The screen went dark.
CHAPTER 4 - EMMY
“WE’RE NOT TAKING the Corvette?” Daniela di Grassi dumped her bag next to my brand-new Range Rover and made a face. “What sort of a road trip is this?”
Originally, Dan had booked this week off to go on vacation with her family, but then Ethan, her significant other, got asked to produce a charity single to raise money for a recent earthquake in Haiti, and he didn’t want to say no. And Caleb, their son, had been more excited about hanging out at the studio with a bunch of pop-star-rock-stars than taking a jaunt to Italy anyway, so they’d postponed the trip until summer. Caleb’s principal would be happy—she hated when Dan snuck him out of school, never mind that seeing the world was more of an education than doing projects on the life cycle of woodlice or whatever he was working on this week.
And me? I was happy too. Dan had been one of my best friends for over a decade, and with so much going on in our lives, we didn’t see enough of each other anymore. An adventure in Kentucky was just what the doctor ordered. Actually, I might need a whole hospital since Dan had offered to share the driving.
“No, we’re not taking the Corvette. Firstly, I can’t fit all my guns in the trunk, and secondly, if you’re taking a turn behind the wheel, this is the vehicle I want to crash in.”
“O ye of little faith.”
“How many times have you crashed this year?”
She counted on her fingers. “Four? Five? Does the fox count? It ran right out in front of me.”
“You needed a new bumper. Yes, it counts.”
“Well, how many speeding tickets has Mack disappeared for you?”
Mackenzie Cain was another of my besties as well as being Blackwood’s best hacker.
“Uh, two.”
“Really? This year? That seems low.”
“This month,” I admitted. “Put your stuff in the car, Dan.”
We’d considered taking the jet, but the helicopter was being serviced—first-world problems—so we’d have had to drive to the airfield anyway. And then we’d have needed a rental car to get around at the other end, and I wouldn’t have had an excuse to road-test my shiny new toy. Kentucky really wasn’t that far.
Bradley bounded through the back door, hauling my suitcase along behind him. “Everything’s packed. Did you eat breakfast yet?”
Not quite everything—I hadn’t paid a visit to the basement armoury yet. But Bradley had sorted out the boring stuff at least.
“I had coffee.”
“You can’t survive on coffee. Mrs. Fairfax made banana muffins, and they’re a-ma-zing.”
Mrs. Fairfax was my housekeeper, and yes, she was an awesome cook. But banana muffins sounded all too healthy. I’d planned to stop for a McDonald’s breakfast en route, but then Toby, my nutritionist, materialised behind Bradley with a paper carrier bag.
“You get muffins and fruit salad, plus sandwiches for lunch. I wouldn’t want you to starve on the way.”
His tone said he knew exactly what I’d been planning. The dude was psychic. Last time I’d stopped for a cheeky cheeseburger on the way home, I’d paid cash and thrown the wrapper in a rubbish bin on the outskirts of Richmond, but somehow, he still knew what I’d done.
“Super, thanks.”
Alaric was borrowing one of Blackwood’s Ford Explorers for the journey, and now Bethany appeared with a single hold-all. Had she finally learned how to pack light?
“You guys ready to go?” I asked.
“Alaric’s on a call, but he said he wouldn’t be long.”
Yeah, right. Alaric could talk for England and America when he got going. Folks, this could take a while. At least it gave me plenty of time to select my hardware, and I could probably fit in some shooting practice too.
“How’s Gemma? Have you spoken to her?”
Gemma was the girl we’d helped out of a difficult situation earlier in the week. Bethany hadn’t been keen to leave her alone in England, but Gemma had insisted she’d be fine. I wasn’t entirely convinced—nobody recovered from what she’d been through overnight—but I had to look at the bigger picture. Gemma still worked at the gallery Bethany had been fired from, the same gallery that had handled Red After Dark and at least two other stolen paintings that we knew of. If our efforts in Kentucky failed, we’d have to try another tack, and having somebody on the inside who we could leverage wasn’t a bad idea. Plus she could retrieve the bugs me and Alaric had planted a couple of weeks ago.
I’d asked Roxy, an acquaintance in London, to check in on Gemma regularly, and Alaric’s buddy Judd had promised to keep an eye on her too. I’d walked in on the tail end of the conversation between the two of them, which was more of a warning on Alaric’s part—an eye, not hands, you asshole; Gemma’s fragile—and if Judd didn’t do anything stupid, she’d be okay. Hopefully.
“I called her last night and offered the use of my flat if she doesn’t want to go home straight away, and Judd’s insisting on driving her to work tomorrow morning so she doesn’t have to brave the Tube. He seems nice, doesn’t he?”
Bethany hadn’t seen Judd shoot a man between the eyes without flinching.
“Yeah, he seems nice.” I shoved Toby’s offerings into the back seat of the Range Rover—out of sight, out of mind. “Tell Alaric to get a move on, would you?”
Closure. I just wanted closure. To find Red, find Emerald, slam the door on that chapter of my past, and move on. I owed Alaric, but I didn’t want to spend the rest of my days repaying the debt.
Down in the basement of Riverley Hall, I found the door to the weapons’ locker ajar. The room was a terrorist’s wet dream, and if the cops ever got a look inside, we’d probably all be arrested. Fortunately, the entrance was well-hidden.
Black was lurking at the back near a stack of Russian-made RPG launchers. We’d
