‘Orla…’ Rufus stretched a hand out, seeing her pain, wishing he’d kept his mouth shut.
She twitched away from his touch. ‘No!’ she shouted, jumping to her feet. She started to pace around the room, swigging whisky from her glass, eyes feverish with confusion and seething hatred. ‘We left the scrapyard and we got Fergal out and he flew the plane. We had to run, London was finished for us. But first I wanted to make sure we’d got rid of her.’
‘Orla – you didn’t. Last I saw, she was alive and well.’
Orla rushed to the table and slammed her glass down, hard. Whisky slopped over the rim.
‘But Redmond’s dead,’ she hissed, leaning into him, her jaw clenched with fury. ‘And she was behind it, I know she was. She was having an affair with that Mafia man, Barolli – he must have taken out a contract on us to avenge her death. The fuel dial was low, that’s what Fergal said. And he’d only just refuelled. Someone must have cut the fuel line. We were meant to die that night.’
Rufus chewed his lip. He was startled by the intensity of her anger. The news of Annie Carter’s survival had made her incandescent with rage. ‘Look, Barolli might well have arranged it, but it wasn’t to avenge her. To please her, perhaps? She married him. Moved to the States with him.’
‘No! She should have died,’ Orla howled in his face, spittle flying. ‘She was meant to die.’
‘Orla,’ he said gently, ‘she didn’t die. She’s alive.’
Now Orla’s eyes grew distant. She slumped into her seat, drained the whisky in one gulp.
‘I’ll kill her,’ she said with flat, bitter venom.
Rufus felt a chill creep up his spine. His thoughts flew to poor Rory, lying in the grave outside. If only he could have brought himself to believe that she would use the knife, he would have stepped in, snatched it off her. But the truth was, he hadn’t wanted to think her capable of such an act. And his reluctance to see the truth had cost Rory his life. Rory’s betrayal had been motivated not by greed but by the need to protect his son. At heart he was a good and true man, undeserving of the cruel end she had inflicted on him.
‘I have to kill her,’ said Orla, her lips drawn back, baring her teeth so that she seemed almost to snarl. In that moment, she seemed more animal than human. ‘She took Redmond away from me,’ she spat. ‘It’s her fault he’s not with me now. I want to do to her what she’s done to me: snatch her family from her, hurt her so that she wishes she were dead.’
Rufus said nothing. He knew now how much she had lost when Redmond was taken from her, how deep and damaging that hurt must be. He couldn’t punish the other hurt she’d suffered; Pat and Tory were beyond his revenge. But he