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 mademehurt 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.’
39
Nella
They all had their guesses, but no one had ever agreed on the exact reason why Nella had always been an appalling driver. Some said it was because she’d always been slightly uncoordinated and too hot-headed and proud to ever keep trying at something she wasn’t instantly brilliant at the first time around. Others said it was because she’d secretly wanted the Barbarani driver to spend more time teaching her. Deep down, she wanted to need someone. Secretly, she was willing to sacrifice a small piece of her pride, to need him.
Because needing him made her feel alive. Needing him made her feel vulnerable, and human, and imperfect, and all those things she’d fought her whole life to prove to her father and the rest of the world that she wasn’t.
How had she been so blind?
She didn’t know how she made it to Devil’s Pool, which, on the Find My iPhone app was just a tiny blue dot pulsing like a sick little blue heart. Her real heart, also blue, also cold, was in her throat. All her joints were stiff and shaking with the exertion of pedals and clutches and indicators and headlights (which she’d remembered after the first ten minutes). But she’d made it.
Her chest constricted. Devil’s Pool was the most dangerous cliff jumping location in all of WA. Jett wasn’t an amateur, but the ocean didn’t give a shit about that.
Where was Jett? Had he jumped? How long ago?
There was only one car in the beachside car park, a white Corolla with a dent in the front. It looked vaguely familiar but since she couldn’t care less about cars she didn’t know if itwasthe same or just a similar model.
There was something moving out on the cliff. People.
One of the figures looked tall – was it Jett? Maybe.
The other was short and slight and holding something in one hand ...No.
She didn’t remember leaving the car. She didn’t know if she shut the door or took out the key or if the handbrake was on. She’d kicked her heels off back in the garage, not thinking any further ahead than the need to operate three pedals and her bare feet screamed as she flew across the rough bitumen to the prickly grass, then cold, soft sand and finally the jagged edges of the cliffs. Wind gripped at her hair and skin. There were voices up on the ridge, but the ocean crashing against the rocks and her heavy breathing drowned them out.
It was a female voice first. Familiar, but not.
‘Keep going, right to the edge.’ Nella knew that voice. She squinted up. Pink hair. Daisy! But at the same time, it wasn’t Daisy. It was her voice, but sharper, like she’d sawed it to a lethal point. The thing in her hand was a gun.
