Page 61 of Last Shot

‘My reaction probably made it worse.’ His knuckles were white; if he squeezed the wheel any harder, the bones would rip through skin.

‘I’m not sure how else you were meant to act,’ she said. ‘We would have died if you hadn’t remembered the secret passage. And by the way, why the hell was Emilio Barbarani so paranoid?’

A smile pulsed at the edge of his lips. ‘He was convinced the La Marcas were sending spies disguised as customers and investors. He wanted places he could hide the wine while it was being made so no one could ever take the recipe. But mostly he just used them to smoke and play cards with his mates so his wife didn’t find out.’ He was old-school. Everything opens via a lever – no electricity.’

‘Well, thank god for Emilio Barbarani.’

‘Most people only say that when they’re about to make a very stupid decision after drinking too much sangue.’

‘You knowsanguemeans “blood” in Italian, right?’

‘I did know that. How do you?’

‘I read it in one of the articles about the Barbaranis—Holy shit!’

‘What?’ Grey slammed on the brakes, his arm flung out instinctively to bar her from catapulting through the window. His hand brushed the underside of her breast and her skin caught alight.

‘Nothing, sorry. Thought I saw a roo.’

He snatched his hand away, shifting Bessy down a gear and fixing his gaze back through the windscreen like nothing had happened.

But something had.

Max realised where she’d seen the name Sophie recently. In bold Times New Roman font at the bottom of all those articles she’d consumed about the Barbaranis. Sophie Kingsley – the journalist.

Had she and Grey—?

But she wrote all those—

So that would mean—?

‘What?’ He was staring at her like he’d planted a bug in her brain and all her thoughts about how Sophie must have used Grey to get close to the Barbaranis so she could advance her writing career were downloading into his mind. No wonder he’d hated the thought of Max trying to worm her way onto the Barbarani property without giving him the full story.

No wonder he was so ...Greyson.

‘It’s not visiting hours,’ she squeaked out, a random Hail Mary to justify her temporary insanity. Saliva slipped down her throat in an awkward way that had her descending into a tear-streaming coughing fit.

‘We’re not visiting,’ he said after she stopped dying. They were approaching the part of the freeway where the lights were spaced closer together, a concrete fairyland at the end of the dark woods. Max had no idea how Grey planned to get them into the jail, unless they committed a quick crime. She also had no idea how she could ever bring up Sophie again without him ejecting her from her seat into the middle of Forest Highway. But both puzzles melted in her mind as they sailed under the lights and she realised something.

This was the longest she’d been in a car since she was sixteen. The bus ride to Bindi Bindi had almost broken her, but she’d got through that by focusing on her research and the thrill of finally being free. Also, the bus hadn’t had the same claustrophobic feel as a car.

The realisation was enough to set her off though. The leather’s perfume was soaking her nose. The whirring sound of the engine and the sickeningly smooth glide of the wheels over bitumen twisted inside her like a building tornado. Her skin was clammy, but given the outside temperatures and Grey’s thick jacket, she knew it would be ridiculous to ask to turn the air conditioner on. She shifted, trying to imagine she was somewhere else. But the places her mind conjured up – the cellar, the prison, Jackie’s house, the blank spaces between each word on the note Vittoria had shown her – were not helping.

Max felt Grey’s eyes on her a few times, but she must have looked completely normal (well, as normal as she could look to him) because he said nothing. Had he noticed the hitch in her breath when they stopped suddenly because of the city gridlock? Or when a truck roared past, did he feel her body tense, bracing for it to hit?

Of course not. He wasn’t paying her that much attention.

The prison was the last place Max had imagined she’d end up tonight when she left yesterday morning. Now, in the early evening, it was a dark slab of chocolate against the flat fields, tiny squares of dull light puncturing the concrete edges like little nuts. Max hated chocolate with stuff inside it.

Nella had lent her another jacket, a plum corduroy that was a step up from the pink one, but her freak-out realisation about Sophie in the car had her skin still bubbling in prickly sweat. She draped the jacket over her arm as she led Grey to the security block.

‘Aren’t you cold?’ he hissed, his gaze on her bare shoulders. She’d tossed the smoky, blood-stained singlet into his washing basket (an act that had felt oddly intimate and equally rebellious) and had replaced it with Nella’s second-least revealing clothing item, which was a black silk high-necked evening top. Her shoulders, all the way down to the rose tattoo on the middle of her back, were exposed, but at least her front was covered this time. When the evening air scraped away the layer of sweat, she’d look almost professional from the top up, with the jacket covering her back.

It was a shame about Nella’s heeled leather boots and apple-red miniskirt swathing her thighs like Glad Wrap. Oh well, beggars and choosers and all that.

‘We’re walking into the fires of hell, Greyson. I’ve never been warmer.’ She hoped he didn’t pick up on the wobble in her voice. Everything was making her off-balance, the car, the prison, Nella’s shoes. The breath of the man behind her on her neck as they waited for their security clearance.

‘Did Skinner ever visit her here?’ Grey asked as they waited for someone to escort them in.

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