She forced herself to continue. “But now, there are no butterflies. Every morning I wake up and there’s this pit in my stomach, because I know that somehow, at some point, I messed things up between us. I don’t know how, why, or when, or whether it goes all the way back to that night in the park in Bangkok when you tried to kiss me for the first time and I pulled away. I hate myself for that, by the way. I wish every day that I could go back in time and kiss you back, and never stop kissing you.
“What would have been different if I had, Sam? Would we be together by now? Would you never have slept with Bling? Would . . .” Kayla gulped, trying to banish the lump in her throat. A breeze tickled the hairs on her arms. “Would I never have kissed Oliver? Things have changed—your feelings have changed, I can see that—and it’s horrible. It makes me feel sick to think of how things used to be. How amazing it felt. All I want is to go back to that.”
Sam looked like a man whose brain, body, and heart were at civil war with each other. “We can’t, Kayla. We just can’t.” His brain was obviously winning.
“But why?” She dropped her hands into her lap. She felt like a petulant child. “I don’t get it. I love you, Sam. You’re making me wish I didn’t, but I do.”
There was a rich silence that stretched out far in front of them, bouncing off the mountains and rippling over the lake. A quiet uncertainty; a moment in time in which anything could happen.
Then it was shattered. Sam stood up, pushing his weight off the ground with his damaged hand, and grimaced.
He looked out over the lake and said the last words Kayla would ever heard him say. “I’m sorry.”
Then, for the last time, he walked away.
“NO. NO!”
Russia was in outrage. She, Bling, and Dave had passed Sam walking back to the villa as they were all making their way to the lake for a sunset dip, and as soon as she spotted Kayla and her solemn, tearstained face, she demanded to know what happened. Kayla brought her up to speed.
“I’m going to bloody kill him, I’m so angry,” Russia said. “Oh my God, I will actually kill him.” Kayla could have sworn there was actual, literal steam wafting out of her Russian friend’s ears. Nope, false alarm. She’d just lit a cigarette. She offered the pack to Kayla, who happily obliged. “Let’s smoke these and calm down. Then . . .” Russia tapped cigarette ash onto the dry mud. “Then I have something to tell you.”
The two of them sat shoulder-to-shoulder on the banks of the lake, smoking their cigarettes in silence. This was not the hopeful, tense silence of five minutes earlier, but rather a pensive, resigned blanket of quiet. Not too far away, Bling and Dave were splashing each other with water from the middle of the lake. Kayla heard Dave challenging Bling to a swimming race, demanding he have a head start due to his disability. In true, ruthless Bling style, she refused him the sympathy he was fishing for and set off toward the other side of the lake with an elegant breast stroke, leaving him spluttering and flailing in a bid to catch up with her. Kayla couldn’t help but smile. She had amazing friends.
Russia finished smoking her first cigarette and instantly lit another. “Do you remember the night Oliver grabbed you on a night out and Sam responded by grabbing him by the throat?” she asked.
Kayla nodded. It was difficult to forget. Russia delicately blew smoke rings through the O shape in her lips. Kayla knew that to an outsider, her friend would look pretty yet vacant. If only they knew how sharp she was.
“Okay. Well, he made me swear I wouldn’t tell you this. Sam, that is, not Oliver. I saw him storming toward the end of the road—the opposite direction from the bus stop. I assumed that meant he was planning on walking home, which, as you know, is a bit of a hike, and not exactly through the best area. I was worried, so I ran after him.
“Then I realized he was on the phone, so I hung back a little bit. You know me, I’m unbelievably nosy. And he kept saying stuff like, ‘Please, stop,’ then he hung up abruptly. I kind of thought he might have been talking to Oliver, so I ran up behind him and jumped on his back. I mean, he must have heard me coming—it’s not like I snuck up on him—but he looked like I’d given him a heart attack. Really on edge. I thought he was going to yell at me, but he just started crying.”
“Crying? Sam?” Kayla asked incredulously.
“Yup. It shocked me too. I didn’t know what to do, so I just kind of hugged him and asked what was wrong. He was talking into my shoulder so his voice was kind of muffled, and he just kept saying that he didn’t know what to do.”
“About what?”
“I’m not sure, entirely. I asked if it was about you, ’cos, you know. I’ve seen the way you look at each other. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the pair of you are madly in love.” The revelation shocked Kayla. She barely knew what to make of her own feelings, and hadn’t been aware that others were analyzing them too. “And he said yeah, it was about you, partly.”
“Really? What else did he say?”
“He said, and I quote, ‘I love her, Russia. But we can never be together. And that kills me.’ I asked him what he meant by that, why you couldn’t be together, but he just started walking away and begged me not to follow him. So I didn’t.”
Kayla tried to let what Russia had said sink in, but she couldn’t. Her brain was spinning too quickly. She sighed. “I wish you had gone after him.”
Russia shrugged and took hold of her hand. “I could say the same thing about you.”
KAYLA KNEW WHAT she had to do.
She took her time walking from the lake back to the bungalow, Russia’s words ringing in her ears the whole way. I love her, Russia. But we can never be together. And that kills me. What did he mean by that?
He did love her. She knew it. She knew she wasn’t crazy.
Padding across the bungalow’s tiled floor, she crept down the corridor toward Sam’s room. She had no idea what she was going to say, how she was going to tell him she knew he felt the same without implicating Russia. How she could possibly put into words what she was feeling right now. Maybe she’d just kiss him with everything she had and hope he kissed her back.
She went to knock on his door, but paused just before her knuckles made contact with the wood. That’s strange, she thought.
The door was ajar.
Chapter 35
June 17, Thailand
THERE WAS ONLY one other time in my life I’d seen this much blood.
Or, at least, this breed of blood—not the poppy red hue of a shaving cut swirling into bathwater or the stale maroon of a drying scab begging to be scratched. This was angry. A deep crimson syrup whose quantity betrayed its origins. This blood was a consequence of pain.
My mind whirled, stuck on a waltzer of panic.
The worst part was knowing who the blood belonged to. It belonged to the man I cared about most in the world.
Why was it always the ones I loved the most?
My stomach lurched. This couldn’t be happening. Not again. Someone had to be playing some sort of practical joke, albeit a sensationally cruel one. He was gone. How could he be gone? How could there possibly be this much blood? I’d only seen him thirty minutes earlier, when I’d told him exactly how I felt. When he gazed at me through his sad brown eyes and uttered the last words I’d ever hear him say: “I’m sorry.”
I stepped back from the crimson pools. The bedroom started spinning. My thoughts were bleeding into each other. Splotches of red seeped into my vision.
Think, Kayla. Focus. This cannot really be happening. Not again.
There were no indicators of foul play. No smashed windows, no screaming, no sirens wailing in the distance to tend to the crime scene. Just blood. Lots and lots of blood.
But somewhere deep within my gut, I knew the truth. My body knew. My knees buckled. I fell to the floor, causing a ripple in the red lagoon rapidly forming on the tiled fl
oor. Sam’s blood. The sticky air was difficult to inhale, and I could feel myself losing consciousness. Good. Maybe I’d wake up and realize none of this had ever happened.
But it had happened.
Sam was gone. And somehow, it was all my fault.
Chapter 36
August 2, England
THE ACCOUNT WAS created at this address.
What the hell does that mean? Did Gabe send those messages to himself?
She couldn’t think clearly. She felt drunk, disorientated, still disconcerted by the mysterious figure on the rope swing. Her skin was crawling, as if the revelation about the origins of the IP address meant she could no longer trust her own house. The bricks and mortar had eyes, the wallpaper had ears, the very foundations were built on dark secrets and cruel intentions.
She left a voice mail for Sadie. Of all the times she needed to speak to the detective, this was the most urgent.
She reopened her laptop and logged into Facebook, typing hastily into the search bar. Daniel Burns: one mutual friend. Daniel Burns, who joined Facebook in February this year. Daniel Burns, who drove her brother to suicide. Daniel Burns: a fictional character who was born in the building she used to call her home.
Hang on a second.
Daniel Burns joined Facebook in February. That couldn’t be right.
There was only one person living at Berry Hill in February. And that would mean . . .
Kayla froze.
Oh dear God, no . . .
Chapter 37
August 2, England
THE STUDY IN Berry Hill House had a unique smell that transported Kayla back to her childhood.
It was a vast room with high ceilings, an ornate fireplace, and three very expensive—yet exceedingly uncomfortable—sofas. Every wall was lined with deep mahogany bookcases, which formed a series of enclaves, much like a library. They were stacked with shelf upon shelf of classic old books in traditional burgundy and forest green leather covers. Great Expectations, Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice. Kayla had a vivid memory of perching on the rope swing at the ripe old age of seven, a heavy, leather-bound Mark Twain book sitting in her lap as she struggled over each and every word, loving every second of it. Her mother had found her, bent her over her bony knee and smacked her three times on the bottom. Hard. Those books were not for reading. They had cost a fortune, didn’t you know?
Fake. The whole thing was fake. The books were never read, the glorious shelves never scoured for the next captivating story, Encyclopaedia Britannica never opened and pored over like it deserved to be. The books had been bought in bulk as a decorative display, not painstakingly built over a long career of collecting and cherishing each title.
But no, those books were not for reading. They were all part of the act.
Kayla shuddered as she opened the door to the empty study and was hit by a waft of musty air; the odor of expensive mahogany and unloved books. It triggered a twitch of resentment buried somewhere deep inside her. She wondered how long that had been suppressed.
She walked over to the desk at the back of the room, facing intimidatingly outward like the one in her old headmaster’s office, and lowered herself into the chair behind it. She switched on the computer—which was rarely ever used—and tried to steady her shallow, rapid breathing as the machine croaked slowly into action. As the browser history loaded. She tapped her foot impatiently on the wooden floor. Come on, come on, come—
“Kayla.” A warm voice, laced with a glimmer of unease, from somewhere near the door. Kayla leapt out of her skin. She hadn’t heard anyone follow her in. “What a surprise. I haven’t seen you in the study since you were little.”
Mark Finch was leaning against the door frame with a too-big smile plastered on his face. The bags underneath his eyes bulged angrily, and his jaw was covered in thick, steel-gray stubble. His pale lilac shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, accentuated the sickly tinge to his pale face. Growing up, all of Kayla’s school friends had a crush on her dad; he was rich, attractive, and powerful. She wondered whether they’d still fancy him now. Haggard and balding, with the dull, lifeless eyes of a man very much in the depths of a dark and prolonged depression.
He walked slowly toward the desk. “What are you doing in here, sweetheart?”
Kayla searched her brain frantically for an explanation. “I—I . . . my laptop isn’t working. I just wanted to . . . ch-check this one too, to see if it’s a problem with the Internet server or just my own computer.” She could feel her cheeks burning furiously. Subtle, Kayla. Really subtle.
Mark looked at her strangely. “Why didn’t you just reboot the router? It’s in the kitchen, not the study. You know that.”
“I . . . erm—yeah. I mean, I could have done that. I should have. Sorry, I’ll go and do that now.”
Kayla stood up shakily and started to walk, as confidently as she could, toward the door. Her dad edged to the left, blocking her path. He grabbed her arm, his eyes boring into her pupils, scaring her. She’d never been scared of him before. He spoke in a stony, measured tone. “I don’t like it when you lie to me, Kayla.”
“Wh-What? I’m not. What?”
“What were you doing on my computer?”
She tried to shake her arm free but his grip was too tight. She felt like a trapped animal. “I just told you.”
He took a step closer to her, so his face was inches from her own. She could smell strong coffee on his breath. “And I just told you I don’t like it when you lie to me. Why were you on my computer?”
Kayla gulped. “I found out something strange today. I was just investigating. That’s all.”
His grubby nails dug even deeper into her arm. She wanted to yelp in pain, but her pride wouldn’t allow her to. “What did you find out that was strange?”
There was no point in trying to lie. Kayla sensed, instinctively, that he already knew the answer. “The Facebook account that sent Gabe those messages was created in this house. According to the dates, I was away skiing, Gabe was at boarding school and Mum was in rehab. There was only one person that could have created that account, Dad. Please tell me it wasn’t you.”
Mark held her gaze for a moment, then collapsed to the floor as though every bone in his body was made of cotton wool. “Shit, Kayla. Shit. How . . . h-how did you—”
“How did I find out?” Kayla’s voice was shaking more than her knees. Which was a lot. “Guy I went to school with tracked the IP for me. I checked the dates. Please tell me I’m putting two and two together and getting five?”
Silence. Mark’s head was lulling in circles. His neck looked dangerously close to snapping.
“Dad? What the—” She tried to sidestep around her father’s crumpled figure, but his hand snatched her ankle.
“You can’t leave, Kayla. I’m sorry. It’s not safe. I’m so, so sorry.”
“Dad, you better tell me what the hell is going on. Now.” Kayla didn’t know whether she felt angry, scared, or utterly baffled. Probably a mixture of all three. “And let go of my leg!” She jerked her ankle free.
Mark clambered to his feet with the trepidation of a baby taking its first steps. He seemed to recover, then grabbed Kayla by the wrist and dragged her toward the desk chair, thrusting her into the seat. Her coccyx collided with the arm, and the pain took her breath away for a millisecond.
Mark walked around to the front of the desk and started pacing across the wooden floorboards. His hands were planted on his head as he patrolled his territory like a frantic police officer. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“You can’t believe it?”
“I know. I know. This was never supposed to happen. Never. Nobody was ever supposed to find out . . .”
“Find out what? Dad, I swear to God, if you don’t start telling me what’s going on . . .”
Mark continued t
o pace as Kayla sat in silence, trying and failing to understand what was happening. Eventually, he stopped abruptly and turned to face his daughter. His voice was calmer now, more measured. His tone, however, was still strangled, almost manic. “This was never supposed to happen.”
“So you said,” Kayla replied coolly.
“It all seemed so simple, so easy. Nothing could possibly go wrong. We had it all worked out; it was a simple solution. But you know what they say about things that seem too good to be true.”
“They usually are?”
“Yep. I sure learned that the hard way.” Mark ran his hands through his thinning air and gazed skyward. As he lifted his arms, the dark purple sweat patches spread even farther down his shirt. “Fuck. Fuck.”
“Dad,” Kayla whispered. “Tell me. Please.”
His voice quivered. “I tried so hard to keep you from finding out. So hard. You have no idea . . .” His eyes were wide, popping out of his skull. “Knowledge isn’t power, Kayla. Knowledge kills.”
She could have sworn the temperature had dropped ten degrees. Goose bumps tickled her arms and a cold sweat trickled down her spine. The dusty smell of old books was half nostalgic, half suffocating. “What are you talking about?”
Tears started to stream down Mark’s face. His mouth remained open, threatening to howl like a wounded wolf. Kayla couldn’t help but cringe—nothing made her shudder quite like the sight of her father crying.
For a while it looked like he might throw up. Then his pacing resumed.
This time when he spoke, his voice was quiet. Distant, like he was sleep-talking. “I guess there’s no harm in telling you now. You’d figure it out for yourself, anyway, soon enough. Soon enough. Oh, Mark. Mark, Mark, Mark. You always knew this would happen.” He stopped walking and sat on the edge of the desk, facing away from Kayla, rocking steadily with his eyes closed. He looked deranged.
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