Instinct tells me to keep running, even though I heard Shadow yelp in pain. If he’s caught himself on barbed wire, any of the islanders will help him, but that shrill female voice can’t be ignored. I should head for the quay, yet my legs aren’t following my instructions. Trees surround me as I retrace my steps; there’s no sign of a victim anywhere.
The next cry comes from directly ahead, making me tear through high brambles into a clearing. A woman is lying between tree stumps, so petite she looks more child than adult. It’s Billy’s new kitchen hand, cowering on the ground, eyes terrified. One sleeve of her denim jacket is dark with blood.
‘You’re safe now, Chloe. Tell me what happened.’
‘Help me, please. It won’t stop bleeding.’
Her face contorts when I lean down to take her hand. I only see the knife a moment before she lashes out. Its blade skims my jaw, triggering a lightning flash of pain.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’
The knife glints in the moonlight as she lunges at me again. When she kicks the torch from my hand, I’m in trouble. Whoever she is, she’s used to the darkness, while I’m night-blind. Instinct makes me spin round: she’s two metres away, just a thin silhouette, laughing at me.
‘Who the hell are you?’
‘Take a guess.’ She moves fast, her blade slicing through my jacket.
I grab her wrist to shake the knife from her hand. When moonlight floods the clearing, I realise why she looked familiar. I see a glimpse of the innocent child that used to play video games while I waited for her father’s next command, but it’s buried under a new facade. Her features are pinched by misery and spite, her hair blonde instead of black.
‘Craig sent you, didn’t he, Ruby? He’s gone now, you don’t have to follow his orders.’
‘Lying bastard, you betrayed both of us.’
Somehow she slides from my grasp. When she lands a drop kick on my chest I reel back, winded. Now she’s scrabbling for her knife among fallen leaves, until I stand on her wrist, making her release a piercing scream, but I’m dealing with an expert fighter. Ruby frees herself in moments. The blade glitters in her hand, inches from my chest.
‘Never forget my father, will you?’ she hisses.
A shot rings past my face, the sound deafening. It misses me by inches, but Kinsella has missed his target too. Ruby is already sprinting through the trees, at a pace neither of us can match.