Page 77 of Last Breath

The voice was familiar but Jett couldn’t place it. He’d finally fallen asleep. Had he?

Why was he wet? Not wet. Saturated.

He blinked, eyelids crusted together with salt and sand. A gull squawked nearby.

Morning?The sky was purple and gold. Just after dawn. How long had he been ...

‘Don’t sit up!’ The voice belonged to Noah Avery, he realised, who was standing above him in jogging gear, blue wireless headphones around his neck, blocking the buttery yellow sunrise. ‘You might have hit your head. I thought you were a bloody dead body. Be just my luck, wouldn’t it, on my day off?’

Jett started to ask what happened, but as the smells of seaweed and dried bird poo wafted around him and he took in where he was – on a sandy part of Bindi Beach near Devil’s Pool – everything came back.

Jett touched the back of his head. ‘I can’t feel anything. Are you sure I hit it?’

Avery raised his black wrap-around sunnies into his dark red hair and squinted at him. ‘Dunno, man. One of the surfers said they saw you staggering out, then you collapsed here. I was jogging – she flagged me down. Obviously still look like a cop even out of uniform. Or maybe I’m a magnet for disaster.’ Something in Avery’s frown dislodged the uncomfortable memories of Friday night.

‘Is your fiancée all right? Nella said they took her to Bunbury.’

‘Yeah. She’s doing better, no real damage, just ...’ Avery blinked. ‘You sure you’re all right? You were lying here passed out by the time I got here, and the surfer reckons she saw you hit your head after you jumped. I’ve called the ambos.’

‘Shit.’ Shame and panic congealed in the pit of his stomach. He couldn’t stand the smell of ambulances. ‘Cancel it. I’m fine. I, uh ... probably just fell asleep.’

It often happened like that.

‘Why did you jump, Randall?’ Avery looked at him suspiciously. ‘Do I need to take you for a psych eval?’

‘No. God. I swear, it was just a jump – I do it all the time. I timed it badly, I realise that.’

Avery didn’t seem convinced.

‘If I wanted to kill myself, I’d do it in my car.’

‘Well, now I really have to take you for an evaluation.’ But Avery’s face had softened. ‘You swear to me, Randall? You’re okay?’

‘I am now.’ And it was true – he’d drained her from his system with the jump. For now.

‘Blokes need to talk more,’ Avery said, turning to watch a gull dive into the water. ‘You have someone you can talk to?’

‘Yep, sure do.’Razor. Because dogs don’t ask follow-up questions.

The cop showed no signs of leaving him alone. Shit, what was the time anyway? Jett didn’t anticipate Ariana La Marca being the type to try to slit their throats on the way to the hangar, but he couldn’t take any chances. Luca being collateral wasn’t going to stop her from trying to undermine Nella’s attempt to get the proof from the La Marca Lake Orta house.

He could feel the restless energy sparking off Avery like an oily pan spitting on a stove. ‘Is there, uh, somethingyouneed to talk about, Avery?’

Avery wiped a massive freckled paw over his brow, not looking at Jett. ‘I’m good, man.’

‘And your girlfriend ...’

‘Hazel.’

‘Hazel. You sure she’s all right?’

Avery’s pursed lips told him he’d poked the right spot. Reading other people’s emotions was a skill Jett had sharpened through years of bouncing around foster homes. You needed to be on high alert at all times – like a meteorologist knows all the weather patterns, but in this case the warning signs for anger, boredom, pain. Because if you missed them, it was often too late. He touched his scar, scraping sand and crusted salt from the smooth ripples of healed skin.

‘She’s saying some odd things,’ Avery eventually said. ‘It’s probably nothing. The doctors reckon I should chalk it up to her concussion.’

Jett frowned. ‘What’s she saying?’

‘Just that ...’ Avery paused, running his eyes over Jett like he was checking to make sure he wasn’t an imposter. ‘I dunno, man, she’s saying someonepushedher.’