Page 361 of The Black Trilogy

“Money. It was about money,” Black cut in. “In the time I was there, they only let me out of the cell once a month, and Diego drugged me first. The coward stood at the door and shot me with a tranquillizer dart. He was too much of a chicken to just open it.”

“Knowing that makes me wish I’d drawn out his death a bit longer. Really had fun with him.”

“Much as I like you to be professional, it’s a nice thought. Anyway, before he let me out for the first time, he made me practise imitating some guy’s voice. He played recordings over and over for hours. Always in Spanish, his end of mundane phone conversations about money transfers and profit margins. After a while, I started hearing his voice in my sleep. That must have been Carlos.”

A cruel punishment, made all the worse by it being Black’s unknown brother. “Most probably.”

“After Diego doped me, he’d wait just long enough for me to become coherent again, then we’d meet with some lawyer. I had to speak in Carlos’s voice, and Diego told me to agree with everything he said and sign when I was instructed. Whatever cocktail he gave me messed with my head, so I didn’t follow everything, but the gist was that the lawyer needed my signature to transfer assets back to Diego.”

“I bet Carlos tied the money up to protect himself, knowing they couldn’t kill him as the money would be lost. Except they did, accidentally, so they had to use the next best thing.”

Black leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “Me.”

“Yep.”

“Diego was pure evil. As well as the drugs, he said if I didn’t do exactly as he asked, he’d kill Jane in front of me.”

The colour drained from Jane’s face. Black noticed and held her tighter.

“That’s what happened to Lorena, isn’t it?” she whispered.

“I didn’t answer one of the lawyer’s questions fast enough. Diego pulled me through to the room opposite and made me watch from the window while one of his henchmen shot her.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m sorry.”

“So you went along with him?” I asked, then immediately regretted it. I’d made it sound like I disapproved.

“What else was I supposed to do? I was stuck there, so spaced out I could barely walk let alone take on his army. I didn’t care a dime about whatever I was signing for, but I needed to keep Jane alive. She was the only person left who wasn’t loyal to Hector. Nobody else was around to help me.”

I winced as that dig at me hit home. But Black was right; I hadn’t helped him. Instead, I’d been off gallivanting around England and Syria and Jordan and Egypt and Japan and America. If only I could turn the clock back, I’d have done everything in my power to find him sooner. I’d also have inflicted a whole lot more pain on Hector and Diego. Death by a thousand cuts, maybe. I’d always wondered if that worked. An old friend of mine once got up to eight hundred and three, but then the dude quit on him.

My thoughts were interrupted by Jane’s trembling voice. “What happens now?”

I remembered her earlier comment about her family, or rather, not knowing whether she had one. “You can come home with us.”

“Of course.” Black gave her that smile again. “We’ve got two houses in Richmond. You can stay in either one.”

“Actually, it’s just one at the moment,” I told him.

“What do you mean one? Just one house? Did you sell mine already?” He sounded surprised and a bit disappointed.

“No! Of course I didn’t sell it. I’d never do that. In fact, I’m living in it. It’s mine that’s uninhabitable.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

Where did I start? “Well, there was a fire, but the sprinklers put that out. So there’s water damage. And some bullet holes, a lot of bloodstains, the kitchen got taken out by a grenade, and quite a few of the doors and windows are missing. Oh, and the guardhouse is flattened.”

His fists clenched. “Ramos?”

“That was the line he crossed.”

“How bad was it?”

“Mick died, and Seth’s in the hospital with third-degree burns to his face, arms, and torso. Hector lost fourteen men. I’m officially dead, and the FBI is trying to work out what to do with the bodies. Agent Stone said the medical examiner’s complaining we’ve taken up all his morgue space.”

“Too many good people have been hurt,” Black said, rubbing his temples. “Are the police going to cause problems?”

“I doubt it. We shot as many as possible from the front. Plus, on the bright side, for the past eight months, they’ve been convinced I killed you or at least hired someone else to, so I can prove they’re wrong on that.”

He groaned and leaned back against the wall. “Did they arrest you?”

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