Page 257 of The Black Trilogy

“Then welcome to the team. Mack’ll fill you in. She’s right—we need whatever assistance you can offer.”

Nate signed off, and Luke took a seat next to Mack. “Go on then, what happened?”

“Okay, so Emmy took a job in Syria for the CIA. A dangerous job, too dangerous, and she shouldn’t have done it. She knew she shouldn’t, even admitted it, but she went anyway.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Because part of the task involved searching for two men who’d disappeared attempting the same mission, and one of them was an old friend of hers. She said she couldn’t just leave them there.”

“And what happened?”

“She took one other person with her, a former special forces guy called Logan. They were looking for evidence of chemical weapons on a military base, and they found it. Then they found the hostages. They couldn’t save one of them, but the other made it back with Logan. Emmy didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“They got spotted as they left, and a whole company of Syrian army troops pinned them down. Jed had a broken leg, so Logan stayed with him while Emmy crawled through a pipe to escape. She called Logan to say she had a plan to distract the soldiers, and then somehow she blew up the whole place.”

Mack couldn’t be serious? Luke looked for a sign she was joking, but her expression didn’t change. One person couldn’t blow up a whole military base, surely? And not Ash. She’d struggled to bake a cake without it collapsing in the middle.

Mack saw his disbelief and answered his unspoken question. “No kidding, she levelled it. They saw the explosion from space. She spoke to Logan one more time and told him to get Jed out of there, but the line went dead in the middle of the conversation. According to Logan, the troops took off towards the other end of the base, and there was a whole lot of shooting. Nobody’s seen or heard a thing from Emmy since.”

“So you think she’s been captured?”

“Either that or killed. And after what they did to Jed and the other guy who didn’t make it, being held prisoner by the Syrians is not something that bears thinking about.”

“Could she have escaped?”

“Anything’s possible with Emmy, but this all happened six days ago and there’s been radio silence. We reckon she broke her phone, which isn’t a surprise because she destroys every phone she gets her hands on, but if she was free and able to, she’d have begged, borrowed, or stolen another to let us know she was safe.”

“What’s our plan? Look for anything in Syrian internet traffic that refers to a prisoner or a woman being killed?”

“Exactly. So far, we’ve found nothing, but that doesn’t necessarily mean much because they kept quiet about Jed and Phil too. From what we’ve heard, they’re writing the explosion off as an accident with a munitions store.”

“And if we don’t find anything?”

“Nate and Nick are organising a team to go back to Syria, but if they do have Emmy, they’ll be expecting us, and it’s got the potential to turn into a bigger bloodbath than it already has.”

With that hanging over their heads, Luke pulled his laptop out of his briefcase and Mack flipped open the lid on hers. Side by side, they hacked, hunted, and translated until the early hours of the morning.

All to no avail.

Eventually, Mack slumped forward onto the desk and Luke yawned until his jaw ached.

“We need sleep,” he said.

“I know. But I feel awful going to my bed when some psycho could be torturing Emmy on the other side of the world.”

“You can’t help her if you’re snoring on your keyboard.”

“I know.” She gave a resigned sigh. “MI6 has agreed to help search, and I’ve got a meeting with them in the morning. I need to stay awake in that. And I don’t snore.”

Luke pushed his chair back and got up, stretching his arms out above his head. Mack looked as if she hardly had the strength to move. Unable to resist, he scooped her up and carried her over to the lift. She let out a little squeal then relaxed in his arms.

“Which floor?” he asked.

Mack reached out and pushed the button for the second.

Following her directions, Luke found himself in a room decorated in eggshell blue with a large, comfortable-looking bed against one wall. He walked over to it and lowered her gently onto an intricate quilt decorated with birds.

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