Page 303 of The Black Trilogy

Everyone at the party had brought me a gift, and Bradley lugged in a box of colourful packages he’d collected from people at the office for my parcel opening session after dinner.

“Thanks, guys. These presents are really…interesting.”

“For the girl who has everything,” Jed said, holding up the cuddly amoeba he’d chosen.

There was little point in buying me expensive presents. I could already afford anything I wanted, so people went with silly stuff instead. Heated gloves from Nate, a woolly hat with cat ears from Bradley, and a T-shirt with the slogan “I fight better in heels.” Only Carmen gave practicality a nod with a new scope for my AR-15.

“Now is it time for a movie?” Nate asked.

Bradley folded his arms. “No, Twister.”

Oh, good grief. “Bradley, if we try to play Twister right now, we’ll puke.”

“Why do I even bother? You’re all a bunch of party poopers.”

“How about we play later?” Dan said, playing mediator. “You can have the first spin.”

Bradley gave a little huff and settled into his favourite seat, the one with twelve cushions and a fluffy pink blanket. Guess he didn’t want to clear up vomit, and with any luck, he’d forget about his games if we fed him enough popcorn.

Meanwhile, Nick had found a football game, and although it wasn’t my thing, I didn’t want to rock the boat seeing as the others seemed keen. Relief that the evening hadn’t been too awkward tempered my boredom—nobody had mentioned last week, and I wasn’t about to.

I should have been happy.

Well, not happy exactly, but at least relaxed and enjoying a pleasant evening with my friends. But I couldn’t shake the prickly feeling at the back of my neck, a sense of foreboding that something wasn’t quite as it should be. I’d had these niggles before, and Black always encouraged me to listen to them.

More than a few times they’d been right on the money.

Looking around, I saw I was the only one getting antsy—the men were focused on the football and Carmen and Mack were engrossed in their guys. Dan sat on Nick’s lap, her attention split between the TV and a huge bowl of M&Ms. Even Bradley had given up his sulk and started cheering on the dudes in tight trousers.

I slipped away and went for a mooch. The house was secure, and the perimeter alarms flashed green. When I called down to the guardhouse, Seth reported all was quiet. I heard the game buzzing in the background and a cheer from Mick. In the control room on the ground floor, I stopped and scanned the monitors, clicking between the cameras that kept watch over the estate. Everything seemed peaceful, nothing out of the ordinary.

The only thing that wasn’t calm was my sixth sense, which poked at me like a toddler with ADHD.

Hold on. What was that?

I’d got halfway out of the door when I glimpsed movement on one of the screens covering the woods behind the house. A deer ran along a trail, caught in a beam of moonlight that filtered through the trees. I nearly wrote it off, but with the way I was feeling, I began to wonder what startled the deer in the first place. They lived all over the estate, and I was used to seeing them when I rode Stan out there around dusk, which meant I knew they only ran like that when they got scared.

The monitor showed nothing else except fuzzy darkness. Twisted outlines of trees swayed against a grey sky, and a layer of high clouds masked the stars. I’d just reached forward to switch the camera to thermal imaging mode when Michael Jackson’s “Bad” played.

I looked down at my red phone, the one I kept for emergencies only, and the display showed an unknown number calling.

No way.

No way could that freak be calling tonight.

Not on my birthday. Not when I was supposed to be having fun.

Yeah, technically I didn’t know it was him because I hadn’t answered the phone yet, but I knew.

I just knew.

Which was why when I answered, rather than my usual “Yeah,” I greeted him with, “What do you want?”

The electronic voice came back at me. “Is that any way to greet the man who holds your life in his hands?”

“I’ll ask if I ever speak to him.”

“You’ve got a lot of fight for such a delicate thing. It’s a shame you don’t have some obedience instead. I was generous. I gave you two warnings, but you just couldn’t hold back, could you?”

---