She’d bought both pistols from a crooked military surplus dealer down near Miramar. Thad insisted on coming with her for the Beretta, had made a big thing about checking the gun over like he knew what he was doing, sighting along the barrel with one eye closed.
Layla had gone back later for the Makarov. She didn’t have enough money for the two, but she’d been dressed to thrill and she and the dealer had come to an arrangement that hadn’t cost Layla anything at all. Only pride, and she’d been way overdrawn on that account for years.
Now, Layla checked in the cracked mirror that the gun didn’t show beneath her skirt. Her face was even more bland in its pallor and, just for once, she wished she’d been born pretty. Not beautiful, just pretty enough to have been cherished.
The way she’d cherished Bobby. The way he’d cherished her.
She left the locker room and collected a fresh tray from the kitchen. The chefs were under pressure, the activity frantic, but when she walked in on those long dancer’s legs there was a moment of silence that was almost reverent.
“You changed your clothes,” one of the chefs said, mesmerized.
She smiled at him, saw the fog lift a little as the disappointment of her face cut through the haze of lust created by her body.
“I spilled,” she said, collecting a fresh tray. She felt every eye on her as she walked out, smiled when she heard the collective sigh as the door swung closed behind her.
It was a short-lived smile.
Back in the ballroom, it was all she could do not to go marching straight up to Venable, but she knew she had to play it cool. The four bodyguards were too experienced not to spot her sudden surge of guilt and anger. They’d pick her out of the crowd the way a shark cuts out a weakling seal pup. And she couldn’t afford that. Not yet.
Instead, she forced herself to think bland thoughts as she circled the room towards him. Saw out of the corner of her eye Thad casually moving up on the other side. The relief flooded her, sending her limbs almost lax with it. For a second, she’d been afraid he wouldn’t go through with it. That he’d realize what her real plan was, and back out at the last minute.
For the moment, though, Thad must think it was all going according to plan. She stepped up to the Dyers, offered them something from her tray. The secretary still hadn’t left his side, she saw. The girl must be desperate.
Layla took another step, sideways towards Venable, ducking around the cordon of bodyguards. Offered him something from her tray. And this time, as he leaned forwards, so did she, pressing her arms together to accentuate what nature had so generously given her.
She watched Venable’s eyes go glassy, saw the way the eyes of the nearest two bodyguards bulged the same way. There was another just behind her, she knew, and she bent a little further from the waist, knowing she was giving him a prime view of her ass and the back of her newly-exposed thighs. She could almost feel that hot little gaze slavering up the backs of her knees.
Come on, Thad…
He came pushing through the crowd nearest to Venable, moving too fast. If he’d been slower, he might have made it. As it was, he was the only guy for twenty feet in any direction who didn’t have his eyes full of Layla’s divine body. Venable’s eyes snapped round at the last moment, jerky, panicking as he realized the rapidly approaching threat. He flailed, sending Layla’s tray crashing to the ground, showering canapés.
The bodyguards were slower off the mark. Thad already had the gun out before two of them grabbed him. Not so much grabbed as piled in on top of him, driving him off his legs and down, using fists and feet to keep him there.
Thad was no easy meat, though. He kept in shape and had come up from the streets, where unfair fights were part of the game. Even on the floor, he lashed out, aiming for knees and shins, hitting more than he was missing. A third bodyguard joined in to keep him down, a leather sap appearing like magic in his hand.
There was that familiar crack of skulls. Just like Bobby…
Layla winced, but she couldn’t let that distract her now. Her mind strangely cool and calm, Layla stepped in, ignored. The fourth bodyguard had stayed at his post, but Layla was shielded from his view by his own principal, and everyone’s attention was on the fight. Carefully, she reached under her skirt and yanked the Makarov free, unaware of the brief burn as the tape ripped from her thigh.
The safety was already off, the hammer back. The Army surplus guy down in Miramar had thrown in a little instruction as well. Gave him more of a chance to stand up real close behind her as he demonstrated how to hold the unfamiliar gun, how to aim and fire.
She brought the nine up the way he’d shown her, both hands clasped round the pistol grip, starting to take up the pressure on the trigger, she bent her knees and crouched a little, so the recoil wouldn’t send the barrel rising, just in case she had to take a second shot. But, this close, she knew she wouldn’t need one, even if she got the chance.
One thing Layla hadn’t been ready for was the noise. The report was monstrously loud in the high-ceilinged ballroom. And though she thought she’d been prepared, she staggered back and to the side. And the pain. The pain was a gigantic fist around her heart, squeezing until she couldn’t breathe.
She looked up, vision starting to shimmer, and saw Venable was still standing, shocked but apparently unharmed. How had she missed? The bodyguard had come out of his lethargy to throw himself on top of his employer, but there was still an open window. There was still time…
Layla tried to lift the gun but her arms were leaden. Something hit her, hard, in the centre of her voluptuous chest, but she didn’t see what it was, or who threw it. She frowned, took a step back and her legs folded, and suddenly she was staring up at the chandeliers on the ceiling and she had to hold on to the polished wooden dance floor beneath her hands to stay there. Her vision was starting to blacken at the edges, like burning paper, the sound blurring down.
The last thing she saw was the slim woman she’d taken for a secretary, leaning over her with a wisp of smoke rising from the muzzle of the nine millimeter she was holding.
Then the bright lights, and the glitter, all faded to black.
The woman Layla had mistaken for a secretary placed two fingers against the pulse point in the waitress’s throat and felt nothing. She knew better than to touch the body more than she had to now, even to close the dead woman’s eyes.
Cindy, the name tag read, even under the trickle of the blood. She doubted that would match the woman’s driver’s licence.
She rose, sliding the SIG semi-automatic back into the concealed-carry rig on her belt. Two of Venable’s meaty goons wrestled the woman’s accomplice, bellowing, out of the room. She turned to her employer.
“I don’t think you were the target, Mr Dyer, but I couldn’t take the chance,” she said calmly. She jerked her head towards the bodyguards. “If this lot had been halfway capable, I wouldn’t have had to get involved. As it was…”
Dyer nodded. He still had his arms wrapped round his wife, who was sobbing, and his eyes were sad and tired.
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
The woman shrugged. “It’s my job,” she said.
“Who the hell are you?” It was Venable himself who spoke, elbowing his way out from the protective shield that his remaining bodyguards had belatedly thrown around him.
“This is Charlie Fox,” Dyer answered for her, the faintest smile in his voice. “She’s my personal protection. A little more subtle than your own choice. She’s good, isn’t she?”