“Where was he?”
“On a job.”
“Where?”
“North Carolina. Wilmington.”
“Alone?”
“No, he was with Pale. They flew back the next day.”
Pale was one of Black’s long-standing partners in crime. Along with Nate, they’d been three of the four original Horsemen of the Apocalypse, a group of elite assassins used for jobs considered more or less impossible. After White died, the Horsemen had expanded to include me and a handful of others, but due to politics and the fact that trained killers were renegades by nature, the group was more or less dormant now. Officially, anyway. But Pale, Black, and Red were still tight. Case in point—who had Black turned to when he needed to rescue me from Ridley’s clutches? I’d woken up in the back of an RV to find Pale’s weathered face looking down at me. He ran his own team now, but he’d always help out an old buddy in a pinch.
“You saw them?”
“They landed on the airstrip out back. By that point, me and Alaric had already been used for target practice off the Virginia coast.”
“What if he got back early and left again?”
“Ana, why are you doing this?”
“Because somebody has to ask these questions and you’re not going to. We know whoever stole the money was bold as well as cunning, and who’s the most capable person you know?”
She did have a point there. Fine, we’d go through this stupid exercise so I could point out the flaws in Ana’s arguments, and then maybe she’d stop acting like a bitch with a bloody bone. The thought process might even shake some other ideas loose.
“Okay, brainstorm away.”
She looked kind of surprised at my acquiescence but led me into Riverley Hall’s gallery. Four stone pillars stood in front of the four windows, each with a rearing horse atop it. Black, Red, White, and Pale. The white horse had a black ribbon tied around its neck.
“Why the change of heart?”
“It’s easier to get this over with, and then we can focus on the real problems like you said.” I dropped onto one of the sofas, squashy beige leather that kind of hugged you as you sat. They were far more comfortable than the harsh-angled white ones in my gallery over at Little Riverley. The paintings were different too—classic oils and watercolours that contrasted with my abstract modern acrylics and sculptures. “How would you have done it?”
“I’ll let you answer first.”
“For years, I always thought it was a combination of Alaric’s boss and the crooks. I never liked the guy, but in all the time we’ve been watching him, he hasn’t put a foot wrong. No fancy holidays, no expensive cars, no drugs, no alcohol, no hookers. He fishes on the weekends.”
“But?”
How did she know there was a “but” coming? Sometimes, her thought patterns were too close to mine for comfort.
“But just lately, I’ve been wondering whether Alaric could have had some involvement.”
“Despite what you told Sky? What makes you say that?”
There was no judgement, only curiosity.
“Honestly? Because we’ve more or less ruled out everything else, and a few weeks ago, I found out…” I closed my eyes for a moment because I still couldn’t believe he’d omitted to tell me about such an important part of his life. “I found out he has a daughter. A fifteen-year-old daughter.”
“That’s…unexpected?”
“Understatement of the year. And I keep thinking that if he kept me in the dark about that, what else didn’t he tell me?”
“Maybe he had a good reason?”
“We dated for eight months. He’d made noises about transferring to the Richmond field office so we could spend more time together.”
We’d even looked at houses in the area. Not for me to move in with him, because that would have been a big step—too big a step—but I could definitely have seen myself staying over.
“What if he didn’t know he had a kid? Sam didn’t realise for two years that he was a father.”
“That was different. You were locked in a jail cell and you also thought he was dead.”
“I’m just saying that the mother might not have told him.”
“I guess it’s possible,” I grudgingly agreed. I’d been trying not to think about the logistics. What was the girl’s name? Did she look like Alaric? “But that still doesn’t change the fact that he told his personal assistant of one week all about her and he didn’t so much as mention her to me.”
“Mudak. And stealing the contents of the briefcase would have been straightforward for him.”
“Yes. But I’m still struggling with a motive. It cost him far more than he would have gained. His job, his reputation, his inheritance.”
Me.
And why would he still be looking for Emerald if he’d been responsible for letting her slip through his fingers back then?
“So who did gain?” Ana asked.
I was getting better at this. “Black.”
“Assume for a moment that Black is the culprit. In the same way that it would have been easier for Alaric than anyone else to replace the pay-off, Black has the advantage when it comes to breaking into his own home.”
“But he’d still have to bypass the security system, and it’s monitored in real time by the Blackwood control room.”
“Every door?”
“Yes.”
“Every window?”
“Yes.”
“What about the roof?”
“Pressure sensors.” Ever felt all the colour drain out of you? It’s like a slow chill that starts at your hairline and works its way downwards through your forehead, nose, cheeks, and chin. “Except…”
“Except?” Ana asked. “What’s wrong with your face?”
“Around that time, we had a new roof put on the guest house. The tiles were old, and… It doesn’t matter. But the sensors got removed and replaced too, and each building has an escape hatch onto the roof.”
“So somebody could have climbed up onto the roof?”
“No, that’s not possible. We have cameras at the roofline.”
“What about dropping down?”
“From where?”
“A tree?”
“There aren’t any trees tall enough, not nearby.”
“A plane? You say Black arrived in one.”
“Is that even feasible?” We stared at each other. Both of us had made plenty of parachute jumps, but the guest house roof wasn’t
