Black Widow Read Free Page A

one of the palms.
    ‘Layla!’ she yelled again, but there was only silence.
    Maybe this was a nightmare. Please God let it be a nightmare. At any moment Layla would come and jump on the bed and she would wake up and Max would groan beside her and roll over and go back to sleep.
    ‘Layla!’
    Nothing. No answer. No sound.
    Annie stumbled back outside to the terrace and stepped on something soft. There was a tiny crunch of bones. She looked down. A dead sparrow. Not a mark on it, but it was dead. The blast , she thought. The Shockwaves had killed it. There had been an explosion. Or had it been merely stunned? Had she just killed the poor damned thing with her weight? Nausea rose again. Her eyes went to the pool house and found nothing there but smouldering wreckage.
    Her eyes drifted on.
    ‘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