.

A vision twisted into his mind, then another, warping around each other in an orgy of horror.

Sally Sue’s pale blonde hair streaked with blood as she slit Nella’s throat, her lips against the wound, kissing, drinking.

Vomit green eyes flashing with poison. Was he already too late?

Sally Sue. How had he been so na?ve to discount her from this entire equation?

‘You hurt her,’ Daisy said.

‘What?’

‘You hurt her so much.’

He hadn’t been paying attention to what Daisy was saying. And he definitely hadn’t been paying attention to the gun in her hand. She was crying, tears slipping ...

Gun.

The gun in her hand.

The ... what?

He held up his hands instinctively, the way he’d watched the other kids do that night they stole the cars. The night he got his scar. His thoughts shattered into incoherent shards like she’d already fired.

Daisy. Gun. The two images didn’t fit.

‘You hurt her,’ Daisy repeated again. Her tears were gone now, as though her skin had just absorbed them. Her eyes weren’t even red. ‘And you made me hurt her. I didn’t even know she liked you. If I did, I never would have ...’

‘Who?’

What was happening? Had he actually died when he jumped into Devil’s Pool the last time? Had Avery dragged his lifeless body from the water and everything that had happened since been his first circle of Hell?

‘Nella.’ Daisy said her name like it was a holy word. ‘You hurt her so, so much. Now I’m going to make you hurt too.’

Her profile was blurring. He’d never really looked at her properly before.

Because he was a shit date, a shit man. Because there was always another face, another body, obscuring half his vision.

He’d never really been able to look at another woman and acknowledge her as beautiful since he’d met Nella Barbarani.

The word had taken on an entirely new meaning and ruined his life.

But now he looked at Daisy. He’d been so fucking blind.

It had been fifteen years and she’d dyed her hair. She’d probably got a nose job. Added a septum piercing, some quirky tattoos, and lost about twenty kilos. She might be wearing blue contacts to disguise the green colour.

But she was the right height. The right age. And he would never forget that voice. The one she was using now. All of Daisy’s sweet, sugar-coated, nasal twang eroded away with the knife of her true identity until all that was left was the sharp, deathly point.

Jett wasn’t generally good with faces; being ashamed of his own, he’d perfected the art of listening without looking people in the eye.

Instead, he was attuned to voices, the quick changes that signalled a foster carer was getting to the violent point of a drinking session, the dangerous cadence of boredom that signalled the ringleader of the carjacking gang was looking for more stimulation.

And the voice of the woman who’d stalked and abducted Nella to keep her as her very own real-life doll fifteen years ago.

‘Sally,’ Jett said, his voice like rusted gears trying to move into place. ‘It’s been a while.’