Black Widow. Jessie Keane

couldn’t leave Max. Couldn’t believe he was dead, and so couldn’t leave, couldn’t accept any of this. And Layla! Layla was here. She felt sick with fear. She might never see her again if she went back to England and left her here, in the hands of these animals. ‘No, wait!’

      ‘No?’ There was no laughter in his voice now. ‘You listen to me, you fucking jumped-up tart. You fly back there tomorrow morning and you don’t ask questions or tell me no because I don’t like that. You got it?’

      Annie took a steadying breath. ‘All right.’

      ‘Good. When I get off this phone, you get on it and book a flight out for you and the girl with you. No police, don’t even think about that, or your little girl goes right here and now, got that? No more messing about.’

      The line went dead.

      ‘What did he say?’ asked Jeanette.

      Annie took the gun back off her before she shot one or both of them by mistake.

      ‘We’re flying back to England tomorrow morning.’

      ‘We can’t! What about Layla?’

      ‘We have to,’ she told Jeanette. ‘They want money, and the money’s there.’

      But if it wasn’t, if she couldn’t raise whatever these people wanted, then what the fuck was she going to do? She told herself it had to be there. It had to be.

      ‘But tonight! We can’t stay here tonight!’

      ‘Yes we can. We’re going to barricade ourselves in here, and ship out in the morning, okay?’

      ‘No,’ said Jeanette, her voice wobbling all over the place. ‘No!’ She made a chopping motion with her hand and then lunged across and grabbed the phone. She started to dial with shaking fingers.

      ‘What are you doing?’

      ‘I’m calling the police,’ said Jeanette. ‘It’s what we should have done in the first place. We can’t cope with all this, we can’t—’

      Annie thought of the phone tinkling as she passed by it after the blast. She grabbed it off Jeanette and smashed it back on to the cradle. ‘No police,’ she said.

      Jeanette had finally flipped. She grabbed the phone again. Annie yanked it off her and Jeanette came at her ready for violence. Annie raised the gun and pointed it at Jeanette.

      ‘Back off,’ she said.

      ‘What the…what the fuck are you doing!’ yelled Jeanette.

      Annie stared at her. The hand on the gun did not waver.

      ‘I’m shooting you dead,’ said Annie, ‘if you touch that fucking phone again. You silly cow! There could be a tap on this line. The man said no police. If you went ahead and phoned them, they could kill Layla.’

      Jeanette stepped back, shaking her head.

      ‘I didn’t think…’ she faltered.

      ‘Well think on this, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm: if you go near this fucking phone again I swear to you that what little brains you have are going to be decorating this hallway—do you understand me?’

      ‘I understand,’ said Jeanette, going pale under her tan.

      ‘Now here’s what we’re going to do,’ said Annie.

      What they were going to do was this. Phone the airport and book the flights. Make another call, one that Annie thought she would never have to make, one that the kidnappers would find entirely acceptable, so no worries about the line tap there. Then they were going to check out the finca from top to bottom.

      They did all that, and by then it was nearly dark and the shadows were deepening, making them both jumpy.

      ‘What do we do now?’ asked Jeanette, her eyes going in all directions.

      Now Annie explained that they were going to barricade themselves into the bedroom with water and a bucket overnight.

      ‘I don’t want to stay here,’ moaned Jeanette, trailing along behind her like a pathetic baby bird waiting for its mother to feed it. They didn’t have any food. Annie knew this was an oversight. They should have picked some up when they were up at the little gatehouse. There was nothing in the kitchen here. But who the fuck could have thought about food at a time like that?

      ‘We have to stay here,’ said Annie flatly.

      ‘It’s horrible. With Jonjo dying out there in the pool, and the servants just up there rotting…’

      Servants. That was, strictly speaking, what Inez and Rufio had been. But they had also been good friends and helpers, cooks and chauffeurs, life-support almost. And now they were dead. Annie’s guts churned at the thought.

      ‘The dead ain’t going to hurt anyone,’ she said. ‘It’s the living you have to fear.’

      She went on, checking room to room, gun in hand.

      Jeanette followed her, thinking that Annie was fucking scary. The woman’s child had been snatched and her husband killed, and here she was, ice-cold, ready to shoot anyone who came near.

      I’d be in bits if this happened to me, thought Jeanette, not realising that Annie’s rigid control was all that stood between her and madness.

      Satisfied that the finca was clear and secured, Annie filled a large jug with water and grabbed two glass tumblers and a bucket and then ushered Jeanette into the main bedroom, the room she had always shared with Max.

       Max.

      Heart-wrenching grief gripped her, stifling her as she thought of him. Once more she shook thoughts of him aside, and with Jeanette’s help she levered the heavy wooden dresser over the bedroom door.

      ‘What we’re going to do is this,’ she told the girl, pulling down a suitcase from the top of the wardrobe. ‘We’re going to take turns sleeping. Two hours on, two hours off. One stands guard, one sleeps.’

      Jeanette nodded shakily. ‘Okay.’

      The windows were barred, the shutters closed, the only door into the room blocked off. Annie assessed the situation. For the moment, they were safe.

      Safe, thought Annie. Sure they were safe, unless someone was really determined to finally kill them. These people had blown up the pool house, why not blow up the bloody finca too? Her ears felt suddenly oversensitized, as if every tiny sound were a threat. She took first watch while Jeanette lay down on the bed, protesting that she would never be able to sleep. Within minutes, she was snoring gently.

      Annie sat up in a chair with the gun held ready across her lap. The old building creaked and groaned as it always did, the rafters shrinking and popping after the gentle warmth of the day. Was it that? Or was it someone coming to finish them off?

      She didn’t know.

      She had to hold herself in readiness, just in case. Their plane tickets were booked; Annie had packed a few bits into a suitcase. In the morning they would take Rufio’s battered old car and Jeanette would drive them to the airport.

      Until then all Annie had to do was wait and think. She knew she wouldn’t sleep, although she knew she had to try and rest, to keep strong so that she could cope with all this. So she would try not to think about what could be happening to Layla right now.

      She thought instead about Max. Annie Carter, who never weakened, never cried, sat there amid the wreckage of her life and let the grief take hold of her. She let the tears stream unchecked from her eyes, and silently swore that the death of the man she loved would be avenged.

       5

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