Into the Black

Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

OKAY, IT TURNED out the nightmares hadn’t stayed behind in England. They’d hitched a ride across the Atlantic then rested up so they could kick the s**t out of me properly. As darkness reigned, my husband’s death played over and over again in my head, each time worse than the last.

With the amount of sleep I didn’t get, Nate’s idea of easing myself in gently seemed like a good one. As a newly initiated member of the walking dead, complete with jet lag and a leaky brain, I was in no shape to work. I’d never, ever felt so exhausted. At this rate, I’d be needing a zimmer frame soon.

Alone in the house, I made a half-hearted attempt to use the gym, but when Bradley bounded in midmorning, I took his arrival as a sign and staggered off the treadmill. What was wrong with me? The gym had always been my favourite room in the house, but today I couldn’t wait to leave.

“Time to sort out your hair,” Bradley said. “Blondes always have more fun.”

The bag of cookies he handed me didn’t hurt either. “Chocolate chip and raspberry? You really spoil me.”

“I’ve seen Toby’s menu, and I figured you’d need them.”

“What would I do without you?”

“Starve, probably.”

He knew me so well. Our closeness surprised people, but for the last decade, he’d been the sunshine to my Cimmerian shade. The glitter to my gloom.

Although our first meeting hadn’t quite gone as planned, for either of us.

Deep in the throes of building my house, my husband and I had got sick of fielding endless queries from builders and carpenters and electricians and plumbers.

“If I get one more question about window frames, I’m gonna throw this damn phone off my half-built balcony. Why am I getting so many calls today?”

My husband looked across at me, and one corner of his lip twitched.

“You arsehole. You diverted your phone to me, didn’t you?”

“I might have done that.”

“You… You…”

“Yes?”

“You little shit.”

“s**t, yes. Little, no. Look, just hire an assistant. Neither of us has time to deal with this right now.”

Fine. I’d called an agency, and they assured me they’d have no problem finding a suitable candidate. “Our books are full of efficient and experienced personal assistants,” I believe were their exact words.

I cleared half a day in my diary and rented an office suite for the interviews. Even back then, I’d hated bringing strangers home. My home was my sanctuary.

Three interviewees came and went, and as I spoke to the fourth applicant, I rolled up the sheaf of résumés I’d been given, ready to shove them up the recruiter’s backside. The grumpy old battleaxe in front of me interpreted “efficient” as “I will arrange your life in the manner I see fit and woe betide if you don’t agree with me.” By the time the fifth prospect came in, a nervous girl for whom experience translated as having babysat for her cousin’s children when she was sixteen, I’d resorted to plotting murder.

One person left to see, and I didn’t have high hopes. Perhaps I could ask Nate to build me a robot?

I’d written half a snotty email to the agency when Bradley walked in, or should I say bounced? His pink T-shirt and artfully shredded jeans weren’t typical interviewee attire, but after we’d chatted for twenty minutes about everything from the new model Corvette to the dire state of the Billboard 100, I figured I should ask some of the questions on my list.

At least, if I could get a word in edgeways.

“So what made you apply for the position?”

“Huh? What position?”

“The personal assistant position? The one this interview is for.”

“Interview? I’m not here for an interview. I already have a job as a stylist.” He indicated his own clothes as an example, and I had to admit the look worked for him. “I just want to rent an apartment. The receptionist said the realtor’s temporary office was the third door on the right.”

Well, at least Bradley could count. Shame the receptionist couldn’t. This was what happened when staff got hired for the size of their chest rather than the size of their brain.

“Sorry, but I’m not the realtor.”

“I wondered where the brochures were.”

I may have lacked brochures, but I did have a few empty apartments. By that point, my real estate portfolio was coming along nicely.

“What kind of place are you looking for?”

“Somewhere I can move into quickly.”

“Hmm… I might be able to help.”

As we walked around the corner to a property I owned, Bradley told me about his flooded home. “So, the guy upstairs left a tap running, the sink blocked, and the ceiling fell down. And the landlord’s being soooo awkward. He thinks it’s fine for the place to stay mushy and mouldy until he gets around to fixing it.”

“Sounds like a real gem.”

“That’s only the half of it. The lady next door has a hearing problem and she plays her stereo loud enough to wake the dead.” He shuddered. “And she only listens to Irish folk music.”

Ouch.

I picked up the spare key from the concierge and showed Bradley around a nice place on the second floor. I’d bought the entire complex for a steal two years earlier from a guy with a gambling problem.

“What do you think?” I asked once he’d seen all the rooms.

Bradley looked out the window at the communal swimming pool. “I’m not sure it’s in my budget.”

“We can sort something out. Apart from that?”

“It’s fabulous. So much nicer than my place.”

“And mine.”

“You have a nasty landlord too?”

“No, I have a building site. Right now, I’ve got no doors or windows, all the walls are bare plaster, and carpets are a distant dream. I don’t know where to start.”

So far, I’d only ordered the gym equipment.

“With decorating? Ooh, I love decorating! You need to get paint samples and decide on a colour theme for each room. Once you’ve done that, you can start with fabric swatches for the upholstery and then comes the fun part.”

“Sleeping?”

He clapped his hands together in glee. “Buying furniture and accessories.”

Wonderful. I f*****g hated shopping. “How busy are you with your stylist thing this month?”

“I’m between contracts at the moment. I’m sure I’ll pick something up, though, and I always pay my rent on time.”

“If you decorate my house, I’ll pay you and throw in the apartment free for six months.”

“Are you serious?”

“As a heart attack.” Which was what I’d have if I tried to sort out the damn house myself.

Bradley leaned against the glass, tapping his fingernails on it as he thought. “I guess I could do that. Would it be a problem if my boyfriend lived here with me?”

“Is he an arsehole?”

“No!”

“Then there’s no problem.”

Over the next hour, we hammered out the details, agreeing on a fair salary, a list of basic tasks that were needed, and rough working hours. That evening we sealed the deal with a handshake and margaritas.

Sometimes, the impulsive decisions you make in life turn out to be the best choices. Our original contract had lasted six months, but eight years later, Bradley was still colour-coordinating my life. I’d be lost without him.

Bradley kept me company over lunch, although from the dirty looks he gave the salad, he regretted not stopping at the drive-thru on the way over.

“Thanks for staying, Bradley.”

“That’s why you pay me the big bucks, doll.”

“I’ll give you a raise if you can convince Toby to let me eat proper food again.”

“No can do. I’ll just have to stick with abusing your credit card instead.”

I laughed, because I didn’t care what he spent on my credit card and we both knew it.

I’d stopped caring about cash years ago. As long as I had enough to be comfortable, the extra zeroes on my bank balance didn’t matter. Sure, I had toys, but most of them were there to save me time, like the helicopter and the plane. I never had enough time. Tick, tick, tick, tick… The seconds counted down, and then poof! You were gone. Material possessions? Well, I was just as happy wearing Walmart as Vera Wang.

And having money had proved a blight as well as a blessing. While I’d done good with it by starting a charitable foundation to help kids who’d been dealt a bad hand in life, it also meant I never quite knew who my friends were. Did new acquaintances see me as a person or a cash machine? The answer to that question meant I didn’t trust many people, although I’d learned to spot money-grabbers a mile off.

Speaking of money-grabbers, I still had to deal with my husband’s Aunt Miriam. Ever the compassionate one, she was intent on suing me for his estate, convinced that as his only living blood relative, she was automatically entitled to everything. While I knew she wouldn’t get a dime, the thought of a protracted battle weighed on my mind.

“Bradley, have you heard anything from Miriam?”

“She’s been emailing you. Nate got your lawyer to write back, but that was only a couple of weeks ago, and I don’t think she’s replied yet.”

Why didn’t Bradley meet my eyes?

“And what else? Come on, I’m a big girl; I can take it.”

“She turned up here one day.”

“Here? Really?”

She’d spread her cheer at my husband’s family home a few times, but never before darkened my doorway. Hardly surprising, since she hated me with a passion her husband could only dream of.

Fortunately, our paths hadn’t crossed much over the years. I only saw her when we threw a party at the Riverley estate, which had belonged to her brother before it passed down to my husband. She’d turn up for the free booze, hoover up the canapés, b***h a bit, then slither back under her rock until the next time.

“Yes, here. Mrs. Fairfax made the mistake of opening the door to her, and she started ranting as soon as she got inside. I asked her to leave, but she told me she wasn’t listening to some fudge-packing little pixie and that this would soon be her house, anyway.”

Bradley tried to smile, but his lip quivered. My mind flicked to the Walther I’d put back in its hiding place.

“Karma’s gonna bite that b***h in the ass one day, and when it does, the Kruger Clos d’Ambonnay is coming out of the wine cellar.”

This time, he grinned properly.

“Karma can hardly miss, can it? Miriam’s ass is the size of Texas. Dustin threatened to put a pitchfork up it if she didn’t leave.”

Dustin was the groom who looked after my horse, Stan, and he’d just earned himself a bonus. “Was that what got her to go?”

“No, her husband was with her.”

Nine years had passed since Miriam got married, and the poor man deserved a medal for bravery. Or stupidity. “How did that help?”

“I told him I had a very special relationship with a member of the local press, who’d find her insults over my s****l preference about as funny as I did. Then I suggested he might want to get her out of here pronto if he didn’t want her arrest for disorderly conduct to be splashed across the front page of the Richmond Times.”

“Well done, Bradley, I’ve taught you well.” I gave him a high-five, laughing.

“When I was trying to get rid of her, I just thought ‘What would Emmy do?’”

“Yeah, I’d have totally done that. Except I’d have given her a couple of glasses of wine first so she made it into the drunk tank.”

“She won’t get this house, will she?”

“Not a chance, so you can stop worrying. This place is one hundred percent mine.”

True, but what I didn’t tell Bradley was that I fully expected her to stir up a right royal shitstorm before she admitted defeat. Miriam was one stubborn woman.

But so was I.

The fifteen-thousand square feet of Little Riverley had always been in my name, although my husband had gifted me the land it was built on.

“Let’s take a walk,” he’d told me on the morning of my alleged twenty-fourth birthday.

“What kind of walk?”

Last time he’d suggested a pleasant amble in the countryside, I’d ended up in running gear, carrying a rifle for twenty miles while he jogged effortlessly beside me.

“You’ll see.”

“Do I need sweatbands and electrolytes?”

“Not today, Diamond.”

We started from his house, Riverley Hall, and set off across the estate. I thought we’d stop when we got to the boundary, but he carried on, over the chain-link fence and through the forest belonging to the property next door. It was smaller than Riverley, but wildly overgrown, and an eerie stillness surrounded us as we crept through the tendrils of mist that lingered from a chilly night. The place had been empty the whole time I’d lived at Riverley Hall, although that hadn’t stopped me from exploring. I knew we were heading towards the old house.

He pulled me to a stop in front of it, and I gazed up at the drooping facade. A fire had raged through the building many years ago, and between that and the storms that followed, the roof was left sagging at one end while charred timbers poked out of a hole at the other. Only two windows remained intact, the rest jagged shards of glass glinting in the morning sun. It was a sad shell of what had once been a majestic mansion. Like a wounded animal, it needed to be put out of its misery.

My husband put his arms around my shoulders and whispered in my ear, “Happy birthday, Diamond.”

“Sorry, what?”

“I bought it. For you. I know Riverley’s never been your dream home, so now you can design your own place.”

“Oh.”

Had he finally got sick of me living with him? Was this a really big hint that I should move out? Sure, our relationship had always been a little unusual, but I was happy sharing his house.

He took a step back. “s**t, don’t give me that look. What have I done?”

“Giving me a whole estate is very generous, but do you not think there were easier ways you could have asked me to leave?”

“Leave? Why would I want you to leave? I was planning to live in the new place with you—we can share both houses.” He sat on the edge of a broken fountain. “You always wanted a modern house, and when the old lady who owned this disaster died, the opportunity seemed too good to pass up. If you prefer, we can just take down the fence and use the extra land for riding.”

You see why I loved him? He might have been a cold bastard, and he might have been a sadistic son of a b***h, but he knew me. And he wanted me to be happy.

“In that case, thank you!” I jumped up, wrapping my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck, clinging on like a demented monkey much to his amusement.

“That’s more like it.” He smiled, eyes twinkling, and hugged me back. “Let’s go home and find an architect.”

After Bradley and I finished lunch, I helped him to clear the plates into the dishwasher then he headed into town to run some errands. That left me at a loose end, which was why when Mrs. Fairfax returned with the groceries later in the afternoon, she found me cleaning my guns in an attempt to distract myself.

I wanted to do anything but think.

“What are you doing, child?” she scolded before giving me a welcoming hug. “You’ve got oil all over the table.”

“I needed to do something mind-numbing.”

“Things must be bad if you’ve resorted to polishing.”

She was right. Of course she was right. But at least my Colt .45 was really, really shiny.

“I should get back to the office.”

I couldn’t put it off forever even though the prospect was daunting. Almost like the first day at a new school, and I’d had a few of those, what with having been expelled most years. Not only did I have to slot back into doing a difficult and dangerous job, I needed to do it without my number one partner in crime by my side.

My husband had always acted as my sounding board, and now the whole dynamic of how I did things, planned jobs, and thought them through would have to change. A rocky road lay ahead, one I wasn’t sure I could navigate alone.

“No need to rush into work before you’re ready,” Mrs. Fairfax said. “How about I make you some supper?”

“Uh…”

Thankfully, Bradley arrived back and saved me from an evening of second-guessing myself.

“We’re going out for dinner. I’ve made reservations at that Thai place you like,” he told me.

I didn’t relish the idea of dining out, but it was better than staying home alone. Home had too many ghosts and memories.

“I’m driving,” I said.

“No, you’re not. I’ve left my Valium at home.”

“I’ll drive slowly.”

“Last time you said that, Mack had to hack into the police database and erase your speeding ticket.”

“If you drive, we’ll get there in time for breakfast.”

We compromised and took a town car, which turned out to be a good move. Roadworks had left downtown in chaos. Rather than wait as our driver fought his way through road closures and detours, we decided to walk the last part. At least on foot, we could take a shortcut through the park. Fresh air and exercise were good for us, right? And I always carried a flashlight in my purse. Be prepared and all that.

Bradley and I were halfway to the restaurant, discussing the merits of green curry versus red curry, when I picked up on the soft pad of footsteps coming up behind.

I lapsed into silence while Bradley kept chattering enough for the both of us. The moon reflected off the metal bollards bordering the path, the only light at that time of night. I glanced around—the place was deserted. Only us and our new friend walked the narrow avenue between the overgrown trees and bushes, long past needing a trim. The tall evergreens and the damp air muffled any sounds. If anybody shouted for help, not a soul would hear.

Good. I never liked to have an audience.

I blocked out Bradley and concentrated on my surroundings. Our companion matched our pace twenty yards behind. I felt rather than heard him, and my sixth sense told me it wasn’t simply someone out for an evening stroll.

Bradley realised I’d stopped speaking and turned to me. “What?”

I jerked my head back infinitesimally, indicating the trouble approaching. He knew me well enough that he understood.

“Here we go again,” he muttered, rolling his eyes.