Until the Day I Die(77)

He didn’t reply.

“Look,” I said carefully. “There are other people out there. Women who will open up and let you in. Women who want a relationship where both people let their guards down—”

“I don’t want another woman.” He propped himself up on one elbow. “I want Sabine. And it’s not fair to judge her by everybody else’s standards. She’s had it rougher than you know.” He swung his feet around and started jiggling his knee. “I know this sounds crazy. But I wouldn’t blame her even if she was seeing somebody else. I just want to know, so we can deal with it.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Seriously? You really feel that way?”

The knee stilled, and he stared at me, like it was a challenge. “Yeah, I do.”

“But what if it is Perry? What if she’s in love with Perry and not you? What would you do then?” I couldn’t believe I was saying this, but I felt like we’d gone beyond a place of politeness.

He stood up. “Before you say anything else, you should know. I love Sabine, and I’m always going to be on her side, no matter what. So don’t push me. Don’t make me take sides against her. You’ll be sorry, I can promise you that.”

I flinched. “Okay.”

After he left, I had a good cry. But when we all woke up the next morning, bleary and hungover, he sheepishly handed me a mug of coffee and hugged me. Later, I told Perry about the exchange, but he shrugged off the whole episode.

“You can’t get in the middle of somebody else’s relationship,” he’d said. “You have to let them work it out the way they need to.”

But last night, looking back, the memory had chilled me. I should’ve listened to what Ben was trying to tell me that night. That when it came to Sabine, all bets were off. She was Ben’s bottom line, his alpha and omega. Even if she wanted to screw me financially. Even if she wanted me dead.

What a pair of fucking traitors.

Sick of memories, I climb out of the tree, then move to the bank of the river, shaking the stiffness out of my legs and stretching my arms over my head. The ribbon of clear water has worn far down into the rock bed, cutting its way deep into the earth before shooting out over the cliff’s edge to the pool below. The forest up here is much thicker. Quieter too. I need to decide what my next move should be.

I pick my way upstream to where the branch joins a larger river. It’s wide and calm, a couple of yards across, and looks much deeper, like it might be up to my waist. There’s no path along the bank, but this seems like the best way to go. At least I think that, until I see the bodies.

There are two of them, naked, bobbing in the current. A blue nylon rope, anchored to a palm tree on the bank, is lashed around their necks. Their bloated greenish-black trunks, their arms and legs, are borne to the surface, again and again, like fish on a stringer. A kaleidoscope of butterflies flits over them, fluttering up and landing again. Feeding. I catch sight of a hand, the flesh eaten down to the bone. Several of the bones are missing.

I hear all the air exit my lungs in an audible groan, and turn away. I try not to collapse.

It’s Agnes and Deirdre, I know it, even without taking a closer look. This is where Lach stores the bodies. Until he, or whoever’s got the shitty job of disposing of them permanently, can take them to the volcano.

I unzip the pocket on my still-damp shorts and pull out Lach’s phone. The waterproof case looks like it’s done its job, because the device lights right up. I tap in the password l-o-c-k and study the thing. He hardly has any apps. There’s the music he was playing back at the campsite. And an internet browser. An album of photos—most of them pictures of a beautiful, tattooed brunette woman with a chubby blond toddler.

I snap a few photos of the bodies, just in case I need proof later. Then I dial Shorie’s number. Busy signal. Which means something’s probably screwed up with the service provider. Or Shorie’s phone can’t receive international calls. Or the cell towers here are wonky. Shit.

I hit the browser. I can’t sign on to my Jax account from someone else’s phone—the multifactor authentication messages I’d need won’t send to a non-remembered device. But I can create a new Jax account in Lach’s name, a fake one, and contact Shorie that way. And it’s just as well I don’t get on my account anyway. In addition to tracking the phone, if they know what they’re doing, Antonia or Lach could track me via the app’s GPS metrics.

But they’re probably tracking me right now, since I’m sure Lach’s noticed that his phone has gone missing. So I’m screwed either way. I tell myself to slow down. To think. For now, it seems, this is the best plan to contact Shorie that I can come up with. I download Jax, and it immediately starts to autofill, dumping Lach’s personal data from all his other social media and whatever else he’s stored on his phone’s account.

Excuse me. I mean to say, Lachlan Erdman’s personal data.

I yelp out loud. Lachlan Erdman! Antonia’s brother, it has to be. And it looks like he used to have a Jax account, which was why all the profile stuff filled in so nicely, including a profile picture of him hugging a little boy on a beach. All his profile info, except for his bank information. Those fields—the ones for his account and routing numbers—remain blank. Which means he probably deleted them before he shut down his original account. Well, there’s nothing I can do about that—no way for me to know what they are.