Page 134 of Last Shot

Grey’s eyes gleamed. ‘If Forrest realised what his brother had done ... and tracked down Esme ...’

‘Esme’s the connection between Forrest and Libby.’

‘Take us to Esme Gold,’ Grey demanded. ‘Now.’

‘I can’t.’ Alexandra’s face was the colour of chalk. ‘They relocated her two days ago. Maximum security. Even you can’t get in there, Hawke.’

The black and white ghosts on the screen were the only life in that room as Alexandra’s words thumped against the concrete like dead birds.

‘It won’t matter,’ Max said quietly. ‘Forrest had his own motivations.’ She thought of the way Luca had looked at Ariana La Marca all night, Sophie’s article about the black eye he’d given Forrest at the party. But she’d never be able to prove it.

Just like Evan, Forrest was a monster who’d escaped. Max was left in the wake of their screeching tyres, counting dead women.

‘You need to get out of here,’ Alexandra urged, directing them back down the corridor. ‘I don’t have a good enough explanation for why two civilians are here when we’ve had an inmate potentially murdered by a visitor right under our noses.’

Civilian. The word didn’t hurt as it once had. Cop. Criminal. Civilian. Maybe she didn’t have to fit into one box.

‘There won’t be any more,’ Grey told her quietly, as she scanned them out of the door. ‘He’s silenced the only people who could put him in a place like this.’

Something clanged down the corridor. Alexandra whipped her head around. ‘Go!’

Grey took Max’s hand and they pelted down the corridor as Alexandra slammed the door behind them. The sound of a full stop. A chapter ending. But Max had no idea how to turn the page, or where to run from here.

Had Libby convinced Forrest to play his part by promising it would eradicate Luca Barbarani from the world?

‘I know she lied,’ Max said, as she and Grey were assaulted by the caustic morning sunlight, ‘but she didn’t deserve ... She was just trying to survive, grieve her son ... She might have—’ She broke, the image of Libby slumping forward on the prison’s grainy CCTV footage replaying on an endless loop in her mind.

She might have helped us. She might have repented.Libby had never liked Esme; she was probably just using her and ETR because the easiest way to get to the Barbaranis was through one of their own. Max had never been able to hate a bee for stinging her. It was just protecting itself, its hive – it was instinct. And the same way, she couldn’t hate Libby Johnston, and she couldn’t hate Jackie, not completely.

But she could hate the men who’d tried to destroy them.

Something blazed inside her – a flare started from a flint against a silver knife. A knife picked up from a kitchen bench. Or a knife that never existed at all. A memory so hazy she’d never be sure.

But the dishwasher had been on. And Jackie never left the kitchen in a mess. It had been the only thing they’d ever fought about, until Evan. When they lived together, Max existed in comfortable chaos, while Jackie was Marie Kondo. A knife would never have been left out on a kitchen bench in a house that Jackie owned when a dishwasher was on.

But maybe Evan had threatened her with one earlier that he’d pulled from the drawer – before he threw her through the coffee table. Maybe Jackie had grabbed it herself, maybe she’d started the fight. But maybe, in her shaking, hallucinogenic state, Max had grabbed a clean knife from the drawer while Evan lay bleeding by her feet and put it on the bench before her colleagues arrived.

For the first time, as she stared up at the prison gate, the sun burning through her eyelids, Libby’s lifeless body burning through her soul, Max let herself believe the version of events where the knife had never existed. Where she’d tried to kill an unarmed man before he killed her friend.

She let herself be that person, who she might be but would never know for sure. She had to be okay with that.

That was what helped her breathing steady. That and the warm, solid body surrounding her, at her lowest, her worst, seeing all of her and not flinching.

‘I know,’ Grey murmured, as she collapsed into him, tears and hair and teeth. He held her while she quaked, her tectonic pieces converging and transforming, trying to adjust to this reality. But this time she didn’t have to do it on her own.

‘We’ll get him,’ Grey promised. ‘We’ll get him the right way. Nella will help us prove it, we just need to bide our time. I’ll keep you updated, every step of the way. I’ll drive down to Perth, I’ll ...’ He stopped as she pulled back, her blurred, tear-drenched vision able to make out those two forest brown eyes – her headlights in the darkness of this moment.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I ...’ He fumbled, a characteristic never once in history associated with Greyson Hawke. He raked a hand through his hair, suddenly unable to look her in the eye. ‘Sorry, I just assumed you’d want to be kept in the loop. But it’s probably ... You don’t want—I don’t have to ... I mean, you can just go back and ...’

‘Grey.’ She pushed her hair back. The pain was there, of course, but for the first time it felt contained, like she could touch it without scalding her hands. Because he was there too. ‘I’m staying.’

His head shot up. ‘Staying?’

She smiled at the incredulous look on his face.Ha, she couldn’t help thinking.I won. I made that look appear.‘In Bindi Bindi Cove. I texted Nella back in the car – I want the job. I thought maybe we could do it together.’

‘Private investigation?’

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