I didn’t want to leave Warren, but I had no choice. If I’d stayed with the boat, Scott would have shot me. He wouldn’t have needed a steady hand—not while I was two metres away, pulling frantically on the starter cord.

All I could do was hide. A thick belt of mangroves hugged the shore on either side of the jetty, creeping into the shallows. I knew I had to get past them quickly because of all the noise involved—splashing water, slurping mud, the crunch of pencil roots underfoot. The aerial roots were even more of a hazard, reaching out to trip me as I staggered between them. But the palisade of closely packed tree trunks and soaring root systems provided good cover. A clear shot would be hard, I told myself as I lurched along, panting, sweating, dragging my boots out of the sludge. Everything smelled pungently organic, like sewage.

I couldn’t hear Scott behind me. I couldn’t see him either, though I wasn’t glancing back—not while I negotiated a mangrove swamp. I had to keep my eyes on the ground or risk falling. I was so scared I was like an animal, heedless of the muck clinging to me, shrinking into myself like a snail, gasping, shaking, numb with fear. There was a sense of unreality. How had it come to this?

At last I noticed a change in the light and looked up to see that the trees were thinning. I’d almost reached the track to Karboora Beach.

I stopped. Would Scott be skulking somewhere on the track, waiting for me to emerge? Probably not. He didn’t know the terrain. He wouldn’t realise he could trap me like that.

Then I heard the sputter of an engine. For a split second I thought someone had come to my rescue, until I realised I was listening to the sawing sound of a starter cord being pulled—once, twice, and a third time, successfully. The engine roared to life. I recognised its rumble.

Someone had started the motor on my tinny.

I knew it couldn’t have been Warren; yanking the cord would have been way beyond him. Scott must have decided to cut his losses. He must have taken one look at the mangrove swamp and thought, Nope. For all he knew, a police launch might have been on its way, drawn by my distress flare.

The engine was moving north. It was chugging along somewhere behind me; I pictured Scott at the tiller, scanning the mangroves, my gun across his knees. He would take one last shot if he could, I felt sure. But he didn’t have a hope. There was too much dense growth between me and the bay. I was safe for the time being.