Page 261 of The Black Trilogy

“How do you think she’d hold up if she got captured?” Nate asked him.

“Not sure. Nick?”

“She definitely wasn’t right a few weeks back. Whether she sorted her head out enough between then and now to withstand the nightmare they put Phil through, I don’t know.”

“When did she last do a hostage drill?” Jed asked.

“With Black and Alex about three months before Black died,” Nick said. “A full drill—four days. Sleep deprivation, starvation, stress positions, messing with her senses, torture, the lot. Alex was waterboarding her when I saw them. And Black put her in a picquet before that. She was doing fine, but she’d never have broken with Black there anyway.”

“The question is, how would she do with him out of the picture?” Nate asked.

“Not sure. I’ll have a chat with Alex and get his take on things.”

When the men stopped talking, Luke ran an internet search to find out what a picquet was. He’d seen waterboarding on the news, and he thought that was horrific until the results for picquet popped up.

It had taken him several goes to get the right spelling, but when he did, he wished he hadn’t. The gruesome mediaeval device involved tying one hand high above the victim’s head, either by the wrist or by the thumb. They balanced on their opposite foot atop a rounded spike, not sharp enough to draw blood but definitely pointy enough to hurt. When the pain in the victim’s hand got too much to bear, they’d transfer their weight to the foot until that too became unbearable. This shifting of weight continued until the victim confessed or died from the pain.

And Black had put his wife in one? Luke had no words. Only a monster could contemplate that. A sadist.

Until that point, Luke had felt many things for Emmy, but pity wasn’t one of them. Now he felt a twinge of sadness as he thought of how she’d been treated, and guilt that he’d added to her problems.

This latest news spurred him on, leaving him more determined than ever to get to the bottom of what happened to her.

CHAPTER 41

LUKE DECIDED NOT to mention the torture parts to Mack. If she didn’t know, he’d rather avoid upsetting her further. It might not be true, anyway. All he had was second-hand information, and Nick could have misunderstood the situation.

Mack came back a couple of hours later, carrying a bag from Starbucks.

“You’re a genius,” Luke said as she unloaded pastries onto a plate.

“I don’t know about that.” Her cheeks went adorably pink. “I just wanted some food that didn’t taste of cardboard.”

Luke cast his eyes over the selection of cakes and danishes. “You made a good choice.”

“I only eat sugary food when I’m stressed. Normally, I’m quite good.”

“You and me both. I need to diet, but I keep telling myself ‘tomorrow.’ How did the meeting go?”

“Dead end, for the moment.” She stuffed half a maple-pecan twist into her mouth and chewed mechanically. “They’ve said they’ll keep looking, but Syria’s difficult right now.”

Luke reached over and squeezed her hand, trying to show support. She stared at his fingers on hers, but didn’t pull away.

“We’ll keep looking too,” he said.

They carried on through the day, but it was hopeless. Luke found nothing, and each time Mack sighed, he knew her luck wasn’t any better. When his eyes started to ache, he pulled Mack back from her screen.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“You’ll end up with eye strain if you don’t take a break. Sometimes a bit of time away from the computer shakes something loose. That’s what I’ve always found.”

“I want to look for Emmy.”

“We’ll just stop long enough for dinner. How about that? We could go out—”

“No time. Ruth will cook us something.”

“Ruth’s the housekeeper?” Luke had heard her vacuuming earlier. Not close. On one of the other floors.

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