She was sure there would be no hesitation from him.
She was on her feet and hurtling to the cliff edge when he opened fire. A bullet caught her in the ankle. Then another in her side. As she leaped over the edge, a third bullet sunk into her shoulder.
She plummeted into the darkness below.
CHAPTER 2
Present day
‘Mrs Walker,’ the lady receptionist stated in her thick Spanish accent. She looked up over her computer screen into the waiting area where a handful of young women were sitting expectantly.
Kim got to her feet. She was alone. All the other women had husbands, boyfriends, or what looked to be their mothers, waiting with them. Kim didn’t have a mother. Not one she’d known anyway. And her husband, Patrick, was as ever too busy to come with her.
That was fine. She could handle herself. She always had.
On the outside, Kim Walker was beautiful, radiant, confident and alluring. The type of person who made others feel happier. But then the world only ever sees what it wants to see. What lies underneath? Nobody ever really knows. Kim had always been an expert at masking her true self. That was the way it had to be.
The truth was she was wracked with nerves. As confident as she appeared, she always felt tense in the presence of someone of authority. They were just doctors and nurses here. They weren't the police, the intelligence services or part of some secret and deadly government-sponsored murder squad. They weren’t going to ask questions she couldn’t or wouldn’t answer.
They posed no real danger.
To them, Kim Walker was just another pregnancy, another statistic, and another set of forms to fill out. Albeit at thirty-six, she was certainly the oldest of the expectant mothers in the room.
Kim approached the receptionist, who indicated over to room number four. Kim headed to the door, opened it to reveal a darkened room, and spotted the young female doctor sitting in front of a bank of brightly lit monitors. The doctor looked up at Kim, an apology on her face.
‘Mrs Walker, I’m Dr. Karmala. Please come, sit down.’
The doctor, as with all the other staff at the expensive private clinic in Marbella, spoke perfect English. Many of them were English, though the doctor’s features and her accent suggested she was from somewhere on the Indian sub-continent.
‘You can call me Kim. No need to be so formal.’
‘Certainly, Kim.’
Kim shut the door and headed to the bed and sat, looking over the machines next to her with their myriad of knobs, dials, and lights. She felt a sickly sensation in the pit of her stomach. ‘You have the results?’
The doctor hesitated, shifting in her seat, then looked down at the papers in front of her.
‘Yes.’ She paused, as if gathering her thoughts. Or trying to find the words. ‘Mrs Walker–’
‘Kim.’
‘I’m sorry, Kim. As you know your pregnancy is considered more high risk because of your, urm, age–’
‘Just tell me. Please,’ Kim said, already preparing for the worst.
Tears rolled down Kim’s face as she drove away from the clinic, back towards her lavish villa high up in the mountains overlooking the cool blue Mediterranean. She made no attempt to wipe at the salty streaks.
Perhaps this was nature’s way of punishing her for what she was. She didn’t believe in a god, about praying for a better life or for forgiveness for the bad things she’d done. Good and evil weren’t concepts designed to test one’s faith in a higher being, they were simply human nature.
Yet throughout her life, Kim had seen an element of karma; that she did firmly believe in. What goes around comes around. Or maybe it was just pure shitty luck.
Either way, deep down, Kim felt she deserved it. But how the hell was she going to break the news to Patrick?
They’d been together for over five years, married for four. He’d long wanted children. She’d always been more hesitant. Because of her own painful childhood, she was fearful of the world she would be bringing a child into. What if it suffered as she had? Even worse, what if it turned out to be just like her?
But slowly, as the years wore on, her natural mothering instincts had won out. Patrick had never pressurised her. She’d loved him even more for that. Of course, like everyone else, they’d had difficulties in their relationship, but the lack of children had never driven a wedge between them.
Patrick would be as devastated as she was about the news. And it wasn’t like she was getting any younger. Even if she could get pregnant again in the future, the risks would only increase further with each attempt they made.
Kim let out a long, pained shout. Not a scream, but an angry, fearsome roar. She was angry with herself more than anything. How fucking selfish could you get? There she was, full of devastation and self-pity that the child she was carrying was less than perfect, but it was still a living child. It was still her child. She would love it unconditionally.
The tears stopped. A hard-edged resolve broke onto Kim’s face as she battled against the turmoil in her mind.
It was five p.m. when she wound the car along the long driveway and rolled to a stop outside the grand double doors of her home. Patrick’s car, his beloved Maserati, wasn’t there. She had no idea what time he’d be back from work. She’d left a voice mail asking him to call. She hadn’t given the details but had hoped from her tone of voice – and given he knew where she was going that afternoon – that he’d have understood what the problem might be.
She’d had nothing in response from him. She loved him dearly but he really could be a self-centred prick sometimes. A lot of the time actually.
Kim stepped out of her car and walked to the entrance, first unlocking the metal security grate and then the left of the double doors. She swung the door open and stepped into the marble-floored atrium, feeling a waft of pleasantly cool air on her face. She let out a long sigh, pleased to be back in her own space where she could shut herself off from the outside world once more.
She turned to push the door closed. Caught sight of the dark figure, off to her right, a split second too late.
Her old instincts were still there, but they weren’t as sharp as they used to be. And she was pre-occupied. Maybe if it had been any other day, maybe if the news she’d just received had been positive, she’d have been more alert and it would have made the difference. A fraction of a second extra was probably all she needed to turn the tables on her would-be attacker.
And yet it was by such small margins that people regularly lived and died in all sorts of circumstances; accidents, close shaves.
But this was no accident, Kim knew. Far from it. And she realised as soon as the almond-scented rag was forced over her face that there was nothing she could do.
Seconds later, her body went limp.
And during the grave violence that soon followed, her unconsciousness was one thing Kim Walker would surely have been thankful for.
CHAPTER 3