He could—

  ‘Teddy!’

  Was it the blonde calling him, or his Lyla?

  Was it real, or in his head?

  He tripped on a root.

  He caught one last glimpse of the port, the beautiful blue expanse of water rippling into the horizon, signifying hope and potential, before he fell down.

  He cracked his head on a rock and his world went dark.

  76

  As promised, Dylan Walcott was alone.

  He sat on the hood of his BMW, facing the reef, his hunched back to the trail. The sun didn’t faze him. He wore a purple polo shirt tucked into grey slacks, and loafers over anklet socks. His hair was still perfect, his demeanour poised. He gazed longingly out over the reef, like a teenage boy waiting for a girl in some romantic movie.

  King and Slater couldn’t spot an ounce of resistance in his body.

  Walcott was a master deceiver, but this time they both got the sense he wasn’t faking it. He wasn’t here to enact some grand conspiracy.

  He was simply here to talk.

  They pulled their jeep alongside his, its broken twisted hood facing the water between the cays. They were on the edge of McLean’s Town Cay, where the highway branched off to a gravel trail that led all the way to the water’s edge. In the distance they could see Big Harbour Cay, its low bank bristling with vegetation.

  There was no one else around.

  King and Slater got out, rounded their respective doors, came to the front of the jeep.

  Slater squinted under the cloudless sky.

  Dylan stayed on his hood. He was an athletic guy for being in his mid-fifties. He had perfect balance. It looked as if he could slide off at any moment and sprint away, but he hadn’t brought a gun.

  No need.

  He had the lives of Lyla and Caleb Barrow in the palm of his hand.

  Dylan said, ‘Before anything else, I want proof of life.’

  ‘So do we.’

  Dylan rolled his eyes. ‘You think I killed a grandmother and her grandson for no good reason?’

  ‘You think we killed Theodore?’

  ‘Yes, actually,’ Dylan said. ‘I could see that as a very real possibility.’

  ‘We’re not that angry at him.’

  ‘He used you, whether you two want to admit it or not.’

  ‘He did,’ Slater said. ‘But you’re still our problem. Not him.’

  Dylan said, ‘Before we pull out our phones and prove we have each other’s hostages alive, enlighten me about something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why did you come for me? What did I do to you?’

  King said, ‘Your bank, Métier, launders money for some corrupt members of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.’

  Dylan raised a waxed eyebrow. ‘So?’

  ‘We took a dislike to what you do for a living,’ Slater said. ‘Simple as that.’

  ‘Then I imagine you’d take a dislike to every man and woman in power.’

  ‘One step at a time,’ King said. ‘You came onto our radar first.’

  ‘Would you believe me if I told you I have no idea what dealings I have with the LVMPD?’ Dylan said. ‘The specifics are unimportant to me. I’m a big-picture guy. I let my employees handle the details.’

  ‘That makes it even worse,’ Slater said.

  Dylan rolled his eyes. ‘Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. Okay — are we done? Can we get down to business?’

  Slater said, ‘You first.’

  ‘You want to talk to Lyla?’ Dylan said. ‘Go for your life.’

  He pulled his phone and they flinched reflexively. He smiled. ‘You think I’d get into a Mexican standoff with you two? I’m a little smarter than that.’

  He hit a number on speed dial and had to wait less than two seconds for it to be answered.

  The convenience of having people on your payroll.

  Dylan said, ‘Yes, I’m fine. No, not yet. Put her on.’

  He tossed the phone to King, who caught it one-handed and lifted it to his ear.

  Lyla’s voice said, ‘Hello?’

  It was smooth, a touch slurry, above all else monotonic. King wondered if she’d been given a pill or two to calm her down. ‘Lyla, are you safe?’

  ‘Oh, yes, dear,’ Lyla said. ‘Perfectly safe. So is Caleb. He’s a curious boy. Wants to know where we are, what we’re doing here.’

  ‘Did you go to Dylan yourself?’ King said. ‘Or were you taken?’

  He could almost hear her furrow her brow. ‘Taken? What on earth are you talking about? Dylan has been nothing but pleasant to me.’

  ‘Do you want to speak to your husband?’

  Still on the hood, Dylan’s eyes narrowed and he shook his head. Don’t push her.

  Lyla waited a long time to answer.

  She must have thought the question would simply go away if she ignored it for long enough. But it didn’t. It hovered over her like a dark shadow until she said, ‘Not right now, dear. I’m a little tired. I think I need a lie down.’

  ‘What are you going to do next?’ King said, trying to pull her out of her trance. ‘Leave your husband? Start anew? Be Dylan’s captive?’

  Dylan slid off the hood and made a lunge for the phone.

  King backed up a few steps.

  Slater stepped in between them and slipped the Glock out of his holster and pointed it at Dylan’s head.

  Crunch time.

  Through the phone, Lyla said, ‘I don’t know. I’m tired.’

  King could tell she was spiritually empty, nihilistic in the face of such betrayal. She had no idea what she wanted for herself or for Caleb. Maybe answers would come after a good night’s sleep, but King doubted it.

  It didn’t matter.

  He had the answers he’d been looking for.

  He said, ‘Sit tight, Lyla.’

  Then he angled his body behind Slater’s so Dylan couldn’t see him, and he turned his back and muttered a sharp command. ‘Put the phone on the table face-down but don’t hang up. Do it now.’

  She would listen.

  If she didn’t…

  He lowered the phone.

  Dylan swept a couple of thick locks of hair off his forehead as the wind picked up, rippling the low waves on the reef. ‘Put that gun down if you know what’s good for you.’

  Slater complied.

  He said, ‘No problem. Just had to make sure my friend here could finish his call in peace.’

  ‘I don’t want you antagonising her,’ Dylan said. ‘She’s been through enough.’

  Slater rolled his eyes. ‘Because you’re so noble.’

  King stood behind him, clutching the phone in one hand, its screen still lit up with an active call.

  Dylan said, ‘The phone, please.’

  King pretended he didn’t hear.

  Dylan said, ‘You hand that phone over or both of them get it.’

  He meant it.

  King had given it twenty extra seconds, and it’d have to do. He finally killed the call with Lyla and passed the smartphone back to Dylan.

  Dylan said, ‘Now let me talk to my brother.’

  ‘What do you want to say to him?’

  ‘Are you stalling?’ Dylan said.

  King said, ‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’

  He pulled his own phone out and hoped like hell that Violetta and Alexis had Theodore Walcott with them.

  77

  Violetta’s phone beeped a confirmation.

  She barely registered it.

  Shock set in.

  She and Alexis stood over Teddy.

  He lay face-down in the sand, unmoving. A viscous patch of crimson swirled around his head, sinking into the ground with each passing second. They’d caught up to him, screeched to a halt where he’d fallen, looked down and gasped in mutual horror.

  A pointed rock had gone through his skull, driving up through his face.

  He’d impaled himself on a piece of the landscape.

  After a prolonged silence Alexis said, ‘That was your phone.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your phone. It buzzed.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Violetta fished it out of the back pocket of her jeans and glanced down.

  Well, she thought, at least that worked.

  A location notification flashed on a satellite map of Freeport, revealing Lyla Barrow’s location as deep in the heart of a resort complex overlooking the Bell Channel Bay, just inland from the south shore. The phone was wirelessly connected to her open laptop in the car, which had been running a tracking service on every incoming call to the cell tower in the east of Grand Bahama. Lyla was positioned right at the water’s edge, no doubt in a villa that Walcott owned personally.

  She could find which house was his by combing through the labyrinth of documents she’d amassed.

  Violetta returned her gaze to Teddy’s body and said, ‘We got her.’

  It didn’t sound like she was the one speaking.

  That’s the shock.

  Her phone rang.

  Inevitably.

  She looked down, saw King’s contact name, clenched her teeth and sucked in air.

  Alexis said, ‘What do we do?’

  ‘What can we do?’

  ‘You have to answer it,’ Alexis said.

  ‘I know,’ Violetta said. ‘But what do I say?’

  ‘You’re the operator. I’m the civilian.’

  ‘I don’t know about that anymore.’

  Alexis said, ‘Give it to me.’

  Violetta did.

  Her own actions surprised herself, but she was still looking in on her body as a distant observer, unable to comprehend what had happened. So it was someone else passing the phone to Alexis Diaz, who a few months ago had been a paralegal in New York, who hadn’t so much as been in a physical altercation her whole life before that. Now she was taking the reins, wading through the uncertainty, charging ahead.

  She swiped her finger across the touchscreen to answer and said, ‘It’s Alexis.’

  King said, ‘Is Violetta okay?’

  ‘Yes. She’s right beside me.’

  ‘Put Theodore on.’

  Alexis stared at Teddy’s corpse at her feet. The skin paling, the halo of blood spreading wider.

  Alexis said, ‘I can’t do that. He tripped on a rock and it went through his skull. There was nothing we could have done to stop him. But you need to pretend I told you something different.’

  Like nothing was amiss, King said, ‘Well, wake him up.’

  She didn’t say anything.

  King said, ‘What do you mean he passed out? From what?’

  Alexis stayed mute.

  King said, ‘Oh, fear? Really? That scumbag’s been pretending he was someone else for the past thirty years and now he’s so scared he couldn’t possibly stay conscious? That’s what you’re telling me?’

  Alexis was detached from King’s cover story. She was thinking hard. Finally she said, ‘We have Lyla’s location. She’s at a resort in the Bell Channel Bay. We can be there in fifteen minutes. Maybe less.’

  King almost sighed with relief, but reined himself back in and said, ‘Good. I know where that is. We’ll be right behind you. Thirty, tops.’

  In the background, a voice that could only be Dylan Walcott said, ‘Thirty? Where the hell are you going?’

  The cover blown.

  An unstoppable chain of events set in motion.

  The grand finale.

  King said, ‘Gotta go. Are we on the same page?’

  Alexis said, ‘Yes.’

  The line died.

  Alexis handed the phone back to Violetta and said, ‘We have to go for Lyla. Right now.’

  Violetta said, ‘What if there’s an army defending her?’

  ‘Then we go through them.’

  ‘Are they joining us?’

  ‘Thirty minutes, they said.’

  ‘So we’re on our own for fifteen.’

  ‘We can’t stall. We have to move.’

  Violetta said, ‘I know.’

  She allowed herself a single second to mourn Teddy Barrow. You can’t put on a facade for thirty years. Half of Theodore Walcott was Teddy Barrow. Maybe more than half. The rest had been deep under the surface, fighting not to take over, but it had escaped eventually. As soon as Teddy realised Theodore could pay mobsters to execute each other. He’d kept the guilt at bay with his childhood conditioning, living two lives in one. Most of him had been a good, confused man, unsure why he had such dark urges, willing to do anything and everything to protect the woman and child he loved.

  Violetta had seen the look in his eyes when he’d charged out of the room. His hands had been inches away from Alexis’ Glock. Alexis hadn’t realised it. Violetta had. At the last second Teddy had changed his mind and decided to run instead of fight. He might have succeeded. There was no doubt in Violetta’s mind he could have killed her, if he wanted.

  Alexis was already halfway to the car. ‘What are you doing?’

  Violetta hovered over Teddy’s corpse, facedown in the sand.

  Under her breath she muttered, ‘The choices we make…’

  Then she forgot about him and started for the car.

  78

  King took the phone away from his ear to a tirade of abuse.

  Walcott’s hair was far from perfect now, hanging in fronds over his forehead, accentuating his crazed eyes.

  He shouted, ‘What are you two up to? If I don’t get an explanation in ten seconds, that stupid bitch is dead and I’ll make her grandkid watch as my men—’

  King ripped his Glock free, slipped a finger inside the trigger guard and pressed the tip of the barrel through the veil of hair draped over Dylan’s forehead.

  It touched his skin with a soft thunk.

  It stayed there.

  Dylan froze. His eyes twisted with hate. ‘You’re making an enormous mistake.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re not exactly necessary anymore, Dylan.’

  Slater didn’t move to stop King. They must be in the endgame. That was the only way the phone call could have gone.

  Dylan was irate now, livid instead of scared. ‘You think I give a shit about my brother? Kill him, give him a new life, I couldn’t care less. I’m the one with the leverage, you dumb fucks.’

  Slater said, ‘Pipe down, kid.’

  ‘Kid?!’ Dylan spat. ‘You’re twenty years younger than me, you goddamn stupid motherf—’

  King said, ‘Enough.’

  He said it with a verve that clammed Dylan up like someone had zipped his lips shut.

  King said, ‘You are a kid. You know why? Because you didn’t play this right, and you’re starting to realise it. We have Lyla’s location now. And we never had your brother. Our partners surprised him and he ran away from them. Tripped on a rock and died.’

  ‘Good,’ Dylan said. ‘He was always pathetic. I gave him that eighty k from the good of my heart. That ungrateful piece of shit.’

  ‘There’s no good in your heart,’ Slater said. ‘And no matter how much we lecture you about what you’ve done you’ll never realise right from wrong. That’s the most frustrating thing. One tiny facet of your business that you knew next to nothing about facilitated the exploitation of underage sex slaves in Las Vegas. You funnelled dirty money through your banks like it meant nothing, and it did mean nothing to you. It was so inconsequential that you considered it beneath you. And you’re so narcissistic and corrupt that it’ll never sink home. You’ll never see it from anyone’s perspective other than your own. We could sit in a room with you for a month straight and you’d still never see it. So...’

  He nodded to King.

  King’s finger started to depress the trigger.

  Dylan was clearly straining to stay mute, but he couldn’t.

  Self-preservation gave way to desperation.

  He said, ‘I have reinforcements all around us. You two were too stupid to see them. You kill me, you’re dead.’

  King shook his head with a sad smile. ‘Where, Dylan? Where exactly are they? Hiding in the brush in ghillie suits? You thought you had absolute leverage over us. You got cocky. You caused your own downfall. Keep that in mind.’

  Dylan, who was composed in every situation, broke out in a full sweat. ‘If I miss my check-in in two minutes, the woman and the brat get it! Slowly and painfully! They’ll scream.’

  Slater said, ‘That’s what’ll happen to them within half an hour? I don’t think so. You know why? You never stopped to think whether your men were as evil as you.’

  ‘They’ll do what I tell them. I can guarantee you that. Get this gun out of my face.’

  ‘They’ll start torturing a scared grandmother and her scared grandson the minute after you miss your check-in?’

  Dylan said, ‘Yes,’ but his eyes weren’t so sure.

  King said, ‘You’d do that. To protect your bottom line. But they’re salaried. They’re independent contractors. And you’re not the cartel. You’re a businessman with a handful of ex-military in your employ. Have you threatened to kill their families if they don’t comply? Have you done anything to ensure that they’ll slowly murder an old woman and a child just because you were twenty minutes late to a check-in?’

  Something dawned behind Dylan’s eyes.

  A painful, miserable acceptance.

  With that, his last option had been exhausted.

  His voice cracked and he said, ‘Wait. Please.’

  It was music to King’s ears, and it was the closest they’d ever get to making him pay for the things he’d done.

  The only way to a narcissist’s heart is to make them realise they made the wrong call. When it’s not life or death, there’s always an excuse, always someone else to blame, always an ego to protect.

  Not anymore.

  In that singular moment, the titan Dylan Walcott was reduced to a beggar.

  King pulled the trigger.

  They caught his body before it fell, one man on each side, and walked it to the reef. Then they dropped it into the shallows, where the blood tainted the clear water, dirtying it, muddying it, ruining its impeccable beauty.

  Which was fitting.

  Dylan Walcott and his grandfather before him had tainted this island.

  The Walcotts — all of them, even Theodore with his secret campaign to destroy his brother — had exploited a kind and good-natured population for everything they were worth.