was anything but normal.
‘Where the hell are they?’ hissed Jeanette.
Annie held up a finger to her lips and mouthed: Shut the fuck up, will you?
Jeanette pulled a face but did as she was told.
Annie carefully opened the door into the hall. It was empty. Holding the gun at the ready, she crossed the hall to the bedroom and pushed the door gently open.
Blowflies swarmed out, and with the flies came the smell. Annie flinched back and Jeanette let out a cry of startled disgust.
Oh God, thought Annie. No.
Fighting the urge to gag, she pushed the door wide open and saw what was there. Rufio was tied to the chair, his head flung back, his lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling. Bluebottles swarmed over his face and over the gaping wound that slit him open from neck to crotch. His own bloodstained machete lay discarded on the tiled floor.
The stench of blood hit Annie afresh and she nearly choked. And there was Inez, on the bed…
No, she couldn’t look any more.
Tied up, she thought. Your staff are a little tied up.
What sort of sick bastard could have done a thing like this? They’d been dead for hours, she could see that. For hours. While she and the others had been lazing on the terrace, perfectly relaxed, up here this horror had been unfolding, and they had heard nothing, known nothing. Annie’s skin crawled to think that the bastards who had done all this had been prowling around, and she had been completely unaware. And now…this.
She closed the door softly on the grisly scene, but she could still see it in her mind’s eye. Her guts still churned and her mind still floundered to take it in.
‘Oh Jesus,’ Jeanette moaned, holding a hand to her throat. ‘Who could do that? How could anyone do that? What—what’s going to happen to us?’
‘Fuck it, is that all you can think about?’ Annie rounded on her furiously. ‘We’re still alive. They’re not.’
But they might just be playing with you, said an insidious voice in her head. Making you really suffer before they strike the killing blow.
No, Annie told herself. They had Layla. They had Layla and that meant they were willing to negotiate. Didn’t it? But…it might also mean that they knew what would hurt Annie most, and that would be for Layla to suffer. Inez and Rufio had been tortured. Would these people draw the line at torturing a little girl?
She had to push those thoughts away. She was still alive; she had to dig deep and hold on while there was still hope for Layla. She couldn’t afford to give in to despair. She glanced at her watch and her heart seemed to stop dead.
Had they really been that long getting up here, looking around, finding that awful scene? The hour was up. Bang on time, she heard it. The phone was ringing in the main house. And she wasn’t there to answer it.
She ran as if her life depended on it. Forgot who could have been watching, hiding, awaiting their opportunity to pounce. She ran and was only dimly aware that the light was going now, that it was growing cooler, that Jeanette had forgotten all that Annie had said about keeping quiet and was bleating along behind her, clacking along in her high heels, silly cow, saying something, babbling and crying, moaning that she wouldn’t be left alone up there, that they were never going to get back in time anyway so why try?
But they had to try.
Annie thought of nothing except the need to be quick. Quicker than she had ever been in her life. Her heart felt as though it was bursting out of her chest, her legs were on fire. She sprinted on to the terrace, crashed through the finca’s door straight into the hallway and her hand was on the phone when it stopped ringing.
‘No!’ she yelled, and picked it up and flung it against the wall, feeling helpless, stupid, furious. Instantly she regained control. Picked the thing up, listened to the dial tone. Still working. But she had missed the call.
Be there, he had said.
And she hadn’t.
Jeanette was still prattling on.
‘What will happen? What will they do? Will they hurt Layla? We missed the call, they won’t like that.’
‘Shut up,’ said Annie.
‘They won’t hurt her, will they? Not a little girl like Layla? They wouldn’t do that, would they?’
‘Shut up,’ repeated Annie, watching the phone, willing it to ring again.
‘They won’t hurt her,’ said Jeanette shakily.
Annie’s head shot round and she glared at her. ‘I told you, shut up. I can’t think with all this yakking going on.’
Annie looked past her at the door, forced herself to think even though her guts were liquid with panic. She’d missed the call. Would they phone back? She took a deep breath. Now she felt really sick. The thought of these people having Layla. She wished Max was here. No hope there, though. No hope at all.
‘Shut the door,’ she told Jeanette, and Jeanette read her look correctly and quickly obeyed.
But then Annie thought about that and wondered if she was shutting the baddies out, or shutting them in, because they could already be here, wasn’t that a cold hard fact?
She thought of the quiet way they had moved Jonjo out of the pool, when she and Jeanette had been right here in the finca, and they hadn’t heard a thing. Four men, wasn’t that what Jeanette had said?
Four men wearing masks.
Four dangerous, deadly men. They could be in here right now, ready to spring out and do damage.
‘They’re not going to ring back,’ said Jeanette, shaking her head in rising hysteria. She was clutching herself and shivering.
Thank Christ, Jeanette hadn’t yet considered they could be shut in here with a clutch of murderers. That would really make her flip.
‘They’ll ring back,’ said Annie, although she also doubted it. ‘They’ve got a bargaining tool. They’ve got Layla. And maybe they were watching us when we went in to find Inez and Rufio. They’ll know where we were and that it was a legitimate delay.’
Legitimate, thought Annie. She was talking as though they were dealing with reasonable people here. Not people who would shoot a man between the eyes, push another off a cliff, snatch a child away from its parents, torture a harmless, good-natured woman like Inez in front of her horrified husband’s eyes.
She bit her lip, folded her arms around herself and watched the phone. Along the hallway, the kitchen door was ajar and she could see in there too. It appeared to be empty. She straightened and moved toward it.
‘Where are you going?’ Jeanette almost shrieked. She was clearly terrified of being left alone.
‘Hush,’ said Annie, and walked on silent feet along the hallway. Jeanette came mincing and clattering along behind her. Annie stopped and turned and looked at Jeanette.
‘For the last time, take off those fucking shoes,’ she hissed at the girl.
Jeanette quickly kicked off the heels. Annie proceeded into the kitchen. Empty. Silent. Cool and almost dark. There was the larder, though. Big enough for a man to hide in, easily. Annie crossed to the drawer by the sink and pulled out the two large sharp knives she knew were in there. None were missing, and that was good. That was very good.
She handed one of the knives to Jeanette.
‘Keep it ready,’ she said.
‘Jesus,’ moaned Jeanette, but she took the knife anyway.
Annie held a knife in one hand and the gun in the other and went over to