Page 315 of The Black Trilogy

“I’m scared too, but we have to stay positive.”

I was trying to make Carla feel better, but I’d lied. I wasn’t scared. A mixture of apprehension and anger simmered away inside me, not fear.

Anger because whoever Blanco was, he’d walked into my life and tried to destroy it piece by piece. First my husband, now my home and my friends.

Yes, I knew I’d stepped on his toes by inadvertently investigating his business, but I’d barely found anything, and his reaction was overkill. That was where the apprehension came in. If his response to me busting a few low-level drug dealers was to send a squad of mercenaries to make my birthday bash go with a bang, what would he do when I went after him personally?

I gently extricated myself from Carla’s grip and snuck back to my cubicle. Crane took the high-backed chair next to the bed while Belcourt hovered at the foot, waiting. I kicked back on the lumpy mattress and went through the story a second time for Crane’s benefit.

“Officially,” he told me when I finished, “I can’t be seen to condone any actions that might break the law.”

“But unofficially?”

“Unofficially, if Blackwood can take out the network supplying the bad coke, we’d owe you one. Senator Trent’s calling me ten times a day, wanting minute-by-minute progress reports. I can’t get on with anything else. It’s driving me crazy. Crazy!” He ran a hand through hair he didn’t have. “Last weekend, I had to miss my son’s sixth birthday party because of a drugs bust, and my wife’s not speaking to me because of it. Just tell Belcourt what you need, and we’ll do our best to assist.”

“Okay, so first favour. You can help me convince people I’m dead. It’ll be a whole lot easier for me to find this douche canoe if he doesn’t think I’m looking for him.”

Crane and Belcourt both rolled their eyes. What was it with that tonight? “Fine, but it’s going to take more than us to do that.”

“I know. Leave it to me.”

I called an acquaintance at the FBI. Mack had kept her word, and they already had agents on the scene.

“Agent Stone. Long time, no speak.”

He groaned, long and loud. “What do you want?”

“I love you too. I’m at the hospital. Do me a favour and get your sweet patootie over here.”

“Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like this?”

“I have no idea. Don’t we always have fun together?”

“No.”

“I’m in the ER. Hurry up.”

He arrived twenty minutes later, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. Well, that made two of us.

“So, tell me again,” he said. “Why should the FBI be taking over this case?”

I ran through possible options in my head. “Because if you identify the dead dudes in my house, I bet at least one of them had weapons he shouldn’t have been carrying. Oh, and maybe, just maybe, because they were trying to murder us all.”

Plus I’d rather have the FBI than the local cops, because the local cops didn’t like me very much since they thought I killed Black. That had the potential to make everything a little awkward.

“So you want me to wade in with my size twelves and fix up your mess?”

“Yeah, pretty much.” I gave him a snarky smile. “A bit like when you lost that informant last year and the whole paedophile case you and eight other agents had spent seven months working on was about to get flushed down the toilet, and I waded in with my dainty size fives and fixed up your mess.”

He rolled his eyes at me. Seriously, why all the eye rolling? But he owed me a favour, and he knew it. He looked at Belcourt and Crane, who both shrugged, then turned back to me.

“Okay, you need to lie down and put a sheet over your head. Which one of us gets to wheel the gurney?”

The final part of the jigsaw was Dr. Beech. Dr. Beech worked in the ER, but he also spent many hours tirelessly fundraising for the hospital. In the last decade, he’d organised fairs, hosted dinners, and wheedled cash out of everyone who crossed his path, culminating in the opening of a new paediatric wing. The Blackwood Children’s Centre. He was only too eager to go along with our little charade, and I think he was secretly thrilled to be assisting with a real, live FBI investigation, which was how Agent Stone sold it to him.

By the time his shift ended, Dr. Beech was the happy recipient of an IOU for a new incubator to go in the special care baby unit, and I was the proud owner of my very first death certificate. Dr. Beech was so chuffed with the night’s events he even offered to do a quick interview with the waiting press, and flanked by Agents Stone and Belcourt, announced my sad demise from unexpected internal bleeding to the reporters gathered outside the front door.

While my cohorts played the media, I snuck out to the car park. When I called Dan to pick Nick and me up, I’d assumed she’d bring one of the company’s Explorers, but she turned up in Nate’s Porsche 911. The three of us stood in front of it, staring down at the impossibly small trunk at the front of the car.

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