Black Widow

‘Max?’

Her eyes locked on to the body in the pool. A man’s body, the skin brown from hours spent in the sun, face-down, floating on the surface. Dark hair on the arms, dark hair on the head—and blood billowing all around it like a crimson halo.

Annie felt the breath leave her body in one horrified, disbelieving rush.

‘Max!’ she screamed, and dived straight into the pool.

Afterwards, Annie couldn’t even remember swimming across the pool. One moment she was on the side looking at Max’s lifeless body, then she was there beside him.

‘Max!’

The nightmare was relentless. She rolled him over and he was weightless, lifeless in the water. Max, oh God Max no please don’t be dead, please Max…

It was Jonjo.

The breath left Annie in a whoosh and she sank and came up spluttering and choking on chlorine and Jonjo’s blood. Jonjo’s pale blue eyes were wide open, staring blankly at the sky, and between them was an impossibly neat hole, leaking a steady flow of red into the blue water. She flinched away from the body in horror. Glanced at Jeanette, who had seen that it was Jonjo too and was now starting to shriek again.

Where was Max?

Annie felt panic grip her, robbing her of reason. Jonjo was dead. The explosion. Layla, where was Layla? And Max. Where the fuck was Max?

Something deadly serious had happened here. A deliberate hit. Max and Jonjo Carter had influential friends but they had bad enemies too. People whose toes they had trod on over turf in London. People who might want to take revenge. Maybe she and Max had been out here lotus-eating for so long that they had dropped their guard. She had to do something. Fuck, she wished Jeanette would shut up.

She looked all around the perimeter of the finca and stared up at the rock face looming behind the building. Max could have taken cover up there, if this was a hit. And if this was a hit, they—whoever ‘they’ might be—could be up there right now, watching, maybe taking aim.

Annie swam swiftly to the side of the pool and hauled herself out. She grabbed Jeanette and yanked her to a standing position.

‘Just shut up,’ she ordered, and shook the blonde again, hard. ‘Shut up. Come inside, come on, you silly cow.’

Annie grabbed Jeanette’s arm and hauled her indoors. She slammed the door shut and locked it. She went to the back door and quickly locked that too, while Jeanette stood nearly nude, shivering and crying in the hallway. Annie closed all the windows and shutters. Then she bundled Jeanette into the master bedroom, locked the door behind them and shoved her in the direction of the wardrobe.

‘Put some clothes on,’ said Annie. ‘Move, Jeanette. Come on.’

Jeanette was still weeping and wailing. She was just standing there looking at the clothes.

Annie ran over to her. Her heart was pounding, her head was spinning, she wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t going to be sick again. She wanted to scream too. Layla. Max. Where the fuck were they?

‘What did you see out there, Jeanette?’ she demanded urgently.

Jeanette just stared at her. Shock, thought Annie. She’s in shock.

‘Come on. Talk,’ she said more gently. If she was ever to get any sense out of the poor bitch, she’d better ease up.

‘Men, there were men,’ cried Jeanette.

‘Go on.’ Annie felt herself grow still as she braced herself as if for a fatal impact.

She wanted to hear, but she didn’t. Dreaded the details, but she had to know. Christ, she was shivering too now. She wanted to roar and scream at Jeanette, demand every detail; she wanted to know. But know what? How terrible would it be, to know what had taken place out there on the terrace? How terrible, to know what had happened to the man she loved so much, to the daughter who was a living, breathing part of her and of him?

‘Maybe four of them—I don’t know.’ A sob burst from Jeanette. Snot and tears ran down her face in rivers. ‘It all happened so fast; it was so confusing. They had masks on. They dragged Jonjo off the bed and shot him and threw him in the pool. They put a cloth over your face. I thought they were going to kill me.’

‘Max?’ asked Annie, thinking: I’ll never survive this, I couldn’t live if he was dead…

‘They grabbed him.’

‘And?’

‘They grabbed Layla too.’

Layla.

Annie turned away from Jeanette. Moving like a zombie, she went to the left-hand side of the bed, the side that Max always slept on, and opened the drawer in the bedside cabinet. The first thing she saw was Max’s ring. He always took it off when he was in the pool. It was bright yellow gold, with engraved Egyptian cartouches on either side of a square slab of lapis lazuli. She took it out, turned it over. Her eyes suddenly filled with tears.

Max.

She took a breath, blinked, got focused again. She slipped the ring on to her thumb, for comfort, for reassurance; then got back to business. There was a small bunch of keys, and she pocketed them. She pulled out a cloth-wrapped parcel with shaking hands and removed an oilcloth-covered item from within it. Pulled off the oilcloth and sat down hard on the bed as her head spun suddenly and the room tilted and darkened.

Got to get a hold, she thought. Got to keep thinking.

But Max. Layla. Someone had them. Fuck it all, someone had killed Jonjo.

Come on, Annie. Get a grip. You’re still fucking alive. They left you alive.

Annie came back to herself, taking deep breaths. The room steadied. Why had they left her alive? They’d drugged her, left her to find this horror. They’d left Jeanette too, apparently untouched, unmolested. Shit, if they were willing to snatch Max and Layla, if they were willing to plant a bullet hole in poor bloody Jonjo’s head, why hadn’t they finished the job? Why hadn’t they killed her and Jeanette too?

Annie tipped the gun out on to the bed and snatched it up. Christ, she was shaking so hard. She flicked open the chamber, as she had seen Max do. He practised shooting at a target back in the woods sometimes, and he was a crack shot, a brilliant shot, but she was nervous of guns. She’d taken a bullet herself, and that was enough to make anyone wary.

She took out the box of bullets and removed the lid. Started loading the cold, slippery things into the chambers. Tried to, anyway. Her hands were shaking so much she could hardly get the bullets in there. She breathed deep again, steadied herself. Got the bullets in and snapped the chamber closed. Slipped her finger in beside the trigger.

‘It’s a hair trigger,’ she remembered Max saying when he had shown her the gun once. ‘You’ve got to be careful. One squeeze and you’ve blown someone away. Put the safety catch on once it’s loaded.’

Annie had shuddered. She still had the scar from the bullet she’d taken; she didn’t want to go shooting anyone. She had seen what guns could do, first-hand.

But they could still be here, hiding, waiting. And they had taken Layla. They had taken Max.

Annie clicked on the safety and went over to the wardrobe. Jeanette was still standing there like a spare prick at a wedding. She stared wide-eyed at the gun in Annie’s hand.

‘We’ve got to protect ourselves,’ said Annie. ‘Now come on. Let’s get dressed.’

She pulled out tops and jeans for them both and shoved the clothes at Jeanette. ‘Put these on.’

Jeanette stood there, clutching the clothes to her and still not moving.

Nearly demented, Annie hissed through gritted teeth: ‘Move, you stupid cow.’

Annie’s tone would have galvanized a regiment. Jeanette started to put on the clothes. Annie did the same, yanking on jeans and a blue top. Then the phone started to ring in the hall.

It would be Inez, apologising for being late with the lunch, telling her that she was coming now, Señora, she would be five minutes, only five…which meant another half an hour. Inez, with no idea that hell had been set loose. Thinking no doubt that the bang of the pool house being blown up was somebody back in the woods, hunting with a shotgun. If she had heard it at all. Inez was a little deaf, and Rufio liked a drink or two; they weren’t the brightest kids on the block and that was a fact.