Page 295 of The Black Trilogy

“Back off and leave her alone. She’s not speaking to you today.”

The guy from the back of the van was loaded into the ambulance and shipped off to hospital, but I barely noticed. Even the fire brigade who came to extinguish the burning vehicle hardly registered. The only thing I was vividly aware of was the burning smell of human flesh from the barbecued driver. That stayed with me for weeks afterwards.

“Nate’s at the hotel,” Nick said, after a brief phone conversation. “Do you want to go there?”

I couldn’t. I didn’t want to see the mangled, charred wreckage of the car my husband had burned to death in, especially since it would be accompanied by the same stench.

“Can you take me to the hospital instead?” I wanted to be first in line if tyre-iron guy survived.

But he didn’t.

“Massive internal injuries, I’m afraid,” the bespectacled doctor told me, feigning sympathy. “He was gone before we got him out of the ambulance.”

I sank onto a hard plastic seat in the waiting room, my mind black. Empty. In less than half a day, my whole world had twisted into a nightmare I’d never wake up from.

Nick must have taken me home although I had no recollection of the journey. By the time he carried me upstairs and put me to bed, I’d gone numb. His lips moved, but I heard nothing. I couldn’t speak; I couldn’t move; I couldn’t think.

That night, I relived the explosion. Over and over and over and over. I lost count of the number of times I woke up screaming. Nick stayed with me, fidgeting on the sofa by the window, undoubtedly ready to make a swift leap off the balcony if the need arose. A long time had passed since he spent a night in the same room as me, and on the last occasion, I’d sent him on a trip to the hospital. It was a testament to how worried he must have been that he stuck it out. I did notice he had a Taser in his lap, though, just in case.

Things only got worse the next day when the police arrived. I couldn’t get out of bed. If I stayed buried under the covers, perhaps this horror story would turn out to be a bad dream. My three closest girlfriends, Dan, Mack, and Carmen hovered at my bedside, at least one of them there at all times, never leaving me alone. Dan had the hugs, Mack had the tissues, and Carmen had the gun.

There was a soft knock at the door, and Nick slipped inside.

“There’s a couple of detectives downstairs.”

“So?”

Let them stay downstairs. There was no love lost between me and the local cops.

Nick sat on the edge of the bed and squeezed my hand. “Baby, they can’t identify Black by sight, and his teeth were too badly damaged for dental records to be an option.”

“It’s him. I know it’s him. I was right there, Nicky.”

“I understand, Ems. But they say they have to be sure. They want a DNA sample.”

Black and I had always guarded our privacy fiercely. Neither of us had fingerprints or DNA on file. On the rare occasions they did pop up, Mack simply hacked in to whatever system they’d appeared in and erased them. But he was dead now, so what did it matter?

“Fine. Give them the DNA. Then tell them to get lost.”

While Nick went to Black’s room to hunt for a hair sample, I rolled over and curled up again.

Don’t think; don’t think; don’t think; don’t think.

But the police wouldn’t leave. Nate stood outside my door like a guard dog for the rest of the day, and every so often, I heard an angry exchange of words. Eventually, though, after ensuring I was suitably lawyered up, he had to allow the police to question me.

“Just stick to the bare minimum, Ems.”

“Do we know anything new?”

“They’ve identified the dead guy from the hospital. A wanted hitman, and the driver too. The pair of them had a collection of outstanding warrants from here to California.”

So I was right.

“Any news on who hired them?”

“The money trail’s a dead end. The cops found two hundred thousand in cash when they searched their hotel room, but it could have come from anywhere.”

“Two hundred? Is that all?”

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