Page 58 of Last Shot

‘I’m down here, Hawke.’

He’d been staring at a spot on a karri tree just behind her head. As he drew his gaze down to hers, everything tensed. Her green eyes pierced him like blades tipped with poison. The feeling spread through his body, uncontrollable. The only antidote was to look away, to make her leave, to move closer—

No. He would get a grip on this.

He would concede one tiny piece of broken glass from deep within his soul. A means to an end.

‘Last time I let someone into the Barbaranis’ lives, let’s just say it didn’t go well.’

Her expression wavered, like she’d just realised something. ‘Sophie?’

The ground shifted beneath him. ‘How did you—’

‘He’s here!’ Frankie called.

The familiar crunch of tyres against the gravel road snapped him out of it.

How the fuck does she know about Sophie?Nella wouldn’t have said anything. Jett definitely wouldn’t ... Frankie and Luca didn’t know enough about it, and Tom refused to invoke Sophie’s name, as though she was an urban myth that would strangle you through your mirror if you said her name too many times.

Doesn’t matter how she knows, Grey thought as he watched Quinton jump from the driver’s cab with a brown satchel.That’s not the problem.

The problem was that he should never have trusted Sophie. But he wasn’t going to make the same mistake again, not when all logic and reason were flashing red, neon warning signs that he shouldn’t trust Max Conrad.

But the problem, he was realising, was that he already did.

19

Max

Max tried to focus all her attention on Quinton to avoid thinking about whatever it was that had just passed between her and Grey. She still didn’t know who Sophie was or what she’d done, but she’d hit the nail on the head and likely bent it too when she’d guessed Sophie was who had made Grey’s voice go quiet. But every time she felt his eyes on her, all she could see was the note Vittoria showed her.

Quinton.

He had green hair, like grass in need of mowing, sprouting from an otherwise handsome head. His eyes were blue and they kept flickering towards Frankie in a way that Max would find sweet if the situation wasn’t so dire. Quinton’s eyes definitely needed to be on Arnold Schwarzenegger.

‘I’m going to check on Vittoria and Giovanni,’ Grey said. ‘There might not be a bomb in Arnold, but this still might have been a distraction.’

Max didn’t like the fact that her first instinct wasn’t to snort in derision at the Fixer’s paranoia. Was he right? Had someone done this to Arnold deliberately?

‘For a silent protest,’ Quinton was explaining to Luca, running a tentative hand through his hair as Nella marched him towards Arnold, currently cradled in Jett’s arms. ‘Gonna shave it off if it doesn’t start growing out quick enough.’

Quinton knelt beside Jett and Arnold, rolling out a purple mat and instructing Jett to lay Arnold on top. As the vet checked the cat, Jett stood and said something gruffly to Nella, which made her smile through her tears. She leant into him but Jett stayed straight-backed, arm still on her but not moving closer. What was up with those two?

Quinton started to pull bottles and vials from his satchel. Max prayed Frankie’s faith in this green-haired vet’s skills was not obscured by the size of his biceps and the depth of his dimples.

Grey returned, jogging down the grass embankment, narrowly dodging a tiny amber coloured vial that rolled away from the others.

‘Careful!’ Quinton launched at the vial. ‘That’s etorphine!’

‘Is that like morphine?’ Luca drawled. ‘If so ...’ He stuck his tongue out.

‘Hell no, man.’ Quinton carefully put the etorphine back in his satchel. ‘This shit’s for buffalos. There’s enough in this vial to kill you three hundred times. A scratch of it on your skin’s enough to do it. You wouldn’t believe the paperwork I had to do when I dropped one and broke it.’ He shook his head and put a syringe into another vial.

Max felt as though his words had kicked her square in the stomach.

A fucking scratch. All it would have taken was a drop of etorphine in Evan’s morning long black. A dash on his toothbrush. A damp kiss on his cheek. It didn’t have to be a gun. She might not have lost her job, lost her life, herself.

She looked up to find Grey watching her. Warm embarrassment spiralled through her and she cursed herself. She was thinking about Evan because of the impending trip to Semperdom. There was no room for her to lose her shit here; she could not give the Fixer any more reasons to change his mind about working with her – especially as, after what he’d said about having trouble trusting people, it felt like he’d maybe started to trust her.

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