Page 320 of The Black Trilogy

“I knew you would be.”

“So where are you going?” I eyed up the holdall sitting on his lap.

“I’m coming with you.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said, but the determination in his voice told me he wasn’t.

“If you go, I go.”

“No way. It could ruin everything. I’ve always gone to see Eduardo alone. I don’t know if he’d even come for me if I was with somebody else.”

“What do you mean, come for you?”

I sighed and spilled. “The way it works is that I check into a particular hotel, and when he knows I’m there, he sends somebody to pick me up.”

Nate paused a few seconds as he tried to rein in his exasperation, then offered a compromise.

“How about we travel separately? I’ll keep an eye on you from a distance, but I’m not letting you go alone.”

“It’s not your choice.”

“Before he died, Black and I made a promise to each other. If anything happened to either of us, he’d look after Carmen, and I’d look after you. As well as that, I care about you, believe it or not. I may not always agree with the way you do things, but I can’t deny you get results, which is why I haven’t locked you up and thrown away the key.”

“Touching.” And it really was, even if my reply came out snarky.

“Emmy, I’m coming along whether you like it or not.”

I knew from experience that if Nate decided to do something, I wouldn’t be able to change his mind, and if the situation had been reversed, Black would definitely have been on the plane with Carmen. Secretly, I was also pleased at the prospect of having backup, especially Nate, who’d spent a lot more time in South America than me and had the skin colour of a local.

“Fine. Whatever.” Great, now I sounded like Bradley when his wilder decorating ideas got vetoed. “Just make sure you don’t screw things up for me.”

I should have told Nate not to talk as well, because on the way to the airport, he started with the interrogation.

“So, tell me, why are you so positive that Garcia won’t execute you on sight? You’ve been hazy on that so far.”

“Because if he had a problem with something Blackwood was doing, he’d talk to me about it, not shoot my husband.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“Maybe not with one hundred percent certainty, but close to it.”

“Why? All the information we found on Garcia suggests he should have been committed years ago. He’s renowned for being violent and unpredictable.”

“So people say, but he’s not always like that. And he’s as sane as you or I.” Okay, perhaps that was a bad example. “Eduardo recognises that in order to maintain his position at the top of the tree, people have to fear him. He cultivates the image of being unstable, and yes, that involves doing some nasty stuff, but he’s actually very smart. Calculating. And he’s never given me the slightest indication that he wishes me harm.”

“People change. When did you last see him?”

“Thirteen months ago.”

“Speak to him?”

“The same,” I admitted.

“So before Black’s death, right? How do you know he hasn’t taken offence to something one of you did in the meantime? You were trying to take out a network of cocaine dealers, after all.”

“Firstly, it wasn’t his coke; therefore they weren’t his dealers. Which means that far from being upset, he’d be pleased. Secondly, I may not have seen him or spoken to him, but he did send me a birthday gift and a note yesterday. A note that basically said he hoped Black’s killer came to a nasty end. And even if he was an olive short of a pizza, which he isn’t, he’s hardly likely to have a diamond necklace delivered to me in the morning and then follow it up with a death squad later on the same day.”

I fished the note out of my bag and passed it over to Nate, and he flicked on the interior light to read it. “I don’t see anything in there that says he hopes the killer’s dead. And what’s more, you don’t even know for definite that this came from Garcia.”

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