Page 156 of The Black Trilogy

The place was clean, just a little dusty, but the eerie stillness said it was uninhabited and had been that way for a while. It reflected the man who’d once lived there, its spirit extinguished along with his.

I climbed the main staircase, which rose up both sides of the hall, and made my way through to the west wing where his bedroom was located.

The door creaked as I gingerly pushed it open. I’m not sure what I’d expected, but when I stepped into the room, the sheer emptiness of it hit me. The huge space was immaculate, not a thing out of place. Normally, there would have been signs of life despite Mrs. Fairfax’s best efforts: a book open on the nightstand, a remote control tossed on the four-poster bed, discarded clothing draped over one of the leather armchairs.

But there was nothing.

The room was as lifeless as the man who’d once slept in it.

With a heavy heart and feet to match, I walked over to his nightstand and opened the drawer at the top. All of his stuff was still in there. A bottle of Tylenol, a box of tissues, a Beretta pistol. Loaded and ready, of course. And a Taser, just in case I had an episode.

I tucked the letter under the gun and quickly shut the drawer.

It was done.

Finished.

Over.

And just being in Riverley Hall had sapped all my energy. I debated staying for the night, but I decided I’d only feel miserable waking up there in the morning. Instead, I whistled for Lucy and went out the way I’d come, making sure the door was secured and the monitoring system set.

Lucy scampered around in the darkness as I trudged back to Little Riverley, and her exuberance only made me more exhausted. I glanced at my watch. Past two o’clock already, which only left me four and a half hours before Alex arrived for another fun-filled morning.

Please, let me get some sleep tonight.

Writing the letter must have helped, because for the first time in weeks, I slept through what was left of the night without nightmares.

I hoped it was a sign.

CHAPTER 7

DESPITE BEING RUDELY awakened by Alex at six thirty, I still felt more relaxed than I had in days by the time Nick showed up with breakfast at ten. My hero. A bacon and egg roll with ketchup and HP sauce, just the way I liked it, and a hundred times better than the sugar-free muesli allocated by Toby.

Once I’d hidden the evidence in the bin, I grabbed my handbag and hopped into the passenger side of Nick’s shiny Dodge Ram.

“New truck?” He’d been driving a Chevrolet Silverado last time I was home. “You only bought the last one a month before I left.”

“Yeah, I did, but it looked a little second-hand after Dan borrowed it to chase a pair of trigger-happy terrorists. The body shop said there were too many bullet holes to repair economically.”

“Crikey. I take it Dan was okay?”

“Of course. She takes after you in that respect. When the cops dragged the terrorists out of the ravine they’d driven down to get away from her, they actually begged to be locked up rather than have to face her again.”

Good old Dan. Guys tended to think that because she was small and cute, she couldn’t pack a punch. Same with Mack and Carmen and me. We’d had a bunch of fun over the years showing them just how wrong they were.

Twenty minutes later, we arrived at the office. Rather than base our company in a high-rise building in town, we’d chosen a large estate in the country for our headquarters because that gave us the space to put our training facilities there as well. We also had a small office in Richmond for meeting clients, an hour away by car and a lot quicker by helicopter.

While we’d started off in Virginia, the company had expanded quickly, opening offices in New York and Washington, DC in our first year. Now we operated on six continents. If Nate ever made good on his promise to send me to Antarctica, we’d tick off the seventh. Forty-two countries and eighty-nine offices, not including the sixteen in the United States.

At last count, we had fourteen thousand permanent employees and probably the same again in regular contractors. From a humble start, with just my husband, Nate, and me working out of my husband’s house with a secretary and a handful of part-timers, security had turned into big business for us.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” Dan said as I walked into my office. She sat on my desk, swinging her legs. Abstract paintings and the occasional poem decorated the walls beside her, and, the bulletproof glass windows overlooked the outdoor shooting range beyond.

I stepped inside and closed the door before giving her a quick hug. I never showed my softer side to the rest of the employees. People needed to fear and respect me; they didn’t have to like me.

“What fun awaits me this morning?” I asked.

She showed me jazz hands. “Management meeting.”

---