I hurried back through the villa and headed out of the front door, closing it quietly behind me. Down the big curving staircase, past the parked cars, branching onto a gravel path that took me out to the manicured lawn. An arched iron gate threaded with purple blossoms led into the vineyard, out of sight of the pool.

Shielding my eyes against the sun, I squinted towards the stand of trees that bordered the bottom of the vineyard. There was no one around. I scanned the breadth of the slope on both sides of me but saw no movement. There were probably other ways down there, other ways of reaching the woods, but I didn’t know what they were. Certainly you could come up from the gorge side – Rowan had showed us the path cut into the rock – and maybe there were also ways around the far side of the estate. But there was no time to check now.

I checked my watch again – barely six minutes until the time I’d asked for the meeting with CoralGirl – and broke into a half run. The bare path between the rows of vines was rutted and uneven, threatening to trip me as the slap-slap-slap of my sandals took me downhill. The sun seemed hotter out here than by the pool, high in a cloudless sky, its blistering heat beating down on my head and shoulders like a physical force. There was no shade out here on the hillside – the vines were only about four feet tall and provided no protection from the heat of the afternoon. Neither did they give any concealment unless I bent double and stooped over as I ran. But there was no time for that.

I felt totally exposed for every yard that I hurried away from the villa.

Perhaps she’s watching me right now. Watching me coming.

At the treeline I stopped running, panting for breath, hands on my hips, trying to make my breathing as quiet as possible, still dazzled from the bright sun on the hillside. There was sweat at the small of my back and under my arms, but at least there was some shade here. The worn dirt path wound around the big oak and sycamore trees, the bark of their trees rutted with age. Here was the dip, the hollow, then up and around again, past the big rock and the fallen tree. The sign stuck lopsidedly into the ground: ‘ATTENTION!’ in faded red lettering. Here was the clearing that led out to the bluff. This was the spot. I stepped off the path and into the trees. The cover wasn’t great here, but there were some low bushes and the thick canopy of leaves above threw much of the woods into a warm, earthy shade.