Page 65 of Someone in the Water

Frankie

BOOM.

The sound of the gun ricochets off the mountains. I collapse on the ground and wait for my heart rate to slow, for the pain to flare. But neither of those things happen. No pain, no blood loss, no injury.

Raphael missed his shot.

The huge bird from earlier swoops overhead and I look up, suddenly mesmerised by its size and aura.

But then I hear a click. A reloaded gun.

Of course the danger isn’t over. I flick my head, looking for an escape, but it’s a reflex action.

I might be faster than Raphael, but the range of his pistol would outpace me in this vast sloping vineyard. I stare up, like cornered prey.

‘Stupid fucking bird!’ Raphael shouts, swinging the gun towards the sky in frustration, the owl just visible in the distance, then back to me. ‘But I won’t miss this time.’

I wait for a few seconds, but nothing happens.

So I slowly, carefully, rise to my feet.

Dom is somewhere in the vineyard, and he will have heard the shot.

If I can keep Raphael talking, maybe there’s a chance I can survive this.

‘What do you mean by Izzy died trying?’ I ask, forcing myself to make eye contact, to hold his attention. ‘Trying what?’

His sudden crack of laughter makes me jump.

‘You still haven’t worked it out, have you?

It was always only Izzy in the water with you that night.

But she was there to kill you, not swim with you.

She worked for me, remember? And that meant getting her hands dirty if I asked her too, not that she showed any reluctance when it came to killing you. She said you’d become too needy.’

His stare sharpens. ‘But you killed her instead. I don’t know what went wrong out there in the sea – she took Salvo’s mini-oxygen kit out of his boat, just like I told her to, so she should have had the upper hand.

But she wasn’t wearing it when I found her, and it never showed up.

I do know you got her drunk on tequila though, and judging by the mark I saw on her forehead when I found her, you also kicked her in the head.

You knocked her unconscious, Frankie. You caused her to drown. ’

My breathing stutters. I’m there in the water again.

Fear giving me a strength I didn’t know my muscles were capable of.

Kicking out, slamming my foot into something solid.

Was that Izzy’s head? After all these years swerving between guilt for her death, and the trauma of escaping a predator … was it actually both?

‘If you kill me, you’ll go to prison for a long time,’ I say, my voice quivering. ‘Your life will be over too.’

‘I doubt it,’ Raphael says. ‘You’re roaming my family’s private land.

I’ll say that a wild boar had been spotted trampling the vines and I came here to deal with that.

I always keep my gun in the boot of my car, so no one will question it.

And if a Brit is stupid enough to trespass on agricultural land in the middle of the night, those are the risks. ’

‘Especially when you’ve got friends in the police,’ I throw back.

‘We do what we need to get by.’

He raises the gun again. My body convulses with fear.

‘Lola will make sure you get justice!’ I shout, like a final call to arms. ‘She’ll go to France, to police beyond your reach.’

‘Hah! Lola won’t be talking to anyone; Patrick will make sure of that.’

His words are worse than bullets. I fall silent, slump forward, close my eyes, wait for the pain. I see Lola, waving at me from a podium, a gold medal between smiling teeth.

A muffled sound cuts through the night. ‘Help me.’

My eyelids flick open. My head swings, in perfect synchrony with Raphael’s.

‘Please, help me.’ A pained, low voice wafts over. But it’s a man’s voice, thank God. Not Lola. ‘I’ve been shot.’

I watch Raphael’s face morph from confusion, to understanding, to horror. Then he sprints towards the voice.

Calling out his son’s name.