Free Want You Dead by Peter James

ground job as an Air Traffic Controller at Gatwick.’
    ‘Like in the film Pushing Tin ?’
    ‘Yes, except it is not like that at all in reality.’
    The caviar was served. It arrived in a silver bowl surrounded by ice, with tiny blinis and a mound of sour cream. The eggs were the size of miniature peas, a silver grey colour. She had never seen anything like them. They reminded her of large frogspawn.
    Bryce showed her the way to eat it, by putting a tiny smear of the cream on a blini, then spooning the eggs on top, and popping it in his mouth with his fingers.
    She copied him, then tried to mask her shock at the taste. Her first bite evoked the memory of her mother spooning cod liver oil into her mouth when she had a cold as a child. Then she felt the silky texture of the eggs themselves melting, and experienced a sudden frisson of excitement, realizing she was eating the world’s most fabled and expensive delicacy.
    ‘So?’ he asked.
    ‘Amazing!’ she replied.
    ‘You’re amazing,’ he said. Then from his inside pocket he suddenly produced a deck of cards, and with a flick of his wrist fanned them out perfectly so that every single card was visible.
    ‘Wow! That’s pretty impressive.’
    He turned the fan away so that only she could see them. ‘Select one. Just choose and touch it, but don’t show it to me.’
    She touched the queen of hearts. ‘Okay, done.’
    With another flick he snapped the deck shut. And with another he fanned them open again. ‘Do you see the card?’ he asked.
    It wasn’t there. She frowned and glanced down at the table wondering where it was. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t see it.’
    ‘Open your handbag.’
    She leaned down, picked her handbag off the floor and popped the clasp. She opened it and gasped. The queen of hearts lay there between her lipstick and phone. She lifted it up.
    ‘Was that the one you chose?’ he asked eagerly.
    ‘That’s incredible! How did you do that?’
    He shrugged. ‘It’s my hobby,’ he said. ‘I do close magic for fun. Have you heard of the Magic Castle in Los Angeles?’
    Red shook her head.
    ‘Have you ever been to LA?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Maybe I’ll take you there one day. Who knows?’
    She grinned. ‘I’d love to go to LA.’
    ‘Are you missing anything?’
    ‘Missing anything? I don’t think so.’
    He dug his hand into his side pocket and pulled out a watch. It was her white Swatch.
    ‘How the hell?’ she exclaimed.
    He handed it to her and she clipped it back on her wrist. ‘Okay, I’m impressed!’
    ‘I’m impressed too,’ he replied. ‘With you.’
    Against all her principles – and Raquel’s advice – and partly because she was smashed at the end of the meal, she invited him up for coffee when, leaving the taxi waiting, he walked her to the front door of her building.
    He stroked her face and ran his fingers through her hair, held both her wrists gently, then gave her a single light kiss on her lips. ‘Not tonight,’ he said. ‘We’ve both drunk too much. When we make love for the first time, I want it to be special.’
    She closed the door behind her, walked along the communal corridor, past her chained-up bicycle, and floated up the three flights of stairs. It wasn’t until she entered her third-floor flat, in a modern block beside the River Adur with its view out over Shoreham Port, that she noticed the bracelet on her right wrist.
    It was a narrow silver band, completely circling her wrist, which fitted snugly. Too snugly to have been slipped over her hand. She stared at it, bemused, wondering exactly when he had put it on. Just now, when he had held her wrists outside?
    But more puzzling still, there was no clasp. It was solid, all the way around. She examined it carefully, tugging at it, but there was no join, no seam that she could find. On the surface she saw tiny engraved writing. She had to squint to read the words. Queen of Hearts. Followed by a heart symbol.
    Then her phone pinged with an incoming