Pitch Black: A Romantic Thriller (Blackwood Security Book 1) (40 page)

Dan interrupted my thoughts. “What happened to the ransom?”

“It’s in the back of Nick’s car. Can you put my share back in the safe?”

“Sure.”

“And Jason’s gonna want to speak to you. There’ll be paperwork.”

She groaned. “Yeah, I know. Thanks for leaving me all that.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll call him—I need to have a word about Simon. He’s whacked.”

“I got that.”

“You don’t have the whole picture yet. In the van he told me he couldn’t wait to feel my tight pussy around his dick. Jason needs to look into his history.”

“The sick fuck. Did you check Tia?”

“He didn’t touch her. If he had, he wouldn’t be breathing now.”

“That kick in the nuts you gave him let him off easy.”

“I broke his trigger finger too. I heard it crack when I wrenched the gun out his hand.”

“That was a nice trade off for Tia’s fingernail.”

“That’s what I thought.” I gripped the steering wheel tighter. “He’s not getting out of prison. I’ll fix it. He’s never going to interfere in Luke or Tia’s life again.”

Dan reached over and squeezed my hand. “You obviously care about them. Are you sure you’re doing the right thing by leaving?”

“I don’t see another way. I’ve fucked up Luke’s life for quite long enough.”

“You should speak to him.”

Did she think I didn’t know that? “I can’t.”

Her answering shrug left me under no illusion that she thought I was doing the wrong thing. I glanced at the SatNav. We were ten minutes from the airbase.

“Will you say goodbye to Luke and Tia for me?” I asked. “Tell them I’ll miss them.”

“I will, but you should do it yourself.”

It was my turn to shrug. Dealing with more emotion was beyond my current capabilities. “Let me know if they need anything.”

We lapsed into silence and soon pulled up at the gates of RAF Northolt, where my plane was waiting next to the taxiway. The stairs were already lowered, and as I approached, Bradley bounced down to meet me. Didn’t the guy ever run out of energy?

“I’ve loaded up your bag with your laptop and a few bits from the house. And I’ve picked up a fresh bulgur wheat and rocket salad for you to eat on the flight.”

“Have you been talking to Toby again?”

“Yes, and he’s thrilled you’re on your way back. He’s so worried you’ve been neglecting your diet. Most of your groceries have arrived—it’s just the wagyu beef that’s stuck on the tarmac in Japan, and the caviar’s on back order. He mentioned a detox.”

Great, that would mean living on spinach smoothies and lemon tea for a week, and I didn’t even like caviar. Was it too late to change my mind about going home? How about a little break in the Caribbean?

Dan read my thoughts and mouthed, “Don’t even think about it.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Stop being like that. You know how much you love nettle juice,” she said.

“Bitch,” I whispered in her ear as I hugged her tightly. “I’ll see you in a few days.”

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “I’m glad you’re back. I mean really back.”

“Me too.”

Leaving Dan on the tarmac, I turned and walked up the stairs onto the plane. It was just as I remembered, cream leather seats with walnut trim. At least Bradley hadn’t had the interior re-fitted while I was away. I wouldn’t have put it past him. I took a left and went into the cockpit to greet my pilot.

“It’s good to see you back, Emmy,” he said. “Will you be flying her today?”

“I might as well.” I was still wide-awake, and I never slept on planes anyway. I could do far too much damage at 45,000 feet. “I’ll take a break in the middle. I understand Bradley has salad for me.”

“I heard that. He mentioned it earlier while I was tucking into my cheeseburger and fries.”

“Sometimes I don’t like you very much.”

He chuckled as we buckled ourselves into my Learjet 85, and I shouted back to Bradley to fasten his seatbelt for take-off. With eight seats, it was the smaller of our two planes. I had a larger Global 8000 as well, configured to carry fifteen, but that was apparently in Seattle. Today’s flight plan called for us to fly to Teterboro, New Jersey, a seven-hour journey that took the plane to the limit of its range. From Teterboro, we’d refuel and make the short hop over to Richmond International where my husband’s helicopter, a Eurocopter EC155 he’d purchased two months before his death, was waiting to take me home. Maybe a fourteen-seat helicopter was overkill for me and Bradley, but we’d sold the smaller one just before I left and hadn’t got around to replacing it. That was something else on my to-do list, which grew longer by the minute.

I started the plane’s engines, and once they’d warmed up, I taxied over to the runway. As I wound up the engines for take-off, I felt the first rush of adrenalin, which was swiftly followed by something else.

What was it? Was I…nervous?

Chapter 38

LUKE AND NICK made the drive back to the house without further incident. The place was still lit up like a nightclub by emergency service vehicles, so Nick parked at the far end of the driveway.

Luke got out of the car and shuffled towards the house. Thank goodness Tia went to bed. He wanted to tell her they’d caught the kidnapper, but at the same time, he didn’t know how to explain that Simon Howard appeared to be related. They’d gone through their whole lives believing it was just the two of them and their mother. The news he had a half-brother was still sinking in, not to mention the shock of him being a criminal. How would Tia take it?

Maybe Ash could help him break the news? He was still pretty cross at her for lying, but she’d come through on the kidnapping problem. Without her he’d most likely be lying in a shallow grave, and even if he’d survived, he wouldn’t have known whom to turn to for help. Luke would always be grateful to her for getting her friends involved, doubly so for the way she’d selflessly exchanged herself for the police officer at gunpoint. Her hysterical reaction afterwards still baffled him, though.

Where was she, anyway? She and Dan weren’t among those gathered outside. Come to think of it, their car wasn’t in the driveway.

He looked back to where Nick had stopped to talk to a cluster of police officers. They’d stayed to ensure Tia’s safety while the whole mess unravelled. Luke wandered over.

“Nick, have you seen Ash? I’m surprised she’s not back by now.” She’d smoked the tyres when she left ahead of them.

Nick looked uncomfortable as he excused himself from the group and led Luke away from prying ears.

 
“The thing is, she’s not coming back.”

“What? You mean she’s not coming back tonight? Have you got her number? I could meet her somewhere tomorrow.”

Nick shook his head. “She’s not coming back at all. She’s on her way home.”

“To America?”

“Yeah. She thought it would be better all round, what with not being your favourite person right now.”

Luke clutched at his hair. “Shit, I need to talk to her. Surely if she left at the same time as us, she’ll still be on her way to the airport? I’ll go after her. Is she flying out of Heathrow?”

Nick looked at his watch. “No, out of Northolt. She’ll already have taken off.”

Did commercial airlines fly out of Northolt? It had been over a year since Luke last chartered a jet from there—maybe things had changed?

Movement by the front door caught his eye. Oh shit. Why wasn’t Tia in bed? Her eyes settled on him, and she veered in his direction. It looked like he’d have to break the news about Simon, Ash, and everything else himself. Tia would be devastated Ash had left. They’d grown so close in the time she’d been with them, and and of course, she didn’t yet know about Ash’s deception.

He walked over to her, slowly, as if by dragging his feet he could somehow put off that talk forever. Tia looked so young and vulnerable standing there, lit up by the security lights on the outside of the house. Not only that, but her face was pale and her frame gaunt. The ordeal of the past few days showed in the way she carried herself.

Luke put his arm around her, but she shook it off. Instead, he put his hand on her back and gently steered her inside. There were people milling around all over the place downstairs, talking into phones and writing notes. He didn’t want to have this conversation with an audience.

A policewoman started towards them and he waved her off, bypassing the rest of the crowd. They could wait. He led Tia back up to her room where she sat at the top of the bed, hugging a pillow to her chest. Luke perched on the edge, facing her. For a few minutes, they stared at each other. Luke didn’t know what to say, and it seemed Tia was in the same boat.

Finally, Luke broke the silence. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t know.”

“What happened?” Luke asked quietly. “Can you talk about it?” He wasn’t sure whether Tia would tell him all the details, or even that he wanted her to, but the masochist in him couldn’t stand being kept in the dark.

“I want to tell you, but I’m not sure I remember everything right. It’s hazy.”

He reached over and squeezed her hand. “It doesn’t matter if you forget things.”
It might be better that way.
“Just tell me what you can.”

“I was walking home from Arabella’s. I remember seeing a van up ahead, and I was going to cross the road to avoid it. But then you got out the driver’s door. What were you doing in a van?”

“It wasn’t me. The man who took you, we look alike.”

Tia shuddered. “Creepy.”

“What did he do?”

“I don’t remember anything else until I woke up in a bathroom. I was on my own, but my wrist was chained to the radiator. The taps didn’t work, and I had to drink funny tasting water out of a bottle. I think he put something in it. I didn’t want to drink it, but there was nothing else.”

Tia paused, and a tear rolled down her cheek. Luke reached out and wiped it away with his sleeve as thoughts of murder ran through his mind.

“I needed to use the toilet, but it didn’t flush.” She screwed up her face at the memory. “The smell was disgusting. I thought I’d been abandoned. One night I dreamed you came through the door, but then you left. You didn’t leave, did you?” Tia dissolved in tears.

“It wasn’t me. I swear it wasn’t me.”

Should he hug her? Or leave her to calm down? This was why he needed Ash—she’d know what to do. In the end, he opted for the middle ground and stayed on the bed while Tia continued.

“The room didn’t have any windows, so I didn’t know if it was day or night. My thoughts were all jumbled. Maybe that’s what they mean when they say someone’s lost their mind?”

“You hadn’t lost your mind. That situation would make anybody think oddly.”

“Nothing made sense. But then I remembered Ash reading me a poem once. She made me a copy. It started ‘If you can keep your head when all around you are losing theirs…’ And that was funny, because it wasn’t those all around me who’d lost their heads; it was me. I’d lost my head. But I kept repeating the poem over and over, to have something in my head that wasn’t fog. But I couldn’t remember one part, and that annoyed me more than anything.”

“What part couldn’t you remember?” Luke asked. He’d look it up.

“‘If you can make a heap of all your winnings; and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss; and lose, and start again at your beginnings…’ I just can’t remember the line that comes next.”

“‘And never breathe a word about your loss,’” completed Dan softly from the doorway.

“You know it, too?”

“It’s ‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling. Ash has a copy of the poem hanging on her office wall. I’ve read those lines many times when I’ve been sitting in there.”

“She said it was special to her, that when she was my age and struggling with how she should live her life, someone read it to her like she did to me.”

“She told me that story, too,” Dan said, smiling as her eyes took on a faraway look.

“It helped me. I’d have gone mad in that room otherwise.”

“She’ll be very glad to hear that.”

“She saved me again. That’s three times now. Once when I fell off my horse, once with the poem, and then again when she got me out of that room. It was her, wasn’t it? Or did I imagine her like I imagined Luke?”

“It was her,” Dan confirmed.

That was news to Luke. He hadn’t realised she’d been so hands-on in the search. What exactly had her role in all this been?

“I thought I was dreaming when she opened the bathroom door,” Tia said. “She wrinkled her nose and said, ‘He’s been making you eat pop tarts? What kind of sick animal would do that?’ I’d been stuck in that filthy room for days, and she still managed to make me laugh. Then she got my handcuffs open and carried me out of the house.”

Luke wasn’t sure laughter was appropriate. Ash sure found humour in strange places. Although when Tia asked her next question, he almost let out a nervous giggle himself.

“Where is Ash, anyway?”

So this was how a deer in headlights felt. Ready to get flattened and unable to do anything about it.

“She needed to leave, honey,” Dan said.

“Leave? Why would she leave? She lives here. Where else would she go?”

“Ash wasn’t totally truthful with us about who she was and why she came here,” Luke said. “It was for the best that she went back to her real home.”

Wherever that was. Luke realised he didn’t even know. Virginia was a big place.

“But this is her real home now. She was happy. We were all happy. You have to make her come back!” Tia cried.

Now what? Luke didn’t know what to do, other than somehow get Ash to return. And that was impossible, as according to Nick, she was over the Atlantic now.

“Ash had a few problems in her life, sweetie.” Dan stepped in once again. “Just before she came to England some awful things happened, and she needed to get away for a bit. But the time came when she had to face up to those things rather than keep running from them, and that’s what she’s gone to do.”

“Will she ever come back?” Tia asked, tears flooding down her cheeks.

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t. She told me to tell you that she’d miss you, though.” Dan looked at Luke. “Both of you.”

Luke couldn’t meet her gaze, and it was at that moment he understood just what he’d lost. He’d never truly known Ash—the quiet woman with what in hindsight was an underlying sadness about her, despite her efforts to put on a mask for the world. Yes, she’d lied, but she’d never set out to hurt him, and she’d come through for them both when it really mattered.