Chapter 26
CHAPTER 26
NOT ALL JOBS were as pleasant as my Mexico jaunt, as I found out a couple of weeks later. Black lent me to the NSA, and a day spent undercover on a college campus took a turn for the worse when a young religious extremist decided to take an inexperienced agent hostage rather than be arrested. I stared through a rifle sight for three hours while the lunatic fiddled with his suicide vest, trying to convince us to come around to his way of thinking.
Black’s voice played over in my head. “Keep breathing, Emmy, until you see your shot. Steady. In and out. Then stop while you pull the trigger.”
My bullet punched through the guy’s left eye as I dispatched him to discuss his views with Allah in person.
I thought I was okay with it. It was an outright kill, a single shot, and there wasn’t even that much mess. I mean, I’d even got a round of applause from the agents on site.
I went home, wrote up my report, then had a pleasant supper of roast chicken and assorted vegetables with Black before I snuck up to my room to eat the Reese’s peanut butter cups I’d cadged off a local cop. Half an hour in the newly installed sauna, and I was relaxed and ready for bed. Sure, I’d had to shoot someone, but in my new line of work, that wasn’t entirely unexpected, and it was either him or that poor schmuck from the NSA. In a way, it was a relief to get my first kill over with.
I fell asleep.
But not for long.
That fateful Wednesday, the devil in my head paid his first nocturnal visit. I saw the terrorist’s eyeball disintegrate, the splash of blood on the wall behind him so vivid I could smell the metallic tang. In life, he’d crumpled, but in my dreams, he stayed standing, staring at me with his good eye as he reached for his vest.
Over and over and over and over again.
“What’s going on? Emmy?”
Black’s shouting woke me, and I came to with a jolt. Why was he in my bedroom? And more importantly, why did he have a gun in his hand?
“Is there an intruder?” I grabbed my own gun from under my pillow and thumbed the safety.
He stared at me.
“What?” I asked.
“You were screaming.”
“No, I wasn’t.” Surely I’d have heard myself?
“Yes, you were. And you’ve gone white.”
“You must have been dreaming.”
He sat down on the bed and squeezed my hand. “Diamond, I think you were the one dreaming.”
I shook my head, as if by denying his words, they wouldn’t be true. How could I have made enough noise to wake Black without even noticing? His gaze flicked downwards, and I realised my Walther was still in my hands. I dropped the gun as if it had burned me and struggled to sit up.
“I wasn’t… I couldn’t…”
The reality wasn’t something I wanted to consider.
But I had no choice.
Nightmares plagued me, ever more frequent as I added to my back catalogue of triggers. Talking things through with Black helped some, but they kept coming, relentless.
Something inside me broke that day, and nothing could ever fix it.
Over the next year, the jobs Black gave me got tougher, as did the ongoing battle with my demons. Black was always by my side, though, and Blackwood grew like it was on steroids. The profits made the decision to expand overseas an easy one, starting with an office in London.
While Black and I scoured the UK property listings and hunted an art thief in LA, Nate surprised us by getting married. He took a trip to Mexico to deliver a hostage negotiation training program in partnership with the Mexican authorities and came back with their best sniper in tow. The High Command GAFE had been less than happy to lose Carmen, and Black spent two weeks placating them while Nate and his new bride took off for a honeymoon in Australia. To this day, we still gave the Mexican Special Forces a discount on our services.
Nick finally agreed to join us, and Black and Nate each signed over five percent of their shares in Blackwood to him as an incentive. I’d kept in touch with him over the months, our meetings mainly dinners of the room service variety. Our discreet liaisons suited us both, as did our string of dirty text messages.
After the ninth or tenth such occasion, Black found out. Nick dropped me back at Riverley one evening and kissed me goodbye with a little too much tongue. When I turned towards the house, I saw Black step back from the window. Our secret wasn’t a secret anymore. Would Black say anything?
I half expected him to, but when I said goodnight, all I got in return was a grunt as he poured himself a glass of Scotch.
“That’s a good thing,” I muttered to myself as I climbed the stairs.
Like I’d said to Nick, what I did in my own time was my business, but I still didn’t want to talk to Black about the sordid details. He may have controlled my working hours, but he couldn’t take over my entire life.
Oh, who was I kidding?
Two days later, Black beckoned me into his study after my morning workout.
“I’ve got a project for you. A new challenge.”
“What kind of challenge?”
“We’ve just signed the contract to buy an office building in King’s Cross, and I need you to fly to London and oversee the setup.”
“How long for?”
“At least a month. Maybe two.”
“That long?”
“The contractor’s behind, and they’ve already installed the wrong type of partitioning on the top floor.”
“Seriously? You want me to monitor builders?”
“I thought you might like to catch up with your old friends as well. Jimmy… Jackie… That kid who taught you how to boost cars.”
I might have grumbled, but Black was right. Yes, I missed Nick, but I had a ball catching up with the guys at the gym. Jimmy helped me to keep up my training while I learned the ins and outs of business and investments. Profit and loss, balance sheets, government regulations, marketing. Boring, but it sure came in handy later when I needed to look after my own money.
Unfortunately, with my frequent flights between the UK and the US, I also learned about jet lag and the joys of airport immigration queues when you don’t have a US passport. I had a citizenship application in progress, but the constant barrage of questions on every aspect of my life and job from US Customs and Border Protection officers drove me nuts. Interviews, forms, visa renewals. Hours of my life wasted. Not only that, my hazy status caused difficulties getting security clearance for some jobs, and while I could obtain the information in more creative ways, it wasted valuable time and energy.
After one such painful trip through McCarran International, I sat in a Vegas hotel bar with Black and Nate, ready to plan a security test we were due to undertake for one of the big casinos out there. I’d arrived late, annoyed, and tired, and I quickly swallowed the glass of white Black pushed in front of me.
“Problems again, Diamond?”
“What’s new? I can’t even be sarcastic because then they insist on a cavity search. Which you gentlemen may get excited about, but let me assure you, it’s something I could live without.”
“I’ll order another bottle of wine.”
“Can’t you just get me a fake US passport? You got me a UK one.”
“Under a different name, yes, but we need to keep Blackwood above board, at least on the surface. If you leave under one name and come back under a different one, suspicions will be raised. How about I buy a jet instead?”
“That wouldn’t help. I’d still have to go through the same channel at immigration and the jobsworths keep asking questions about my employment. They struggle to believe a twenty-year-old is a partner in a security company, and it’s not as if I can go into lots of detail. Half the stuff I do is classified.”
“Maybe if you told them you were a secretary instead?” Nate suggested.
“I don’t think having an admin job and nothing else to tie me to the States would be conducive to my application for citizenship, which will take years, by the way, since I’ve got no family here. I need more wine.”
Black signalled to the bartender, but I couldn’t wait. I grabbed his glass of red instead.
Nate drummed his fingers on the table then snapped them in front of my face. “I’ve got an idea.”
“Please, I’m dying to hear it.”
“Why don’t you two get married?”
Black choked on an olive, and I spat out the mouthful of Merlot I’d just taken.
“Exactly how much have you had to drink, buddy?” Black asked.
“Only a couple of beers. And a whisky or two.”
I started laughing, ignoring Nate’s indignant look. Black waved at the waiter again and asked for a jug of water.
But Nate wasn’t finished. “Just think about it. Emmy, you’d get your green card faster and save time at the airport. And if Black had a ring on his finger, he wouldn’t keep getting chased by horny women with dollar signs in their eyes.”
“Nate, I know you’ve had some crazy ideas in the past, but that one’s special,” I said, patting his hand.
Even so, part of me felt oddly pleased. Nate had hated me when we first met, and now he was trying to marry me off to his best friend? This was progress.
“Ems, it’s not that crazy. How long does it take to get permanent residence after marriage? Three years?”
“Something like that,” Black said.
“And you could get divorced afterwards. If you keep your fingers crossed, marrying Emmy might even give your Aunt Miriam a heart attack.”
Should I be pleased or insulted by that?
Black took a sip of his fresh glass of wine. “Perhaps the idea does have some merit.”
“I can’t believe you’re even considering it,” I said.
“Diamond, you were the one complaining about immigration. And neither of us likes Miriam.”
Nate nudged me. “A heart attack, get it? Marriage… Valentines… Hearts… Never mind.”
I’d only met the irritating cow once, and I’d been forced to have a chat with the punchbag in the gym afterwards. When Black and Nate put it that way, the pros did seem to outweigh the cons.
“Fine. Let’s get married then.” I slammed my glass down. My third glass. My third, large glass. That was the wine talking. “How do we even do that?”
Black turned to Nate. “This was your suggestion.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll ask the concierge.”
Three hours later, I stood in front of a fat bloke dressed as Elvis with Black beside me. Thanks to the concierge, we had the licence thingy and a bouquet of flowers, and Nate had bought us rings.
Black squinted at one of the cheap gold bands. “They’re engraved?”
I leaned forward to see for myself. CB & MB 4EVA?
“What’s with the text speak?” Black asked.
“Chief Petty Officer Black and the Mad Brat Forever. Appropriate, huh? And it’s your initials as well, sort of. Get it?” He poked me in the arm. “Get it?” he asked again before noticing our exasperated looks. “What? The engraving was free. We might as well take advantage of it.”
“Thanks, buddy,” Black said dryly.
A lady with bouffant hair and a clipboard marched up, her face arranged in a fake smile.
“Ma’am? You’ll need to put the wine bottle down before the ceremony starts.”
“What?” I glanced at my hand and realised I was carrying a bottle of rosé. “Oops. Here, take it.”
“Have you written your own vows, or would you like to use the standard ones?”
Vows? I could barely even speak without slurring. “Uh…”
“The standard ones,” Black said.
He looked remarkably calm for a man about to sign his life away. My bottle disappeared, replaced with red roses, and Elvis coughed in front of us. Boy, his collar was really shiny.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God to join Charles Edward Black and Amanda Emerson in Holy Matrimony…”
After one small hiccup where I told Black I took him to be my wedded wife, we got through the ceremony and mugged for the camera while Elvis snapped a picture. Bouffant lady handed it to us minutes later in a cheap cardboard frame, our only reminder of this oh-so-momentous event in our lives.
“I’ll always be by your side, Diamond,” Black mumbled. “In spirit if not in body.”
Where had he got that whisky from? I wanted some, but Nate confiscated the bottle.
“Time to go, buddy.”
The wedding package included a limo, one of those tacky stretch ones with fancy lights and vaguely sticky seats, and we returned to our hotel as Mr. And Mrs. Black.
At that point, I was just trying not to puke.
“Now what, Mr. Black?” I asked as we staggered into the Bellagio.
“Bar, Mrs. Black?”
“A marvellous idea, Mr. Black.”
We could barely walk at all, let alone straight, and instead of ending up in one of the many lounges, we found ourselves at a poker table in Club Privé. Black shoved a pile of cash at a croupier as my buy-in.
“Happy wedding, Mrs. Black.”
He pressed his lips to my forehead then stumbled off to the speakeasy-style bar. He didn’t come back. Through drooping eyelids, I saw a slender blonde dressed in stilettos and feathers leading him by the hand as they headed towards the bedrooms, and although an irrational spike of jealousy flared in my chest, I quickly extinguished it with a gin and tonic. Black was my husband in name only. At least one of us would be getting some on our wedding night.
I didn’t even make it to bed, let alone with a man. When I woke in the bathtub the next morning, blotchy circles covered my skin, imprints from the pile of poker chips I’d fallen asleep on. Half a million dollars, I found when I counted them up. That was a lot of splodges. Really, I should play poker drunk more often.
Back home in Virginia, we had a late wedding reception for appearances’ sake. Neither of us could be bothered with the details, but the party planner went all out. Black knew loads of people and a few hundred turned up to offer congratulations, toasters, cutlery, and bed linen. Miriam arrived with a set of polyester napkins. Unfortunately, she didn’t keel over and die, but her face did go disturbingly purple as she berated him for his lack of prenup.
“Did you leave your brain at home when you went on your gambling spree?” she hissed. “Because I can’t see any other explanation. Where did you find her, anyway? On a street corner?”
“We met in a wine bar in London,” Black said, sticking to the cover story we’d concocted for the occasion. He gazed down at me adoringly. “And Emmy’s my soul mate. We’ll be together until the day I die.”
At the time, I didn’t realise how prescient those words would be.
“Well, I hope you’ve got a good lawyer.” Miriam spun around, caught herself from overbalancing with an inelegant lurch, and stormed off.
I could quite understand why Black’s opinion of her was so low he needed a backhoe to find it.
Eventually, we both got bored with mingling and small talk and settled into the library with Nate, Carmen, Nick and a good bottle of Scotch.
“How long do you reckon before they all go home?” I asked nobody in particular.
“Ages, I expect,” Black answered. “They’ll probably hang around as long as there’s food and drink left.”
“Oh, good grief. For a pretend wedding, this sure is turning into a hassle.”
“Pretend wedding?” Nick asked.
I realised neither of us had filled him in yet. I thought he’d been a bit quiet.
“Kind of. We got married for real, but mainly to help out with my citizenship application.”
“You’re all invited to the divorce party in a couple of years,” Black added.
“So you’re not really together, together?”
I shook my head. “No, nothing’s changed except we get to wear these classy rings Nate picked out, which probably cost twenty cents each.”
“Yours cost forty-nine dollars, you ungrateful wench,” Nate said.
“Such generosity.”
The grandfather clock near the window had chimed two by the time the last of the guests trickled out. One of the party organisers stuck her head around the door. “That went amazingly fantastically!”
Her perkiness was unnatural at that time in the morning. I managed a grunt in return.
“Well, we’ll be back tomorrow—oops, later today—to clear up. Y’all have a fabulous night!”
Black finished his drink and got to his feet. “I’m going to bed.”
“Same.” I paused then leaned into Nick. Sitting beside him all evening had left me with a wanton ache between my thighs. “Want to join me?”
“Black won’t mind?”
“No. You heard him.” Besides, he’d spent our wedding night with a showgirl.
Nick followed me to the door, but Black changed his mind and poured himself another whisky. Well, at least if he was hungover, he wouldn’t notice if I had a lie-in.
Upstairs, Nick gave me a reminder of our Mexican jaunt, and I was grateful that in the days when Riverley was constructed, they built proper, solid walls with plenty of soundproofing.
Otherwise, that night could have got a little embarrassing.
Life continued as normal. What passed as normal for Black and me, anyway. The only noticeable differences were that I lived it with a ring on my finger, albeit a nicer one than Nate bought, and I changed my name.
“Pretend or not, no wife of mine is wearing a forty-nine dollar ring,” Black told me.
I bought a second ring for him in return, but we kept the original engraving. Tacky, but it seemed fitting. Amanda died a death, appearing only on official paperwork, and with my new surname, Emerson became my semi-official first name.
As I filled out one form after another, I asked, “Do you want me to sign a proper prenup?” We’d scribbled out something on the back of a cocktail napkin, but it probably wouldn’t stand up in court. Black was loaded, and I didn’t ever want money to come between us. “Well, I guess it would be more of a postnup now?”
“Don’t be so stupid.”
“But what if I decided to go out and buy a house with your charge card?”
He took me by the shoulders. “Diamond, when my parents died, their estate was worth just over nine billion dollars, and it all came to me. I’ve probably doubled it since then. So you’d have to buy a really big house for me to notice, and even if I did notice, I wouldn’t care. Spend what you want.”
Wow. I knew he had a lot of money, but I didn’t realise it was that much.