Page 91 of The Black Trilogy

“Okay.”

“I need to call Nate, see where we are with a team.”

Nick followed me into…well, I called it my home office, but it was more than that—it served as a backup control room should anything happen to our primary location in Kings Cross. He still hadn’t said a word, which stung, and now he slammed the door behind us.

“What are you playing at, Emmy?”

Great. In the last two days, I’d managed to upset almost everyone I cared about.

“I’m sorry.”

I was doing a lot of apologising tonight. If this kept up, I might just record a message.

“Sorry? Sorry? Sorry doesn’t cut it, babe. You ran off without a word to any of us.”

“I left a note.”

I tried to defend myself, but half-heartedly because I knew he was right.

“A half-assed note that didn’t explain anything, just asked us to stop a murder investigation.”

“Did you stop it?” I asked, holding my breath.

“Yes.”

I inhaled again. “Then it did its job.”

“That’s it? That’s all you’re gonna say?”

“Nicky, can we do this later?” Say, sometime next century? “Finding Tia’s the most important thing here.”

“Fine.”

He echoed Nate’s comment from earlier, and as a woman, I understood what that meant. I had two grumpy, monosyllabic men to deal with.

I settled myself into a seat and Nick grudgingly took the one beside me. Nate soon appeared on the wall of screens in front of us.

At forty-one, Nate was a couple of years older than my husband, and his dark brown hair had grown too long again. Carmen would be nagging him to cut it, no doubt. His tan skin spoke of his Cuban heritage, and on a normal day, women the world over would kill for his complexion. Not today, though. Today, worry lines marred his forehead. The last few months had taken their toll on him too.

He could see me as well, and his first words weren’t exactly sympathetic.

“What on earth, Emmy? Have you seen yourself in a mirror recently? You look like a librarian on crack, and your hair’s full of twigs.”

“Nice to see you too, Nate.”

I ditched the glasses I’d put back on out of habit.

“Your team’s being assembled.” He was all business. “I’ve assigned Nye as team leader, and he’s in the office already. You’ve got nine more people on their way in and another thirty-seven on standby for the morning.”

The monitor chimed and Nye, one of the supervisors in the London-based investigations team, popped up beside Nate.

“Evening, Emmy. Glad to have you back. Hey, what happened to your hair?”

At least one person was happy to see me, but was my hair really that bad? I toggled a few buttons so I could see what they did. Eek! I looked like I’d been in a fight with a hedge trimmer and come out the loser.

I explained the situation with Tia, going over the chain of events since the evening before last. “I’ll send over the photos of the tyre print. Get someone on tracing the van right away, would you?”

“Tom’s looking up the registration as we speak.” Tom was the control room supervisor, drafted in to help.

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