Athena let out a dreadful, guttural sound that might have been a death rattle. Mucus streamed from her nose, but her eyes remained fixed on Ella’s. She couldn’t seem to respond, but she was listening.
‘Rachel worked for The Group, back in the 1990s, and her dream was for me to work for them too. So now I do. We’re the ones who brought down your helicopter by the way, in case you never figured it out. We destroyed your evil husband and now I’m here to finish the job. You are about to die, Athena.’ Ella’s voice broke with emotion. ‘Is there anything you want to say to me?’
Athena’s eyes glistened with tears. Her lips were moving, faintly and apparently silently. Ella brought her ear as close as she could, straining to hear. And at last she did, a single, breathy word.
‘Apollo.’
Rage flowed into Ella’s body like lava. No. No, no, no! The monster’s last word could not be about her dead son. About her loss. She didn’t deserve that! It was Ella’s loss that mattered now. Ella’s pain. Ella’s vengeance.
Clamping Athena’s face between her hands, she forced her to look at her.
‘Do. You. Remember. My. Mother?’ she demanded, stabbing out each word like a switchblade.
Athena’s lips parted. For the last time, the two women looked at one another, face to face. Then, with a final effort of will, defeating the demands of her collapsing body, Athena’s bony fingers grasped Ella’s collar and she whispered back a single, Greek word. A word that meant that she, Athena Petridis, would not let her killer win. That the last laugh, even in death, would be hers.
‘Ó??.’ She breathed defiantly at Ella.
No.
PART THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Six weeks later …
Ella sat in the back of the UberX, her face pressed to the window as the rain streamed down. Outside, the streets and beaches of East Hampton were deserted, the wet October weather leaving an eerie, glistening sheen on the grand, weather-boarded homes with their drenched gardens, ghostly visions of green and white beneath a brooding, gray sky.
Once again Ella reflected on the unlikely series of events that had brought her here. How utterly crazy everything had been since Mykonos, and the fateful day of Athena’s death. Not death, she reminded herself, her gaze fixed on a single raindrop snaking its way down the car window. Murder.
I murdered Athena Petridis.
One day, Ella imagined, those shocking words would have the effect they were supposed to. They would elicit some profound feeling in her. Not guilt, perhaps, because there was no question that Athena deserved to die. But awe would surely be appropriate? Awe for the magnitude and finality of what she had done, of ending another human life. It worried her that right now she felt nothing at all beyond a nagging discomfort that Athena’s last word on earth – ‘no’ – had been a denial of the admission Ella had so desperately craved.
No, she didn’t remember Ella’s mother.
No, Rachel Praeger’s drowning had not been a significant event in her life. Losing Apollo, her own son, that was what she remembered, that was what she cared about. Not Ella’s mother, or any of her myriad other victims.
‘Forget her,’ Gabriel had told Ella robustly as they boarded the seaplane back to the mainland, just hours after the murder. Ella had been voicing her disappointment, although she’d wisely omitted the part about already missing the thrill of the chase. ‘She’s dead, and nothing she said or did matters any more,’ said Gabriel. ‘Besides, who knows what she really meant by that one word? People aren’t rational in the moment of death. Or when they’re in pain. Athena was experiencing both.’
Ella nodded mutely. He was right. It just didn’t make her feel any better. It occurred to her that she might be in shock. Her teeth were chattering, and the heavy wool blanket Gabriel had wrapped around her shoulders was doing nothing to alleviate the chills. Sipping hot, sweet tea from the flask he’d given her, she looked down at the procession of police cars and ambulances making their belated way up the cliff towards Villa Mirage, trying desperately to shake off the feeling of misery that engulfed her.
What’s done is done and can never be undone.
Where had she learned that? At school?
And just like that, flashes of another life began to come back to her: Mimi, the ranch, high school. How different she’d been. How ‘other’. How unexplainable, even to herself. She remembered her desperation to get away, to leave Paradise Valley and her lonely existence there. The thrill of college at Berkeley, swiftly followed by the misery of her debilitating headaches, the shame and isolation of hearing ‘voices’ in her head and worrying about her mental health.
Then she thought about her life in San Francisco. Gary Larson, her awful, lecherous boss at Biogen; Bob and his wife Joanie, her first true friends. And Mimi’s death. The funeral, the day that changed everything. The first time she’d laid eyes on Gabriel …
She turned and looked at him, sitting beside her in the cramped seaplane, her thoughts bringing her full circle. Even in Athena’s dying moments, the most significant event in her life to date, Gabriel had been on Ella’s mind. Almost as if he were a part of her, as if his irritating, transmitted ‘voice’ had become internalized, a permanent fixture of Ella’s inner life. They’d grown closer in the last two months, since breaking away from The Group, that was for sure. They’d both learned to communicate better, their common goal of finding and killing Athena and keeping one step ahead of Redmayne ultimately overcoming their former rivalry and distrust. And yet, despite this closeness, this fragile brotherhood, it struck Ella that she still knew almost nothing about this man who had changed her life so profoundly. This infuriating, yet addictive person who had led her here, introduced her to The Group and encouraged her to use her abilities, her extraordinary gifts, to serve a higher purpose. This man – who had told her the truth about her parents and convinced her it was moral to kill another human being if it were done in the name of justice – remained an enigma.
Thanks to Gabriel, Ella Praeger had been born again, for better or worse. She had risen like a phoenix from the ashes of her old life. And yet in so many ways, all the important ways, he was a stranger.
‘Who are you?’ Ella had wanted to ask him. But she knew that, if she did, she would probably get only half an answer. She consoled herself that maybe that was all he had to give. After all, she barely knew who she was any more: a grieving daughter?
A cold-blooded killer? A genetically modified freak? Perhaps, imperfect as it was, the bond she and Gabriel had formed would have to be enough.
When they landed at the same private airstrip in Northern Greece that they’d flown out of together just weeks before, Gabriel handed Ella a fresh weekend bag full of new clothes, papers and cash. Then he helped her into the back seat of the jeep that would take her to Athens’s international airport, and her flight to Stockholm, where they’d agreed Ella would lie low until the mysterious death of ‘Athena Solakis’, Dimitri Mantzaris’s reclusive tenant, died down. Once the news cycle moved on, Ella would be free to return home to San Francisco, if that’s what she wanted. At some point she