Free The Siren's Sting by Miranda Darling

the notes of a flute. Every evening at dusk, the same flute, the same tune. It sounded vaguely Middle Eastern, or perhaps Indian. Stevie did not, unfortunately, have any kind of ear for music and, much as she enjoyed singing, she was often gently—or sometimes not so gently—discouraged from doing so.
    She raised her binoculars and scanned the neighbouring houses.
    Pino Maranello in the stone bungalow behind—former professional soccer player, many beautiful daughters, many beautiful wives and girlfriends, unlikely flute player—was sitting on a rattan chair on the lawn, smoking a cigarette and reading the newspaper. He was still terribly handsome and made good use of his looks. Several women in jewel-coloured shift dresses bustled about with plates and napkins under the bamboo pergola, chattering like gay parrots.
    Stevie lowered her binoculars. ‘ Buona sera ,’ she called.
    Pino looked up from his paper and flashed her a grin. ‘ Ciao , Stevie . La nonna sta bene? ’ He always asked after Stevie’s grandmother. ‘Will we see her this summer? It’s been too long.’
    â€˜Perhaps this summer. I know she misses Sardinia.’
    Pino nodded and raised both palms to the sky. Of course, everyone misses Sardinia when they are elsewhere .
    Stevie turned her binoculars to the house to her right: the Biedermeiers had obviously just arrived—still pale as butter. They were eating their dinner outside. It was early for dinner, but they were German—from the north—and had perhaps acquired this custom in the long winters. Frau Biedermeier, tall and fair, Herr Biedermeier, round and fair, two good-looking, fair-haired children— not flute players either.
    She swung to the left but the music ended there, a last graceful note hanging in the powder-blue air.
    If only all mysteries were as charming.
    Across the road, a woman was calling for Ettore—‘ Ma dove sei andato?! ’ — the exasperation in her voice growing.
    Stevie looked down at her companion. ‘Perhaps you had better . . .’ And little Ettore was gone.
    The sun was sinking steadily into the glassy sea. Stevie’s grandmother Didi used to tell her to watch for the green spark— electricity, she called it—that you might see, if conditions were right, if you were very lucky. She remembered sitting beside her father on the sun-warmed wall, just as she was doing now, and the sound of her mother’s singing voice rising from the kitchen. Days long-gone, almost as if they never were. Stevie kept her eyes focused on the sliver of planet, pale pink and disappearing fast, until—there! The green flash.
    At least some things never changed.

5
    At the easy hour of eleven o’clock, Stevie stood at the end of the long wooden jetty at Hotel Cala di Volpe. She spotted the launch in the distance: right on time. The sun was already hot, burning through her silk kaftan — this one a wiggling Missoni print in turquoise, pink and yellow; the kind of garment a happy and high-living acquaintance would wear for lunch on a yacht in the Mediterranean. Stevie was, after all, incognito.
    She had had a brief moment of doubt on the drive over: was the turban too much? She touched the turquoise headpiece gently, making sure it was as she had arrranged it.
    Too late for second thoughts—the launch was pulling up to the jetty.
    The Hercules was moored off the coast, visible only as a white dot from the jetty. Stevie knew it had been built by an ultra-discreet German firm that had been designing since the warships of World War I. There had been much talk and speculation in mega-yachting circles over the project—know only by its code 999—but the shipbuilders and everyone else associated with the project had remained tight-lipped.
    Almost no one knew who the owner was, nor how it was possible that project 999 bore such an uncanny resemblance to the latest $100 billion US naval project,