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  It’s a statement. Had it been a question I might’ve been inclined to enlighten her on how corrupt the world of business can be. But I won’t.

  “The company was his life, his prize possession, the only thing he’s ever treated with respect and cared for.”

  “So why would he sell it?”

  “Because I offered him an awful lot of money to buy it, Miss Martin, and the other key trait my father possessed was greed.”

  “This isn’t the first time you’ve been in a police station, Mr. Ryans, is it?” She catches me off guard and she knows it. A sadistic smile begins to turn on her lips as my jaw drops open and slowly closes again without making a sound.

  “To what are you referring, Miss Martin?”

  “Oh, there’s been more than one other time?”

  “Stop playing games, Trina,” Barnes cuts in. “Ask him a question with purpose or we’ll wrap this up.”

  She puffs and scowls at her senior. “You gave a statement once as a boy. In South Africa.”

  She’s trying to establish motive. It’s underhanded, it’s dirty but she’s played the game well.

  “That has nothing to do with this case.”

  “I beg to differ, Mr. Ryans. I think it has a lot to do with this case. You once gave a statement that your father—”

  “Enough!” I snap, standing and pushing my chair back. “I made a statement as a ten-year-old boy. I’m thirty years old, Miss Martin. I’ve lived a life since I was that little boy. I see what you’re doing. I see your game but that ten-year-old boy won’t give you a motive. The reason, the only reason, I shot a man tonight is because he would have killed me if I hadn’t. Am I sorry that a man died tonight? Of course I am. Will it haunt me every day for the rest of my life? Of course it will. But am I sorry that if someone had to die tonight it wasn’t me or, worse still, Jackson or Scarlett? No.”

  I rest back into my chair and soften my tone. Time to play the man. I gaze into her eyes until she shifts awkwardly in her seat and I wait until her pupils lock on mine. I lure her in. “I’m just a man, Katrina. I took a life to save my own. Don’t I deserve to live?”

  Her lips part with her breath as she slowly moves her head up and down.

  “I’m not the bad guy in this. I can promise you that. Kevin Pearson may have been my father but he was a sinful man. You’re about putting bad guys away, aren’t you?”

  She nods again. She’s putty.

  I sit back in my chair and give her space to compose herself, glancing at Barnes who winks very subtly from his left eye.

  “We’re done here,” he says, turning off the cassette recorder.

  I breathe a short sigh of relief.

  Trina is quick to make her excuses and exit, no doubt annoyed by her inability to control her pheromones.

  “You know Jackson?” I ask Barnes.

  “We served together in the military and briefly in the police before he went private. I know what I need to know.” He crosses one heel over his opposite thigh, revealing horrific yellow socks.

  “How’s it looking?”

  He shrugs and rolls another cheap pen between his fingers. “I can work with self-defence. Jackson’s statement matches yours. But the gun is more difficult. It’s a bad time politically for gun crime. The Crown Prosecution Service are going to want possession as a minimum, even if they accept self-defence.”

  “What can I do?”

  “It could cost you.”

  I sit up straighter now. “If there’s one thing I’ve got, it’s money, Barnes.”

  He nods. “Jackson said as much. He also said you’re a good guy.”

  “How is he?”

  Barnes shakes his head on a short laugh. “He’s made of stone, that man. Muscle damage only. He was lucky. Had them stitch him up with a shot of the good stuff, no anaesthetic, then he discharged himself. Should be back on his feet soon enough.”

  “Sounds like Jackson. And Scarlett, how’s she?”

  “We haven’t spoken to her yet.”

  “Where is she? Can I see her?”

  He shakes his head. “We won’t be long. She’s up next.”

  The foreign sensation of pressure begins to build behind my eyes again. I need to sleep.

  “Can I trust you, Barnes?”

  “Jackson does.”

  “I’ll take that as a ringing endorsement.”

  “Do so. He’s a good judge of character.”

  “I hope so.”

  “You and me both, kid.”

  Chapter Two

  I’m going to hell. The funny thing is, I’ve never given much thought to whether I believe in God, the Bible, Heaven and Hell but I suspect I’ve broken the rules to pass the shiny gate and walk barefoot on the carpet of white cloud. The scary thing is, I don’t care why I’m going, I’m only terrified that when I get there, my father and Gregory might not be waiting.

  “Miss Heath!”

  Katrina Martin slams a hand on the cold metal table between us, dragging me from my trance.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper, allowing myself a brief glance upward before settling my eyes on the invisible movie playing out on the surface of the table.

  “You were saying?” Her annoyance is obvious.

  I don’t know what I was saying. I was thinking about my soul, burning alone, but I don’t think I said that aloud.

  “Miss Heath!” she snaps again.

  D.I. Barnes sighs heavily. “Alright, Trina, calm down. She’s had a shock and it’s the middle of the night.”

  His soft tone causes me to search his face. For some unfathomable reason, he’s being nice to me. He turns up his lips ever so slightly, comforting me as much as I can or care to be comforted.

  “Scarlett, you said you were at the party.”

  “We were dancing.” I explain the next half an hour of the party in seconds as I watch the scene replay in my mind. Gregory’s strong hand on my back pulling me into his firm chest as he moved us around the dance floor, his brown eyes never leaving mine, desire firing between us. “We didn’t want to stay for the fireworks.”

  “And Mr. Jackson drove you?”

  I’d wanted to get in the Bentley and drive to where Gregory could consume me with sheer pleasure. I’d wanted to be held by him and never let go. But the feeling disappeared as soon as we slipped into the back seat of the car. An unsettling eeriness had chilled my bones. Gregory pulled me into him to warm me but I could still feel it, like a presence, something unnerving.

  “Yes. He drove us to the Shard, to Gregory’s apartment. I’ve been staying there.”

  I stop myself before I tell them why I’ve been staying with Gregory. I promised I would tell them what he told me to say and that’s all. I don’t have a lawyer. We agreed not to have lawyers at first because we have nothing to hide. That’s the story. My mind blurs with confused images—my father’s funeral, me on my knees at his hospital bedside as I realised he’d been murdered, the dark-haired boy from my dreams who watched his father beat his mother half to death.

  “Scarlett!” Trina shouts, startling me, causing me to blink my dry eyes quickly.

  “Yes.”

  “What happened when you got to the Shard?”

  “The Shard. We parked and Jackson or Gregory, I don’t remember who, one of them noticed the tyres of Gregory’s Mercedes had been slashed.”

  The hairs on my skin had pricked up. We knew who it was and we knew he was in the vicinity. Gregory told me to take the car and leave but I couldn’t, I wouldn’t. I couldn’t leave Gregory to face Kevin Pearson alone. But there was more than that, something deeper, darker within me that wanted to see the end of my father’s killer. Bile rises in my throat and I swallow it down. Gregory took my hand in his, instinctively protecting me, and Jackso
n pulled his gun from the glove compartment of the Bentley.

  Jackson led the way, his gun cocked and raised as we left the basement and rode the lift to the sixty-fourth floor.

  “We took the lift to Gregory’s floor. Jackson got out first, then Gregory, then me.”

  “Nothing else happened in the car park?” Trina queries. “You noticed the tyres then just left? Jackson or Gregory, they didn’t look around the car park? Check for an intruder?”

  “I, err, I don’t remember. Maybe, I don’t think so.”

  “So presumably they weren’t taken by surprise?”

  “I, err, I’m not sure. I guess they thought it would be best to leave the basement and get to the apartment.”

  “You are aware that the man who died tonight was Mr. Ryans’s father, aren’t you?”

  “I, err...” We didn’t discuss this. My chest begins to throb as my heart rate rises. They know. If I say yes I only confirm what they know. Don’t I? “Err, yes, I know that.”

  “Keep going, Scarlett, you’re doing well.” D.I. Barnes casts a warning eye in Katrina’s direction. “So you got out of the lift at the apartment.”

  I take a deep breath. I won’t let Gregory down. I nod.

  “For the tape, please, Scarlett.”

  “Yes, the door was open.”

  “Fully open? Wide open?” Trina jumps in.

  This woman is starting to anger me. “No,” I snap. “The door was ajar.”

  D.I. Barnes gives away their position with a subtle nod. I smile on the inside, knowing I’ve said the right thing.

  “Jackson kicked open the door and right away he was shot in the leg. He fell to the floor.” I need to concentrate now. It’s time. Gregory went after his father. No, Gregory told me to look after Jackson, then he went after his father. No, Gregory told me to look after Jackson and then he went upstairs. Damn it! My eyes are burning under the pressure of the room, the intensity of Katrina’s stare, the thought that I might let Gregory and Jackson down. “Gregory told me to look after Jackson and I did. I tied a tourniquet around his thigh.”

  “Where was Gregory?” Trina snarls.

  “He ran, he left. He went upstairs.”

  “He went upstairs? He just left you and Jackson with an armed man who’d already shot one of you? He just went upstairs?”

  I look at D.I. Barnes, begging him with wide eyes for help, but he doesn’t jump in, he puts his head down. I’m alone.

  “He ran. Like I said. It was all so fast. Next thing I knew, Gregory was back, running through the lounge. Then there was fighting, shouting, tussling. They were in the downstairs bathroom.”

  “Who?”

  “Gregory, and his father, Kevin Pearson. There was banging and smashing, like glass being shattered. Then they burst into the lounge, wrestling, fighting, then into the gym. At some point a gun slid into the lounge and they followed, struggling. There was a chain, something from the gym, I think, around Gregory’s neck. Pearson was strangling him.”

  There was a chain around Gregory’s neck, his face was red, his beautiful eyes were wide as he fought for his life. They flipped over and over again, first Gregory on top, then Pearson. The chain stayed pulled tight to his neck. Jackson was shouting at me to do something but I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to help. I was useless and I was watching the man I love die.

  “The chain was so tight on his neck, his muscles were straining, his face was red. Pearson was killing him.”

  Gregory thrust an elbow back into his father’s throat and took the opportunity to pounce. Towering over him, Gregory thrust his hands around his father’s neck, pushing his thumbs into the windpipe. He held his position through kicks and flailing limbs until Pearson stopped moving, lifeless. Gregory slumped back against the wall to catch his breath before checking that I was okay and moving to help Jackson. That’s when it happened.

  “There was blood. I know now that Gregory had been stabbed with something but when they were struggling it wasn’t obvious who was bleeding. Maybe both of them.”

  As Gregory tended to Jackson I saw the lifeless body twitch. I made steps towards it. I had Jackson’s gun in my hand.

  “He was dying. Gregory was dying. There was a gun on the floor. That’s what Gregory went upstairs for, I know that now.”

  The lifeless body suddenly sprung up. Grabbing the gun beside him, Pearson raised it and aimed at Gregory.

  I had no choice.

  “Somehow, Gregory managed to grab a gun from the floor and the rest was so quick, kind of a blur. He—”

  I can’t do this. I can’t do this to him.

  “He. Gregory. He.” I take a deep breath and exhale as subtly as I can manage. “He shot him.”

  I shot him. A dry lump forms in my throat, my eyes are on fire. It was him or Gregory. That’s why I took the shot. But right before I did, Gregory wasn’t the only man I thought of.

  “Just so I can get this straight, Gregory’s dying and you and Jackson are watching?” Katrina sits back in her chair and plants one hand firmly on her waist.

  “I. We. It wasn’t like that. Jackson was injured. What was I supposed to do?”

  “Right. And dying Gregory, who earlier left the room and wandered upstairs, he suddenly found the strength to pick up a gun and shoot his father through the head?”

  I wince at her blunt version of events.

  “It wasn’t like that. He didn’t wander, he ran. And he was dying! He was dying and he would be dead now if—”

  I shake my head and will impending tears not to fall.

  “How long have you known Gregory Ryans hated his father?”

  “I...I don’t—”

  “How long, Scarlett?”

  “It’s not like that.”

  Trina stands, sending her chair crashing against the wall.

  “That’s enough, Trina!” D.I. Barnes is on his feet too.

  “It’s not like what? Why are you protecting him, Scarlett?” She’s barking, leaning towards me, both hands on the table, her words wet on my face.

  I’m not protecting him. He’s protecting me. He’s protecting me and you’re behaving like he’s a murderer. I rise without conscious thought until I’m face to face with Katrina Martin. “What the fuck did you want him to do? He was going to die! One man in that room was never going to make it out alive and I’ll be damned if I’m sorry that it’s not the man I love, that it’s the fucking bastard who picked the fight!”

  She takes a step back from my rage. A sadistic grin starts to rise on her lips. “Do you know he couldn’t even call you his girlfriend? Unrequited love, that’s what you’re protecting.”

  She’s a jumped-up, moody bitch and she’s trying to rattle me but her words drive a knife through my gut, taking the energy out of my legs, forcing me to sit.

  “That. Is. Enough. You want to make your name, Trina, but this isn’t the case you’re going to use to do it. Get out of here, you’re off the case.”

  Trina snaps her head to look at D.I. Barnes. “Fuck you!” She marches out of the room, slamming the metal door and causing me to jump as she goes.

  I try to calm my heaving chest, taking long inhales. “It was self-defence. He had no choice,” I mutter, my eyes rising to meet the scrutiny of D.I. Barnes.

  “I know,” he says softly, before pressing the Record button on the cassette and ending the official interrogation.

  “Why did she behave like that? What’s her problem?”

  D.I. Barnes shakes his head, slowly, thoughtfully. “You two represent everything she can’t stand.”

  My hand instinctively rises to stroke the heavy diamond choker around my neck and I look down at my black gown. How perfectly unordinary we must look, giving statements in black tie, smelling of money. Lying to protect our dirty l
ittle secret. I want to defend myself. I want to explain that this isn’t my life, that I am ordinary. But I don’t. Instead, I think about the man who borrowed the diamonds around my neck from Harrods.

  “Where’s Gregory?”

  “He’s waiting for you.”

  “Is he free to go?”

  “For now.”

  “Even though—”

  “You’d both better get out of here before I change my mind and charge his arse.”

  “Thank you,” I whisper with more gratitude than he could possibly take from my words.

  My weary legs find the strength to stand and move to the door. The corridor is long and grey and closes in on me as I work my way to the guarded double door and the enormity of the night starts to hit me. My entire being aches with pain, sorrow, emptiness. Each step takes me closer to the only person in the world who can make things feel right again.

  The guard pushes open the door without speaking and inclines his head for me to walk into the station reception.

  Gregory rises from a row of seats, his shirt soiled, his sleeves rolled to his elbows, his hair showing the signs of his stress tell—pulling his fingers through it. His broad shoulders turn slowly to face me, his deep brown eyes wide but relaxing when he sees me. He’s as perfect as ever and I need him. I need to feel his strong arms around me. His shoulders sag and he mouths to me get here.

  Like he knows I will, I move towards him and despite everything, I fall a little deeper.

  My heart stops beating and breath leaves my lungs. He places his palms on my cheeks and gently rests his lips on my brow then pulls me into his hard chest and wraps his arms around me. In the safety of his embrace, my legs finally give way beneath me and I sob, tears streaming down my face as I cling to him. He sweeps me up into his arms and carries me away from the station, away from the nightmare of the last few hours.

  “Shhh,” he whispers into my ear between soft presses of his lips. I nuzzle further into his neck but my tears don’t stop. Everything pours out of me, every emotion I’ve felt since we met—love, desire, desperation, fear, pain, anger, relief—it all fuels my sobs.

  The cold of the dark night bites the naked skin of my arms and chest and harsh reality courses through my bones. “I could’ve lost you,” I chug through broken breaths.