Chapter 22
CHAPTER 22
WHEN BLACK SAID the next six months would be hard, he hadn’t been kidding. If it wasn’t for the obscene amount of cash he’d promised to pay me at the end of it, I’d have jacked it all in during the first week.
Even then there were some days when Black nearly got his two hundred grand stuffed up his sanctimonious American backside while I caught the next flight home.
But I’ll start at the beginning. Day one was all right. My first ride on a plane, in first class no less.
“I could get used to this,” I said, settling into the plush leather seat.
“The novelty soon wears off.” Black had his laptop open before the seatbelt light blinked out.
I hoped that was true, because after the initial thrill of take-off, I fell asleep, revelling in a bed far more comfortable than my mattress at JJ’s. Black woke me when the food got dished out, and I forked down a tuna salad and a slice of chocolate cake, then I nodded off again. Perhaps my subconscious knew what was waiting for me.
After seven hours, we touched down on American soil just as the sun was rising. The fairy tale continued as Black ushered me into a chauffeur-driven car for the journey back to his house, Riverley Hall. If I’d known the nightmare that was to come, I’d never have left the airport.
But for now, I was blissfully ignorant, and when we turned through the enormous iron gates that guarded my new home, my jaw dropped.
“You weren’t joking. It’s huge!”
Riverley made the London place look like a council house.
“I never joke.”
If the entire population of a small village, maybe even a town, ever found themselves evicted, the lot of them could have moved into Black’s house with room to spare.
“It looks as if it came off a film set,” I told him.
I’d only ever seen buildings like that in library books. Or films. Horror films. It had a gothic air about it, and hideous gargoyles stared down at me from the roofline. The huge stone columns flanking the front door dwarfed me, guarding walls with the same grey hue as a storm cloud.
“Are Morticia and Gomez home?”
“Sorry?”
“From the Addams family?”
He gave me a blank look.
“You know, on TV?”
“I don’t watch TV.”
Oh. “I just meant the house looks a bit creepy.”
He shrugged. “I guess. I grew up here, so I’m used to it. A minor noble built it at the turn of the last century. He wanted something that reminded him of his mother country.”
“Where was that? Transylvania?”
Black’s lips formed a flat line. “England. He was one of my ancestors.”
“Freaking nobility. No wonder you’ve got a stick up your backside.”
He followed me out of the car. “I do not.”
“Do too.”
He pushed open the front door and waved me through.
“What, no butler?”
“Good grief, why did I think this was a good idea?” he muttered, before taking a deep breath and turning to face me. “I’ll give you a tour.”
“Lovely. Will that include the crypt?”
No answer.
The mansion was a maze, the layout illogical and full of unexpected dead ends. And did I mention gloomy?
“Do you have a map?”
“You’ll soon find your way around.”
Really? Even at the end of six months, I could still see myself bumbling about like a blind hamster, desperately hunting for a way out.
Black led me upstairs, where he gave me the choice of sixteen bedrooms, each one expensively decorated and all but two with en-suite bathrooms. They may have been luxurious, but I didn’t need a chandelier or seventeen throw pillows. I chose the plainest, a corner room on the second floor, third if we were speaking American, which looked out on a perfectly manicured kitchen garden and the lawns and woods beyond it. Little did I know I’d look out of that window every night for weeks dreaming of escape.
The bed was a king size, a far cry from my single at home, and I even had a small dressing room. While Black went to make a phone call, I unpacked my suitcase then stood back.
“Isn’t having an entire room for my clothes overkill?” I murmured to myself.
“Don’t worry, you’ll soon fill it.” I turned to find Black had reappeared behind me.
“I don’t like spending money just for the sake of it.”
“You’ll be spending my money, so don’t worry about it. We’ll go into town later. I’ll show you around, and we can stock up on the things you’ll need.”
“Well, if you insist. I’m not going to turn down free stuff.”
“Let’s get brunch first.”
Brunch? Another reminder the flight had landed on a different planet altogether.
As Black led me back through the labyrinth, I boiled it down to the basics. All I really needed to know was where my room was, where the kitchen was, and how to get in and out. Oh yeah, and how to find the gym, because according to Black, I’d be spending a lot of time in there.
When we got to the kitchen, I found Riverley Hall had its own version of Ruth too. She was equally plump and cheerful, but called Mrs. Fairfax.
“Omelette and salad?” she asked.
Black nodded while I grimaced.
“I stick to a healthy diet most of the time,” he said.
“Is that why we have that?” I pointed at a bowl of fruit salad. “I was hoping for chocolate cake.”
“Yes. You’ll have to cut back on your junk food intake from now on.”
That was my first indication of what was to come. It turned out a lack of cake was the least of my worries.
As promised, in the afternoon we headed into Richmond. I picked out some more workout clothes, a few pairs of jeans, and a jumper or two and tried not to feel guilty as Black footed the bill. Strange, because I’d rarely felt remorse when I purloined things back in London, but somehow it was easier to take stuff from strangers.
“You need a couple of nice dresses as well,” Black said. “You may need to accompany me to dinner at some point.”
“I’m not really into dresses.”
He gave me a wry smile. “I’d noticed that, but you have to learn to pretend to be.”
In the upmarket boutique he took me to, the sales girls swarmed around him like demented flies and looked down their snooty noses at me.
“Shop here often, do you? I didn’t imagine you as a sequins-and-tiaras kind of guy.”
“What man doesn’t look good in a cocktail dress?” he answered, deadpan.
For a second, I wasn’t sure whether he was serious. “I thought you said you didn’t joke.”
“It’s a new thing for me.”
He cracked a tiny smile. Progress?
Hmm. Where did I start in this fancy shop? The only time I’d bought dresses before, I was more concerned with the ease of getting out of them while cavorting around a pole than what they actually looked like. I shuffled through the rails, trying to look as though I knew what I was doing, but it was hopeless. I didn’t understand the sizing, and I couldn’t work out how to get into half of the outfits with all their hidden zips and twiddly buttons. I was drowning in a sea of silk and chiffon.
“How about this one?” Black asked, holding up a purple knee-length thing with sequins on the bodice. “It matches your eyes.”
I snatched it off him. “Yeah, okay.”
“Do you want some help?”
“No.” I sighed. “Yes.”
One snap of his fingers, and the nearest salesgirl started piling frocks into my arms. I caught sight of a price tag and dropped the lot.
“What’s wrong?” Black hissed as I backed away.
“That dress costs three thousand dollars.”
“And?”
“That’s more than I earned last year.”
The sales girl eavesdropped on our conversation, head going back and forth like she was at a tennis match. It took all my self-control not to slap her.
Black steered me back to the rail and bent to pick up the items I’d dropped. “My investments earned three thousand dollars while we were eating brunch. Just buy some dresses, would you?”
Trying to absorb that new piece of information, I plucked the top two dresses from him and hurried into the changing room. They fitted well enough, and I hauled my jeans back on.
“You want those ones?” he asked.
“Not really.”
He turned to the cretinous woman still hovering at his elbow and handed her his credit card. “Could you wrap these up?”
She beamed up at him and scuttled off as I folded my arms and stared out the window.
“Now what?” he asked.
“I don’t deserve those. I haven’t even done any work yet.”
He slung an arm around my shoulders and grasped my chin, forcing me to meet his gaze. “You will soon enough. I’ll get my money’s worth out of you, don’t worry.”
Why did my knees want to buckle when he said that?
“And we’re having dinner with Nate later,” he continued as the woman presented him with two bags.
“Who’s Nate?”
He held the door open, allowing me to escape. “Nathaniel Wood. He’s my business partner.”
“Do I need to wear a dress?”
“Jeans will be fine. He’s coming over to the house.”
Super. Another person to be nice to.
We reached Black’s Corvette, and I lowered myself into the passenger seat. That wasn’t his only hot car—he’d shown me his garage earlier, full of automotive delights. I’d memorised the code number on the lockbox where he kept the keys, just in case an opportunity arose.
The engine growled into life, then we sped on to the next part of my adventure.
Nate arrived at Riverley not long after we did. He obviously had his own key because he came straight into the kitchen and helped himself to a beer. I felt like an amoeba under the microscope as he looked me up and down then turned to Black and raised an eyebrow as if to say, “Seriously?”
“Give her a chance.”
“I thought we agreed to poach someone from the CIA? Or the FBI, even?”
“None of those candidates were right. I thought I’d try a different route.”
Nate glowered at me. “What experience do you have in the security business?”
“Not a lot,” I admitted. “And most of it’s been from the other side.”
He turned back to Black. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Quite possibly. But Emerson’s staying.”
The beef Wellington Mrs. Fairfax made was no doubt delicious, but I barely tasted it. Hostility rolled off Nate and filled the room, suppressing my appetite. I pushed dinner around my plate while Black and Nate talked business. The facts and figures mostly went right over my head, but Nate’s suspicious glances in my direction every time Black mentioned anything about their current clients didn’t. What, did Nate think I was some sort of spy for the competition?
Clearly, I had a lot to prove. Black had taken a huge gamble in bringing me here, even risking the wrath of his friend. Nobody but Jimmy and Jackie had ever shown that belief in me before. What if I let him down?
When Nate left an hour later, the temperature in the room rose again.
“Are you okay?” Black asked. “You were very polite. Not like you at all.”
“He hates me.” I sighed dramatically and collapsed over the table.
Black chuckled. “He’s not your biggest fan at the moment, but he acts that way with everyone to start with. You have to earn Nate’s trust. He doesn’t give it out freely.”
“An uphill battle, seems like.”
“Yes, but you’ll fight it, and you’ll win.”
Right now, I couldn’t even fight my own body. By eight o’clock, I’d already yawned a dozen times as my brain got confused over time zones.
“You should get some sleep,” Black said.
“I think you might be right.” I couldn’t resist adding, “For once.”
“How has that mouth not got you into more trouble?”
“Must be my charming personality.”
If Black rolled his eyes any harder, he’d have to go and retrieve them from his freaking tennis court.
“Charm or not, you’ll have to keep getting up in the small hours. I train early.”
Oh, joy. But at least I wouldn’t have late shifts dancing sapping my energy at the other end of the day. The thought of eight hours of uninterrupted sleep made me smile as I journeyed to my bedroom. I only got lost twice. Not bad.
The next day, I reported for duty at the gym at five o’clock sharp, dressed for battle in running tights and a sports bra. How bad could it be? After all, I’d trained at least five times a week with Jimmy.
I soon got my answer. Every morning, a portal to Satan’s dungeon opened up in the doorway of the gym, and I was contractually bound to step through it. More than once, I checked to see whether Black had grown horns and a tail. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d started poking me with a trident every time I stumbled on the treadmill.
After four mornings in the gym with him, I struggled to walk. I had so many bruises in delightful shades of green and brown I didn’t need to worry about wearing camouflage when he forced me to go running in the woods, and if I’d ventured out in public, I’d have needed to wear a burka to avoid getting dragged kicking and screaming to the nearest women’s shelter. On the plus side, he might have got arrested, which would have given me a day off while his lawyer sorted out the mess. Black was the meanest fighter I’d ever come across, and at JJ’s I’d met more than my fair share.
How I’d ever managed to break his nose, I had no idea. I couldn’t even get him to break a sweat now. He’d start me off on cardio equipment, maybe eight miles on the treadmill or thirty on the stationary bike, before moving on to weights, then boxing or martial arts.
My muscles stiffened up overnight and by the next morning, I’d barely be able to move, but Black made me run, cycle, lift, and jump again anyway. On day five, he did at least bring in a physio to loosen my muscles before I seized up completely.
Fight training became my nemesis. I already knew how to box, but Black began drilling me with weapons too. He had a series of punchbags set up, all with layers of foam taped around the outside, and he taught me to attack them with knives first, because he expected me to carry one from now on. Once I’d mastered blades, he moved on to anything else that happened to be around—a golf club, a hammer, keys, a rolling pin, a flashlight, whatever we picked up on our way to the gym.
There were times—many times—I wanted to tell him what he was asking of me was impossible, but I swallowed down the words. Why? Because everything he made me do, he did it too, and I couldn’t bring myself to admit defeat.
As I ate lunch after my third physio session, Black wandered in and sat opposite me. He’d already showered and moved with an ease I only dreamed of.
“I have to go away on business until the end of the week.”
“Thank goodness.” The words slipped out before I managed to stop them.
He looked at me sharply. “You still have to train, though. Gym at five, as usual.”
I groaned, but I couldn’t complain too much. After all, he was paying me a lot to be there. And without him watching over me, I’d just jog on the treadmill for half an hour then go back to bed.
Or so I thought.
When I got down to the gym on day six after a non-sanctioned lie in, I found Black had hired me a new trainer.
“You are late,” he growled in a thick Russian accent, tapping his watch. “You will have to do extra.”
Oh, great. Extra.
Alex, it turned out, used to be in the Russian army. I suspected they’d kicked him out for being too hard on the troops. Black was a pussycat in comparison, and I found myself counting down the seconds until his return. In my spare time, I plotted ways to murder Satan’s older brother.
Shove him under a truck? Strangle him with barbed wire? Simply shooting him as he slept seemed too kind.
On the plus side, when Black finally did get back, he’d procured me a UK driving licence to go with my passport, complete with international driving permit.
“After lunch, we’ll start lessons,” he said.
Thank goodness. If I was driving, Alex couldn’t make me do push-ups.
Black sat me in the driver’s seat of his Ford Mustang, apologising that it was the smallest car he owned, then proceeded to tell me what each pedal did, how to change gear, and what all the dials on the dashboard meant. He got halfway through his spiel before I got bored, started the engine, and drove off.
“Oh. Why didn’t you say you could already drive?”
“You never asked. Once again, you made an assumption about me, and it was wrong.”
“I’m going to have to stop doing that, aren’t I? To save us wasting time down the line, do you have any other skills I should be aware of?”
“You already know about the pick-pocketing. Probably you could cut the lessons on shoplifting, lock-picking, and burglary short as well.”
“Noted. Who taught you to drive?”
“Mostly a seventeen-year-old car thief named Vinnie, although some of it was trial and error when I started borrowing cars myself.”
“Ah. So I needn’t have bothered providing you with a key?”
“It wouldn’t have been essential, no.”
From that day on, I lost my afternoons to less physical tasks like offensive and defensive driving, shooting, and learning how to throw knives with deadly accuracy. It wasn’t long before my evenings vanished too. Black started off by bringing in a French teacher, who spent three hours each day teaching me the language as well as French history and culture, which she claimed was as important as knowing the words themselves.
Sure, the lessons were hard, but learning how to converse abroad was far more useful than learning about the reproductive cycle of a dandelion. I enjoyed L’ecole de Noir far more than Forest Hill Comprehensive.
One of those co-opted into working with me was Nate, who turned out to be a whiz with electronics. He taught me a little about computers, as in how to hack them, search them, and take them apart. I also found out how to place bugs, disarm security systems, and monitor phone conversations.
I drank in everything he told me and developed a flair for blowing things up. It was possible to do an amazing amount of damage with things found in an ordinary household, and the day I created a spectacular ball of flame using a mobile phone battery and a few chemicals, I got a grudging smile and a “Nice job.”
Hurrah! High praise indeed from Nate. That was the start of his thaw towards me, much to my relief. As he was Black’s best friend, life would have been uncomfortable if the attitude he’d displayed at our first meeting pervaded for my entire stay.
After Nate came an old-timer named Herb, a botanist who talked to his greenery like it was human. Under his tutelage, I learned which plants were safe to eat, which had medicinal properties, and how the select few could be used to kill someone. With Herb’s help and Black’s permission, I started my own deadly garden out the back of Riverley Hall, fascinated as I watched my evil little fiends sprout and grow.
A mechanic of dubious origins improved my hot-wiring skills then taught me new ways to break into a car, the best methods to disable an engine, and how to sabotage parts of the vehicle to turn it into a death trap. I vowed to check my brake lines regularly from that point on because it was all too easy to damage them.
The high points in those first three months were few and far between. After physical training from five to twelve, I had half an hour to eat lunch then I’d carry on until nine with another thirty-minute break for dinner. My brain was worn out from all the studying, and at night I’d fall into bed wondering how I’d ever get through another day. Black had turned into the devil incarnate, and Riverley Hall became my living nightmare.
Think I’m kidding? I recall telling him that if he told me to “Just do it” one more time, I was going to just shoot him.
At that point in our lives, I didn’t like him very much at all.