Black

by Sophie Lark

  Black put his arms under Morris’s and hauled him up.

  “Come on,” he said. “We’ve got to get you out of here. There may be another attack.”

  “I—alright,” Morris said, confused.

  He stumbled along with Black, leaning heavily on his arm.

  “Come on,” Black called to Holly. She got up from behind the table and followed after them.

  Black could see the clog of guests fighting to get out the main door opposite the stage. He tried to scan the group, to see if Clark was among them. He saw the hem of Cara’s shawl, just as she managed to push through the door, but no sign of Clark. He might have already gone through.

  Black took Morris out the service door instead, through the kitchen and out into the back alley. The kitchen employees were shouting questions at Black, but he just yelled at them to call the police.

  Once out in the alley, he tried to pull Morris toward the back streets with plans to put him in a cab, but Morris had regained his composure and flatly refused.

  “Take me back around the front,” he said.

  “We should get you out of here,” Black said.

  “No,” Morris insisted. “I’m not running and hiding.”

  “Tom,” Holly said, “I really think—”

  “No,” Morris said again, his face resolute. “We need to go back and make sure everyone’s alright.”

  So instead of leaving, Morris went around to the front of the hotel to check on the guests and employees. The streets were packed with people, some in hotel uniforms, some in their gala finery, and some in plain street clothes as passersby were drawn in by the commotion.

  Black still couldn’t see Clark anywhere.

  The police were already pulling up, sirens wailing. Emerson was one of the first out of his car.

  “There was an explosion in the ballroom,” Black told him. “A bomb on the stage, possibly inside the podium.”

  “Help me keep everyone back until the bomb squad checks it out,” Emerson said.

  Black helped him set up a cordon, along with a half-dozen other officers.

  Two ambulances had arrived as well, but nobody seemed to be injured. An older gentleman at one of the front tables seemed to be having heart palpitations, and a couple of women had been scratched on their bare arms by flying fragments of wood.

  The paramedics wanted to check everyone who had been sitting closest to the blast, including Morris and Holly. Morris shook them off after only a moment.

  “I’m fine,” he insisted.

  He had pulled out his phone. Holding it up to take in both himself and the scene behind, he began speaking to the camera.

  “I’m here at the Dorchester Hotel,” he said. “It appears that a terrorist group has planted another bomb in an attempt to disrupt our fundraiser for the Children’s Hospital, and possibly to kill me as well. Well, I’m not dead. And I’m not scared. And I’m not silenced. What I have to say is too important. The health and safety of future generations depends on it. I’m going forward with my green energy summit, and no one is going to stop me.”

  He ended the recording and turned to Holly.

  “Monitor that post,” he said. “Reply to comments as needed.”

  “I will,” Holly said, shakily.

  Morris strode off to speak the reporters who were clustered against the cordon.

  “He’s certainly resilient,” Black said.

  “This summit means everything to him,” Holly said. “They won’t stop him.”

  “Apparently not,” Black said.

  Holly was shivering, not so much because the night was cold, but from the shock of what had just happened.

  Black took off his suit jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders.

  “Are you alright?” he said.

  “Yes,” Holly said through chattering teeth. “It’s just…I wasn’t in the office when the package bomb went off. It’s horrifying. The way the stage just exploded, out of nowhere. God, we’re so lucky no one was hurt. Tom was right there. If it had been five seconds sooner…”

  “It’s alright,” Black soothed her. “Everyone’s okay.”

  He held her close against his body, warming her. After a while, she stopped shivering.

  “Bomb squad is finishing up,” Emerson said, giving Black a nod. “Let’s go inside.”

  9

  I think falling in love is always a surprise.

  Josh Dallas

  Black re-entered the ballroom with Emerson at his side. The scene inside was a far cry from what it had been a half-hour earlier. Then the room had been crowded but clean, with an orderly arrangement of round banquet tables and chairs, pristine white tablecloths, and bland but ornate decor.

  Now it was deserted of people, except for a half-dozen officers collecting evidence. Half the chairs had been knocked over and scattered in the mad rush for the door, as well as a couple of the tables. Shattered glassware littered the floor, crunching under the soles of Black’s shoes.

  A large hole had been blown in the stage. The podium had been completely eradicated. All that remained of it were a few splintered planks of wood. The screen playing the slideshow had been reduced to shreds of melted plastic, still dripping the foamy white decelerant the firefighters had used to put out the blaze. The same was true of the elaborate jade-green drapes, now charred, stained, and ruined.

  Black had seen the bomb squad leaving, dressed in their protective suits, carrying the remains of the explosive device.

  “Did they say anything about the bomb?” he asked Emerson.

  “Well, the one sent to Morris’s office was a small pipe bomb—not large enough to kill, but obviously sufficient to maim. This one was larger, but again, targeted. They weren’t trying to eradicate the room; they were just trying to hit one person.”

  “Morris,” Black said.

  “Evidently.”

  “If they wanted to do maximum damage, they would have at least packed the device with shrapnel.”

  “Right,” Emerson said. “But they didn’t. They wanted to hit Morris alone.”

  “Can you trace the materials they used to make it?”

  “Possibly,” Emerson said. “It appears they used ammonium nitrate crystals, the same as before. But if the parts were all homemade, as with the package bomb, it’ll be difficult to trace.”

  Black was quiet for a moment, thinking.

  “What is it?” Emerson said.

  “I was thinking how difficult it was to time the explosion. There was no set time when Morris was supposed to get up to make his speech—it happened at about 9:24, when Holly gave him the nod. But she was just going off when the silent auction wrapped up. They were reading the room, not sticking to a schedule.”

  “So you think the bomber had a visual on the stage?”

  “Possibly,” Black said.

  “But the bomb missed Morris.”

  “Right.”

  “So either they lost their line of sight, or there was a delay in setting it off.”

  Black wished he would have noticed where, exactly, Clark had been at that moment. He hadn’t been sitting at the same table as Holly and Cara. Even if he had been, it wouldn’t necessarily clear him. Everyone in the room had a view of the stage, and the trigger device might have been something as subtle as a cellphone, held beneath the table.

  But Black did think it odd that Clark hadn’t been sitting with Morris and the rest of his staff. If he was the bomber, he might have been worried about the strength of the blast. If it was too strong, it would have engulfed the table as well.

  “What’s your thoughts?” Emerson prodded Black.

  Black knew that bombings like this, highly publicized and affecting politicians and members of the elite, would put an insane amount of pressure on Emerson’s office.

  “Well,” Black said, “I’m not sure yet. I get a bad vibe off Daniel Clark. He works in Morris’s office, as a researcher. He’s the only person in that office old enough to have been involved with the i
nitial Citizen’s group. He sticks close to Morris. But they’ve also known each other the longest of any of the staffers—he’s not some new arrival. He was around long before the Citizens started targeting Morris.”

  “I’ll look into him, see if he has any kind of record,” Emerson said.

  “Other than that, I’m not sure yet,” Black said.

  “Well, keep me posted. I’ll do the same.”

  “Yeah. Let me know if there’s anything useful with the bomb.”

  Emerson nodded.

  “You ought to come for dinner on Sunday,” Emerson said. “Andrea says she’s hardly seen you since the wedding.”

  “I’d like that,” Black said. “Say hello to her for me.”

  “I will if I ever get to see her, either,” Emerson sighed. “It’s not exactly a nine-to-five, this job.”

  “Well, I think that’s why they gave it to you.”

  “Because no one else wanted it?” Emerson gave his short bark of a laugh.

  “That’s right,” Black said, clapping him on the shoulder.

  When Black went back outside, he saw Holly still waiting by the paramedic’s station, wearing his suit jacket.

  “I thought you were going home?” Black said, concerned.

  “I wanted to hear what the police said,” Holly said. “And I didn’t want to just leave you here alone. That was so awful. I thought it might bring up bad memories for you.”

  She was right, it had. As many times as he had replayed the NSC bombing in his mind, as many times as he’d recalled the abrupt, horrific force of the blast, he had still been completely unprepared to feel it again. The suddenness and heat of the explosion, the way the pressure of it knocked everyone back. The ringing in the ears afterwards, the dead silence and then the utter panic that swarmed into the room. It was an experience like no other. One to which you could never become accustomed.

  Black thought Holly might not want to be alone at her apartment either. She still looked pale and shaken.

  “Thanks for waiting,” he said, helping her up from the bumper of the ambulance. “I would like some company.”

  “Do you want to come back to my place?” Holly asked. “It’s closer.”

  “Sure.”

  He hailed a cab for the two of them, Holly giving the address to the driver.

  She cuddled against him in the backseat, still shivering slightly.

  She lived in a small, simple flat, not far from the Houses of Parliament. As soon as she unlocked the door, he noticed how nice it smelled inside, just like Holly herself. That might have been because of the large number of plants all around the kitchen and living room. She had cactuses, succulents, great leafy tropical plants, and tiny, wizened trees in pots. She had a large number of orchids in shades of violet, blue, green, and white. They filled the air with their fresh, clean scent. So much oxygen that Black immediately felt revived, breathing it in.

  The apartment might have felt crowded with all this greenery, but the rest of the furniture and decor was simple and tidy in the extreme, mostly in shades of cream, tan and white.

  It was bright and fresh and inviting, just like Holly herself. He wished he could look around and read the titles on all the spines of the books lined up neatly on her shelf or see what records she had stacked next to her vintage turntable. He knew that Holly had once had a deep and unwavering love for the Beatles, and he wondered if it still endured.

  But right now, more than anything, he wanted to take care of her. So he helped her take off the suit jacket and her heels, and took her to the bedroom.

  The bathroom was small but included a full-size tub. Black began to fill it with warm water. He stripped off Holly’s gown and carried her to the bath. Rolling up his shirtsleeves, he sat on the edge of the tub and washed her hair, gently massaging her scalp with the shampoo and then rinsing her clean.

  “Where on earth did you learn to do that?” Holly asked.

  “I had to take care of my sisters when they were little,” Black said. “Especially Violet, because she was so much younger. You know what our mother was like.”

  Holly nodded.

  There were times when Black’s mother had stopped drinking, or at least reduced the frequency. Then she would take a shower, put on her favorite bright pink top, paint her toenails, and even go grocery shopping. She would fill the cupboards with crisps, biscuits, tinned soup, dry pasta. Sometimes she’d even cook something. Occasionally, when she had a job, these good times would last for weeks or even months.

  But more often, she’d hide in her room with the shades drawn, watching old romantic comedies and drinking cheap boxed wine that gave her a sickly-sweet smell that turned Black’s stomach when he’d get within ten feet of her.

  The worst times were when the drinking coincided with having a boyfriend in the flat. There were five or six of them that came and went in a rotation over the years. Some were worse than others, but none were kind. And when they were there, Black had to be home every minute of the day, because he couldn’t leave his sisters alone with them. Which meant no after-school activities, no football, and no friends.

  “You were the best brother,” Holly said. “Do you remember when you made Violet that costume for the school play? The unicorn suit?”

  Black laughed.

  “Yes,” he said. “It was horrible. I had no idea how to sew—it was taped and stapled together.”

  “But she loved it,” Holly said. “I was so jealous of your sisters. You know my brother is a complete ass.”

  Black did know that. Johnny Summers was currently incarcerated in HMP Belmarsh for armed robbery. He had always been a bully and bit of a shit. He and Black had gotten in a couple of schoolyard dust-ups, until Black grew so tall that even the older boys stopped picking fights with him.

  It was curious, talking about these things with Holly. He’d always hated remembering his childhood years. He wouldn’t have thought that he’d want to reminisce. But somehow, whenever Holly mentioned it, she brought out the best parts, the ones that weren’t so painful. She pointed out what had come through that time clean, and strong, and living—his relationship with his sisters. The parts of him that were good then and still good now.

  “Holly,” he said, “does it bother you being around all the smarmy prats in Parliament?”

  “Of course it irritates me!” Holly said. “People getting paid triple what I do because they’re the third cousin of the Lord of Ipswich or whatever nonsense. People in power doing whatever they can to pass laws that benefit only themselves and others like them. Bumbling idiots who will always be promoted before me because they went to the right school with the right people.

  “Still, I wouldn’t trade places with them. And I’m not just saying that to make myself feel better, since it’s impossible anyway. I mean it truly. You and I can go to their parties. We can climb the ladder the same as them, even if it’s steeper and harder. We can see what they see. But they’ll never be where we’ve been. They’ll never see the other side of life. They started halfway up. You and I will make the full climb, and we’ll experience it all, for better or worse.”

  “God, you’re an optimist,” Black said.

  “So are you,” Holly said, looking up at him from the bath. “I know who you are, Byron. You never let the hard things twist you or ruin you. Life is unfair. But we’re not.”

  She made him feel so hopeful and good. She made him believe that life could be as rich and rewarding as she saw it.

  Black kissed her, breathing her in, wanting to be linked with her, connected with her as they’d been the other night. He wanted that feeling to go on and on and never end.

  Holly made him so happy. She felt so right.

  As their kiss deepened and became more urgent, Holly grabbed Black and pulled him into the tub with her. Neither of them cared if his clothes got soaked, or if they splashed water all over the floor.

  Black wrapped her up in his arms; he crushed her gorgeous naked body against his. He ran his han
ds down her waist.

  Holly rolled over on top of him. She fumbled at the waistband of his trousers, struggling to unbutton them now that they were sopping wet. She succeeded in freeing his cock, and she climbed on top of it, water running down off her flushed, glowing skin, beading on the beautiful breasts directly in front of Black’s face.

  Entering her beneath the water felt incredible. Her body was so warm from the bath. Holly was a tiny burning sun, and Black was an astronaut who had somehow found her in the cold, empty void of space. Though they’d spilled half the water out of the tub, they were still buoyant, floating together.

  Holly looked directly into his eyes as she rode him slowly. He pulled her tight against him, gazing into her face. Though they were moving so slowly, he could already feel his climax beginning to swell. It was so hard to control himself with Holly because she brought every good feeling out of him. She amplified every sensation of excitement, pleasure, and connection.

  She was equally quick. He could already feel the convulsions running through her body, the way she clung to him all the harder, and gasped, and cried out.

  He let himself go, too. He lost himself in the infinite goodness of Holly Summers. He allowed himself to feel everything he wanted to feel with her, without holding anything back.

  When they were finished, they climbed out of the bathtub, throwing towels down over the mess they’d made, before the water could seep through the cracks in the tile down to her neighbor’s flat.

  Holly helped Black strip off his sopping clothes, throwing them into her washing machine in the closet.

  “Now you’re trapped here,” she said, laughing. “Unless you want to go home in my Wonder Woman pajamas.”

  “No thanks,” Black said. “I’m a happy prisoner.”

  Holly made them tea, and they drank it in bed, under the covers. It was getting extremely late, but neither of them seemed to want to go to sleep.

  “I know we said we should keep this casual,” Black said hesitantly. “But I’m going to Andrea’s for dinner on Sunday. I thought you might want to come? We could go as friends—I’m sure you’d like to see my sisters.”