Page 8 of Last Shot

‘Sure, Max.Whatever. If you want to come over here’—he glanced down at the bed—‘then do. If not, you can leave. I don’t really care either way.’

She crossed her arms. ‘Really unclear how any woman can resist that.’

He tucked his hands behind his head, biceps bulging against the headboard. ‘You’d be surprised.’

I’m sure.

‘Look.’ Luca leant forward, broad shoulders hunched, pressing his thumb into his closed eyes. ‘The whole auction thing – not my jam. See, I hosted a small party, and—’

‘I don’t care about the auction!’ This wasn’t going to plan. ‘You’re in danger!’ Max said, moving closer.

At that, Luca’s hand recoiled and so did the rest of him; he flattened his body against the headboard like she’d lurched at him with a bloodstained axe.

‘Well, your father, more specifically, I think ...’ Shit. She’d lost her grip. He was looking at her like she was an eel flapping around on his floor. ‘There’s going to be a murder!’ she blurted out. ‘Tomorrow night, at the gala, someone’s going to die!’

It was at that exact moment that the bedroom door burst open and the Barbaranis’ Fixer charged straight at her.

4

Max

It was a good thing Max had devised an escape plan while Luca Barbarani slept off the alcohol poisoning. Only two simple steps needed to be in play: ensuring Luca’s balcony door was unlatched, and that the enormous trellis she’d seen covering the mansion wall from the limo reached as far as Luca’s bedroom.

The Fixer had clearly expected her to be skewered by shock like a marshmallow on a roasting stick but she’d bolted for the French-shuttered balcony door and flung herself over the railing before he’d finished his roaring battle cry.

Her arms shaking, she fought for purchase on the trellis lattice. The skin of her toes tore on the rough wall as she gave up the safety of the solid balcony rails for the flimsy wooden trellis planks and dark green (likely poisonous) vines.

Max’s stomach plummeted to the ground as that furious, chisel-led face leered over the balcony.

‘STOP!’

Now, in place of the Fixer’s brown eyes, Max was looking up at the barrel of a gun. She forced herself to move, but a scratchy vine had wrapped around her ankle.

Fuck. Would he really shoot her?

He cocked the gun.

Her right arm went instinctively to her waist, where her own holster used to be. She didn’t like the way his eyes tracked that movement. He lowered his gun. Somehow she knew that didn’t mean anything good.

‘Guess your aim’s full of shit too!’ she yelled, ripping her leg out of its tangle and spider-manning down the next storey.

The trellis trembled. Max’s stomach lurched as Grey, gun still in hand, climbed onto her escape plan. An escape plan that was meant to hold one medium-sized woman, not one medium-sized woman and a gigantic, less charismatic, short-haired Thor.

With a gun instead of a hammer.

‘Fuck.’ She did the one thing you weren’t supposed to in situations like this: she looked down.

The immaculately curated Barbarani garden bed wasn’t neck-breaking distance away, but it was definitely ankle snapping. Rib cracking. Her hands burned from gripping the narrow planks, her arms shaking from holding her weight. Another metre, then she could jump ...

The trellis groaned. Max’s hands caught fire.

SNAP!

Pink brick slashed against her skin. Twisted vines, broken boards. Ribs crushed against ground. No air.

She didn’t know how long she lay there – dead, most likely. Except she knew things, and surely you couldn’t know things if you were dead. The thing she knew was that there was something else entwined with her in the wreckage of the frangipani bushes.

And it was moving.

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