Page 319 of The Black Trilogy

My overriding hope was that by naming Eduardo, the man from last night had given us a big clue. Because surely whoever his real puppet master was, he had to be someone with a grudge against Mr. Garcia, didn’t he? That left me with one big question—would Eduardo be able to shed light on his identity?

I itched to get going, to go to Colombia and speak to him. Patience wasn’t something that came naturally to me. I planned to slip out the following evening, and having to squander a whole day before I could take what was, for me, the most logical next step in the investigation irritated me to no end. I smacked my head against the wall in frustration, but that achieved nothing more than a headache.

Time was precious, and every day I wasted was a day I’d never get back.

Tick, tick, tick. While the seconds marched by, I needed to catch up on sleep, give a statement to the FBI, and sling a few things in my suitcase.

It promised to be a long twenty-four hours.

CHAPTER 8

I STOOD IN my bedroom at Riverley Hall, taking a mental inventory. I’d had to venture upstairs, no matter how depressing the memories might be. What did I need for my trip to Colombia? On the bed, a small suitcase lay open with the essentials piled inside.

Normally when I went abroad, I was going somewhere I owned a house or apartment, but I had neither in Colombia. I kept a few things at Eduardo’s, clothes mainly, but he’d bought a lot of the outfits for me and they weren’t to my taste. Dresses, tops, skirts, cover-ups for lying out by the pool, all very conservative. I wore everything anyway, because it pleased him, but I still needed to take my own clothes for when I wasn’t at his place.

A passport lay beside the suitcase. Tonight I’d become Maria Delgado, one of two identities I used to travel to Columbia. Maria worked as an interior designer. I’d just put on the wig that matched her passport photo, and along with her papers, I’d take fabric swatches, wallpaper samples, and a sketchbook with drawings of room concepts. If anyone cared to check, I even had a website, although if they called the number listed, Sloane, my office assistant in Virginia, would inform them I wasn’t currently taking on new clients.

It was a solid identity, just as long as nobody asked me to actually sketch anything, because I couldn’t draw for toffee. It was Bradley who’d filled up the pad with pictures for me, and they certainly looked the part.

An envelope slipped into the back of the sketchbook held a collection of photos—one of everyone associated with the case. Fourteen dead gunmen, although missing bits of face made some of them a bit fuzzy, plus the pack we’d used after Black’s murder containing photos of the guys from the van. Obviously, the driver got burned beyond recognition, but Mack had found a shot of him from a surveillance camera in the hotel parking lot and enhanced it as best she could.

As I threw extra clothes into my luggage, I clung to the hope that Eduardo or someone on his staff might recognise one of them.

When I’d checked forty-five minutes ago, right before sorting out my hair, everyone had gone to bed except Luke, who was determined to finish hacking into something or other before he went to sleep.

I didn’t really care what.

Don’t get me wrong, the information Mack, Luke, and the others found with their computer searches could be invaluable. But it had its limits, and I always believed that by talking to people face-to-face, by watching their body language and feeling the vibes they gave off, I could glean information not found in electronic format. Hence the need to catch a plane.

My phone chose that moment to ping with a text message.

Ryan: Still at Albany House. Tia’s okay and behaving herself.

I bet she was.

Emmy: The bedrooms are out of bounds. All of them. This is not a hands-on job.

Ryan: How about the couch?

Emmy: I mean it.

Packing complete, I put in a pair of brown contact lenses. On a scale of one to Ashlyn Hale, my alter ego who’d dated Luke, I rated myself a seven for mediocrity. Finally, I fastened the necklace I’d received for my birthday around my neck and slipped the note that came with it into my wallet.

I’d be travelling commercial, so the only weapon I carried was a knife stuffed in the front of my bra. When the metal detector went off, I’d claim it was the underwire that caused it, as usual. I’d yet to find an airport security guard confident enough to give me a really good grope.

The clock struck midnight as I stole down the stairs and took the tunnel to the garage, keys to one of the Ford Explorers clutched in my hand. All was going swimmingly until I opened the driver’s door, at which point Nate stepped out the shadows and climbed into the passenger side.

Oh, rats.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked.

“Would you believe I fancied a pizza?”

“And the pizza place will only serve brunettes?”

“Okay, you got me. Fine. I’m going to Colombia.”

No point in lying, not to Nate. That was the downside of knowing someone for as long as I’d known him—trying to fib right to his face was pointless. He saw straight through it.

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