Joker in the Pack

by Elise Noble

  Low voices came from the hallway, Tate’s and another man’s, but I couldn’t afford to waste time listening. Instead, I heaved the couch with all my might and managed to slide the tie-back off the leg. I wasn’t free, exactly, but at least I could hop. Somebody shouted my name, and I’d stumbled six feet when the sound of breaking glass stopped me in my tracks. A few groans, and then everything went quiet again. What had happened?

  A scraping sound came from the passage outside, and Tate backed through the door dragging a body. Black leather boots, denim-clad legs. My heart leapt into my throat. Please, don’t let it be Nye. The rest of the visitor came into view, and I retched again, bringing up the last of a chocolate cookie.

  Oh, hell. Oh hell, oh hell, oh hell.

  “Is he dead? Tate, is he dead?”

  Tate shrugged as he dropped Warren’s legs, and they hit the carpet with a hollow thud.

  “I hope so.”

  “How could you?”

  “It was easier than last time. I just hit him over the head with a vase. But I’m not sure what to do with the body. Digging is such a menial task.”

  He’d gone out of his upper-class mind. “What did Warren ever do to you?”

  “Nothing, but he came looking for you, and that could have made things tricky.”

  Maddie and Mickey knew who I was with too, but with Tate unravelling fast, I avoided mentioning that in case he went on a rampage.

  “You didn’t have to kill him.”

  “Sometimes it’s just easier.” Tate nudged Warren with one stinky shoe before heading back to the drinks cabinet. “Why does some common oaf always have to ruin things? First Ronnie, now this waste of space. I had so many plans for us this afternoon, and now I have to dispose of an extra corpse.”

  My heart bled. But devastated though I felt over Warren, I had to use the situation to my advantage.

  “You should probably do that right away, before he stiffens up.”

  “Do you think?”

  “He’ll be more difficult to handle if you wait.”

  I needed more time. Just enough for Maddie to realise something was wrong and call the police. I only hoped she’d insist on speaking to someone other than Graham.

  Hold on, did Warren just twitch? Or was it my imagination clawing onto any hope, no matter how faint?

  Tate topped up his glass and turned back. Quick—I needed to distract him. If Warren was still alive, who knew what Tate would do if he realised?

  “On second thought, we shouldn’t let Warren ruin our afternoon. Why don’t we have a drink together and deal with him afterwards?”

  “I suppose that would be acceptable. Red or white? Or would you prefer something stronger?”

  I choked back a laugh. Now his manners came back? “Red would be wonderful.”

  If I broke the glass, that would give me a weapon. Then I could aim a jagged shard for his eye, and…

  A strange noise took my attention. Distant at first, but it quickly came closer. Whomp-whomp-whomp.

  Tate heard it too and ran to the window on unsteady legs.

  “Those bastards!” he screamed. “You told them, didn’t you? You told them!”

  What was out there?

  “Told who? You’re not making any sense. How could I have told anybody what you did when I didn’t know myself?”

  Tate ignored me and dashed to a walk-in cupboard in the farthest corner of the room. When he emerged, I nearly wet myself in fear. He’d gone from a vase to a gun, and from the way he loaded a cartridge, he knew how to use it. Tate swung the barrel in my direction, and I looked into a black hole that led straight to hell.

  A crash came from the far side of the house, and a door slammed. Whoever was running through the corridors didn’t worry about staying quiet. The footsteps came closer and closer, and I knew what would happen if they came through the door of the lounge.

  “He’s got a gun,” I shouted as the person paused outside.

  “You little bitch!” Tate screamed, and I stared in horror as he tightened his finger on the trigger.

  Behind him, the door burst open, and relief became fear as Tate turned his sights on the man I loved. Nye leapt for him, arms outstretched, and my eyes screwed shut of their own accord. My boyfriend versus a shotgun. I couldn’t bear to watch.

  Time slowed, until the moment of silence was broken by an almighty bang.

  CHAPTER 43

  SCREAMS FILLED THE air as Tate and Nye both fell to the floor.

  Mine.

  The screams were mine.

  Blood leaked onto the carpet as I tried to get to Nye, but my feet were too tightly bound to walk. I ended up jumping, desperately trying to keep my balance. Please, don’t let Tate have claimed another victim.

  Nye didn’t move, but as I got closer, Tate groaned. Oh shit, he was trying to get up.

  I grabbed an ugly statue of a dog from a side table and hefted it in both hands. It looked antique and, to my untrained eye, solid bronze.

  And that meant it was heavy. Good.

  I raised my hands as high as I could and brought the ugly ornament down on Tate’s head.

  He lay still.

  Carol’s voice popped into my head, telling her tale about Emmy and Horrible Henry, swiftly followed by a replay of Tate’s words from earlier. He had plans for my pretty mouth, did he? Well, let’s see how those plans went with a third testicle. I raised the dog once more and walloped him between the legs. If he was unconscious, there were no witnesses, right?

  The bronze slipped out of my hands and thudded to the carpet as I fell to my knees next to Nye. I pressed my bound hands to his chest. An age passed before I felt the flutter of his heart under my palms, and I sagged in relief. But the wetness seeping into the knees of my trousers told me this wasn’t over. Nye’s blood had formed an abstract pattern on the floor, more Kazuo Shiraga than Jackson Pollock.

  But at least he was alive.

  A phone. I needed a phone, but before I could find one, a stranger walked through the door. Blonde, beautiful, and even with bodies lying all over the floor, she had a composure I could only dream of.

  “Please help him,” I sobbed as the nightmare overcame me. “Please.”

  She dropped to her knees beside Nye and tore open his leather jacket. His white T-shirt had turned red.

  “That bloody idiot,” she said. “He jumped out the helicopter while it was still five feet off the ground.”

  “Is he going to die?”

  “Only if I kill him myself. He should have waited.”

  “We need to call an ambulance.”

  She tapped her ear. “I’m miked up, and it’s already on its way. I’m Emmy Black, by the way. I’d shake hands, but…”

  “It’s a problem for me too.”

  Before I could blink, she’d whipped out a knife and sliced through the rope. A second later, my ankles were free too.

  “Are the others alive?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  I stumbled over to Warren and felt for a pulse. As my fingers pressed against his wrist, he stirred and opened his eyes.

  “Olivia, are you okay?”

  Oh, thank goodness. “Shouldn’t that be my question?”

  He smiled up at me and raised a hand to his head, wincing as he touched the lump on his temple. “Palmer said you’d fainted and gone for a lie-down, and when I insisted on coming to find you, he must have whacked me with something.”

  “A vase.”

  “So much for storming to your rescue.”

  “You tried, and I’ll always be grateful for that. Now, lie still until the ambulance gets here.”

  Warren lay back again, but a groan from Tate on the other side of the sofa sent me reeling onto my backside, and I scrambled in the opposite direction. Emmy didn’t even flinch.

  “He’s alive! What do we do?” I squeaked.

  “How about you pop out to the helicopter and get my first-aid kit? The big green bag in the back.”

  “But what
about Tate?”

  “Don’t worry about Tate. Nye needs fluids.”

  I paused, torn between helping Nye and making sure Tate didn’t hurt anybody else, but Emmy flicked her wrist at the door and I went through it. I got the distinct impression it wasn’t a good idea to argue with her. The helicopter was parked on the back lawn between the swimming pool and the tennis court, and I yanked the door open. Green bag… Green bag… There it was. From the size, it was more of a portable hospital than a first-aid kit, and I lugged it back inside as fast as I could.

  “I’ve got it.”

  “Thanks. Left-hand compartment, I need a bag of Ringer-lactate, an IV administration set, and a packet of QuikClot EMS dressing—the little squares.”

  “Do you know how to use all of this stuff?”

  “I watched a couple of episodes of Grey’s Anatomy a while back.”

  “Uh, I’m not sure…”

  Nye cracked an eye open. “Ignore her bullshit. She knows exactly what she’s doing.”

  Oh, thank goodness. “Then what about Tate? Should I tie him up or something?”

  “No need,” Emmy said.

  “I really think we should. What if he wakes up properly?”

  “No, what I mean is Tate died. While you went to get the first-aid kit.”

  What? “But he was waking up.”

  “Head injuries can be funny things.” She shrugged. “Unfortunate.”

  Her demeanour said it was anything but. “They can?”

  “Do you have a problem with that?”

  Did I? After all the pain Tate had caused to not only me, Nye, and Warren, but to his own family? Hell no. “Not at all. Sometimes it’s just easier.”

  She smiled, more to herself than me, it seemed. “It is indeed.”

  “But I feel fine,” Nye told the doctor six hours later.

  “Mr. Holmes, you lost several pints of blood and took a nasty crack to the head. You need to stay in overnight for observation.”

  “Can’t someone observe me at home?”

  “I can do that,” I offered.

  “You’ve already tested me for everything. How the hell is a stool sample relevant to getting shot in the shoulder?”

  Apparently, Blackwood had a great insurance package, and the hospital had taken full advantage of that. I swear I heard the technician working the MRI machine mention something about today’s patient paying for a great Christmas party.

  “You never know,” the doctor said. “And head injuries can be unpredictable. Look at Mr. Palmer. Miss Porter here clonked him with an ornament, and now he’s in the morgue.”

  I wasn’t entirely convinced my efforts were to blame, but when I glanced over at Emmy sitting in the corner, her expression didn’t change.

  “How about me?” Warren asked from the bed next to Nye’s.

  A shortage of space meant they’d ended up sharing a room, but Nye had been surprisingly accommodating about the situation once he found out what Warren’s timely interruption at Prestwold Manor had saved me from.

  “Same goes for you, Mr. Hannigan.”

  “Nye, if the doctor thinks it best that you stay here, you really should.” I squeezed his hand. “I’ll worry otherwise.”

  He pulled me down for a kiss, and he would have moved on to tongues if the doctor hadn’t cleared his throat.

  “So, that’s settled,” he said. “I’ll get the nurse to bring you the dinner menu. I believe it’s beef Wellington tonight.”

  Nye caught my eye and snickered. “Look on the bright side; it can’t be as bad as Maddie’s.”

  “You haven’t tried her Moroccan tagine yet.”

  “I’m busy that year.”

  “Speaking of Maddie, she’s offered to come round tonight and keep me company.”

  I said she offered, but I didn’t exactly get a say in the matter. Still, at least I could say sorry in person for being so stupid with Tate earlier, in addition to the thousand apologies I’d given her on the phone. And if she hadn’t called Nye when she did… I shuddered. The consequences didn’t bear thinking about.

  “That’s good of her, babe.”

  “Mickey’s coming too. He reckons he’s been researching my family tree, and I was related to Queen Elizabeth the first about seven hundred generations ago.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Maybe we could ask him to do yours?”

  Emmy had a coughing fit, and I passed her a glass of water as Nye shook his head.

  “Doubt Mickey would find anything interesting there.”

  A knock at the door made us look up, and everyone groaned in unison as Graham poked his head into the room.

  “Evening, all. I think I need to take a statement.”

  He thought? Good heavens, didn’t he know anything about his own job?

  Nye waved him inside. “How about we make it quick? I need to get some sleep.”

  “Of course, of course. Oh dear. I seem to have forgotten my pen.”

  Emmy rummaged in her bag and passed over a sleek-looking black ballpoint. “Here, borrow this.”

  “Thanks. And you are?”

  “Nobody important. Hospital quality control.”

  “Ah, in that case, let’s start with you, Miss Parker.”

  “Porter.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Miss Porter. My name’s Olivia Porter.”

  Graham questioned us for an hour, although we could have finished in half the time if he hadn’t kept asking the same things twice. By the end, Nye had feigned sleep and Warren pretended he had a headache and called for the nurse to save us. Then Emmy told Graham she needed her pen back, and he gave up.

  “Do you think he wrote it all down?” I asked Emmy as we walked out to get a taxi back to London. Apparently, somebody else had already retrieved her helicopter from Tate’s garden.

  “Doesn’t matter. That pen had special ink in it. Everything’ll be gone by tomorrow morning.”

  I giggled. “Funny joke.”

  “He deserves a disciplinary.”

  “Wait—you weren’t serious, were you?”

  She just smiled and kept walking.

  CHAPTER 44

  MADDIE AND MICKEY were waiting on a swanky leather sofa in the lobby of Nye’s apartment building when I climbed out of the cab.

  “Thought we’d got the wrong building for a minute,” she said. “You really live here?”

  “I can’t quite believe it either.”

  She pulled me into a hug. “I was so worried about you earlier. We all were. And then Warren insisted on going to look for you at Tate’s while I checked Lilac Cottage and Mickey waited at the café, and I knew something bad had happened.”

  “We’re okay, that’s all that matters.”

  “Apart from Tate. He got everything he deserved.”

  He did, although I couldn’t help wishing I’d kicked him in the ribs for good measure. “Can we just not talk about it?”

  “Of course. What was I thinking? Why don’t we go upstairs and I’ll cook you a nice dinner?”

  “I feel quite bad enough as it is,” I said, before clapping my hand over my mouth when I realised what had come out it.

  Thankfully, Maddie saw the funny side. “I suppose trying to cook without my recipe book isn’t the best idea. Shall I order a pizza?”

  Janelle ran out of the lift just as the delivery guy left half an hour later, and she was clutching a bottle of champagne in one hand and a bag from Hotel Chocolat in the other.

  “So you can celebrate when Nye comes back,” she said, holding them out to me. “I was going to get party poppers as well, but I guessed you’d had enough bangs for one week.”

  Yes, I had, at least of the noisy variety.

  “Do you want to join us for pizza? We’ve got plenty.”

  Mickey wanted spicy hot, I’d gone for vegetable, and Maddie had retained her crown as the queen of bad taste and chosen a Hawaiian. Pineapple on pizza made me shudder.

  “Why not? Saves making
dinner.”

  Dinner turned into drinks, and I woke up next to Maddie in the early hours, both of us squashed onto one of Nye’s luxurious armchairs. Different location, but just like the old days. I tucked blankets over her before heading for the bedroom, looking forward to sharing it with Nye tomorrow.

  One advantage to having Janelle with us was her connection to the Blackwood control room. She checked her phone every few minutes, and as I cooked us all breakfast the next morning, she let out a whoop.

  “Fenton Palmer’s confessed all.”

  With a good night’s sleep under my belt, curiosity got the better of me.

  “What did he say?”

  “Tate came back from uni for a few days and spent most of the time arguing with his mother. Helena didn’t grow up rich, and she hated the sense of entitlement Tate had developed. Fenton claimed to love his wife, but he’d secretly been considering a divorce according to the files we absolutely didn’t find on his solicitor’s computer.”

  “You hacked into it?”

  “Of course not. That would have been illegal. Anyway, Fenton got back from the pub one night and found Helena dead on the floor and Tate sitting on the sofa, watching an episode of Antiques Roadshow.”

  “That’s…that’s…”

  “Sick? Warped? Freaky? All of the above?”

  “Yes, all of them. I can’t believe I went out with that man. Why didn’t I see he was a psychopath?”

  Janelle patted my hand. “Sociopath. It’s different. Half of the people I work with have psychopathic tendencies and they’re not all bad. You met Emmy?”

  “I did.”

  “There you go. Her husband’s a Grade A candidate too.”

  “Did you do a degree in psychology or something?”

  “A masters. Helps with working at Blackwood, let me tell you. Plenty of quirky personalities there. But to answer your question, Tate was good at hiding his true character. Money and looks blind a lot of people, and it can be difficult to see through that veneer. You had a lucky escape, girl.”

  It sickened me to think just how close I’d come to getting sucked into Tate’s insane world. Instead of making crêpes, I could have been wrapped in plastic and buried in a shallow grave. Those damn prickles made my eyes itch again.