Page 139 of The Black Trilogy

INTO THE BLACK

CHAPTER 1

THE HORIZON GLOWED orange as dawn broke in Virginia. Or perhaps someone’s house was on fire. Or I was hallucinating. Having been awake for the past day and a half, I was too tired to differentiate or even care.

Bradley, my assistant, nudged me. “The helipad’s over there.”

I glanced sideways, and a flash of colour caught my eye. “Pink? You painted my helipad pink?”

“It’s fuchsia.”

Oh, that made all the difference. “It’s freaking pink.”

He made that huffy little noise he always did when he thought I was being unreasonable, and right now, I was too exhausted to argue. I just wanted to go to bed, so I swung the helicopter towards the house, only for Bradley to shriek.

“Where are you going?”

“As near to the back door as possible.”

The rotors were still turning as I stumbled out, leaving Bradley to deal with my luggage and the potted tree thing the downdraft had just blown over.

Home, sweet home.

I managed to keep my eyes open long enough to get past the retina scanner and fell inside. Was anybody else here? No, judging by the red light blinking at me from the camera beside the door.

“Zombie giraffes rule.”

The biometric security system registered my voice print, and the light switch beside the door slid down the wall to reveal a touchscreen asking for my code. Six digits I’d never forget. The date I met my husband.

Bradley wandered in behind me, carrying my bag. “Do you want a drink? I’ve got bubble tea?”

I re-armed the system to monitor the perimeter only. “Nope. I’m going to bed.”

“I bought you new pyjamas. Organic silk with matching cashmere-lined slippers.”

Slippers? Who cared about slippers? I hauled my sorry self upstairs and collapsed on my bed fully clothed. Forget the sleepwear.

Fourteen hours.

Fourteen hours passed before I joined the land of the living. Darkness cloaked the room, broken only by the dim light of a crescent moon glittering on the rail of my balcony.

On the bright side, I’d woken in my own bed and my bad dreams had been blessedly mild. Too many times, I’d taken myself on sleepwalking adventures and ended up everywhere from the woods out back to the driver’s seat of my Dodge Viper. Thank goodness I hadn’t had the key.

As the fog in my head cleared, the events of the past week came back to me. The way I’d fled from England late last night, having spent the last five days hunting down a whack job who’d kidnapped my ex-boyfriend’s sister and threatened to kill her. That freak’s plan had involved Luke coughing up a chunk of change and some business secrets then conveniently dying, but I’d soon stopped that and managed to annoy Luke’s mother while I was at it.

An achievement, huh?

Families. Having witnessed the chaos that could be unleashed by blood relatives, I was almost grateful I didn’t have any.

No, my husband had been my only family, and after his murder, grief sent me running for England. I’d hoped time would help my soul to heal, but having spent a quarter of a year immersed in a new life, I found the grieving process had only been put on hold. The instant I’d stepped back across the threshold of the house we once shared, old wounds opened, raw and bloody.

I missed my husband more than I’d miss the sun if it stopped rising in the morning. Without him, my life was in perpetual darkness and that feeling hadn’t abated in the three months, three weeks, one day, and ten hours since he’d been killed. And it never would, of that I was certain. All I could do was learn to tiptoe around the gaping hole his absence left in my heart.

And the life I’d left in England? Thinking of that hurt too.

Stifling a yawn, I rolled out of bed, desperate for a shower. Lank, greasy locks gave way to pimply skin, and my armpits smelled worse than a week-old corpse. Yuck. I cringed again as I caught sight of myself in the mirror on my way to the bathroom. Bradley had told me I looked terrible, and for once, he was right. Shh—don’t tell him I said that.

It was eight p.m. according to the clock on my nightstand, which was kind of fuzzy seeing as I’d slept in the ugly brown contact lenses I’d hidden behind in England. At least I could ditch the things now. I’d live with the dodgy tresses. A bad hair day hardly qualified as enough of an emergency to interrupt Bradley’s evening, and I couldn’t take any more of his optimism right now, anyway.

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