Page 116 of Last Shot

‘You want to know what’s going through my mind?’ Frankie smiled at Max like she’d been asked the question on a current affairs show and was repeating it back to check she’d got it right.

‘I do,’ Max said, raising her hands so Frankie didn’t get spooked that she was going to go for a weapon. She’d left the dart gun at the entrance to the secret passageway.Keep your hands where they can see them.‘I’m a little bit confused at the moment.’

‘Right?’ Frankie said. ‘But what’s going through my mind isit fucking worked. It’s finally happening. It was all worth it.’ She glanced at Max conspiratorially, still smiling.

Max swallowed and did her best to return the smile.

Keep them talking.That’s all she remembered.Don’t rely on logic. Lean into emotion.

Max nodded. ‘It’s certainly happening. You fooled me, you fooled Greyson, you fooled your family. How long have you been planning this?’ Whatever the fuckthisis.

Tomaso made a strangled noise from the bed in protest at Max’s question. Raphael shoved a gun nozzle above his ear. Tom fell silent.

‘I recognised your friend from the video,’ Max continued. ‘That dart was meant for you, wasn’t it? But your mum took it instead? Was that meant to take the suspicion off you?’

Frankie’s eyes widened a little. Surprise? ‘It was filled with a combo of midazolam, detomidine and butorphanol. It’s used by wildlife vets like Quinton for tranquilising animals.’ She was still pointing the gun at Grey, who would not look at Max. Was heangryshe was here? Had the watch been left by accident – fallen off his wrist as Frankie led them through the door to what they thought would be safety? Or did he think Max was going to fuck this up, like she’d fucked up with Evan and Jackie?

‘Not enough to hurt a human but enough to knock ’em out for a good fifteen minutes or so,’ Quinton added.

Max hoped that’s what the guards had been given too.

Nella tried to scream through her gag. Max remembered her wild eyes, her blue nails, stabbing at Quinton’s chest.

‘I was meant to take the hit. Quinton was gonna carry me out and meet in here, but Mum screwed that part up.’

By sacrificing herself for you.

Max tried to focus on the words coming out of Quinton and Frankie while looking at both doors. She was Alice in fucking Horrorland. Did she choose the door she’d come from – the known poison? Or the mystery one? ‘Was that what you gave to Arnold too?’

Frankie’s eyes flickered to Nella. ‘He killed a bird,’ Frankie said. ‘I saw the feathers on his face in the hot spring. And it’s not the first time he’s done it! Cats are not native here. I warned Nella about him. I injected him with a horse tranquiliser so Quinton would know exactly what antidote to give him.’

‘Which was what Nella was confronting you about tonight,’ Max said, turning to Quinton, keeping Frankie in her periphery. ‘She called the real Bindi Bindi vet and asked her about the drug you gave Arnold. Eliza would have known it was an antidote to horse tranquiliser. A pretty good guess on your part, unless you already knew exactly what Arnold had been given.’

Nella was nodding vigorously, her screams strangled in her throat as she bucked against her binds.

Frankie chewed the inside of her cheek. ‘I needed Quinton here tonight, without anyone asking questions. I knew Nella or someone would insist he came to the gala if he saved Arnold. I didn’tlikehurting Arnold, just like I didn’t like cutting the brakes in Tom’s car, but I don’t expect any of you to believe that, because you never do, you never believe me! You never even hear me, do you? When I was eleven and stuck in that cellar, you didn’t hear me then, and you don’t hear me when I’m telling you your planes and your cars and your clothes are killing the fucking planet! You. Just. Won’t. Listen!’

‘The car,’ Grey croaked. ‘That wasyou?’

‘Billionaires account for a million times more greenhouse gases than the average person,’ Max repeated Frankie’s words back to her. ‘This has got something to do with your environmentalist group, Earth’s True Redeemers, right?’

Frankie drew herself up taller. ‘The car was a mistake, I realise that now. Esme and the others showed me that’s not what ETR’s about. They don’t commitmurder.’

‘Esme?’ Max felt like a glass slipping out of someone’s soapy hand, that moment just before it smashes on the floor.

‘She founded ETR,’ Frankie said. ‘She’s in prison at the moment.’

‘I know,’ Max said.

Edie R. ETR.

Libby Johnston was not brought up in a world where it mattered how sharply you pronounced your ‘t’s like the Barbaranis were. Libby was from Max’s world, and Max should have realised Libby hadn’t been talking to her visitor about someone namedEdie– they’d been referencing Frankie’s environmentalist organisation. The organisation apparently run by Libby and Max’s shared cellmate, Esme.

Frankie’s tattoo – the earth with the dagger, the connection that Max had been trying to make this whole time every time she saw Frankie’s arm ... She’d had that feeling that there was something she should know, something she’d missed. It was the same tattoo Esme had – the one Max’s face had been shoved into in the TV room as they fought against the other women who wanted Libby dead for ruining the finale.

Max looked at Grey, who nodded, his jaw set, eyes hollow. ‘I had someone look into all of Libby’s prison contacts. Esme led the protest that killed three people at the Australind abattoir.’

Max had known Esme’s burns were from a fire, and that the fire she’d set had killed people, but she’d followed Libby’s advice of never asking why, because she was too blind, too fucking trusting of an older woman who saw Max as nothing but a motherless mark. The protest Esme was locked away for had to be the one Frankie had told Max she hadn’t gone to because she’d been waiting for Nella to bail her out for the earlier rally.

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