by Elise Noble
“That’s not true.”
I shrugged.
The truth was, I did think Black was sorry. And I did miss spending time with him the way I used to. But I’d put up with his petty jealousy for too long, and if I didn’t teach him a lesson now, he’d never learn.
“Prove it.”
We lapsed into silence until Dolly bustled back with enough food to sink a battleship. Black had been running with Barkley early in the mornings, but I’d stayed in the hotel room out of stubbornness. The bulge over my waistband said perhaps I should have a rethink.
“Here you go, sweetie-pie. Ham biscuits and pancakes with syrup and bacon.” One portion had become two. Biscuits for both of us—which came with green beans and potato gratin—and the stack of pancakes was a foot high. A pig had given up its life for our lunch, and Canada was probably experiencing a maple syrup shortage. “And here’s that brochure.”
I wasn’t a Shakespeare fan. I’d skipped school the year we were meant to study The Merchant of Venice, and consequently, I’d never developed an appreciation of his way with words. Nate had tried to educate me on more than one occasion, but I still preferred reading the Heckler & Koch catalogue.
What did Penngrove have to offer? Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, Love’s Labour’s Lost… Plus concerts by local bands, a stand-up comedy night, and a visit from an Elvis impersonator. And…
I started laughing. And laughing and laughing and laughing. Oh, hell. We owed Dolly the biggest tip ever.
CHAPTER 44 - EMMY
“WHAT’S SO FUNNY?” Black asked.
I jabbed my finger at a short paragraph on the back page of the brochure.
This year’s performances are kindly sponsored by Killian Marshall, whose generous contributions have allowed the Penngrove Community Theater not only to survive but to flourish.
The photo above showed a man in his early fifties, slightly greyer around the temples than when I’d seen him last, and a fuck of a lot more composed.
“We’ve found Dyson.”
“Killian Marshall? A local philanthropist?”
“Yup.” A modern-day Robin Hood, it seemed. He stole from the rich to give to the poor. “I’ll never forget that face.”
Black blew out a long breath. “Thank fuck for that. I’ll get the research team onto this. Then we can work out how to pick him up.”
While Black pulled out his phone, I looked again at the picture. Dyson’s expression was kind, benign, giving no hint that he was actually a master criminal. Did the townsfolk know where his money came from? I was betting they didn’t.
“Diamond, who’s driving your BMW?”
“Er, nobody?”
He held up his phone screen so I could see the message in red.
ALERT: E BLK - IMPACT SENSORS ACTIVATED
All of Blackwood’s vehicles were fitted with a black box of tricks courtesy of Nate, and the BMW was no exception. Someone had crashed it? I couldn’t say I was devastated, but who had been behind the wheel? Were they hurt?
“Well, somebody must have borrowed it. Where is it now?”
Black tapped away. “Three hundred yards from Riverley’s main gate.”
I began to get a bad, bad feeling about this. Riverley was on a quiet lane. Turn left out of the main gate and you’d be heading for Richmond, but turn right and you’d end up in buttfuck nowhere—just forests and fields plus a dozen or so houses, and we owned most of them. There wasn’t a whole lot to hit. Unless the driver swerved to avoid an animal and drove into a tree, which Dan had managed to do on occasion, it was a tricky spot to crash in.
Black was already calling the guardhouse.
“Did Emmy’s BMW just leave the estate?”
I shuffled my chair closer and leaned in to listen as the duty guard answered. Roy—I recognised his voice.
“Yes, a few minutes ago.”
“Who was driving?”
“Well, Emmy was.”
“Emmy’s a hundred miles away.”
“Are you sure?”
Ooh, bad move. Black’s jaw clenched. “She’s sitting opposite me. I think I know what my wife looks like.”
“Sorry, I—”
“The BMW’s been in a collision three hundred yards down the road, Richmond direction. Call the roving team. Get them to find out what happened. And tread carefully—this could be a trap.”
“Yes, sir.”
Black had gone through exactly the same thought process as me. If Roy had thought I was driving, then somebody else could have too, and thanks to my extracurricular activities, there were certain people who would rather I didn’t see my next birthday. Sure, the crash could have been an innocent accident, but on the other hand…
“And we need to find out who was driving.”
“I just started my shift, but I’ll check the visitor log.”
Oh, fuck. A fist clenched around my throat. “Don’t bother.”
Black raised an eyebrow.
“It was Bethany. I asked Bradley to lend her a vehicle, and she’s got blonde hair. From a distance, in a moving car…”
Roy came back. “A Bethany Stafford-Lyons arrived in your car four hours ago. The ‘purpose of visit’ memo says she was there to see the horses.”
Shit, shit, shit. How fast had Bethany been going? We kept the lane in good nick—no potholes, no overgrown bushes—and it was reasonably straight. And if I’d discovered one thing in the handful of times I’d driven that BMW, it was that it accelerated like a crazy-ass motherfucker. To sixty, it rivalled my Corvette.
I gulped down half a slice of apple pie because I had a feeling I wouldn’t be eating again for a while, and Black dropped a hundred-dollar bill on the table.
“Are you leaving?” Dolly asked. “Is there a problem with the food?”
“There’s a family emergency.”
“Oh, sugar-pie, I’m so sorry to hear that. Let me box everything up to go.”
I tucked the brochure into my handbag. “Really, there’s no need.”
Black’s phone buzzed, and when he checked the screen, he grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the door. I didn’t question it. Whatever grudges I might have been bearing, today they took a back seat to whatever was unfolding at Riverley. And from Black’s furious expression, it was worse than I’d first thought.
“What?”
He bleeped the car open, then tossed me his phone as he jogged to the driver’s side. There was a message on the screen.
Pale: Hearing rumours someone’s escaped from the brig at Norfolk. They’re trying to keep it quiet. Watch your back.
Ridley. Pale was still active military in some form or another. His exact status was hazy, but it made sense that he’d find out the news before us. A surge of adrenaline mixed with horror. Focus, Emmy. I’d long since learned to tamp down the panic and harness the rush it gave me.
“Well, I guess we know where the son of a bitch ended up. I’m driving.”
Black didn’t argue, just opened the door for me and carried on to the passenger side. Smart move. The drive from Penngrove to Richmond was a little over a hundred miles and usually took two hours. I planned to do it in a hell of a lot less. If Eric Ridley had come to take revenge for Kyla’s death, there was no time to waste.
The phone connected to the car’s speaker system, and Roy returned as I gunned the engine.
“The team’s on their way.”
“Hold them back. We suspect there’s a felon involved. Consider him armed and dangerous.”
“Understood.”
The delay wasn’t ideal, but better to pause, to take a breath than to send more people into a potential ambush. Our software allowed us to speak to more than one person at the same time, and Black’s next call was to Rafael.
“Where are you?”
“In the gym with Sky.”
“It’s possible Eric Ridley’s escaped, and there’s been an incident in the lane outside. Since neither of us believes in coincidences, would you mind taking a look?�
��
“On my way.”
I heard Sky’s voice in the background. “What’s going on?”
“Just stay here, Sunshine.”
Sunshine?
Another second, and Matt’s voice filled the car from Blackwood’s headquarters.
“Control room.”
“Take all our Richmond locations up to alert level one,” Black instructed.
We used a scale of one to five based on the DEFCON levels. One was as high as it got short of a full lockdown.
A pause. “Doing it right now.”
I liked that about Matt. He didn’t argue or question, he just acted.
“And send anyone from Emmy’s Special Projects team who isn’t in the middle of something critical to muster at headquarters.”
Why headquarters, you ask? Because for all we knew, Bethany was lying dead and Ridley was hunkered down in the woods near Riverley with a sniper rifle. We needed to clear the way. Carefully.
“One second…” There was some murmuring in the background. “That’s in progress.”
“Send four of them to the end of Riverley Lane. Nobody comes or goes. We’ll need the tech team on standby too. And investigations.”
“What’s happened?”
“Likely escaped felon. Eric Ridley.”
“That guy from the news? Who killed the politician?”
“Yes. At this moment, Blackwood has one priority: locating him.”
“Got it.”
Dan was next.
“We’re coming through from Chesapeake. Contact whoever you need to in order to clear the way because Emmy’s not stopping.”
Good choice. Dan had probably pissed off fewer cops than the rest of us and therefore had more favours owing. Black called a couple of his old Navy buddies and asked them to dig for information of the jailbreak, then Rafael came back.
“Car’s empty. Looks as if it hit a tree. The airbags deployed.”
“Any sign of the occupant?”
“No, but there’s blood on the driver’s door and crushed grass next to it.” Which suggested a struggle. “A woman’s purse is still on the back seat.”
“What about another vehicle?”
“Not that I can see.”
“Widen the search area.”
Another fifteen minutes flew by. And I mean flew. The Porsche did its job, I did mine, and Black did his. Sky was babysitting Tabby while Ana helped Rafael to comb the woods. So far, they’d found no evidence of Bethany or Ridley, but fifty yards along the road, there were fresh tyre tracks behind a stand of trees.
At Riverley, Bradley was helping Mrs. Fairfax to prepare for the influx of visitors. Dustin was on the other side of Richmond getting a saddle repaired, Sam was at work, and the grounds team had been corralled in the lounge attached to the stables. Pale was apparently flying in from wherever, Nate and Carmen were on their way, and Dan had gone to the office to oversee the team there. Plus we’d had confirmation that it was Ridley who’d escaped. He’d killed one guard and injured another in the process.
Dan’s name flashed up on the console.
“Your escort’s waiting two miles ahead. You do still have that suite at the Giants, right?”
“You bribed them with tickets?”
We kept the suite for that very purpose.
“Yeah, cost us six.”
“Fine, tell Bradley.”
A minute later, a police cruiser pulled out in front of us, matching my speed. Thanks, Dan. That was one less thing we had to worry about, but now we had a bigger problem.
“Somebody has to tell Alaric,” I muttered. “I should make the call.”
“I can do it if you want,” Black offered.
“No, it’ll be better coming from me.”
Not that there was a way to make the fact that his girlfriend had been abducted sound anything less than awful.
“Hey, it’s me.”
“Hey yourself. How’s it going? Did you find Dyson yet?”
He was half joking, but I was about to ruin his mood.
“Yes, but that’s not why I’m calling. Where are you?”
“I had to go to DC for a meeting. We’ve had a flood of new business inquiries in the last week. Not sure where they’ve all suddenly come from, but we can’t afford to turn them down.” I had a good idea where the referrals had come from. Black’s guilty conscience. “Wait a second… You’re serious? You found Dyson?”
“Alaric, you need to go back to Richmond.”
He knew straight away that something was wrong.
“Why? What’s happened?”
“Bethany had a little prang in my car. There wasn’t too much damage, but we can’t find her.”
“What do you mean, you can’t find her? She wandered off?”
“We think she might have been taken.” I had to do it. I had to tell him. “Eric Ridley escaped a few hours ago.”
“What about Rune? Is Rune okay?”
Oh, fuck.
“Rune was with her?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Beth said they were going to see the horses at Riverley. Hold on, I’ll call her.”
Black was already on the phone, talking softly, updating everyone on a terrible situation that was now ten times worse.
“She’s not answering.” Alaric’s panic was all too obvious. “I got voicemail.”
“We’ll send someone over to the house. We’ll find them, I promise.”
The question was, would they be dead or alive? Ridley was furious at us, he had nothing to lose, and he’d already killed four people this month. Plus he could be miles away by now.
When Alaric spoke again, it was in a cold tone I hadn’t heard him use for years. This was Alaric the assassin, the man I’d first met on an undercover job over a decade ago, not the man who’d chilled out and lightened up once he quit the Agency and joined the FBI. There may have been a lot of uncertainties at that moment, but I knew one thing for sure. Eric Ridley was a dead man.
“I’m on my way.”
CHAPTER 45 - BETHANY
“IS IT WORKING?” I asked.
“I think so. Okay, put me down now.”
I loosened my grip on Rune, and she slithered back to the floor. We’d been trapped together before, but that had been fun, a visit to an escape room for her birthday, and this was hell. For the first day in the cellar, I’d been terrified, but I’d gone beyond scared and now my only focus was our survival. And to live, we needed to drink. Eric Ridley had left us with nothing. No water, no food, no blankets. When I’d told him Rune was diabetic, he just laughed.
“Nice try,” he’d said. “Sure she is.”
“No, really.”
“Then you’d better hope Charles Black pays your ransom in a hurry.”
What, so we could die quickly? Ridley had shown no interest in keeping us alive. And would Black even pay a ransom? He didn’t strike me as the kind of man who negotiated with criminals. Alaric would look for us, I knew he would, but we’d travelled for hours to get here, stuffed into the boot of a car with our hands and ankles bound and hoods over our heads. He’d have to search half of the United States. I’d tried to leave him a clue that it was Ridley who’d taken us, but would he find it?
Meanwhile, we were on our own, apart from the rats that skittered around at night, anyway. We’d got out of our handcuffs pretty fast thanks to Judd—he’d taught Rune that it was a good idea to carry a universal cuff key, and she had one braided into her homemade necklace—but we were still stuck in a dingy basement. The only door had been locked with a key and then bolted from the outside for good measure. We’d both heard the rattle followed by the dull thunk.
The door might have been old, but it was solid. We’d tried to break it down, and all we had to show for it was bruised shoulders. On the plus side, my headache was easing now. I’d got a nosebleed when the BMW’s airbag went off, and then I’d seen stars when Ridley cracked me over the head with his gun after I punched him by his car. My knuckles hurt too. At least Rune
was in better shape than me, for now at any rate. Ridley had found her phone in her pocket and thrown it away, but he’d missed the little cross-body bag under her baggy sweatshirt. She wore it close, paranoid about something so important getting stolen, and she reckoned she had enough insulin to last her for two more weeks.
Would we survive for two weeks? Earlier, I’d almost given up hope, but Rune had given me a pep talk. At fifteen years old.
“Look.” She’d smoothed out a piece of paper in the gloom. She kept that in her little bag too. “It’s from Naz. Last year, he gave me a jar of stars for Christmas, and I opened one every day. Most of them had jokes on, but sometimes he reminded me how far I’ve come.”
I squinted until I could make out the letters. The only light came from a ventilation grate roughly a foot square, high above our heads. We couldn’t escape through it—even if we’d been small enough, metal bars blocked our way.
You were born into darkness, but you became light. We all believe in you.
“That’s…that’s…so lovely.”
“Not every girl is lucky enough to have four fathers. Naz also told me that the difference between a survivor and a quitter is her spirit. My spirit’s got me through life so far, and I don’t intend to die now.”
“I… Neither do I.”
Not when I’d finally found happiness. When I had a man who would love me until the end of time. And what would happen to Chaucer?
Last week in England, I’d finally got a taste of how the rest of my life could be. It wasn’t a vacation, but it sure felt like one compared to my years with Piers. Alaric had needed to work on a report—one of Sirius’s bread-and-butter projects, he said. Their client was considering a move into new markets, and they wanted to understand the pros and cons of doing business in Ukraine—any problems they might encounter, that sort of thing.
So I’d helped to organise all the issues and benefits into a presentation as well as buying a new printer, arranging travel to Vermont for Ravi, and a flight to Vienna for Judd. Working hours were relaxed. If I wanted to start early, then ride Chaucer in the afternoon and do a bit more in the evening, nobody minded. And of course I got to spend time with Alaric, and Gemma too. She was still staying at Judd’s, as was the new girl. I hadn’t quite worked Nada out yet. She didn’t say much, but she liked to cook in the evenings.
