It only took another moment to realise whose box it was.

With a final nod to the trainer he walked briskly across the grass. The entrance to the building was being guarded by a member of racecourse security who stepped into his path.

“Sorry sir, there’s been an incident upstairs. If you wouldn’t mind—”

“Yes I would mind,” Grogan said going toe to toe. “And bearing in mind the amount of money I’ve paid to enjoy watching my horse run from up there, unless you want to be hearing from my brief, you’ll let me through.”

The security man quailed under Grogan’s stare and jerked his head without a word. As if not actually inviting him to pass would be an excuse later, Grogan thought savagely. If you were one of mine sonny, I’d sack you on the spot.

He was still simmering as he summoned the lift.

147

Inside the private box only two people were still on their feet.

Kelly Jacks was one of them.

She’d seen McCarron go down in response to Dmitry’s gunshot but not as a direct result of it. He’d clearly thought the Russian was going to kill him, had risen clumsily, unbalanced in his panic, tripped over his own feet and fallen.

The shock and the pain of landing heavily, on top of his recent injuries, kept him down. Kelly was praying it was no more than that.

She’d hurled the heavy conference chair at Dmitry at the same moment he’d pulled the trigger. His automatic flinch had pulled the shot wide of its intended target. Instead it smashed the glass of the central window and kept on going to God knows where outside.

The chair had a metal frame and legs and a substantial seat. It caught Dmitry across the jaw and shoulders, jerking his head back with a grunt. He let go of the gun as his legs went from under him and he toppled onto his back.

Yana dropped her composed act and pounced for the gun, scrabbling on her hands and knees. Kelly leapt forwards and kicked it hard enough to send it spinning under the table and across the far side of the room out of reach. Yana gave a howl of rage.

Kelly’s eyes flew back to Dmitry who’d managed to roll onto his side propped on his elbow. He was floundering and groggy and, from the way he held himself, she judged she’d either severely bruised his shoulder or possibly broken his collarbone.

Just to make sure he was out of the game she bounced on her toes and kicked him under the side of his jaw. She heard his teeth clack together as he flailed backwards again. This time he lay still enough to convince her he would not be a problem in the short term.

Yana let out another feral cry and bent to cradle the fallen man’s head tenderly. “Dmitry!” Her shakes and pats had no effect.

“Let him sit this one out Yana.”

“Bitch!” Yana hissed, rounding on her. She held up a hand, finger and thumb squeezed together almost touching. “We are this close. Why couldn’t you keep stupid long nose to self?”

“I did keep my ‘stupid long nose’ to myself,” Kelly shot back. “I queried the Veronica Lytton scene, was told to go ahead and we cleaned it. All that evidence gone without a trace. You should be bloody thanking me, not murdering my friend and setting me up.”

“You interfere just by who you are,” Yana said. She rose, began to circle. “Lytton, he doubt because of you. He want to keep looking—want you to keep looking.” She shrugged. “So we had to get rid of you.”

“And you thought it would stick—setting me up for Tyrone—even though they can test for ketamine in my hair for months afterwards?” she said, injecting scorn into her voice in place of bravado. “You must have known they’d tumble to it eventually.”

Yana shrugged again. “It not matter,” she said. “After today, nothing matter.”

Kelly felt a cold shiver that was not just because of the cool breeze gusting in through the broken window. She was aware of the noise outside—first screams and shouts and now some kind of reassuring drone from the public address system, trying to refocus everyone’s attention on the big race. People would remember today she thought, but not for the reasons Lytton had hoped for.

Lytton!

“What did you do with Matthew?”

“Don’t worry, he is all taken care of,” Yana said with a smile that did nothing to reassure.

Kelly flicked her eyes towards McCarron. He was sitting with his back against the table leg, clutching his cast arm with a look of intense concentration on his pinched face as if trying to will his way around the pain.

“What the hell is worth all this suffering?” She shook her head slowly. “What do you hope to gain?”

“That is easy question—everything,” Yana said. “Soon, it ours.”

Uncomprehending Kelly gestured towards the unconscious man on the floor. “You and Dmitry?” she queried. “You think you can trust a thug like him? What makes you think he won’t turn on you too as soon as you’ve got what you both want?”

“Oh, Dmitry would never turn on her,” said a voice from the doorway. “Would he sweetheart?”

Both women spun to find Harry Grogan had quietly opened the door and was standing in the frame taking in the room at large. Kelly found her voice first.

“What makes you so sure?”

Grogan was staring at Yana as though it was the first time he’d set eyes on her and he didn’t like what he saw. He spoke without shifting his gaze.

“Because she’s Dmitry’s sister.”

148

Grogan took it all in before he stepped into the room. Dmitry was well out of it, limbs threshing weakly. There was an older man Grogan didn’t know on the floor near the table. He looked as though he’d been through the wars and was not out of them yet.

That left the two women.

They couldn’t be more different in looks but there was the same streak of steel running through both of them, he realised. Only, with Kelly Jacks it was forged in fire, clean and bright. He wondered why he’d never seen the sheer contaminated greed in his mistress before.

“Hello Myshka,” he said. “Having fun sweetheart?”

Kelly Jacks raised an eyebrow. “‘Myshka’?”

“Means ‘mousy’ in Russian, I believe,” he noted. “Not exactly an apt description of Yana when you see her like this is it? Bit like calling a short-arse Lofty.”

A smile twitched at the corner of Kelly’s mouth. Yana didn’t quite get the reference but if the stiffening of her spine was anything to go by she knew enough to be insulted by it.

“You know her,” Kelly said. Not a question.