Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
SOMEONE MUST HAVE mentioned the word “party” to Bradley, because he rocked up at four o’clock laden down with bags, boxes, and half a liquor store. The suspension on the hot-pink pickup he was driving groaned under the weight.
“Bradley, which part of ‘a quiet night in with pizza’ didn’t you understand?”
I loved Bradley dearly, but sometimes his positive outlook made me want to eat a bullet.
“Don’t worry, we’re still having pizza. I pre-ordered everything on the menu except the one with pineapple. We’re not having pineapple again.”
Last time Bradley put pineapple on my pizza, I’d taken it out the back and fired ten rounds dead through the centre of it. Good to see he’d got the message.
“So what’s in the truck?”
“I just brought a few extra bits and pieces. Party poppers, balloons, a cake. And games. We can’t have a party without party games.”
“Yes, we can. I’m not playing strip poker again.”
“Oh, don’t be so boring. We can just play beer pong and Twister. Now will you help me carry some of this stuff?”
Twister. Great. My temples throbbed again, the steady pulse of a Bradley-induced headache. I picked up a grocery sack containing nothing healthy at all and carted it into the kitchen then went back for another. How much had he bought? There couldn’t be more than ten people coming, surely?
At least I got a reprieve from carrying duty when my phone rang. Saved by the bell. It was Tia checking I’d received her present.
“Sure did. Thanks, honey.”
“You’re so welcome! I can’t believe I’m missing out on a party. Exams suck.”
“How about I fly you out when they’re finished?”
Luke seemed to be in Virginia for the foreseeable future, so I didn’t see how he could object.
“That would be awesome!”
“You’ve got to study first, though.”
“I’m already gone.”
Tia went back to her books, and by seven thirty, my movie screening room had been turned into a riot of confetti and streamers. People began to arrive, starting with Nate and Carmen. No surprises there. Nate was never late for anything. He had one of those radio-controlled watches, and he lived by it. Of course, since he’d designed the thing himself, it also contained a GPS transmitter and a miniature radio, and if you set the alarm for 11:06, you had fifteen seconds to get out of the way before it blew a really big hole in something. He gave me a slightly awkward hug, and Carmen squashed the breath out of me.
The others trickled in over the next half hour. Mack and Luke, Nick, Dan, Alex, and Jed, plus Logan and three others from Blackwood—Evan, Jack, and Malachi.
Bradley had ordered enough pizza to feed a battalion, plus fries, onion rings, wings, and dips. It was a good thing Toby had left two days ago to visit his sister in Idaho because he’d have had a heart attack at the sight of that lot.
“How many people did you invite?” I asked my darling assistant.
“Just the people here, plus Gage, but he got held up in the office.”
“We’ve got two pizzas each.”
“People get hungry.”
Food and drink covered every surface, and we barely made a dent in it. I took a couple of deep dish pepperonis and a plate full of other snacks out to Seth and Mick in the guardhouse—at least that was a bit more of it gone.
Nate stretched his arms above his head, leaning back on one of the sofas. “Time for a movie? I can’t eat another mouthful.”
“No!” Bradley said. “We haven’t even started the cake.”
“But—”
Too late; he’d gone.
To give him his credit, the cake he wheeled in five minutes later was a work of art. Three enormous layers covered in waves of milk, dark, and white chocolate topped off with glitter. Almost too pretty to eat. The top tier held thirty-three candles, and Nick handed me a fire extinguisher.
Oh, very funny.
“Make a wish,” Bradley cried.
I did. A crazy wish for the only thing I wanted, which was also the one thing I could never have. Black.
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?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Except in a moment of clarity, I suddenly did. The drugs . It had to be the drugs. This guy had money, he had connections, and when he killed Black, it was with a flair for the dramatic, a trait not uncommon among drug lords who wanted to send a message telling everyone not to mess with them.
So while I’d insisted I wanted everybody to avoid any trouble, I’d spent the last week inadvertently stirring it up all by myself. Oh, sugar honey iced tea.
A distorted cackle came down the line. “I wish I could say I believed you, but I don’t. Happy birthday, Ms. Black. I hope you like your surprise.”
Everything came together in my head. I had something in the woods and a grumpy drug lord with a penchant for heavy weapons on the phone. Fifty bucks said my latest birthday surprise wouldn’t come neatly wrapped in a gift box.
But no matter. I was going to dish out a few surprises of my own. Happy birthday to me. I reached out to the keyboard in front of me, starting to type even as I answered.
“A surprise? For me? How thoughtful. I’m sure I’ll love it.” I wanted to keep my nemesis on the phone if possible. One, I’d just started a trace, and two, I had a feeling that as soon as he got off the line, he’d press the “go” button on whatever he had planned.
“In that case, you’ll be pleased to hear I put many hours of careful thought into it.”
My fingers flew over the keys, switching the security system into red mode and sending out an alert to the necessary Blackwood employees that we were under attack and they should go to the nearest place of safety.
“That’s so sweet of you. Nobody here even remembered my birthday until my assistant reminded them this morning. It’s so special that you thought of me all the way from your cave, or your evil lair, or whatever you call it.”
“I prefer the term estate.”
“Estate. Or Hacienda?” I took a stab in the dark. Was he from South America?
“Hacienda will do, I suppose.”
“Wow! You must be loaded.”
“I’ve done very well for myself, yes.”
“I’m not surprised. Look at your qualities—creative, tenacious, charming. Oh, and modest. Don’t forget modest.”
I had two more backup control rooms booting up and coming online. Nothing on the trace yet. The Richmond office messaged back to say they were commencing lockdown procedures and would await further instructions.
“Do I detect a hint of sarcasm?”
“Me, sarcastic? Never.”
“Oh, I think you are. I also think you’re stalling. Goodbye, Ms. Black.”
Son of a motherless goat.
The phone clicked as he hung up, followed almost immediately by the guardhouse exploding in a ball of flames. I heard the boom, and the screen showing the interior of the main room dissolved into fuzz. Another camera in the grounds filmed the blazing remains lighting up the night sky.
Well, the man was obsessed with his freaking grenades, wasn’t he? Anger gave my adrenaline a kick start and heat flooded through my veins. I only hoped Seth and Mick saw my message in time and got into the bunker below the building before it blew up.
By now, everyone in the movie theatre would be on their way to safety, so I hit the button to bring down a steel shutter in the doorway to the control room. The walls were already reinforced. That room was full of complicated and expensive equipment, so I wanted to keep it intact if I could. It would be a pain to replace, although ultimately it was all disposable. Everything was except our lives.
Six steps took me to the wall, where I stared into an iris scanner disguised as an intercom. A panel slid back, revealing a narrow staircase going up and down. I went down.
The beauty of designing a house from scratch is that a person is only limited by their imagination, modern construction materials, and how much money they’re willing to spend. Thanks to an innovative architect, a bunch of confidentiality clauses, and a truckload of cash, Black and I had incorporated some interesting features, none of which appeared on the plans we’d filed.
With a house as big as mine, it was easy to miss little bits of lost space. Maybe a gap between two walls just wide enough for an extra staircase, or a room a tad smaller than the outside dimensions would suggest. Thanks to a hastily constructed wall, we’d hidden from the planning inspectors the fact that the basement extended far beyond the house, and the tunnel boring machines we’d employed moved in and out under cover of darkness.
Oh yes, I loved birthday surprises.