Page 101 of Last Shot

He had it handled, Max decided, scanning the crowd where she’d last seen Raphael. She didn’t stick around to hear Nella’s reply, heading for the wine cabinet on the western wall, her reflection blinking back at her through the glass. Rows upon rows of Barbarani wine leered down at her like missiles.

Raphael had disappeared.

The clenched fist inside her that had curled up as Grey left the mud room was tightening. Time was rushing past like she was in a dream, stuck in the middle of a train station while everyone else was heading towards where they needed to go, getting on the right train. Everything was moving on without her and she’d never get there in time.

How desperate was she that the sight of a man, with no concrete evidence connecting him to a murder plot, looking slightly out of place had been enough to convince her she had a lead?

Delusional. Raphael didn’t evenlikeKaine Skinner, so why would they be working together?

Max leant against the cool glass of the cabinet, trying not to remember the window in the hotel Grey had pressed her up against not twenty-four hours before. Another waiter offered her a glass of sangue, which she took on autopilot.

Raphael hates Skinner.

The La Marcas hate Skinner.

The Barbaranis hate Skinner.

Libby hates Skinner.

Max peeled herself off the cabinet, heart thumping.

Wasthatthe piece that didn’t fit? Skinner?

It didn’t make sense foranyof them to hire Skinner.

Hedidn’t make sense.

She had the strangest feeling the wine was watching her, listening to her heartbeat, whispering. How did Skinner even come into this?

The room started to swim.

Because of me.

Max had brought Skinner into this – she’d kept pushing him as the lead suspect. She redirected the investigation to focus on Skinner, she’d behaved exactly like one of the prejudiced, narrow-minded cardboard-cut-out profiling cops Grey had accused her of being.

She’d behaved exactly how Libby had expected her to.

Skinner didn’t make sense. Except in one scenario: if he’d never been a part of it at all.

‘Antonella was right.’ An unfamiliar voice interrupted her spiralling thoughts.

Max turned to her left, taking a sip of sangue to try to make her shaking hands less noticeable – and promptly spat it back out when she recognised the woman standing beside her.

‘Relax.’ Sophie Kingsley sipped her flute of champagne, her blue eyes on the crowd. ‘I just wanted to say hey.’

Max would have been less surprised to see Libby swanning around here in a cocktail dress.

‘The Barbaranis keep their enemies close,’ Sophie explained as though reading Max’s thoughts, her eyes straying over to the La Marcas, where Ariana was deep in conversation with her mother and Forrest. Max couldn’t see Matteo, whose photograph she’d studied from Grey’s files, but she knew he was here somewhere.

‘Are you writing a story about the gala?’ Max asked.

Skinner. I brought Skinner into this.

‘Part of my penance,’ Sophie said. ‘Instead of a thousand Hail Marys, I think it’s going to be a thousand articles that paint the Barbarani family in a good light.’

‘You might have to get into writing fiction then.’

Sophie raised a thin eyebrow. She was gorgeous, but not in the way Nella was, not as soft, not as exotic. Sophie was harder – sharpened like a pencil just before an exam. She was cut like an athlete, taut muscles evident through her sheer blue gown and a strong jaw that could almost be masculine but was off-set by her huge opal eyes. ‘How many offers have you had, foryourstory?’ she asked.

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