Pitch Black

Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

I’D SAY I woke at dawn that morning, the day of the funeral, but the truth is I never really slept. As soon as the sun cleared the horizon, I headed into the office to work on the case that had occupied my every waking moment, as well as my dreams, for the past week.

The murder of my husband.

I felt like my heart had been ripped out, set on fire, and then put in a blender. My head told me I should be out looking for his killers, that they needed to pay for what they’d done, but inside I was paralysed.

My friend Daniela had moved into my house and each morning, she’d herd me out to the car and drive me to the office. We had a routine now.

“How are you feeling?” she’d ask.

“A little better,” I’d lie.

“We’re getting closer. We’ll find them; I promise.”

Dan was heading up the investigation and had a team of our best people working for her, but so far, every lead had petered out. I offered little help as I sat behind my desk, staring at the wall.

“Hey, watch it!”

I looked across as one of our technicians bumped into a chair, waking Evan, who’d been slumped sideways in it.

“Sorry.”

Evan shook his head. “No, it’s me who should apologise. I shouldn’t have snapped.”

Tension crackled through the air. Not a minute passed without somebody yawning, and tempers were frayed. The equipment in the company gym took a battering as the guys tried not to vent their frustrations on each other. The punch bags bore the brunt of it, and we’d replaced two of them already.

Nick stomped in at ten, wearing a scowl. “Every cop I’ve spoken to in Mexico is either corrupt or incompetent.”

“You didn’t learn anything, then?”

“Apart from how to swear more creatively in Spanish? No.”

He’d been trying to trace the true identity of the sorry excuse for a human being currently on ice with the coroner. The team had narrowed his origins down to somewhere south of the border, but the fact that a good portion of his face was missing left us struggling to pinpoint things any further.

Nick sat back on the couch in the corner and sighed. I wasn’t the only person my husband’s death was affecting. Nick had been one of his best friends.

“Do you want me to make you a drink?” I asked. Playing barista was all I was good for at the moment.

He managed a small smile. “Coffee would be good.”

At least it gave me something to do, although when the machine flashed the “change water filter” light at me, I wanted to kick it. My tolerance of menial tasks had dropped considerably.

At 11 a.m. my office assistant, Sloane, gently nudged my arm. “It’s almost time.”

“Did Bradley bring something for me to wear?”

“It’s hanging on the back of your bathroom door.”

Her voice cracked as she spoke, and I knew she’d been crying. She’d tried to hide it, but her puffy eyes had telltale smudges of mascara around them. I wanted to give her a hug, to tell her to cry if it would make her feel better, but I couldn’t. I was afraid that if she started sobbing, then I would too, and I didn’t cry anymore. Ever.

No matter how much of a wreck I was inside, to anyone looking at me, I was the ice queen. I never got upset, never got emotional. Not in front of anyone but my husband, anyway. He was the only person who saw the real me. And now he’d gone, that girl was locked up inside, and I’d thrown away the key.

Sloane had arranged cars to take everyone to the church, but I decided to drive myself instead. I couldn’t take another pity-filled glance or offer of help, no matter how well-meaning everyone was. I collapsed into my Viper and sat for a few minutes, forcing myself to breathe deeply until I was calm. The others had left before me, which was just as well, because when I arrived at the church, it turned out the media circus had come to town.

We’d suspected a handful of reporters might turn up, but it must have been a slow news day because there were dozens of them milling around in the parking lot. All the local press had arrived, plus a bunch of freelance paparazzi and even a TV crew. When I pulled in, a virtual stampede started towards my car.

My husband and I had done everything we could to keep a low profile, but when someone got killed in an undeniably attention-grabbing way, it had an unfortunate tendency to entice the media scum out from the rocks they usually resided beneath. There was even a crowd of the public, peering through the drizzle from under hoods and umbrellas, ghoulishly waiting to catch a glimpse of the “Black Widow,” as the press had dubbed me. Give them ten out of ten for originality, huh?

I hoped they were getting good and wet.

Barely resisting the urge to drive the Viper straight through the lot of them, I pulled to a halt next to our other cars. My friends were waiting when I got out, and they formed a barrier to shield me from the circling sharks. One held an umbrella overhead, and we moved towards the church as one mass with the guys at the front shouldering any particularly persistent reporters out of the way.

Their shouts echoed in my ears.

“Look this way,” one yelled before Dan pushed him aside.

“Come on, just give us a picture,” another called.

As if.

I kept my head bowed, wishing the service was over before it had even started. A couple of my team stayed behind by the doors to keep reporters out of the church. A few of them tried to talk their way in by claiming to be friends or relatives, demonstrating they had as little respect for the dead as for the living.

I sat down on the front pew next to Nate, my husband’s best friend and business partner. Another of my girlfriends, Mack, took the other side. She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, not as concerned with hiding her emotions as I was. Bradley leaned forward from the row behind and squeezed my shoulder in a show of support. He’d foregone his usual riot of colour and put on a black suit, but his watch was pink, and he had a diamond in his ear. He just couldn’t help himself.

I nearly lost it when the pallbearers carried the casket in. Six of my husband’s oldest friends shouldered the burden, the grief on their faces mirroring my own. The casket was a plain oak affair, with brass handles and a simple arrangement of orchids on the top. He wouldn’t have wanted something fancy, and it was closed of course. In fact, the whole thing was more for show than anything else, as firstly, there wasn’t a whole lot left of him, and secondly, what was left had pretty much been cremated already.

The pastor stood up and droned on for a lifetime. Well, about twenty-five minutes, but it seemed much longer. His whole speech came across as insincere—hardly surprising as he’d never met my husband. The part where he said our kids would miss their father terribly was particularly touching, considering we didn’t have any.

Still, I couldn’t totally blame him. I’d refused to give him any personal details, so he tried his best, and I had to be grateful for that. I blocked out the rest of his words and concentrated on staying calm.

Just breathing.

In and out.

In and out.

When he’d muttered his final prayer, we all trooped outside for the burial. It was still raining, which at least gave me a good reason for hiding under an umbrella once more. The last thing I wanted was to wake up the next day to find my face plastered across the front page. I wouldn’t put it beyond the reporters to photoshop a big grin on my face to show me “gleefully celebrating” the death of my husband, just to stir things up a bit.

As I watched the casket being lowered into the ground, my heart sank down with it. Never again could I love anyone the way I loved that man. When he died, my soul died too. I’d been reduced to a shell, mechanically doing the bare minimum to work and stay breathing but not caring whether I ultimately lived or died.

I was alive but no longer living.

The pastor sprinkled a handful of dirt on top of the casket then Dan nudged my arm and gestured towards the black rose I clutched in a death grip. A thorn dug into my thumb, and I relished the pain, relished the trickle of crimson blood because it broke through the numbness. But at Dan’s urging, I forced my fingers to loosen and threw the single flower into the grave.

That was it. Over.

My soulmate was gone.