“I only noticed at dinner.” I feel bad now for not mentioning it earlier.

He swears and pulls out a large screwdriver with a purple plastic handle—the very one I borrowed from him ten years ago. “Here, take this.”

“What about you?”

“Take it.”

I take it.

“Listen, if it’s my sister out there, you stay away from her, okay? Let me deal with her.”

There’s a nightmarish quality about this. The idea that she would come back from the dead and hatch this elaborate plan. To do . . . what, exactly?

Curtis throws a worried look at the door. “Brent should have come back by now. Do you trust me, Milla?”

“I—” I don’t know. “I need time to take in what you told me.”

“Look, from now on, I will do my best to be totally honest. But you need to trust me. Once we go out that door—”

There’s a scream from the corridor. A piercing female scream.

I yank the door open and dive out, sore knee nearly giving way beneath me, to see Heather wielding the missing ice axe.

So she’s the one who set this up. Her and Dale.

Brent stands a few meters down the corridor from her, arms raised, screwdriver in one hand. Whose side is he on?

Heather swings around, wielding the axe in my direction. It may be old but it could still do some serious damage. I raise the screwdriver. Ice axe versus screwdriver. I don’t fancy my chances.

Curtis is somewhere behind me, armed only with his bare hands.

Why is Heather doing this? Where’s Dale, and who has all those knives? I want to look behind me down the corridor but I daren’t take my eyes off Heather. I’ll have to trust Curtis to have my back.

Heather’s eyes lock on the point of my screwdriver. “Stay back!”

Her knuckles are white on the handle. I sense that if I make a single movement, she’ll swing.

The lights go off.

CHAPTER 48

TEN YEARS AGO

Saskia’s face flashes before my eyes in the darkness, lit up in green and orange as we dance on the stage at Glow Bar.

That Killers track is playing again. I’ve heard the song so many times this winter. The strobe lights reflect off Saskia’s silver corset. Every guy in the place is watching her, though she seems completely unaware of it—or maybe she doesn’t care?