She was watching Lozza and her daughter. Or more likely the sunset behind them. Yet Lozza felt that acute sense of being very keenly observed. It made her hesitate slightly.
Her inclination was to give the woman space. But her and Maya’s gear was next to the path through the dune grasses, right where the woman sat. So Lozza continued up the beach with Maya in tow. As they neared, Lozza noted the woman had no board with her. Not a surfer, then. She was also beautiful. The kind of beautiful Lozza could never even dream to be.
“How are ya?” Lozza said as she set her thruster on a patch of dune foliage, fins up. It was casual—what any local would say. She grabbed Maya’s towel, tossed it to her kid, and picked up her own. She began rubbing her tangle of hair.
The woman glanced up and something inside Lozza stilled. The woman’s eyes were big, and an improbable cobalt color. Like the deep-blue pelagic waters fifteen klicks into the Tasman Sea where the big migratory and predatory fish—marlin, tuna, bonito, great whites—moved deep in the clear, sediment-free currents. But it wasn’t the color. It was something else—a look of raw desperation. Need.
Lozza had spent enough years as an interrogator to have become adept at reading tells, both overt and at the micro level. It was now second nature to her. And something about this woman screamed fear.
The rescuer in Lozza, the goddamn gladiator in her DNA that had pushed her to become a cop in the first place—the same impulses that had also gotten her into serious trouble—made her say, “Nice evening, huh?” Because now she was curious, and fishing.
“Uh . . . yeah, it is,” the woman said, her gaze latching on to Maya. “It’s gorgeous.”
American. Maybe. But there was also something about the way the woman was staring at Maya that made Lozza feel uncomfortable for reasons she couldn’t articulate.
“Going in for a quick splash, then?” Lozza asked, noting the woman’s bikini straps beneath her tank top. “Water’s pretty warm—it’s our first session this year without a wettie.” She smiled.
The woman hugged her knees more tightly against her body as her gaze flashed toward the ocean. That’s when Lozza noticed the aging bruises around the side of her neck. And along her collarbone. And on her arm. Wind gusted and ruffled the woman’s fringe. Lozza saw a cut on her temple and another yellow-green bruise around it. Lozza’s breathing slowed. She’d seen bruises like that before.
A soft inner war rose inside her—a battle between giving this woman privacy to deal with whatever it was that seemed to be conflicting her right now and satisfying her own curiosity, which was sliding into concern territory. She hooked her towel around her neck, the wind now chasing tiny goose bumps over her skin.
“So, you in Jarrawarra on holiday, then?”
“No. I . . . I’m new in town. Arrived last month.” She gave a nervous laugh. “Seems like an eternity ago already, though.”
“Are you from America?” Maya asked as she draped her towel around her skinny shoulders like a Batman cape.
“Canada. West Coast.”
“I’ve never been to Canada,” Maya said, giving a gap-toothed grin that made the woman fixate on her in that odd way again.
“I didn’t know we’d had any Canadians move into town,” Lozza said, delving deeper.
“Should you—I mean, have known?”
She gave a shrug. “I’m a cop. One might expect a local copper to know what’s what in a small rural town like this.”
The woman recoiled. Her neck tightened. “A cop?”
Lozza’s interest was 100 percent now. Something was going on here—a darker undertow.
This was the moment Lozza should have perhaps walked. It was also the instant she could not, because she’d already crossed some invisible and indefinable line. So she proffered her hand. “Laurel Bianchi,” she said. “But everyone calls me Lozza.”
“Or Lozz,” Maya offered.
“And this is my daughter, Maya.”
The woman hesitated, then accepted Lozza’s hand. “Ellie.”
Her hand was cold and fine boned. Smooth skin. No rings. “Well, then, Ellie, welcome to Jarrawarra Bay, New South Wales.”
Lozza waited for a last name. Ellie said nothing.
Lozza picked up her thruster, hooked it under her arm, wavered, then said, “Does Ellie have a surname?”
She paled, looking as though she’d rather bolt.
“Hey, no worries. See you next time—enjoy your swim. Come on, Maya-Poo. Pizza’s waiting.”
Maya gathered up her board and sandals and began to scamper up the dune path ahead of Lozza.
“Is . . . is it safe? I mean, right now?” Ellie called out behind them.
Lozza stopped, turned. “What?”
“Is it safe to swim in this part of the bay right now, at this time of evening with maybe sharks coming out and all? I heard they feed at dusk, and that there are rips here sometimes. And . . . I . . . I guess I expected other swimmers to be out. But the beach is deserted.”
Lozza frowned, momentarily puzzled.
“I can swim,” Ellie said forcefully. It sounded off-key. “I just haven’t swum in, you know, big waves for . . . for a while.”
Lozza looked at the ocean. Surf crunched and boomed off the reef, spumes of spray catching gold rays. The tide was pushing into the mouth of the little creek and churning sand into the water, turning it cloudy and brown.
“Never mind,” Ellie said. “I feel stupid for asking.”
“Hell no. It’s smart. To learn how to read the sea, to learn where the rips tend to form and what to look for.” She hesitated. “Hey, Maya! Hold up. Come back here a minute.”
Maya came running back down the path.
Lozza set her board back down. “Come on.” She tilted her head toward the sea. “We’ll go in with you. Just a quick one before the sun sets. You obviously came down to the beach in that getup because you wanted to go in.”
“Mom! What about the pizza?” Maya held her hand out, palm up.
“Pizza can wait twenty minutes. A quick swim with Ellie, then you can have extra ice cream for dessert—deal?”
Maya beamed and put her board down. Going back into
