‘I know Layla phoned you,’ said Annie. ‘She told me.’
‘She said Orla Delaney broke in here.’
‘That’s right. She did.’
‘She said that she shot her.’
‘That’s right too.’
Max frowned. ‘But I thought Constantine finished Orla. And her brother, that fucker Redmond.’
‘I thought he did too.’
‘The plane crash, did that not take care of it? When was it… nineteen seventy?’
‘Yeah.’
‘But how the hell could that be? You’re certain it was Orla?’
Annie took a breath. ‘It was her. No question.’
‘And please explain to me how you allowed my daughter to get hold of a gun, to actually shoot someone.’
Annie bristled at his tone. It was accusatory, to say the least.
‘Your daughter? Excuse me – she’s mine too. And it happened like this: I heard someone moving about, coming up the stairs. I got your old gun, the.45, and woke Layla. Orla knocked me flat on my arse as she came through the bedroom door. She had a knife. Layla panicked, snatched up the gun and shot her.’
‘I’m not happy at any of this,’ said Max. ‘What sort of crap security you got here? You even switch the house alarm on?’
‘Rosa did it, same as she does every night. Orla cut the wires before she got in through the basement window. And we haven’t needed “security”. Why would we?’
‘See you’ve got one of the boys on the door now.’
Annie nodded. ‘Steve put Bri on there.’
‘And Steve cleared up?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where’s Layla now?’
‘In a safe place, until we know what’s going on here. Did she tell you about the man in the park?’
Max nodded. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about that?’
‘I was away when it happened.’
‘Where?’
‘Does it bloody well matter?’
He shrugged.
‘I was in the States.’
‘Right.’
‘On business.’
‘Oh yeah. Business.’
Annie could feel her blood pressure starting to build. Eight years apart, and he could still drive her mental.
Why did he always do this to her? Right now she wished she’d never met him. She regretted ever climbing into bed with him, and marrying him that first time when she’d been young and stupid. The only good thing to come out of that was her one and only child, Layla. And to think she’d been such a fool as to shed tears when she’d thought him dead.
Then she’d met Constantine, who’d been so much better for her, and she’d married him, but for God’s sake she had to go and lose him too… and then Max had reappeared, by some miracle he had survived, and that should have been the happy ending she’d craved but it wasn’t. They’d remarried but he’d been too jealous of Annie’s relationship with Alberto, Constantine’s son, to even see that he was wrecking their lives all over again.