This is what happens to rule breakers.
The words don’t process at first. Then I know.
“Look,” he exclaims, hauling me to the rail. “Watch.”
I tense, waiting. He stomps to the kill tank, yanks it open, snatches out chunks of bloody meat. Grinning, he throws it overboard, even lifts his knee like a baseballer and throws a kangaroo femur into the waiting ocean. Then he positions his body behind mine, his breath warm on my neck. There’s a chill in my blood. A sudden stillness in the water. Something’s wrong.
And then out of the darkness,
A fin.
Chapter 31
They come in hard.
And they come in angry.
He’s right. My body freezes as the shark fin circles the boat. There’s a splash and silence. It disappears in the shadows like it’s made of them.
They position themselves below you…then they strike.
My heart thrashes so hard in my chest, he can probably feel it. He’s going tothrow me to the fucking sharks.
I’m frozen at the rail, inhaling quick and sharp, peering down into the deep. But all I can think about is Donny Granger.
I shiver, chest rising and falling erratically, my thoughts tumbling over one another in a chaotic rush.
Your dad was a fucking nutter by then. And paranoid as all hell.
Paranoid…
In my mind, a door creaks open. My stomach drops, heavy, like the ground has fallen away. “What was he so paranoid about?”
My body is tense, bracing for something…Any second now, everything will change, and I won’t be able to stop it.
“He thought he saw someone in the woods,” Luke says, “the day he killed Donny.”
For a moment, my brain doesn’t even understand it. I hear the words but they don’t make sense. Not yet.
And then I’m hiding under the ghost gum’s shadow. A branch snaps in the distance, and my heart leaps into my throat. I press back harder against the trunk, hoping the shadow will swallow me whole, hoping the tree will hide me completely while my father murders a man.
It didn’t. Dad saw someone hiding in the woods.
I clench my fists, my knuckles paling from the pressure. I try to steady myself but I can’t. If Dad saw me in the woods, why didn’t he come after me?
Then, like a puzzle piece fitting into place, the realization floods through me.
I whirl around, facing Luke. The silence stretches, sharp and painful. “Who did he think he saw in the woods?”
I breathe in sharply, the ground beneath me shifting. Everything feels muffled and distant. I stare blankly at the circling fins, time slowing down to nothing.
“Your mum,” I hear Luke say, “He thought he saw your mum.”
My body shuts down and I retreat into stunned silence. My lips part, but no words come out.
“She was always running away,” he says. “Taking off to Pine Bay. The cops even brought her back a couple of times. He was paranoid as hell that she was going to say something to them about Donny.”
I stand there staring ahead, the weight of everything pressing in on me.
