“Barkley here looks as if she’d collapse if she went faster than a walk.”
“Barkley? Oh, how cute—you gave her a name. Now we definitely have to keep her.”
“Emmy…”
“Look, leaving her with her old owner wasn’t an option. He was a mean old bastard, and besides, they don’t let dogs into the emergency room.”
Black groaned. “What did you do to him?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
“Then what—”
“It was me.” Dan appeared behind Emmy. “If I didn’t fracture his jaw, I’m fairly sure I loosened a tooth or two.”
“How’s your hand today?” Emmy asked.
Dan flexed her fingers. “Much better, thanks. The swelling’s almost gone.”
“Stop changing the subject,” Black said. “Why aren’t you keeping the dog?”
“Because I’m usually out, and so is Ethan. There’s always someone at Riverley.”
“Georgia works at an animal shelter.” Presumably, Georgia was a friend. “They rehome dogs every day. We donated a hundred thousand bucks last year—I’m sure they’d help.”
“Aw, look at that face,” Emmy said. “Isn’t she adorable?”
Emmy crouched down, and the dog crept over to have her head scratched. Then—smart pupper—she tiptoed across to Black and licked his hand. At least Dan and I had given her a bath yesterday so she didn’t smell quite as bad. Her wiry fur had turned from brown to golden as the shower stall went from white to yeuch.
“See?” Emmy’s pleading expression turned to smug satisfaction. “She likes you.”
“I’m not going to win this argument, am I?”
“Do you really want an answer to that? Hey, Barkley, you want bacon? Let’s cook bacon.”
Alaric appeared next, and I really wished I’d made the effort to tidy my hair instead of just scraping it back into a ponytail. He looked good enough to eat, and even though I’d tried to rationalise things—he was my boss, I was getting over a nasty divorce, all men were bastards, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera—I was still really bloody hungry.
I got busy pouring coffee for everyone to keep myself occupied.
“Alaric.” Black gave a curt nod in his direction.
“Black.”
“Is there a plan for today?”
“More or less. First, we’re going out to Harriet Carnes’s horse farm to try and talk her off a ledge. Dan’s gonna stick around there to follow up leads on Emerald while Emmy and I look into porngate. From what I’ve heard, the laptop used for the presentation belonged to O’Shaughnessy personally, which means he has bigger problems than optics. The cops’ll want to speak to him if that kid was under eighteen.”
“I’ve arranged a meeting with O’Shaughnessy at three. His office. We have to go in the back entrance, if you’ll excuse the pun. You’ve got to give whoever set this up credit—the holy grail of scandal is either a live boy or a dead girl, and their boy came prepubescent and in glorious technicolour.”
“You believe this was a set-up?”
“You don’t?”
“I haven’t seen enough evidence either way so far.”
“It’s all a little too convenient. And if Eric Ridley was there… I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“Eric Ridley… Emmy mentioned you served with him?”
Black picked up a mug of coffee and took a sip before he answered.
“If there was one thing that got me through Hell Week during SEAL training, it was the thought of never having to take an order from that little shit again.”
“He wasn’t popular, then?”
“Ridley had his allies. Some people join the services to fight for a better world. Others want to learn a trade. Then there are men like Ridley—and I use the term ‘men’ in a purely biological sense—who simply get turned on by pulling the trigger.”
“He was a renegade?”
“I was a renegade. Ridley was a bloodthirsty nutjob. It was only a matter of time before he caused serious damage.”
“And he did do damage, I take it? What happened?”
Should I be listening to this? It seemed a bit above my pay grade, but nobody asked me to leave, and I was curious. There was no way I’d open my mouth about Alaric’s secrets or Black’s either. I knew how to keep quiet. I mean, when my ex-husband drove into my father’s car after a drink too many, I hadn’t said a word, although that was perhaps because they were both as bad as each other.
“He was commanding a Mark VI patrol boat off the coast of Syria when he came across a group of refugees in a dinghy. Rather than escorting them back to shore, his crew opened fire. Nineteen people lost their lives. The youngest was six years old.”
“I’m surprised he’s not in prison. Didn’t he get court-martialled?”
“As I said, he had allies. He’d managed to find himself a team whose views aligned with his, namely that people from countries like Syria should be treated as vermin, and they all agreed that the refugees had opened fire first. And since the Syrians were dead, there was nobody around to contradict Ridley and his band of thugs.”
“Did the Syrians have weapons?”
“Conveniently, the guns were deemed to have sunk.”
“Nobody questioned that?” Alaric asked.
“Ridley’s allegiances went up the chain as well as down. I wasn’t sorry to leave that world. Fast-forward to his ‘honourable’ discharge, and he moved his mercenary operation into the private sector. Rumour says his new crew shot a civilian family in Afghanistan the year before last. Again, no witnesses.”
“So what you’re saying is wear body armour?”
“I’m saying watch your back or you might find a bullet in it.”
I wasn’t too keen on this new development. Last week had taught me that Alaric’s job wasn’t the safest in the world, but there was a big difference between facing off against a spurned lover armed with a kitchen knife and being stalked by a trained killer. We’d only come to America to look for a freaking painting.
But Alaric didn’t seem fazed. “I’ll take that under advisement. Are you sticking around?”
“For a few days at least.”
“What about Sky?” Emmy asked. “You said you’d get her training started.”
“I delegated to Rafael. It’ll be character-building for him. I also drove through the night, so I need to
