“No. He didn't know she was still alive. But she was watching him the whole time. Watching, hating, praying to be saved, praying for justice.”

“So, she identified him to the cops?”

“Unfortunately, no. She died before the paramedics got there.”

“Wait a minute. Where do you fit in in all this? How do you know she was watching him and praying?”

“Because I was there.”

“You witnessed it?”

He nodded, and at the same time hit her with a fierce, almost primal look that seemed to warn her: I saw it all, and believe me, you never want to see anything like that.

“Well, I wouldn't have tried to tangle with a gun-wielding psycho either,” she replied feebly. Then it hit her. “But that didn't stop you yesterday. You walked up to him unarmed, no hesitation. Bellamy, he could have shot you.”

“But he didn't.”

“And you were certain he wouldn't?”

“Certain enough.”

“But how?” she asked, frantically grabbing for answers.

Carefully tucking his polo shirt into his shorts, he gave an even more careful reply. “Because the first time we met, I told him something I knew he'd never forget.”

“Really? What was that?”

“I told him how he was going to die.”

***

On the bus home, Bellamy offered her his hand. She hesitated, his words still ringing in her ears.

I told him how he was going to die.

But she quickly shook the unease away and slipped her fingers into his grasp where they happily stayed the entire ride home. Being with him was a strange kind of unpredictable. It could be thrilling; their rooftop rendezvous, the unexpected kiss in the street, the boat ride to the island, the super hot sex. But every so often the unpredictability became a little scary, as though events were dangerously out of her control; his intervention with the mugger, the way he talked his way around the police, his unfathomable liaison with her mom. Rose felt either extraordinarily lucid around him or unable to form a coherent thought or memory. It was bizarre. Everything on the way to the island, and all that had happened on it was indelible in her mind. Unforgettable. Yet, leaving the island and everything since was a blur. Almost as though it had happened to someone else and she'd kind of, sort of, observed without really paying attention.

I told him how he was going to die.

What on earth did Bellamy mean by that? That he'd someday actually get even with the gunman, make him pay for killing that woman? Or had it just been an empty threat, a macho rush of blood covering for the fact that Bellamy had witnessed the murder but hadn't been able to stop it? The more she wrung the words through her mind, together with everything else she knew about him, the more convinced she became that this man she'd fallen for was not beholden to the same rules, the same laws as ordinary people.