Page 106 of The Black Trilogy

Deep breaths, Emmy. “Bradley, what are you doing here?”

“You said you were back, so I flew over on the red eye and, well, SURPRISE!” He gave me jazz hands. “It was awful. There were no business class seats left, and I had to fly economy. Economy! Thank goodness I had my travel pillow and a cashmere throw with me. And a really cute member of the cabin crew gave me an eye mask and a pair of earplugs. And his phone number too, but I’d better not tell Miles that.”

Miles, Bradley’s boyfriend, spent his waking hours writing his thesis on ancient Egyptian burial sites, when he wasn’t overseas digging them up himself, anyway. I’d never quite fathomed out how they worked as a couple. Bradley loved bright colours and changed his hairstyle the way most men changed their socks, which is to say about once a fortnight. Today’s effort was platinum blond and gelled up in a faux-hawk. Miles, on the other hand, was as drab as the beige jumpers he favoured. But they’d been together for a decade now, so they had to be doing something right.

Before I could throttle Bradley, the front door opened and one person after another walked in, dumping packages on the floor and couch before going back out for more.

“Hey!” Bradley screeched as a guy lifted up a tall, thin cardboard box. “Watch out for the chandelier—it’s a Dale Chihuly.”

“Bradley, I’m sure I’ll regret asking, but what is all this stuff?”

“I didn’t know when you were coming back, so I had clothes from the spring collections on hold all over the place. And now you’re here, so I’m having them delivered,” he said, speaking slowly as if explaining the obvious to a small child. “I had to call in a lot of favours to get everything brought over this morning.” He must have caught my look of horror because he patted me on the arm reassuringly. “Don’t worry; you’ll barely notice I’m here.”

I glanced at the pile that had taken over one side of the entrance hall. “Somehow I doubt that.”

“Besides, I need to clear out your closet,” Bradley continued, oblivious. “I mean, what are you wearing?”

I looked down at myself. “Jeans?”

“Not just jeans, Emmy. Those are last season’s jeans.”

“So? They’re comfy.”

“But now you have new jeans, which are both comfy and fashionable.”

Oh, Bradley. I loved him dearly, but sometimes he exasperated me. On the plus side, he was fearsomely efficient at organising my clothes, houses, schedule, and life in general, so I couldn’t get too upset with him.

“Fine, Bradley, do what you need to do.”

Attempting to argue with him was pointless—I’d learned that the hard way over the years. Instead, I made a mental note to hide my favourite old clothes before he recycled them.

“I intend to.” He tilted his head to one side. “Starting with your hair. The colour’s so drab. Does it have to stay brown?”

“I meant with my clothes. The hair will have to wait. We’re in the middle of a kidnap investigation, and I need to go into the office.”

“Do we just have time for an argan oil conditioning pack?”

“No!”

I started for the stairs, but Luke caught my arm. “Emmy?”

Thanks, Bradley.

“Most people call me by a shortened version of my middle name.” That was sort of mostly true. And Luke thought my middle name was Emily, which fitted. “Call me Ash or Emmy, it doesn’t matter. I’ll answer to either.”

I had to get out of the house, mainly to avoid Luke but also to keep out the way of Bradley’s wardrobe shenanigans, so I drove into the office, hoping there was something I could do. Rain was falling heavily, so I left the Aston snugly under its cover and took the X5 instead. Turned out it belonged to me, part of Bradley’s car rotation program. The Land Rover was apparently being fixed after Dan used it for a bit of impromptu off-roading while trying to avoid a deer. Dan assured me the deer came out of it just fine, which was better than the Land Rover’s suspension did.

In the incident room, phones rang, keyboards clicked, and the information board gradually filled up. The problem was, we had nothing significant.

While I waited on hold for one of my contacts to dig out some information, I flicked idly through the emails Sloane had flagged for me. I needed to start pulling my weight in the company again. My husband’s death had left me as majority shareholder, with my fifteen percent and his forty combined. Nate owned thirty-five percent and Nick the remaining ten.

There had always been four of us splitting the administrative burden, but Nate and Nick had been carrying the can by themselves for over three months now, which I didn’t think was helping our relationship. If I’d had that lot dumped in my lap, I wouldn’t have been happy about it either.

I skimmed financial and operational reports first—we needed more staff in the Japanese office, and we’d won a big new contract in LA. Okay, that was good news. Then I found a message that had me itching to pick up my gun. My husband’s Aunt Miriam was taking legal action over his estate because, basically, she wanted it. A letter from her solicitor gave me thirty days to file his will for probate, a deadline I’d missed, oh, twenty-seven days ago. Marvellous. I added a note on my to-do list to call my own lawyer.

“Emmy,” Nye called from across the room.

Oh, thank goodness. A distraction.

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