Max’s strong, steady body, along with the crusted sand beneath her fingernails, pushed Nella’s mind back to Devil’s Pool. Somehow, between the time she’d been standing in front of Sally Sue to when she jumped in after Jett, six other figures had emerged on the beach.
Grey and Max had met Nella halfway back to the shore. She’d managed to keep Jett’s head above water but she couldn’t do that and swim. By the time they reached her, Jett had passed out. Everything from then to now were flashes of mosaic memories that she couldn’t fit together.
Oliver (yes,Oliver) had been on the phone to the ambulance, pacing the sand like an eagle searching for prey. Avery’s voice had travelled down from the cliff, where he and Luca had Sally Sue on the ground. Eliza was waving to the convoy of police and ambulance vehicles, shouting at the paramedics to come to Jett, not the cliff.
All these people. Nella still didn’t understand. How had they known?
‘Why?’ Nella asked, her vision blurry, trusting Max to guide her through the hospital halls that smelt like antiseptic and gravy. ‘I thought you were angry at me. Why did you come?’
Max made a noise that was a half laugh, half snarl. ‘Of course I’m angry at you. But you’re still my friend, for fuck’s sake.’
Myfriend.
Nella only half listened to Max’s explanation of what had happened since Nella ditched Greyson in the garden.Friend.The word that was now tainted forever was ringing in her ear, not like a gunshot, but like a forgotten favourite song.
Max and Grey had tracked Bessy to Devil’s Pool (Jett had installed tracking devices on all the Barbarani cars after Luca once went on a road trip to Sydney with his friends after their father banned him from the jet). They’d arrived at the same time that Oliver was pulling in, along with a PI who’d helped him track Clarkson’s stolen iPad (to the front seat of Bessy, where Nella had left it). Not long after, just before they heard the first gunshot, Luca and Eliza arrived – Eliza still in her scrubs, Luca, hungover. Eliza had been trying to get hold of Jett to tell him Razor had pulled through the surgery. When she hadn’t been able to contact him, she’d called everyone else, and the only person who’d picked up had been Luca. While she’d waited for Luca to collect Razor, Eliza called Avery to report the attack, saying the wound had been made by a knife, not another animal. Suspicions raised, with nothing to go on except the last place he’d found Jett under strange circumstances, the three of them drove to Devil’s Pool. Well, Avery drove. Eliza and Luca had followed him there after they promised they wouldn’t.
Then Sally shot Jett. And Nella jumped in after him.
And when she’d reached the shore, her knights in shining armour came into full focus and she saw they weren’t knights, just the people she’d let down in one way or another. Still there. Waiting for her.
Tom was sitting in the waiting room like he was in his office in between meetings with international wine sellers. But it was the person sitting next to him that made Nella do a double-take.
‘Sophie?’
Max fidgeted beside Nella.
Nella wasn’t sure how she felt about journalist Sophie Kingsley, who’d dated Greyson once upon a time and used his closeness to the Barbaranis to write an exposé about them, which was as accurate as it had been ruinous. She didn’t care as much now about the article. But she’d never forgive Sophie for what she’d done to Grey.
‘I’m going to get a coffee.’ Max squeezed Nella’s hand and stalked off to the elevator. As Nella would have in her position.
‘She still hates me?’ Sophie asked.
‘We all hate you,’ Nella said, taking the empty seat next to the journalist. ‘Tom especially.’ She turned to her brother with an eyebrow raised, realising she wasn’t as bothered by Sophie’s presence as she usually would be, because it gave her a buffer between her and Tom and everything they’d screamed at each other the night before.
‘Don’t tell me you’re here for an exclusive on what just happened, or I swear to god I’ll punch you in the face right now, Kingsley, and fight off every doctor that tries to put it back together—’
‘Nella,’ Tom admonished, while the journalist just watched her serenely.
‘I would never do that, Nella.’
Nella folded her arms, unconvinced, disappointed. She needed a punching bag. But for now, she’d latch onto the distraction dangling in front of her. ‘So why are you here, with mybrother?’
‘He brought me to you,’ Sophie said. ‘We would have been here earlier but the fire blockages held us up. I live in Nannup.’
‘You drove toNannup?’Nella demanded of Tom.
‘Unlike some people,’ he drawled, ‘I have a licence.’
‘No, I mean – you knew that was where the fire was. What were you ... Hang on ... But you called Grey to come and get you because of the fire.’
‘I called Greyson’—Tom looked sheepish—‘because I thought someone was following me. A white Corolla.’
‘Daisy’s car.’
‘So I’ve been informed. Thankfully, the raging bushfire standing in the way of her making you her doll again made her turn around.’
‘Why did you risk your life to seeher?’
