Page 70 of Last Shot

‘You’re not getting a ride on your own out here.’

‘Scared I’ll murder the driver?’ She watched him carefully. He was her entire world right now. There were no stars, no sky, no prison car park. Just Grey.

He swallowed. ‘I’m not letting you out of my sight. You’re staying with me. All night.’

23

Grey

If hotel front desks had silent panic buttons like they did at petrol stations, Grey was certain the receptionist had pressed it a while ago. If he ordered room service, she was going to spit and piss in his coffee, after she’d filtered it through arsenic.

‘One bedroom,’ he said again, exasperation clinging to every word. ‘Two beds.’ His composure was one of the things about himself he regarded highly. As was his ability to act under pressure, to keep his cool, to always know what to do. It was as though all of those pieces of him had been scrambled when he’d flattened into Max Conrad in the garden. Some kind of knock to the brain.

‘I’m sorry, sir.’ She sounded like a surgeon about to call time of death. ‘The luxury suite is all we have left at this time of night. Normally we don’t allow check-ins after—’

‘Yes Iknow, you don’t allow check-ins after nine p.m. Your colleague was quite clear about that, as was the one who served us after he ran off crying. Do you want me to remind you who I work for and who is funding this expense?’

‘Please extend my sincere apologies to Mr Barbarani. But aside from turning other guests out of their beds or sawing the deluxe queen bed in half, I am afraid you are out of options.’

‘We’ll take the saw, thank you.’ Grey set his work credit card down on the mahogany desk.

Max swiped the keys from the worker. ‘Thank you for your hospitality,’ she said, then stalked off towards the elevator, the room key hooked around her thumb.

‘I’ll sleep on the floor.’ It was the first thing she’d said to him since their conversation in the prison car park. ‘This carpet’s gotta be comfier than the prison mattress. It’ll be a real treat.’

‘This is bullshit.’ Grey tossed his jacket on the chair and looked out the enormous black windows to the city lights glittering like sunken jewels along the river.

Neither of them put anything on the bed.

‘I told you. I’ll get my own room and you can strap an ankle monitor onto me.’

‘You’ll gnaw it off.’ He clamped his jaw.Stop rising to the bait.

‘Greyson.’

He wouldn’t respond, not this time. Carefully, he unzipped his duffel bag and drew out the coroner’s report, placing the print-out delicately on the coffee table. He couldn’t read a single word.

‘Greyson.’

‘Take the bed. I’ll be up late reading these, so I probably won’t even go to sleep.’

He could feel her behind him as he sat in the chair. He read the first sentence of the report six times, none of it going in.

‘I’ll stand here all night if I have to. Can you just let me explain?’

‘Why?’ He turned to look at her. Probably quicker than she’d been expecting, because she flinched, and he felt like an arsehole. ‘Why do you want to explain? What does it matter what I think?’ He hadn’t been sure what words would come out of this pit of seething magma inside him. Not those, though.

‘Because ...’

Interesting – she was surprised too. But if there was one thing Grey could trust about Maxella Conrad, it was that she would always have an answer to everything.

‘Because we still have the same goal.’

‘I don’t want Kaine Skinner dead.’

‘But you want the Barbaranis alive.’

‘Which is a very different thing.’ He tried to throw the report down but as it was only three stapled pages, it fluttered to the floor in a very undramatic manner.

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