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Back The Last Guests Save as PDF
Chapters (54)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. PROLOGUE
  5. PART ONE
  6. ONE
  7. TWO
  8. THREE
  9. FOUR
  10. DEADLY SAS RAID IN AFGHANISTAN UNDER SCRUTINY
  11. FIVE
  12. SIX
  13. SEVEN
  14. EIGHT
  15. NINE
  16. TEN
  17. ELEVEN
  18. TWELVE
  19. THIRTEEN
  20. FOURTEEN
  21. FIFTEEN
  22. SIXTEEN
  23. SEVENTEEN
  24. EIGHTEEN
  25. NINETEEN
  26. TWENTY
  27. PART TWO
  28. TWENTY-ONE
  29. TWENTY-TWO
  30. TWENTY-THREE
  31. TWENTY-FOUR
  32. TWENTY-FIVE
  33. TWENTY-SIX
  34. TWENTY-SEVEN
  35. TWENTY-EIGHT
  36. TWENTY-NINE
  37. DANIEL MOORE: ‘A SINGLE BLOKE, HAPPY-GO-LUCKY, A BIT OF A DUNCE BUT WITH A GOOD HEART,’ BEST FRIEND SAYS.
  38. THIRTY
  39. THIRTY-ONE
  40. THIRTY-TWO
  41. THIRTY-THREE
  42. THIRTY-FOUR
  43. THIRTY-FIVE
  44. BREAKING: POLICE CONFIRM DANIEL MOORE ACTED ALONE
  45. THIRTY-SIX
  46. THIRTY-SEVEN
  47. THIRTY-EIGHT
  48. THIRTY-NINE
  49. SECOND ARREST MADE IN WESTAY HIDDEN CAMERAS CASE
  50. EPILOGUE
  51. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  52. Discover More
  53. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  54. Also by J. P. Pomare

I pull more junk out of the box, finding keys at the bottom. I’ll try them one at a time. I see a key attached to a key ring with a tiny buoy. It looks new, too new to be in this box. I hold it up, noticing something odd. It’s not one key but two. A key for a modern lock and a key that looks old but is polished and new, long and thin with a blade at the end shaped like a U. Where have I seen this key? I freeze. They always look the same, don’t they? Axel had said but I know this one is the same as another one I’ve held. My eyes go to the house, the kitchen window. I see him there. Cain, staring out the window at me. His eyes are wide. Why would this key be here? I drop the keys. Why would we have the same key as the Hillview Terrace house? There’s only one reason. Time stops. Everything trembles. My body aches with a new fear. Now I know for certain: It’s him. Cain installed the cameras. Cain cut the keys. Cain knows.

THIRTY-SEVEN

I’M STILL STANDING there. Wide-eyed and rooted to the spot when the back door opens.

He’s out on the deck now moving through the sunlight. The hulking form of him in his singlet, with all those tattoos and scars. My hand goes to my navel, rests there. The bump. I can’t outrun him anymore. He knows, he must know that the baby may not be his after all.

‘Come on inside, darling. I need your help.’

‘It was you,’ I say, my voice trembling with fear. ‘You installed the cameras. You know.’

‘Shh,’ he says, stepping closer. ‘We don’t need to do this, Lina.’

A rush of heat to my face, my breathing is growing faster and faster. ‘How?’ I take one step back towards the lake. ‘How did you do it?’

‘We get to make up our history. We decide what happens. What happened. We can just forget you found those keys, Lina.’ He steps closer. ‘Nothing has to change.’

No, it can’t be him. He can’t know what I did. My breathing is fast and heavy, my hand comes to my brow. ‘How did you do it, Cain?’

He wets his lips, looks past me over the lake. ‘It really wasn’t so difficult to become him,’ he says. ‘Contact lenses. A mask ordered online from a military replica store. And a black-market shotgun. Finding your sim card made things much easier. I got into the dating account and organised a meet-up with him.’

‘You lured him here? So he was innocent? You’re telling me that I killed an innocent man?’ The familiar creep of guilt rises like bile; this can’t be happening.