Page 115 of Last Shot

It took Grey a beat too long to realise the four people were Tom, Nella, Jett andKaine Skinnerand that their mouths and hands were bound. The door to the tunnel slammed shut behind him.

Ariana, who’d been at the front of the group between Frankie and Luca, lay motionless on the floor. How had they taken her out so quickly? Grey ran to her, his hands frantically searching for a wound.

The dawning realisation that this was a trap didn’t get a chance to rise inside him before a voice, the last voice on earth he would have expected, came from behind him.

‘If I’m being honest, that was a little too easy, Greyson. Step away from her, or I’ll shoot your little girlfriend. I can hear her outside the door.’

38

Max

‘How are you alive?’ Max grabbed Vittoria’s shoulders and basically assaulted the woman just to make sure she was actually there, actually breathing.

Vittoria pawed Max away, her breath hot and heavy with sangue. ‘There obviously wasn’t enough in that dart to kill me.’

Max didn’t miss the pride in Vittoria’s voice. ‘They weren’t aiming for you,’ she said, grabbing the woman’s thin upper arm. Even though she doubted those bumbling idiots out there would find the lever in a hurry, they were still bumbling idiots with guns and she wasn’t about to put all her faith in the structural integrity of Emilio Barbarani’s fifty-year-old walls.

They weren’t aiming for you.

The face of the hooded guy whose gun she’d stolen swelled in her mind. Max was now sure she knew where she’d seen him before: in one of the videos she’d watched on the drive from Perth to the Barbarani mansion. He’d covered himself in blood and stood inside a ribs and burgers restaurant in Perth, holding hands with Frankie Barbarani.

Frankie Barbarani, who had been the true target of his gun.

Frankie Barbarani, whose voice Max could hear right now through the thin gold lines of a closed door at the end of the tunnel she and Vittoria were stumbling down.

‘Step away from her, Greyson, or I’ll shoot your little girlfriend. I can hear her outside the door.’

Vittoria stiffened beside Max at the coldness in her daughter’s voice. Max’s mind spun like a too-fast treadmill she’d never match the speed of, never pull all the loose pieces rattling round in her mind together.

Vittoria did not want me to see the note because she knew I would recognise the handwriting.

‘It’s a trap,’ she started. Too late.

The door wedged open, and Max saw a slice of what lay beyond it for a nanosecond, before an enormous form squeezed the air out of her, dragging her into the room.

Bed. No window. Frankie. Gun. Grey.

From the kick of heels and Italian swear words beside her, the same thing was happening to Vittoria. Max heard the door slam again and this time, as her captor released her, Max was able to take in everything before her – like she was watching a tsunami from the beach with nowhere to run.

Skinner, on the bed, hands, feet and mouth bound. Stained white button-down shirt cut open to reveal a burned, twisted patch of skin the same size and shape as an old heart-shaped tattoo. Nella, Luca, Tom and Jett in the same position, writhing like snakes impaled on a stick.

‘Max, what the hell are you—’

‘Shut up.’ Frankie held the gun in two hands, pointing it in a firm line at Grey. Her arms didn’t shake despite the size of the thing. She was still in Max’s dress, the straps falling down her upper arms. Her face was hard but expressionless.

Had Max actually been hit by the gunmen at the top of the stairs? Was she still lying on the cold floor of the entrance hall, having the strangest nightmare?

‘Francesca,’ Vittoria started.

‘Stop talking.’ Frankie kept the gun on Grey but someone else, a guy with green hair under a black hoodie, trained his piece on Vittoria. Quinton. Max thought she’d seen a sliver of green under the attacker’s hood back in the dining room.

Kudos to her.

Including Frankie, three people had weapons – Quinton, who had been the one to bring Max into the room and the dark-haired guy who’d brought Vittoria, now standing over the bed. When he locked eyes with her, Max’s stomach dropped.

Raphael. So that bastard had been in on this whole thing from the start. A pool of blonde hair drew Max’s eyes to the ground. Ariana La Marca lay motionless on the floor by a second door, leading through the opposite wall. There was no visible blood, but Max couldn’t tell from this far away if the girl was breathing.

‘Frankie.’ Max had never been trained in hostage negotiation, but she’d watched the leader of a tactical response team do it with a boy who’d poured petrol on himself and his girlfriend at a Caltex station and was flicking a lighter on and off, trying to muster the courage to drop it onto himself. The tactics hadn’t worked. The guy had dropped the lighter and both had died in the ambulance. ‘What’s going through your mind?’

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