Читать книгу Toxic: The addictive new crime thriller from the best selling author that will have you gripped in 2018 - Jacqui Rose, Jacqui Rose - Страница 26

Janine Jennings was pacing. She was beside herself. In fact, she hadn’t been this agitated since Great Aunt Ethel on her deathbed had bequeathed the Cowdray pearl necklace she’d had her eye on to her sister.

Sighing, she chewed on her nails, tasting the bitter gel polish she’d used earlier. How the hell did Vaughn think he could let this job slip through his fingers? She wasn’t so worried about Alfie. He hadn’t said anything, but she knew him well enough to know he’d want to do the job. He was a greedy bastard when it came to money, plus he was desperate to get back to what he knew best, to get back to the life he loved, so there was no way that Alfie would want to let this one go.

But the problem was Vaughn. If he thought he was going to impress Casey and get her back by being skint and spineless then he was mugging himself off. He didn’t impress anyone. Women wanted real men. Flash cars and a bit of bling not a gutless muppet and a pub lunch with a ten-year-old Ford Focus parked outside. And come to think of it, Lola hadn’t helped. What was she playing at, doing her caring Mary act? She would do well to remember it was her roof that she was living under.

Sighing again and coming to an eventual halt by the end of her pink satin-draped bed, Janine plonked down on the mattress. She understood what Vaughn was saying about there only being the two of them. But there must be a way … there must be.

Staring at herself in the mirrored wardrobe, Janine bit into a Snickers bar. And then a thought came to her. Why not? What could be the harm?

Smiling to herself, Janine picked up her phone. If this didn’t work. Nothing would. And at least it would put the cat among the pigeons.

Janine Jennings wasn’t the only one who was pacing. Eddie Styler was treading the carpet fibres out. He was in trouble. Big time.

‘Eddie! Eddie! Have you seen Barrie?’

Looking down at Barrie, who’d come to wrap his grey fluffy tail around his feet, Eddie quietly picked him up, throwing him out of the back door. ‘No!’

Storming into the kitchen, her face covered in a white clay face mask and her hair tightly done up in rollers, Sandra shouted, ‘Well you better go and find him then.’

Eddie gave a tight smile. He hadn’t been allowed out since he’d been to see Johnny, and Sandra was not only giving him grief, but was watching his every move as well as screening his phone calls.

He stared at his wife, caked in the dried, clay mask, cracking and splitting on her face, and he couldn’t help but think of the Mexican death masks. He shivered and wondered, as he so often did, how the hell he’d ever thought marrying her was a good idea.