Page 14 of Last Shot

This was worse. He hung up on Terry and typed the letters into his phone.

The first photograph was a mugshot. His vision blurred.

Max Conrad hadn’t heard about this supposed murder plot in the family meeting room as she ‘visited’ the prison as a cop. She’d been an inmate. She’d probably laughed about it with Libby Johnston over a pack of cigarettes she’d won for shiving someone in the shower.

He assessed his options.

One: leave the meeting and go and get the fugitive he’d let run loose in his cottage. Throw her off the premises and organise a restraining order. Take the chance she’d been lying about the Kaine Skinner/La Marca murder plot.

Two: assume that Max Conrad, being an ex-cop, wouldn’t be stupid enough to run away from prison and had probably been released on parole. Keep his job by attending the meeting and checking covertly on his NannyCam to make sure she wasn’t trying to pawn his belongings or burn his house down. Then, because he’d lost all confidence in his own instincts, waste his morning pretending to hear her out.

But giving her any more oxygen to purport this ridiculous murder story would be signing his own resignation letter (see also: coronial inquest report). The last time Grey had been wrong had almost cost him his job – and Giovanni’s trust. And a beautiful, cunning woman had been at the centre of that mistake too.

He couldn’t risk ignoring this. Even though chances were he’d become a viral meme for the Barbarani security guards and Jett for eternity – a punch line for them to pass down through generations of their own families.

‘Someone’s dead.’

Nella’s voice shouldn’t have surprised him. He was always aware of his surroundings, always anticipating the next move. But this morning he felt like he was swimming blindfolded through a current of thick, black maple syrup.

The eldest Barbarani sibling stood at the top of the white marble staircase Grey had somehow made his way to while arguing with himself.

‘What!?’ He bounded up the stairs, heart in throat, hand on gun.

Nella made a face like he’d forgotten to put on pants. ‘Calm down, Liam Neeson. I meantyou– you’re dead. Did you forget who you work for?’

‘You can’t just say stuff like that. It’s my job to take that shit seriously.’

Do you and I have different definitions of the word‘murder’?

Focus. Giovanni. Meeting.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ Nella demanded as they took the stairs two at a time, her red-soled Louis Vuittons clicking in time with his leather dress shoes, which he’d never quite got used to. Giovanni had a strict dress code for his employees – guns and designer Italian footwear were non-negotiable.

‘Didn’t sleep well.’

‘Sex usually helps with that.’

‘Actually, I think you’ll find sex is best if you’re awake.’

Nella shot him a familiar look. He knew where this was going, and if he quickened his pace, he could probably reach the meeting room before it did.

It was rich for the Barbaranis to chastise him about his personal life, seeing as he’d spent his night off trying to save Luca from a mauling at the hands of Western Australia’s most rabid bachelorettes. Maybe hewouldhave gone into town. Had a pint. Or a gin. They did nice gin down at that place on the estuary – isn’t that what Nella had said? Maybe he would have met a girl. Someone on holiday, or a wine tour. Not a local. All the locals knew him. And for some inexplicable reason they thought he was out of bounds. Property of the Barbaranis.

The inexplicable reason was actually explicable. When they were about seven years old, Antonella Barbarani had declared that she had absolutely no interest in Grey romantically, however, no one else was entitled to him. He was off limits. Trespassers would be prosecuted. Literally – Nella was now a lawyer. And that pimp-like over-protectiveness had been cute at seven, but now, almost twenty-five years later, it was getting a bit tired.

But out-of-town women were oblivious to Nella’s wrath. If they were from Perth, they were probably aware of the Barbaranis, the same way people are aware of tiger snakes when they go bush walking. The Italian dynasty Grey had served since he was a boy was a tourist attraction, just like the chocolate factory and the caves down here. For Grey, they had always been his work, just like they’d been his father’s work. They were the only ones who’d take in a soldier who’d been dishonourably discharged. And for that, he supposed, he owed them his life.

And he wouldn’t have gone into town. He would have gone to the gym.

‘You’ve got a frangipani in your hair.’ She wacked the side of his head and, true enough, a white, waxy flower fell onto his arm, then down the balustrade. It landed at the bottom of the floor-to-ceiling wine cabinet that stretched across the entire ballroom – wine stacked like relics behind museum glass, or coffins in a mausoleum.

‘Wind must have blown it.’

‘Greyson.’

‘Antonella.’

They passed the stern, glaring portrait of Emilio Barbarani, Nella’s grandfather, the creator of the famous sangue and catalyst for the permanent headache beneath Grey’s skull. Emilio’s frown deepened impossibly as Grey passed. He couldn’t really understand Italian, except the swearwords, but he knew the bronze inscription under Emilio’s face read:The secret is in the wine.

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