Page 217 of The Black Trilogy

I buckled up and turned to Nick, resting my hand on his thigh. “Thanks. For everything. I’ll never forget this.”

“You’d better not. I’m hoping for a repeat performance one day.” He leaned over and nibbled my earlobe. “Maybe in Virginia.”

“Does that mean you’ll give some thought to working at Blackwood?”

“Yeah. I’ll call Black and have a talk about it.”

I couldn’t hold in my smile—mission accomplished, even if I’d used slightly unorthodox methods. One last kiss before the plane landed, and I was soon on my way back to my mentor.

“Job well done, Diamond,” Black said. “My contact at the DEA’s a card-carrying member of your fan club now.”

A week later, Black beckoned me into the conference room for a call with the DEA. One of our boats had been raided by the DEA and the coastguard as it crossed from international waters off the coast of California.

The haul? Six million dollars’ worth of heroin, plus four illegal immigrants.

Not bad.

“Makes the two hundred grand they paid for my holiday look like a bargain, doesn’t it?” I said to Black.

“I’ll charge them double next time.”

Next time? I kept my fingers crossed.

CHAPTER 26

NOT ALL JOBS were as pleasant as my Mexico jaunt, as I found out a couple of weeks later. Black lent me to the NSA, and a day spent undercover on a college campus took a turn for the worse when a young religious extremist decided to take an inexperienced agent hostage rather than be arrested. I stared through a rifle sight for three hours while the lunatic fiddled with his suicide vest, trying to convince us to come around to his way of thinking.

Black’s voice played over in my head. “Keep breathing, Emmy, until you see your shot. Steady. In and out. Then stop while you pull the trigger.”

My bullet punched through the guy’s left eye as I dispatched him to discuss his views with Allah in person.

I thought I was okay with it. It was an outright kill, a single shot, and there wasn’t even that much mess. I mean, I’d even got a round of applause from the agents on site.

I went home, wrote up my report, then had a pleasant supper of roast chicken and assorted vegetables with Black before I snuck up to my room to eat the Reese’s peanut butter cups I’d cadged off a local cop. Half an hour in the newly installed sauna, and I was relaxed and ready for bed. Sure, I’d had to shoot someone, but in my new line of work, that wasn’t entirely unexpected, and it was either him or that poor schmuck from the NSA. In a way, it was a relief to get my first kill over with.

I fell asleep.

But not for long.

That fateful Wednesday, the devil in my head paid his first nocturnal visit. I saw the terrorist’s eyeball disintegrate, the splash of blood on the wall behind him so vivid I could smell the metallic tang. In life, he’d crumpled, but in my dreams, he stayed standing, staring at me with his good eye as he reached for his vest.

Over and over and over and over again.

“What’s going on? Emmy?”

Black’s shouting woke me, and I came to with a jolt. Why was he in my bedroom? And more importantly, why did he have a gun in his hand?

“Is there an intruder?” I grabbed my own gun from under my pillow and thumbed the safety.

He stared at me.

“What?” I asked.

“You were screaming.”

“No, I wasn’t.” Surely I’d have heard myself?

“Yes, you were. And you’ve gone white.”

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