Skye accepted a rare beer from Joy, laughing as her friend clambered up onto a patio chair.
“Careful!” she cried as it wobbled precariously.
“Time?” Joy asked, looking around at her assembled guests. They were all there—Theo and George, Adam and Victoria, Dusty, Louisa, Mia—and Cassandra. The sun blazed in a sky scrubbed free of clouds. Smoke curled from the grill, tugged along by a teasing breeze that carried the scent of charred meat and roasting pepper through the garden.
“Two minutes to five,” Dusty replied, her phone in her hand.
“Let us know when it’s thirty seconds,” Joy told her. “I want us all to join in on a countdown.”
Skye frowned for a moment, then she realized: The ferry would leave at 5:00 p.m., taking Martyn with it. She smiled, waited, raised her beer, chanted along to the chorus of “ten…nine…eight…” Joy gave a great whoop as the hour passed and held her bottle aloft.
“To freedom!” she said.
“And victory,” Adam put in.
They all looked expectantly at Skye. She hesitated, then took a slow, deliberate sip.
“To justice,” she said.
“Do you think we should’ve gone down to the port, made sure he really did leave?” Mia asked. She had arrived with Bruno in her arms, Louisa following with a large, rather tattered dog bed. When Skye had brought them and Dusty up to speed on the day’s events, their three mouths had fallen open in unison.
“Shame I don’t have that saber anymore,” Dusty brooded now. “I could’ve brandished it at him.”
Louisa caught Skye’s eye.
“I’m not sure that would have been a good idea,” she said mildly.
“You gave it to the police, then?” Theo asked, coming toward them with one of Joy’s hastily constructed haloumi kebabs.
“Yeah,” Dusty said rather forlornly. “They said I can have it back once it’s been tested. I might mount it on the wall, you know, like a Samurai sword.”
Mia scrunched up her features.
“What are you now, Mr. Miyagi?”
“He was into karate.”
“Potato, potahto.”
Theo laughed, then turned to Skye.
“Did you read the letters yet?”
“No,” she said. “I haven’t had a moment. But I want to. I will. Soon.”
“Andreas should be here,” Joy said, swiping Cassandra’s wide-brimmed hat and plunking it on George. “I’m going to call him.”
She raised a theatrical hand for silence, selecting speakerphone so they could all listen in. Andreas, when he eventually answered, did so with a dour-sounding “Nai.”
“What are you doing?” Joy said. “Nah, scratch that. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing. Your plans are canceled. You’re coming here to my house for a barbie.”
Silence on the other end of the line.
“Andreas? You there?”
“You are having a party?” he asked, though it was delivered more as a statement of fact. Skye felt a twinge of unease, her whole body tingling unpleasantly.
“Not a party exactly,” Joy said. “More a gathering of friends. We’re celebrating, you see, and—”
