Ruthless - [43]

He thought of Rory then, mouldering in an early grave, and shuddered.

Still undecided, he sat in the car, weighing his options.

She’d be angry if he stormed in there, went looking for her.

No, he couldn’t do that. He’d…

And that’s when he saw Annie Carter, alive and well, exit the house, stride down the steps and across to a black Mercedes. She got in and drove away.

He was so taken aback that for a moment he was unable to think. Then he gunned the engine, and followed.

Layla remained sitting at the breakfast table, too numb to move, as her mother left the room and closed the door. She heard Annie’s rapid footsteps going off across the hall.

The house settled around her, silent, waiting. Rosa was downstairs but that wasn’t much comfort. Annie had questioned the old housekeeper before breakfast, and Rosa had sworn she’d set the alarm last night, same as she always did. A swift examination by Bri, the man now on the door, of the outside of the house revealed that the wires to the alarm had been cut and the lock on the basement window forced. Orla had climbed in through there, made her way to the ground floor and up the stairs.

Feeling like a prisoner in her own home, Layla went into the study and sat down at the desk, chewing her lip nervously. Shivers of dread and horror still coursed through her body every time her mind went back to last night, to what had happened.

Someone had come to kill her mother.

She couldn’t absorb it, no matter how she tried. Worse still, she had killed the woman, never intending to – of course not. Nonetheless, she had shot the woman dead.

But she was carrying a knife. A knife she’d intended using on Annie Carter.

Annie Carter… Her mother hadn’t reverted to her maiden name after the divorce. She’d claimed that Bailey didn’t suit her, she hated the name, it conjured up bad memories. So she’d remained Annie Carter.

Maybe she still loves him a little? wondered Layla.

She shrugged the thought aside. No. When her parents had been together, there’d been nothing but ferocious rows and ugly scenes.

Sitting in her mother’s study, she wondered where Annie had gone, what she was doing that was so urgent. Feeling sick to her stomach and cripplingly anxious, she picked up the phone, called the office. As she’d anticipated, it wasn’t well received. The work ethic at Bowdler and Etchingham was set in stone: illness was unacceptable.

She put the phone down and listened to the silence in the house. What had once seemed to her a comfortable home had changed overnight. The whole place now felt creepy, unsafe. Layla stared at the phone, trying to make her mind up. Finally she picked it up and made another call. This one was international.

39

Max Carter was lying in the hot sun on the terrace, wearing black Speedos and nothing else. He loved basking in the sun. It refuelled him, made him stronger. At teatime he would take a shower and dress for dinner, until then this was his time and he was all alone, blissfully alone at the villa with the sun warming his skin and no sound but the lap of the waves on the narrow crescent of white sandy beach.

He let his mind meander into freefall. He had a good life out here in Barbados. His villa was one of a select few situated on the west coast up near Prospect, away from the encroaching luxury hotel complexes, shaded by manchineel trees and palms. He passed his time easily, developing the odd property or two around the islands, doing a few deals, swimming off Prospect beach and target-shooting in his garden among the mango and breadfruit trees to keep his eye in.

He was living the Bajan dream of hot sands and turquoise-blue seas. And there were other diversions too, very pleasant diversions – like the women who sometimes shared his bed, but never his life. Nevertheless there were times – though he would never admit this to a living soul – when he woke up and she was there in his mind, even after all these years. That annoyed the hell out of him. Sex with other women shifted her image, but somehow it always returned. He’d even find himself reaching for her in the night before it hit him that she wasn’t there, that they were divorced, that she was involved with another man and living half a world away.

The fact that she was so far away was a good thing, he knew. Their fights, his suspicion of her, her defiance – they had caused each other nothing but pain. Jealousy had made him vicious, verbally attacking her: she had retreated into coldness, had become as responsive as a block of stone.

No, they were better apart.

This was the life…

The peace was shattered by the ringing of the phone.

He got to his feet, his movements lithe and easy. With his deep tan and his muscular, compact body, his predatory hook of a nose set under black brows, his dark curling hair, he didn’t look English. ‘My little Italian’, his mother Queenie had always called him, though he was English to the core. Even his eyes were dark – a dense yet piercing navy blue.

He went into the shade of the villa, snatched up the phone in the hall.