Page 80 of The Lucky Winners

Dev exhales slowly and puts down his mug. ‘Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. But that hardly matters now, does it?’ He meets her gaze, wondering how she can even worry about this stuff in the light of such a tragedy. ‘Sarah is dead, Merri, so if it was her you can let it all go.’

‘We can’t let it go, Dev. If it wasn’t Sarah, there’s someone else out there who wishes us harm. Someone who might be willing to do much, much worse than just post photos.’

‘I’m going back to bed,’ Dev says quietly, standing up.

Merri doesn’t move.

He pauses in the doorway, looking back at her. ‘You should try to get some rest, too.’

‘I will. I’ll be along soon.’

He hesitates a moment longer, then turns and heads down the hallway. The walls are closing in. Sarah is dead. The police are circling.

Dev stops walking as a fleeting memory flashes through his mind. He woke up briefly in the night and Merri wasn’t beside him in bed. It was way before he saw the activity down at the water, way before the police rang the bell.

He’d flung his arm across her side, checking she wasn’t there, and then had given in to the soporific effects of the alcohol he’d drunk.

He hesitates, almost turns back to speak to her about it. But now is not the time to try to fix this puzzle. They’re both exhausted and he has a feeling that a long day lies ahead of them.

Dev walks slowly back to the bedroom. There are lots of unknowns, lots of details to be unravelled about exactly what happened last night. But he’s certain now of one thing.

Merri is holding something back from him and the time has come for him to find out exactly what it is.

51

Merri

A few hours later when I wake, Dev has gone out for a run. I get up, shower and make myself some breakfast, but can’t touch a morsel of it. I feel so sick.

If I could change what happened last night, I would turn the clock back in an instant. If there had been no argument, Sarah wouldn’t have rushed off and she wouldn’t have …

I shake away the useless thoughts.

She’d been so shocked at my allegation, so genuinely astonished …

I open the sliding glass doors and step out onto the terrace. Even though it’s early, the heat of the sun presses down on my skin but does nothing to thaw the ice lodged in my chest. My hands curl into fists at my sides, nails biting into my palms. I force myself to loosen them.

Breathe.If I let this fear take hold, it will consume me.

Down at the lake, the flashing lights have gone. The uniforms have mostly disappeared. But a feeling in my gut tells me the danger hasn’t passed.Why?

A shift in the air behind me makes me turn quickly, but it’s just the breeze, just a little gust … Still, my spine locks, my pulse thrumming in my throat.

I think about Sarah last night, so upset. Grabbing my umbrella and rushing out into the flash storm. She was distraught but thinking clearly enough to protect herself from the elements …

The umbrella flashes into my head again. The way she’d held it over her neat short hair. From a distance, maybe, just maybe, Sarah could have looked just like …

Me.

A wave of nausea washes over me. I grasp the balcony rail and turn away from the lake.

What if our friends are completely innocent of betraying us and I’ve been on the wrong scent altogether? What if someone else is watching and waiting?

The feeling I’ve had since we arrived here. The quick movements in the trees I’ve told myself I imagined:what if I’ve been right all along?

Panic rises in me, like floodwater bursting from a dam. I shouldn’t be out here. I shouldn’t be standing in the open. I can’t keep living like this. Something’s going to give and very soon. I can feel it coming.

Fighting to breathe, I sit down. My eyes scan the hillside, the sinister glint of the lake beyond it.