Into the Black

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

I ITCHED TO reach for the pistol in my handbag, but I’d promised Nate I wouldn’t shoot anyone today. Dammit. I didn’t fancy incurring his wrath quite so soon after arriving back, so I’d have to do this the hard way.

The footsteps grew louder as they left the grass and hit the concrete path. I spun around, shoving Bradley behind me as some little punk ran up. How old was he? Seventeen? Eighteen? He was taller than me, and heavier, but who cared? That only meant he’d fall harder.

Moonlight glinted off the blade in his right hand as he thrust it towards us. Good grief—his stance was all wrong.

“Gimme the bag and the watch,” he demanded, then flicked his wrist towards Bradley. “Those earrings real?”

Bradley put his hands on his hips. “Of course they are. Do I look like the sort of man who’d wear cubic zirconia?”

Oh, Bradley. He’d rather be mugged than admit to wearing paste.

I went to hand my bag over, but before the kid could take it, I dropped it on the ground. Oops. As he bent to pick it up, I kneed him in the face, and there was a satisfying crunch as his nose broke.

Score one to me.

He let out a howl and straightened up, dripping blood down his shirt and all over the ground. Pain driving him, he ran at me with the knife held out in front. I sidestepped and twisted it out of his grasp. Amateur.

Bradley leapt back as I swept the asshole’s legs out from under him, and when he was flat out, face down, I pressed the tip of the blade into his neck.

“If I see you round here again, this knife’ll be buried to the hilt. Got it?”

I lifted his mouth out of the dirt just enough for him to mumble, “Got it.”

“Should I call the cops?” Bradley asked.

No way. “You should know better than to ask.”

I’d been in the Richmond PD’s bad books since I left for England, and if we got them involved, they’d bombard me with irrelevant questions for hours, just for the hell of it. Our dinner reservation wouldn’t wait. Instead, I let the guy up, and in seconds he’d disappeared into the night.

“He won’t be back here if he’s got any brain cells left.”

“I doubt he had any in the first place,” Bradley pointed out.

“You’re probably right. That went quite well though, don’t you think?”

Despite being a little rusty, I’d controlled the situation with no problems and my worries about underperforming receded just a tiny bit. Not a bad evening so far, and I still had spring rolls and prawn fritters to look forward to.

Bradley squealed as he stepped forward and picked up my handbag, holding it out in front of him as if it was poisonous. “No, I do not think it went well. He bled on your Louis Vuitton! And just look at the state of you.”

Okay, so he had a point. My silk top, once a pristine cream, had taken on a tie-dyed appearance. f**k it. I’d forgotten how much mess a broken nose made. The mouthwatering taste of crispy wontons receded into the gloom.

“Guess we’re not going out for dinner anymore,” I said. “We’ll have to pick up pizza on the way home.”

“I should have remembered how trouble follows you around.” He rolled his eyes in the dim light and pulled out his phone. “Do you want jalapeños on yours?”

When we got home, Bradley and I curled up together on a sofa in my home cinema, wrapped up in a blanket, like we’d done many times over the years. He was one of the few people who ever glimpsed the soft side of me, the normal person hiding under the hard exterior. The outside world only saw serious Emmy, the hard-nosed hellion totally focused on work. I kept the girl who chilled out with junk food and a crappy movie well hidden.

Only she’d been the Emmy who went to England. With Luke and his sister, Tia, I’d kept the b***h in me locked down, and for three months, I’d been free to act like a regular thirty-year-old woman. Just a couple of days had passed since I saw Luke and Tia, and I missed them already. Not the same way I missed my husband—think barbecue pit compared to the fires of hell—but a certain sadness haunted me now I’d lost the only good things to come into my life in recent months.

Dan had messaged me last night to say Tia was holding up as well as could be expected under the circumstances, but that was little consolation.

Emmy: And how’s Luke?

Dan: He blames himself.

Crazy, because only one man could have stopped what happened, and he was getting to know his new cellmate right now. For a second, the delusional part of me considered hopping on my plane and flying back to tell Luke not to be so hard on himself, but I soon put that idea out of my mind. I hadn’t forgotten the look of disgust on his face when he found out I’d lied to him about my true identity. Hoping to slot back into the life I had with him was nothing more than a pipe dream.

Watching my husband die then seeing a bullet come within inches of Luke’s head had brought home how short life could be. And now I had the choice of wasting mine or making the most of the remaining tatters. My crushed heart wanted to embrace the darkness but logic overruled, and I climbed out of bed as dawn broke the next morning to go for an early ride on Stan.

Being out on a horse at that time in the morning always felt magical. I changed into jeans and left the house, arming the security system before I took the short walk down to the stables where Stan lived with Dustin’s old mare.

When I’d bought Stan as a half-starved mess in Spain, I could have kept him in the stable block next door, but instead I treated it as an excuse to have the old barn on my land renovated. I delegated that task to Bradley, and with his usual efficiency, he’d got the project finished by the time Stan was well enough to travel to his new home.

I should have known better.

As I’d been busy overseas, I’d given Bradley free rein to remodel in the way he thought best, and while he didn’t know much about horses, he knew a whole lot about decorating and even more about shopping. The day I returned, he loaded me into a golf buggy before I had a chance to unpack and took me to see his masterpiece.

“What the…?”

My ramshackle barn had disappeared, replaced by a caricature of a Spanish villa.

Bradley stuck a sombrero on my head and tugged at my hand. “Come look inside.”

It may have been six degrees Celsius out, but two steps over the threshold I stripped off my sweater.

“Why the f**k is it so hot?”

He beamed at me. “Central heating. There’s a solarium at the end as well so Stan gets a proper dose of rays all year round.”

I did a three-sixty, taking in the eight-foot high mural of a clichéd Andalusian village and the artificial beach. Stan was happily ensconced in his new stable, munching hay and watching Spanish-language television.

“You realise he’s a horse, right?”

“I wanted him to feel at home.”

At least Stan wasn’t French. Otherwise, I’d have returned to find a scale model of the Eiffel Tower planted in a vineyard.

The pseudo-villa had grown on me over the years, and Stan gave me a dirty look when I turned off the TV and led him outside into the cool Virginia winter. I gave him a quick brush before I went to fetch his tack. As I came back with the saddle and bridle, Dustin pulled up in his pickup truck and unfolded himself from behind the steering wheel, face impassive as always. My dog, Lucy, bounded out after him, hurtling over as fast as her legs could carry her when she realised I’d come home.

I braced for impact, but even then only narrowly avoided landing on my arse. A fully grown Doberman weighs a lot. Lucy was supposed to be a guard dog, but at that moment she bounced around like a demented puppy.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” Dustin drawled.

“Good to see you too. Have the animals been okay?”

“All fit and well. Lucy’s been staying with me.”

“I hoped she would be. Thanks for looking after them.”

“Just doing my job, lady. Are you taking Lucy out with you this morning? She could do with a good run.”

“Yes, she looks like she needs one.”

Stan, Lucy, and I set off across the pasture, walking at first, but I urged Stan into a gallop once he’d stretched his legs. The wind tearing through my hair made me forget about the mountains of s**t in my life, albeit briefly. Nothing mattered but the thud of Stan’s hooves on the turf and Lucy panting as she raced along behind us, well, nothing apart from hanging on as Stan put in a couple of massive bucks out of sheer exuberance. At the far end of the grass, we waited for Lucy to catch up before taking a meander through the forest that reached all the way to the edge of my land.

Tendrils of mist lingered between the trees, and in the stillness, I could almost imagine we were the only three souls left on Earth. Sticky buds showed the trees would soon burst into leaf—new life and new hope in a world of gloom. Of course, Lucy shattered the illusion by shooting off after a rabbit, and Stan spooked as a deer jumped out of the bushes in front of us.

So much for a relaxing jaunt.

We made it back to the barn in one piece, just in time for Stan to watch his favourite Spanish chat show on EstrellaTV, and I decided to give him a good groom because it was calming for both of us. How lovely to be looking after my own horse after spending weeks working in a stable in England caring for other people’s. I combed out his mane and tail then bent to brush his legs as he snuffled at my pockets for treats.

Then my phone fell out of my pocket and hit the deck.

Stan trod on it, no hesitation. When it went crunch, he even turned his head to glare at me, annoyed at the interruption to his program.

Normal service: resumed. I was back to destroying phones again. I managed it with astonishing regularity, and the guys in the office always had a pool running on how long they’d last. Except while I was in England, I’d managed to keep my piece-of-s**t mobile working for the entire trip—almost three months. Maybe I should quit using my normal phones and just get three of whatever that one was. Or could it be an omen? While my phone was intact, my sanity wasn’t, and vice versa? Perhaps breaking yet another fancy smartphone signified my life was getting back to normal. Here’s hoping, eh?

After I’d salvaged my SIM card and dumped the broken remains in the bin, I led Stan out to his paddock and watched him have a good roll. Then I walked back up the path to the house with Lucy bounding around beside me. Didn’t that dog ever run out of energy? The answer was no, but I preferred her like that than the half-dead puppy I’d brought home five years ago.

I’d been returning home late one night after visiting some acquaintances in a shitty part of Richmond when I heard a small whimper as I walked past a dumpster. When I hopped up on an abandoned pallet and peered inside, Lucy’s tiny head poked out of a plastic bag.

What kind of scum dumped a living creature like that?

I vaulted over the side, landing in something icky and ruining a pair of Jimmy Choo boots much to Bradley’s despair. Out of five tiny puppies in the bag, only Lucy was still breathing. She couldn’t have been more than a couple of weeks old. I sacrificed a Missoni scarf to make a makeshift bed for her in my handbag and rushed her to the veterinarian. It was touch and go for a few days, but a week later Lucy came home with me. I fed her around the clock until she was strong enough to eat by herself, and she grew into a beautiful dog, if not a little bigger than I expected. My reward? Her loyalty and companionship.

And also her drool and her muddy paws. She jogged into the house ahead of me, pausing to shake off the morning dew in the kitchen. Dammit. Mrs. Fairfax wouldn’t be very happy with us.

Lucy munched her way through a bowl of doggy kibble while I started up the coffee machine. Caffeine was my drug of choice, and I needed a good hit first thing in the morning. While I waited for my drink to brew, I went to my phone cupboard and selected a shiny new model from the stack inside. Bulk discount, baby.

By the time I’d set my data to synchronise, the coffee was ready, and I poured myself a generous mug full of something dark, hot, and delicious. I’d just raised it to my lips, relishing the bitter taste, when it was removed from my hand and replaced by a cup of…