She held up her hands as she heard her mother’s gasp. Her daughter going for a walk alone after sunset was every mother’s worst nightmare.

“I know, Amma. I know. I’m sorry. Oh gosh, you can’t believe how sorry I am. I just thought, you know, this is a five-star hotel, with so much security. And we’d booked out the entire place, right? So I didn’t think it was such a big deal.”

“You went for a walk, and then?” Miss Padmaraj asked, trying to bring the conversation back on track.

“That’s when, I guess that’s when Mr. Ananda grabbed me. He clamped something down on my mouth and put something, it was a hood or a pillowcase maybe, over my head so I couldn’t see. But I knew I hadn’t been dragged out too far. I knew I was still on the beach.

“He locked me up in this dirty little shack—I think it might have been one of the old bathrooms or changing rooms or something that the hotel doesn’t use anymore. And then he left me there. I—I don’t know why. I thought maybe he was speaking to one of you—” She looked over at her father, who shook his head. “I don’t know. He’d been after me for money, you see. I think he’d become quite unhinged after his wife’s death. Blamed it on me for some reason. He showed up at the Poruwa also, you know, but security had escorted him out. And once before as well, at the cocktail party we threw at our house. So he definitely had a lot of issues.”

“And what happened next?”

“Well, I was there for lord knows how long, until Mr. Ananda showed up again. He looked even more deranged than before. He said—” Kaavi’s voice broke a little. “He said he was going to make me realize what it was like to lose someone I loved. Just like I’d done to him. He made me call Spencer and tell him where to come. He wanted me to tell him that he would kill me if Spencer alerted anyone. I didn’t want to, you know—I wanted to keep Spencer safe, but—”

Miss Padmaraj nodded.

“That was probably why he overpowered the guards and left his room.”

“When Spencer got there, Mr. Ananda, he—” Kaavi burst into sobs then, her whole body heaving.

“I would have been next, I’m sure of it,” she gasped, reaching out for my hand. “But then Amaya showed up. She managed to tackle him, somehow, and all three of us were struggling to get ahold of the gun when it went off. It was an accident, wasn’t it, Amaya?”

“We were only trying to get the gun away from him,” I replied in a voice that wasn’t my own.

Kaavi continued to sob, her face in her hands.

“The gun was loud. I was so scared.”

Her parents rushed to her side, her mother pulling her close and her father letting his own tears fall as he rubbed her shoulder.