Free A Cold Killing (Rosie Gilmour) by Anna Smith

for ever giving her email to Tony Devlin. He’d have been bombarding her with messages on her regular email address – the one she used for business in Spain and the one most people had for her. But she should have kept her private one to herself. It was careless. She opened the email and read it:
    Ruby – Where the fuck are you? You’re not answering your phone, or your normal email. Everyone is looking for you in Spain, but you’re obviously not there. Are you? This does not look good. I’m losing patience. I know you’re out there, so call me. Don’t make me come looking for you. Tony
.
    It had been sent at eight o’clock this morning, probably not long after Tony got word of Malky Cameron’s surprise barbecue. Ruby knew Tony would also have been calling her mobile within hours of her driving away from Rab Jackson’s villa, but she’d tossed both her phones into the sea near Marbella before driving north. She hadn’t checked her emails – she didn’t need to. She knew everyone would be trying to reach her.
    She sat back, staring at the high ceiling, suddenly transfixed by a spider spreading its web further across the cornicing so that the whole side of the ceiling would end up as one big web, where it could lie in wait, knowing that once its prey got tangled up, there was no way out. It wasn’t much different from the web she’d just cut herself out of. The difference for her was that she’d walked into it six years ago with her eyes wide open, knowing that once she was in, there might be no way out. She pictured Tony’s face, fired up with barely contained anger, telling the arseholes he surrounded himself with that everything was under control now that he was in charge. She knew what a chillingly evil bastard he could be if anyone double-crossed him. She’d seen him shoot one of his men in the chest for trying to pull a stroke with a delivery of coke from London. It was brutal and ruthless, and he’d insisted Ruby remain in the room while he dealt with what he called ‘a bit of business’ with one of the lads who had fucked up. It was the first time she’d seen anyone executed, and she had to hold on to every scrap of her strength not to faint from the shock as the blood bubbled out of the guy’s chest when he shot him. The last thing she could show was weakness. Tony was Jackson’s prodigy. When they’d left the office that night he’d taken her to dinner, and he had talked as though nothing had happened. Afterwards they went to his flat, where he made love to her for the first time. That was a shock in itself – the sex had been tender, caring – no sign of the cold-blooded killer he’d been two hours earlier. Ruby had been expecting a hungry, wild encounter, bordering on brutal. And part of her – the dangerous, reckless side she had, which she knew would never allow her to be a normal person – had been looking forward to it. Instead, he’d kissed every part of her, gently asked her permission before he entered her, and afterwards held her for a long time as if she were a baby, while she stroked his back until he fell asleep. A complete psychopath, Ruby had thought as she lay awake, the rest of the night. She realized then her biggest mistake was to have gone anywhere outside of the business relationship she’d had with him. On the occasions they had met over the last three years on the Costa del Sol, she took care of Rab Jackson’s money – laundered it through businesses, investments, construction companies, as well as charities in UK and abroad.
    Ruby looked up at the ceiling again. The spider had now spread its little empire right across to the other side. Her mind flashed back to the café at King’s Cross and the moment the gun was fired at the old guy’s head. She could still see his shocked expression as he slipped down the chair and onto the floor. And then the grief, panic and frustration of his friend. She felt sorry for them. Then she remembered the look on the