Page 105 of The Black Trilogy

I spun the laptop back to Luke. “Now, you two play nice.”

“Huh?”

“Diablo isn’t our kidnapper. Diablo’s on our side. Meet Mack.”

“Who’s Mack?”

“One of my closest friends. Happy hacking.”

As I left the kitchen to go to bed, Dan and Nick trailing behind me, I heard the keys clicking as Luke typed out a reply to Mack. Hopefully, this would be the start of a beautiful friendship.

I woke at six the next morning in my own bed—a definite improvement. Barely coherent, I stumbled downstairs, zombie-like, my arms outstretched for the coffee machine. Two minutes later, I took my first sip of espresso, savouring the burn from the rich Colombian. An old friend was branching out into the coffee business, and he’d sent me the beans to try. Not bad.

“How are you feeling today?” Ruth asked. She’d been my housekeeper for years now, and knew not to ask questions before I’d had my first hit of caffeine.

“I need to call the control room.”

“Young Nick already did that. Nothing new came in overnight.”

I reached over for my phone, but Mack was offline and therefore asleep. She didn’t keep office hours like a normal person. Most of the time, she worked unsociable hours as the sunshine battled with her inner vampire.

“An impasse,” I muttered. “I hate playing the waiting game.”

“You need to take your mind off things, love. You know you don’t do well when you overthink. Why don’t you spend half an hour in the pool?”

“I should help with the case instead.”

“From the chatter in here earlier, they’ve got enough people working on that already. I don’t know about you, but I do my best thinking in the peace and quiet. Maybe you’ll come up with a few ideas?”

Okay, so she was right on that part. More than once, I’d had a brainwave out running or cycling or, yes, stroking lazily up and down the pool.

But today, I swam a couple of miles without any light bulbs pinging on, and my fingers turned into little prunes. My stress levels dropped in the water, but they soon rose again as I got dressed in jeans; an old, worn T-shirt; and a fresh pair of contacts. I was still wearing the lenses for Luke’s sake. I wasn’t sure where I stood with him, and if I was going to make a clean break at the end of this, it seemed easier to give him as little of the real me as possible.

“Breakfast?” Ruth asked when I got back to the kitchen.

My stomach answered with a loud rumble.

“Toast?”

“Sounds good to me.”

Except before I could get the Nutella out of the cupboard, a commotion in the hallway caught my attention. I raised an eyebrow at Ruth, and she shrugged.

Okay, better investigate. As I got closer, a high-pitched voice made me groan.

“Where’s Emmy? Is she up yet?”

And Luke replied. Uh oh.

“I don’t think there’s anyone called Emmy here.”

“Nonsense, it’s her… Oh! There you are! Sweet mother of Gaultier, who did that to your hair? It’s just not nice. In fact, it’s nasty! You look like a librarian who just escaped from the 1980s.”

Luke’s brow furrowed as a short but exuberant man marched over to me. His pink skinny jeans were studded with diamantes and matched his off-the-shoulder Pringle sweater—tame in comparison to some of his outfits. He held up the ends of my hair for closer examination.

“I cut it a bit,” I confessed without thinking.

“What did you use? An axe?”

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