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Jennifer and I both jumped back at the sight of Cody at the top of the stairs. I threw up two fingers in a gesture I hoped looked like some kind of greeting or warning to him, but would read as the signal to call for help to Laurent.

“How long have you been listening?” Jennifer asked, trembling.

“Long enough.” He paced toward her, his eyes dark. “You used me to get to my brother.”

She shook her head vehemently. “It started out that way, but I love you, I really do.”

He watched warily as she slunk toward him like a chastised dog, her eyes pleading. When she’d nearly reached him, his hand shot out without warning. She didn’t have a chance to react before he’d slapped her so hard across the face that she flew backward.

“Cody!” I cried as she hit the floor. He stood there, stunned, staring at his hand as though it had betrayed him while Jennifer curled into a ball and I cowered behind the island, afraid to rush to her for fear of what he might do to me.

Had he changed his mind after he shoved me overboard? Or had he staged the whole thing, knowing it would look as if the killer had pushed me, making him appear less suspicious by saving me?

He choked back tears, taking a gun from the back of his waistband, his eyes fixed on Jennifer. “I loved you.” He said it like a defense, like of course he had to slap her after what she’d done to him.

I could see blood dripping from her nose onto the floor as she pushed herself up on her elbows and lifted her face toward him. “Don’t do this, Cody.”

“He took everything from me. Everything! Including you,” Cody bellowed, kicking the leg of a nearby table so hard that it toppled over.

“I’m here,” Jennifer whimpered, wiping her bloody nose on the back of her hand. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“You were only with me because of him,” he snapped, jabbing the gun in her direction. “Tyson was always telling me you must want something from me.” He threw his head back. “God, it kills me that he was right.”

His spittle landed on Jennifer where she cowered on the floor, looking up at him fearfully. “I’m so sorry,” she repeated. “I love you.”

“All of it was fake,” he cried. “I had a ring. A fucking ring!”

Fear shot through me. He was volatile, infuriated, and—I was sure now—a killer. I had to do something before he hurt her again. “Tyson was an asshole,” I said, forcing my voice through my dry throat.

He looked at me as though just registering my presence, his eyes dark with rage.

“You were the smart one,” I said gently. “The kind one. He was nothing but a thief and a bully.”

“I went to prison for you,” he growled.

“For which I will be forever grateful.”

“Fucking prison! Do you have any idea what that was like?”

The anguish in his face was both heartbreaking and terrifying. “I’m so sorry, Cody.”

“Audrey—” I could tell Jennifer was trying to warn me with her eyes that he wasn’t in his right mind, but that was what I was banking on.

Yes, there was a harrowing chance he might shoot us in this state, but there was at least an equal chance that he might confess, and if I could induce him to do the latter, all of this would be over.

“All these years I’d thought it was Ian who turned me in,” he lamented, wiping his tear-streaked face with the bottom of his shirt as he paced the floor. “And he paid with his life. For nothing!”

I swallowed my horror and glanced at Jennifer, who gaped at him with a look of shock and outrage as that sank in. Would she still claim to love Cody now that he’d admitted to killing the father of her child? She was smart enough to hold her tongue, for the moment at least.

From the beginning, my gut had told me Tyson and Cody had lied about Ian’s death being an accident, but I’d always assumed it was Tyson who pushed him, not Cody.

Though in context, it made sense that Cody would have been angry enough with Ian for turning him in to inflict harm on him.

“But Tyson finally confessed to turning you in?” I asked.

“He didn’t even have the decency to tell me in person,” he groaned, more to himself than anyone else.

Dread settled heavy in my bones. “So, how did you find out?” I asked, though I had a bad feeling that I knew.

“My arrest report.”

My heart stopped. It was my fault Tyson was dead.

“Samira gave it to me the morning after La Petite Plage.”

I could hardly control my voice. “Samira…”

“Because he was too much of a fucking coward to tell me himself,” Cody spat.

That much was true, at least.

“I saw her hand you that envelope,” Jennifer interjected. “I don’t think she even knew what it was. She just said it was yours.”

“Did you ask her about it?” I asked, trying to follow.

He shook his head. “I didn’t need to. There it was, in black and white…” His voice trailed off.

“There what was?” Jennifer pressed.

“The date of the video submitted as evidence against me wasn’t July fourth, so it wasn’t Ian’s video.”

So he’d come to the same conclusion I had.

“It was dated August second,” Cody went on, focusing on me, “the day after you caught Tyson cheating on you, which he blamed me for. Tyson turned me in, not Ian.” He bunched his free hand into a fist as he paced back and forth, agitated.

“If we’d ever gone to trial, it would have come out in court, but I copped a plea, so I was never the wiser. ”

“But why tell you now, after all this time?” Jennifer asked.

“Because of you,” he said, spinning on her with accusing eyes.

“Your blackmail scheme made him crazy with paranoia. The idea of everything coming back up.” His eyes cut to mine.

“He wanted to hurt me, wanted me to know he’d been the engineer of all my pain all these years, and he’d hurt me again if he needed to. ”

Behind him, a flash of movement caught my eye, and I was shocked to see Laurent peer around the corner of the wall that separated my room from the covered patio.

He must have come in through the servants’ entrance off the balcony, gone through my room and out the sliding glass door that faced the view.

“So you killed him,” I said, careful not to glance in Laurent’s direction.

Cody continued to pace and sweat, so distressed I could practically see the anxiety radiating off him. “When I confronted him on the boat, he laughed. He actually laughed! Thought he was so smart. Said no one crosses him.”

“So you lured him into that coral cave, mounted his tank, and disconnected his oxygen,” I said.

“He ruined my fucking life,” he shouted, running his shaking hand through his thinning hair. “Sent me to jail. His own brother! And he had no remorse. Ian may not have deserved to die, but Tyson did. I had no choice.”

Behind Cody, Laurent crept across the open space to crouch behind the half-wall around the staircase, a body length from Cody. I could hardly breathe.

“You always have a choice,” I said in as soothing a voice as I could muster. “And you still do. You can do the right thing, turn yourself in—”

“Sure,” he said darkly. “Go back to jail. Or I can let them think you did it, that you came here and threatened my family, and I did what I had to do to protect us.”

Fuck. Where were the police?

“Cody,” I said as calmly as I could muster, “I’m your friend—”

But the Cody I’d known had disappeared, replaced by a man with hell in his eyes. “I should have let you drown last night, but I was too weak.”

“You did the right thing,” I said. “And you still can.”

He shook his head, his mouth in a hard line. “I paid for your sins, now it’s your turn to pay for mine.”

He saw my gaze flick to the gun on the counter. “I heard her say it’s not loaded,” he said caustically. “But this one is.”

I pointed toward the ceiling, where the camera was hidden somewhere above us. “It’s over, Cody. There are cameras throughout the house recording all of this, and the police are watching.”

“Oh yeah? Then where are they?” he demanded.

A blur of motion, and Laurent was on Cody, tackling him from behind, his arms around Cody’s waist as they tumbled to the deck with a crash.

Jennifer screamed and jumped out of the way as Cody’s gun skittered across the floor to rest beneath a lounge chair on the far side of the two men.

From my position near the island, there was no way I could get to it before they could.

Cody had a good fifty to seventy-five pounds on Laurent, but he wasn’t nearly as fit as Laurent was, making them evenly matched as they tussled, grappling for the gun. Laurent was faster, though, and first to reach the firearm, seizing it as Cody pinned him to the deck with his body weight.

I heard sirens in the distance. Finally.

“Go.” I pointed Jennifer to the door, and she scurried toward it.

In the split second I’d looked away, Cody had somehow ended up with the gun, which he slammed into Laurent’s skull, sending him falling backward, dazed.

The sirens grew louder as Cody got to his feet, the weapon dangling from his hand.

“Put it down,” I said, wrapping my fingers around the handle of the gun Jennifer had left on the counter. “It’s over.”

He hesitated as Laurent rose unsteadily behind him, clearly stunned and shaking his head. Time slowed as I considered my options, watching Cody’s every movement. Finally, he pointed the barrel down and extended it to Laurent. I felt a wave of relief.

But at the last minute, Cody changed direction, swiftly raising the gun to point the barrel at his own temple before Laurent could grab it.

“No!” Laurent cried.

At the same time, I yelled, “Move!”

Time slowed.

Laurent dived out of the way, hitting the ground just as the deafening shot rang out. All sound beyond the reverberation of the blast was sucked from the room.

Red spattered the white wall, so bright in the afternoon sunlight. An image I knew instantly would be burned into my mind forever.

Cody’s firearm clattered silently to the tile as he dropped to his knees beside it, blood oozing onto the floor.

The high-pitched ringing in my ears blended with the muffled sound of the front door opening. Laurent rose from where he’d fallen, his eyes glued to Cody.

I was still holding the gun as Jennifer entered my line of sight, sprinting for Cody, who writhed on the floor, clutching his arm, blood hemorrhaging from the bullet hole I’d put there. “You shot him!” she cried.

“He tried to kill himself and Audrey stopped him,” Laurent explained, his voice hoarse.

I lowered the gun, my hand trembling. “A towel,” I managed. “We need to stop the bleeding.”

The sirens were close now, their wails melding with Cody’s guttural howls. I placed the gun on the counter and tossed Jennifer a kitchen towel as Laurent scrambled to grab Cody’s weapon from where it rested on the floor.

“I thought it wasn’t loaded,” Jennifer said shakily as she pressed the kitchen towel to Cody’s wound.

Laurent set Cody’s firearm next to the one I’d used to stop him from killing himself, then wrapped his arms around me. “There was one in the chamber. I could see the extractor was protruding,” I said, leaning into him.

I’d known I was taking a chance, aiming for Cody’s forearm. But in the split second I had to make the decision about whether to fire, I figured the worst that could happen was that I’d kill him, which wasn’t any worse than what he was going to do to himself if I didn’t take the shot.

I heard tires in the driveway, and one by one, the sirens abruptly cut. Footsteps, followed by someone pounding on the door, shouting, “Police!”