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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

‘Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to drown you in the lake. And I’m going to blow your husband’s head off with this gun. I have killed people before. You may not believe that, you may not want to believe it’s possible, but I promise you I have. And once you have done it, it changes you. Just ask your husband.’ He doesn’t speak for a moment. ‘Here is what the police are going to find: a textbook murder–suicide. It will only take them a few days to investigate. Your family and friends will assume you were the latest victim of an epidemic of domestic violence and your husband will be just the latest piece of shit to murder his wife. PTSD, they will say. CTE from the head knocks. There is nothing you can do about it. Unless, of course, you choose me. In which case I’ll simply kill him. You and I can be together. So let me ask you again. Cain or me?’

The rage swells. ‘You’ll never be half the man Cain is,’ I hiss. ‘You’re a weak little man. My husband is a hero.’

‘A hero,’ he says, his voice chillingly neutral.

Then he takes the gun from the couch, strides towards the stairs and climbs them. A moment later there’s an explosion upstairs.

EIGHTEEN

‘CAIN!’ A LONG wretched cry escapes me, stinging everything inside. I try to scream again but anguish clogs my throat. In the seconds after, everything is almost silent except for the static of the rain on the iron roof and the wind tearing across the lake, through the trees, up the hills. And that other sound growing louder now: an animal whining, reverberating from my own chest. The explosion still rings in my head, would anyone have heard it out in the world? Wiremu and Melissa up the road might be close enough if not for the storm.

I scream again, my body contorting against the handcuff; blood wells around the steel. He’s coming. Footsteps down the stairs. I kick out for the keys and the table moves a little further away. The shotgun blast can’t have hit Cain. My mind rejects it as something fundamentally impossible, an apple falling towards the sky, water flowing uphill. If it did hit him, the shot didn’t kill him, he can survive. He went through worse in Afghanistan. He’s built to survive.

My next thought comes on as a burning imperative: protect the baby. Kicking once more at the table, my foot impotently passes by without touching the wood. The footsteps come closer. Then he is there, in the room, rushing towards me. ‘Stop screaming!’