Playing Dead

by Jessie Keane

  Then he was hurtling towards her, his skin cracking open like a dry river bed, and blackening to charcoal. She felt the force of the impact, felt herself flying, flying . . . and then she was in the sand, lying there, hearing nothing, not the crash of the waves, not the crackling and burning of the wreckage that she could see the terrace had become.

  ‘Constantine!’ she screamed, but she knew he was gone, gone into that great mystery where she couldn’t follow unless she died too.

  Oh, she wanted to die.

  ‘Constantine!’ she called again, but her voice broke and she was sobbing, standing in a dark void without him, and then . . . she was awake. She shot upright in the bed, shivering, shuddering, sweating; and he was there, sitting there in the chair across the room. Not Constantine of the dazzling smile and overpowering charm, but the charred smoking wreck he was now.

  ‘No . . .’ she moaned, clutching at her head, wanting it to go away.

  But it leaned forward in the chair, as if it was about to stand up, about to come towards her, and she thought that if that happened, if the thing came to her, tried to touch her, then she would go stark staring mad.

  Hey, wonder what’s in this one? it hissed inside her head, and she saw its mouth open in a mindless grin; bugs, dropping from inside it onto the carpet, scurrying away into the skirting board. Slowly, it started to rise from the chair.

  ‘Annie,’ said a male voice.

  It had come for her.

  She threw back her head and shrieked.

  ‘Fuck’s sake, wake up. You’re dreaming. Wake up. You’re all right, it’s okay.’

  The thing was holding her, pulling her in close. She could smell burning. She could smell death.

  ‘No . . .’ she shouted.

  ‘Shh . . . it’s okay, it’s just a dream.’

  Now she was awake. Really awake. She looked around. The light was on, the thing in the chair was gone. Max was sitting on the bed, holding her. She gulped in a breath, pushed her hands through her hair, closed her eyes, tried to get a grip.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ she wailed, slumping against his shoulder.

  ‘You have this much?’ he asked, smoothing back her hair. ‘Bad dreams?’

  All the time.

  ‘No. Not much,’ she said, bewildered by the gentleness of his touch.

  ‘You never used to.’

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ she said, starting to push away from him as she felt herself weaken, lean in. ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘No, you’re bloody not,’ said Max, staring into her eyes. ‘You’re a wreck.’

  ‘Not your problem.’

  ‘No – not my problem.’ He looked at her a moment longer, then stood up, went to the lamp beside the bed. ‘You want me to turn this off? Or you want it on for a while?’

  ‘Just leave it on,’ she said, aware now that she was naked and that he was here with her wearing a flimsy dark-blue robe. She pulled the sheets up to her chin, tried to get her mind refocused. Jesus, he was right. She was a wreck. She looked over at the chair. There was nothing there. Of course there wasn’t. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You’re not fine,’ he said, turning, staring down at her. Then he said, ‘Ah, fuck it,’ and reached out, pulling her up onto her knees. Annie held onto the sheet.

  ‘Max . . .’ she said, wanting to tell him to stop, but he was here, so warm and so strong, she knew this man, she’d loved him, given him a child. This wasn’t some impersonal stranger. This was Max Carter.

  But he wants to take Layla.

  She couldn’t allow herself to think about that now. All she knew was that she was shattered, and he was here and she was glad of that. So this time when he kissed her she didn’t pull away. She let him. She remembered his kiss, how he’d always had the power to take her breath away just by running his tongue over her lips, then settling his mouth over hers.

  He did it now. Snatched the breath from her lungs so that she gave up, gave in, just clung to him and let the old sweet, sensuous feelings steal over her once again.

  ‘Jesus, will you let go of that?’ he muttered against her mouth, and then pulled the sheet away and stepped back just a little, enough so that he could run his eyes down over her breasts, her belly, her thighs.

  Annie knelt there and let him look. She wanted him to look; she wanted this.

  Where his eyes had moved, now his hands followed. She remembered those hands, the hands of a street fighter: blunt-tipped, broad, dusted with black hairs on the back. A tough, hard man’s hands. She shuddered as they moved to cup and caress the fullness of her breasts, teasing her nipples into burning hardness with a flick of the thumbs, but she didn’t try to stop him.

  Now his hands were skimming down over the slight indentation of her waist, trailing with delirious slowness around her navel and then moving out to smooth over her hips before dipping inward to slip down between her thighs.

  Annie gasped as his fingers curled into the dark depths of her bush and parted it to touch the hard nub of her clitoris. His fingers probed deeper, feeling how ready for him she was, sliding effortlessly inside her wetness, maddening her with long, slow, delicious strokes.

  This was better, so much better, than thinking about death and having nightmares about Constantine coming back to her as a charred and hideous monster. This was what she needed, right now, to chase away the shadows.

  Annie reached out while he was still caressing her, hearing his breathing coming harder and faster as she unfastened his robe, pushed it from his shoulders so that it fell to the floor.

  He was naked too, and he was just as she remembered him. Strong, compact, with dark hair on his chest and feathering down over his well-toned stomach to where his erect penis now jutted out, hard as steel, as if straining towards her. She gasped at the beauty of it, took the hot silky shaft in her hands.

  Delicately, she lowered her head and slid her tongue into the little crevice there, tasting his saltiness, then she moved her lips downwards, over the big pulsing head of it, and enfolded it in the heat and wetness of her mouth, sucking gently.

  Max groaned and grabbed her hair, pulling her head back, away from him.

  ‘Enough,’ he told her hoarsely, pushing her back onto the bed. ‘Lie down.’

  Annie lay back, spreading her legs joyfully for him, wanting him now, the pulse of hot, hungry lust thrumming through her just like it was enveloping him. Max lay on her, the whole length of his hard body pushing hers down into the mattress, his hands holding her wrists, keeping her pinned there. He pushed his cock up into her and she cried out at how big he was, how totally he filled her.

  She locked her thighs around his waist and let him have her. It was what he wanted, and she wanted it too. Every thrust was a delirious pleasure, a well-remembered delight, and she clung to him as he had her, violently, lustily; and when she felt him grow almost impossibly, hurtfully big, and when he finally came, she lay there, quiescent, feeling him relax and grow still.

  At last he lay back on the bed, pulling her into the crook of his arm. They had lain like that a thousand times before, but this was new. This was different. She shouldn’t have weakened. Shouldn’t have let all those old feelings take her over. But she’d been vulnerable, shaken.

  She closed her eyes, dreading the moment when she would have to think, talk about what they’d just done. Dusty had been right to be on her guard. Dusty would spit blood if she could see what was happening now. When she opened them again it was him, still him, Max Carter, lying there at her side, his body as beautiful and as strong and tanned as if carved from teak. She let her eyes drift down, over his flat, hard stomach, over his muscular thighs, down to his feet.

  Again she found herself looking at those odd marks on his ankles, scars that were little red circles, almost like cigarette burns.

  ‘What are those?’ she asked him under her breath. ‘I saw them when we were by the pool.’

  ‘Hmm?’ he opened his eyes, saw where she was looking. ‘Oh.’ He let out a breath. ‘When those bastard
s chucked me down that mountain? Smashed both my ankles. The surgeons didn’t think I’d walk again.’

  Annie stared gravely into his eyes. She knew what that must have done to him. Max Carter was all about action, strength and physicality.

  ‘So what happened?’ she asked. ‘You are walking.’

  ‘Thanks to good surgery and physio.’ Max remembered the physiotherapist. Marta. Jesus, that girl had put him through hell. ‘And a monk called Brother Benito.’

  ‘But the marks . . .’

  ‘Bolts,’ said Max. ‘I had one through each ankle, then they took them out. Left scars.’

  He had known hard times. She could see that. He had suffered, just like she had – no, worse – while they were apart. Her heart went out to him then and she thought: Did I ever really get over him?

  No. The answer was no, she hadn’t. If she was truthful with herself – and she always tried to be – just the sight of him still gave her shivers down her spine. Even when they were fighting, ripping lumps off each other, hurling insults; still there was that heat, that undeniable attraction.

  She knew it. Hated it, but knew it was true.

  But now . . . now they were enemies, and he was going to take Layla off her the first chance he got. One quick roll in the hay wasn’t going to make any difference to that. In fact, he had probably taken advantage of her momentary fragility to soften her up for the kill.

  Annie sat up. What had she been thinking? He had cursed her, called her a slut, a tart; he hated her now. If there was one thing she knew about Max Carter, it was how black-and-white his views were, how inflexible. He would never forgive her for Constantine. He just wanted Layla.

  ‘You’d better go,’ she said, and when he didn’t object, when he just snatched up his robe and left her there alone, she knew she was right.

  Chapter 69

  The doorbell rang very early next morning. Brasses kept very late hours, so everyone was still in bed sleeping off the gymnastics and general excesses of the night before. Annie, however, was awake, up and dressed. She thought Max was too, from the noises coming from his room through the thin partition wall.

  She thought about last night, how good it had been to be with him again, skin to skin. But she had to forget that. He’d taken advantage of her, that was all, when she had been going through a low moment.

  She heard his door open and his quick tread going past her room, down the stairs. She opened her door just a crack and watched him. All right, it was just a look, she wasn’t going to touch . . . but oh God, he was still so gorgeous. That dark hair and the way it curled just a little too long over his shirt collar . . . the width of his shoulders, the narrow hips . . .

  Fuck it.

  She still fancied him like mad. She had to admit that. He was opening the front door, but there was no one there. She moved quietly out onto the landing. She saw him look up and down the street. The morning was bright and clear, sun glinted on his hair and made it gleam blue-black. Then she saw him start to bend down.

  There was something on the doorstep.

  Annie craned her neck to see around Max to what was down there, what he was about to pick up.

  Her heart turned to a block of ice in her chest.

  Her eyes opened wide in terror.

  It was a large square box, wrapped in sky-blue paper and tied with red ribbon.

  Max was going to pick it up.

  Constantine had picked up one just like it.

  Hey, wonder what’s in this one?

  Everything seemed to slow to a crawl. For a moment, Annie was paralysed by the sheer horror of what was unfolding in front of her eyes. Then somehow her legs obeyed the commands of her brain and she was hurtling down the stairs.

  ‘Don’t touch it!’ she screamed at him.

  She hit the bottom of the stairs at a run and lunged across the hall and grabbed Max, stopping his fingers just an inch away from the parcel.

  ‘Don’t!’ she shouted.

  Max was staring at her, startled.

  Annie was panting, wild-eyed. ‘Don’t touch it,’ she gasped out. ‘It’s a bomb!’

  They stood in the back yard an hour later, all of them. The girls, Ellie, Max and Annie, who was still shaking hard from the shock of it. Annie’s shrieks of warning had woken the whole household. Chris wasn’t in yet – it was too early for him to start his stint on the door. And thank God for that, Annie was thinking, or else he could have picked the thing up, been blown to kingdom come.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ Ellie had demanded, coming out onto the landing in her dressing gown.

  She’d seen Annie and Max down in the hall, heard what Annie said about it being a bomb.

  Holy shit, it was true; bad things followed Annie Carter around. Max had closed the door, pulled Annie away down the hall and into the kitchen.

  ‘What time’s Chris due in?’ he’d asked Ellie.

  ‘Not for another hour,’ she said, half frozen with fear.

  ‘Phone him. Tell him to stay away until we’ve got this sorted.’

  After Ellie had contacted Chris, Max phoned Ginge; he’d been in the bomb disposal unit during the war but after that he’d drifted into the more lucrative field of safe-cracking. He was a Carter boy through and through: sound as a pound; he’d cracked open the Palermo Lounge safe once for Annie, and officiated at more heists than you could shake a stick at.

  Ginge was there within fifteen minutes of Max’s call. He was pushing sixty, tall, with thinning ginger-white hair, a pot belly and a long, hawkish face. He carried a Gladstone bag with him, and eyed the parcel on the doorstep as if it was a great treat, an enjoyable piece of puzzlement he couldn’t wait to unravel.

  ‘And she thinks it’s a bomb, why?’ he asked Max at the door, while Annie, Ellie and the girls cringed out back.

  Annie had explained this to Max, even though she could barely speak because her teeth were chattering so hard with fear.

  He’d nearly picked it up. She couldn’t get over that. If she hadn’t opened the door to secretly watch him, he would have.

  ‘It’s identical to one that went off before, in the States,’ Max told him.

  ‘Leave me with it then,’ said Ginge, and opened his bag of tricks and set to work.

  Nearly an hour later, Ginge came and knocked on the kitchen door. Max opened it.

  ‘Was it?’ Max asked.

  ‘A bomb?’ Ginge shook his head as if disappointed. ‘Nah, Mr Carter. Just an empty box, tied up with paper and ribbon.’

  Everyone exhaled. Sheet-white but otherwise composed, Ellie put the kettle on.

  ‘I’ll give Chris the all-clear,’ she said, and then went out into the hall to phone him.

  The girls started to disperse. Max slipped Ginge his payment and he departed.

  ‘You okay now?’ Rosie asked Annie as she got up from the table.

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ she lied.

  She went upstairs to her room. Max followed her in, and shut the door.

  Annie slumped on the bed and Max stood there leaning against the closed door, watching her.

  ‘Someone’s playing tricks on you,’ he said.

  Annie looked up at him with a bitter, trembling smile. ‘So tell me something I don’t know.’

  ‘Who’d do this?’

  Annie shook her head, shrugged. ‘The same person who planted the real bomb?’ she suggested.

  ‘It was exactly the same? Tell me about it.’

  Annie folded her arms over her body as if to protect it. ‘I can’t,’ she said through chattering teeth.

  ‘Yeah you can. Come on. Get a grip.’

  Annie glared at him. ‘Oh, you think this is easy? Seeing your husband blown to smithereens and then having this happen?’

  ‘Stop feeling so fucking sorry for yourself,’ said Max roughly. ‘Shit happens. Ride it out.’

  Annie let out a shuddering breath. She dragged her hands through her hair. ‘I don’t know where to start . . .’

  ‘The parcel. Wh
ere was it?’

  ‘On a table. With other parcels. Presents. It was . . .’ Her voice trailed away.

  It was the night of Lucco and Daniella’s wedding. Stars bright in the Montauk sky, the chill, refreshing breeze coming off the ocean, the terrace empty of people. Just her . . . and then Constantine . . .

  ‘And Barolli picked up the parcel . . .’ Max prompted.

  Annie nodded. ‘Then it exploded.’

  ‘Why’d he pick up that particular parcel?’

  She forced herself to think about it. He was right. Here she was, acting like a bloody Victorian virgin when she was Annie Carter-Barolli, gang boss, Mafia queen. She had to get a hold of herself.

  ‘It was the biggest and brightest, the most eye-catching. And at the front of the table.’ Suddenly she looked at Max. ‘It was in front of the other presents. The police in the States told me it was booby-trapped with a cluster of grenades.’ She swallowed hard. ‘The pins had been wired through and into the table, they told me. So that when it was picked up, it would . . . explode.’ Her eyes were full of tragedy. ‘He would have picked that one up first anyway, wouldn’t he? Later on in the evening. It’s traditional, the Don hands the couple their presents.’

  Max folded his arms. ‘So you can rule out Lucco.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Whoever planted the thing thought that Constantine would pick it up later in the evening, when the couple and the guests were there with him. Lucco would have been right there when the thing exploded. Therefore, it couldn’t have been Lucco who planted it, or who got someone else to plant it.’

  Max was right. It couldn’t have been Lucco.

  She tried to think. There had been so many people in and around the house that day. Usually, the place was a fortress, totally secure; but with all the people milling around, it became difficult to keep tabs on everyone. Of course checks had been made – but they’d failed.

  Annie clutched at her head. ‘Who’s doing this? Someone left that thing on the doorstep deliberately, to scare me. Who?’

  ‘That’s what we’re going to have to find out,’ said Max. He was smiling as if this was a game, and he was enjoying it. ‘You know that old saying about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer? I’ve been in touch with sweet young Daniella.’