Pitch Black: A Romantic Thriller (Blackwood Security Book 1) (32 page)

“That doesn’t surprise me. Luke isn’t the type to go around upsetting his employees. So there’s nothing?”

“We found one complaint that looked kind of juicy. Luke sacked a programmer for lying that a project had passed beta testing when it hadn’t, and the guy wasn’t happy about it.”

“I take it you followed up on it?”

“Oh, yes, straight away. He was surprisingly cooperative. He said he’d been going through a nasty divorce and things just got on top of him.”

“Did he seem the type to bear a grudge?”

“He admitted he hadn’t been happy at the time, but he said he didn’t blame Luke any more. Even said he’d have done the same. He reckons he’s got a new perspective on life now he’s moved to Sydney with his boyfriend.”

“As in Sydney, Australia?”

Helena/Melanie nodded.

“Did you corroborate?” I asked.

“Yes, we sent an operative from the Sydney office to check on the happy couple. They offered him a beer and invited him back for a barbecue.”

A complete bust, then.

Mack called back just after eight.

“I’ve got good news and bad news.”

“Hit me with it.”

“I’ve got into Luke’s bank accounts, and his mother’s. And through the firewall on his home computer and his work servers.”

“And what’s the bad news?”

“I haven’t found anything concrete. But from the log files on the server, I’d say someone else has been trying to do the same as me, they just haven’t been so successful.”

“Any idea who?”

“No, but I’ll keep trying to find out.”

“Thanks. We could use a break. Was that the only thing of interest?”

“Oh, there’s plenty that’s interesting. Do you know how much money Luke gives to his mother each month? It’s thousands, Ems. And she spends it all on hairdressers and clothes and golf and manicures.”

“I’ve met the woman, so that comes as no surprise. But I meant anything of interest to the case?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

Mack hesitated a little too long before answering for my liking. What was she holding back? I was tempted to push, but my name already graced her shit list. I trusted she’d tell me if it was important.

“All right, we’ll speak later.”

At least she hadn’t frozen me out today. We were making progress.

At nine, I headed home. I needed some sleep and although I had a fold out bed in my office, after last night, I didn’t want to risk sleeping in it. Bad enough to have Nick catch me sleepwalking, without my entire staff finding out I did it.

When I got back, I snuck up the rear stairs from the garage, keeping my fingers crossed Luke had gone to bed so I could avoid talking to him. My hopes were dashed, though, when I got into the kitchen to find him typing away on his laptop with Nick and Dan sitting beside him.

I was about to walk out again when Dan stopped me.

“Luke might have found something.”

My interest was piqued. “What?”

Luke spoke up. “I got an email alert a couple of hours ago to say someone was in my mainframe at work. They tripped an alarm while they were looking at the code for my new program, the same one the kidnapper wanted. I’m trying to track them.”

I had a bad feeling about this. “Have you got very far?”

“Well the crazy thing is, I think I know who it is.”

“Go on.”

“Well… You see… The thing is… I’m a little bit involved in the online hacking community.”

I recalled the time I’d caught him in the police database. “I knew that. And?”

“You did?” He seemed surprised.

“Sure, and it makes perfect sense. You build cyber security products. The best way to defend something is to know every possible way to attack it.”

It was much how I worked as well, except in the physical world rather than virtual.

“And you’re not judging me for being a hacker? Most people aren’t keen on us.”

“That’s not who I am. You’d know that if you thought it over. Not everything about the way I behaved with you was a lie.”

Plus I was hardly a saint myself.

“I guess.” He paused to type in another command. “Anyway, there’s this hacker called Diablo. He’s one of the best, and we’ve always had a rivalry. Until now I thought it was friendly, but I recognise the signs, and I’m sure that’s who broke into my system. So if we can find Diablo, we might also find the kidnapper.”

“I hate to rain on your parade, but I doubt that.”

Nick and Dan looked up. Nick raised an eyebrow.

“Bloody Mack,” I muttered to him.

Did Mack use the name Diablo? No idea—I’d lost count of her identities over the years—but she was a hacker, and she’d just been in Luke’s system.

I leaned over, slid Luke’s laptop in front of me and opened an instant messenger program. Entering Mack’s username, I typed
Diablo???
and hit send.

The reply was almost instantaneous.

Shit.

I spun the laptop back to Luke. “Now you two play nice.”

“Huh?”

“Diablo isn’t our kidnapper. Diablo’s on our side. Meet Mack.”

As I left the kitchen to go to bed, I heard the keys click as Luke typed a reply to her. Hopefully this would be the start of a beautiful friendship.

I slept better that night. Nick took the room next to mine, and when I asked him in the morning, he said he hadn’t heard a peep out of me. I was still in bed when I woke up so that was a definite improvement.

I called the control room as soon as I got up, but nothing new had come in overnight. Mack was offline and likely asleep, and it felt like things were at an impasse. We needed a break. The waiting game wasn’t one I liked playing.

With nothing more constructive to do, I went for a swim. Truth be told, I was hoping for inspiration, and I did my best thinking when I was alone and surrounded by peace and quiet. It wouldn’t have been the first time a miraculous idea popped into my head when I was lazily stroking up and down the pool.

After I’d swum a couple of miles without any light bulbs pinging on, I looked a bit pruney, so I wrapped a towel round myself and went to change. Once I’d put on a pair of jeans and an old, worn T-shirt, I dug out a new pair of contacts. I was still wearing them for Luke’s sake. I wasn’t sure where I stood with him, and if I was going to make a clean break at the end of this, it seemed easier to give him as little of the real me as possible.

A rumble from my stomach reminded me I was late for breakfast. While I waited for my toast to pop up, I heard a commotion in the hallway.

As I got closer, a high-pitched voice asked, “Where’s Emmy? Is she up yet?”

Luke’s slightly bemused voice replied, “I don’t think there’s anyone called Emmy here.”

“Nonsense, it’s her… Oh! There you are! Sweet mother of Gaultier, who did that to your hair? It’s just not nice. In fact it’s nasty! You look like a librarian who just escaped from the 1980s.”

Luke’s brow furrowed in confusion as a short but exuberant man marched over to me. His pink skinny jeans were studded with diamantes and matched his off-the-shoulder Pringle sweater—tame in comparison to some of his outfits. He held up the ends of my hair to examine.

“I cut it a bit,” I confessed without thinking.

“What did you use? An axe?”

I came to my senses. “Bradley, what the hell are you doing here?”

“You said you were back, so I flew over on the red eye and, well, SURPRISE!” He gave me jazz hands. “It was awful. There were no business class seats left, and I had to fly economy. Economy! Thank goodness I had my travel pillow and a cashmere throw with me. And a really cute member of the cabin crew gave me an eye mask and a pair of earplugs. He gave me his phone number too, but I’d better not tell Miles that.”

Miles was Bradley’s live-in boyfriend, who spent his waking hours writing his thesis on ancient Egyptian burial sites. He couldn’t be more different to Bradley. Bradley was larger than life and always over the top. He loved to wear bright colours and changed his hairstyle the way most men changed their socks, which is to say about once a fortnight. Today it was platinum blond and gelled up in a faux-hawk. Miles was as drab as the beige jumpers he favoured. I couldn’t fathom how they worked, but they’d been together for ten years now, so they had to be doing something right.

The front door opened behind Bradley. One person after another walked in, dumping packages on the floor and couch before going back out for more.

“Hey!” Bradley screeched as a guy lifted up a tall, thin cardboard box. “Watch out for the chandelier—it’s a Dale Chihuly.”

“Bradley, I know I’m going to regret asking, but what is all this stuff?”

“I didn’t know when you were coming back, so I had clothes from the spring collections on hold for you all over the place. And now you’re here, so I’m having them delivered,” he said, speaking to me like I was a small child as he explained the obvious. “I had to call in a lot of favours to get everything brought over this morning.”

He must have caught my look of horror because he patted me on the arm reassuringly. “Don’t worry, you’ll barely notice I’m here.”

I looked round at the pile of shit that had taken over one side of the entrance hall. “Somehow I doubt that.”

“Besides, I need to clear out your closet,” continued Bradley, oblivious. “I mean, what are you wearing?”

I looked down at myself. “Jeans?”

“Not just jeans, Emmy. Those are last season’s jeans.”

Oh, Bradley, what would I do without you? Heaven forbid I should wear non-current jeans. I loved him dearly, but sometimes he exasperated me. On the positive side, he was fearsomely efficient at organising my clothes, houses, schedule, and life in general, so I couldn’t get too upset with him.

“Fine, Bradley, do what you need to do.”

Attempting to argue with him was pointless—I’d learned that the hard way over the years. I made a mental note to hide my favourite old clothes before he recycled them.

“I intend to.” He tilted his head to one side. “Starting with your hair. The colour’s so drab. Does it have to stay brown?”

“I meant with my clothes. The hair will have to wait. We’re in the middle of a kidnap investigation, and I need to go into the office.”

“Do we just have time for an argan oil conditioning pack?”

“No!”

Luke had watched our little exchange with interest. “Emmy?”

Thanks, Bradley.

“Most people call me by a shortened version of my middle name.” It was sort of mostly true. And Luke thought my middle name was Emily, which fitted. “Call me Ash or Emmy, it doesn’t matter, I’ll answer to either.”

I had to get out of the house, mainly to avoid Luke and Nick but also to keep out the way of Bradley’s wardrobe shenanigans, so I drove into the office, hoping there was something I could do. Rain was falling heavily, so I left the Aston snugly under its cover and took the X5 instead. Turned out it was mine, part of Bradley’s car rotation program. The Land Rover was apparently being fixed after Dan used it for a bit of impromptu off-roading while trying to avoid a deer. Dan assured me the deer came out of it just fine, which was better than the Land Rover’s suspension did.

The incident room was a hive of quiet activity. Phones rang, keyboards clicked, and the information board gradually filled up. The problem was, we had nothing significant.