Bronze: A Romantic Suspense Novel (Blackwood Elements Book 8)

by Elise Noble

  Today, Kylie 2.0 appreciated that Russell was a kind man who’d gone out of his way to help solve a problem that wasn’t his to begin with. Yes, Michael, Shane, and Owen had used Ether to communicate, and I’d once been angry with Russell for creating the app, but if it didn’t exist, they’d have found another way.

  Scum always floats.

  “Owen’s paranoid about being followed,” I said. “He’d spot a tail. And Michael’s an asshole, but he’s not stupid.”

  “Then we need to take a different approach. Russell, are you sure there’s no way to decrypt those other messages? Shane’s in particular.” Leyton pointed to a spot halfway down the conversation. “It looks as if he gave Michael a location here.”

  “Sorry. The only way is to physically have the phone.”

  “Which probably went to the morgue,” I pointed out. “Shane always carried it in his jacket pocket.”

  “Hmmm,” Leyton said.

  Hmmm? “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He shoved his chair back. Closed his laptop. “It means I need to go.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  Leyton was already halfway to the door. “Speak soon. Enjoy the rest of your birthday.”

  Russell and I stared after him.

  “Well, that escalated quickly. What did I say?”

  “Maybe he’s going to break into the morgue?”

  Russell’s tone said he was joking, but I feared there might be some truth in it. Not that I had a lot of hope. Even if Leyton got inside, Shane hadn’t survived the crash, so what state would the phone be in?

  I had no time to consider it when footsteps sounded on the terrace.

  “Coo-eee. It’s me.”

  Akeem. I groaned out loud.

  “Want me to get rid of him?” Russell asked.

  Russell had done too much for me already. “It’s okay; I’ll speak to him.”

  At least, I would if I could get a word in edgeways.

  “Happy birthday!” Akeem held out a bottle of champagne. “Shall we open this now?”

  “It’s nine o’clock in the morning.”

  “So? It’s 3 p.m. somewhere in the world. Mario’s on his way with smoked salmon bagels, and Yen will be here in fifteen minutes to do a pedicure. And a manicure too, if you want.” He grabbed my hand, held it up, and examined it. “Yes, definitely a manicure. I’ll tell her. And then Aurelie’s coming for a yoga session.”

  “Honestly, it’s fine. I don’t need—”

  “You do need. Your toe polish is chipped.”

  I hadn’t even wanted it in the first place, but Bradley, Emmy’s assistant back in Virginia, had insisted. And now the last thing I could afford to do was risk two more people recognising me.

  “I’m not so good at meeting new people. Really, I’d rather just spend today on my own. Well, with my, uh, husband.”

  Akeem leaned in and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Don’t worry, I know all about your little problem. Emmy filled me in.”

  What? “She…she told you?”

  “Yes, but I’m excellent at keeping secrets.”

  Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse… “Who else knows?”

  “Nobody here. Just Leyton and the others at Blackwood.”

  “If you know I’m trying to keep a low profile, then why are you doing this?” I hissed. “I don’t need freaking beauty treatments.”

  “Because I always spoil guests on their birthdays, and everyone would think it was weird if I ignored you. Don’t worry—Mario’s terrible with faces, and Yen’ll be looking at your feet.”

  “But—”

  “You don’t look anything like the pictures on TV, anyway. Who did your hair back then? Because it was a crime against style. The fringe suits you so much better.” He reached out and fiddled with the front of my hair, arranging it to frame my face. “You’ll need your roots done soon, but I can have someone take care of that.”

  “Uh…”

  “Ooh, here’s Mario. Do you want to sit inside or out here? There’s not much of a breeze, but the plumerias smell divine.”

  Arguing would be pointless, wouldn’t it?

  “Out here, I guess.”

  Best to enjoy the sunshine while I still could. Akeem knowing my secrets made me uncomfortable, but even though Emmy was borderline insane, I trusted her judgment when it came to people. It was far better than mine at any rate.

  I caught Russell’s eye through the window, and he struggled to suppress a smirk before he turned back to his laptop. Okay, I was a pushover. I’d left my backbone behind when I fled my old apartment.

  “Excellent choice,” Akeem said. “Mario, set the bagels out over here on the table.”

  CHAPTER 8 - KYLIE

  MY PRETTY BLUE toenails matched the sky on Wednesday morning. Eight o’clock, and the sun was already beating down without a single puff of cloud to temper the heat.

  This living-in-limbo was hard to take. I felt helpless, not to mention guilty. Everyone else was out there trying to fix my mess while I was stuck in a luxury resort getting beauty treatments. I just wanted to do something. Yesterday’s yoga session had helped, but Aurelie made me uncomfortable. She’d looked at me just a little too closely, a little too often.

  “Can you send me the rest of Michael’s messages?” I’d asked Russell yesterday afternoon. Perhaps if I looked through them, something might spark an idea.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Leyton’s going through them for clues.”

  “Why can’t I read them too?”

  He glanced up, peering over the top of those shouldn’t-be-sexy glasses. “Because a number of them aren’t very complimentary.”

  Russell was trying to protect my feelings? That was…sweet, I guess.

  “I’m a big girl. I can take it.”

  “Yes, but you shouldn’t have to.”

  “Look, everyone else is going out of their way to help on this, and I should play my part too, even if it makes me uncomfortable. Please, just give me the damn messages.”

  “I’m not going to get any peace if I don’t, am I?”

  I shrugged. He sighed.

  “Fine.” A minute later, he held out a memory stick. “The password’s your mother’s maiden name.”

  “How do you…?” I started.

  Russell just stared at me.

  “Actually, forget it. I don’t want to know.”

  Half an hour later, I regretted not listening to Russell. Did that message mean what I thought it did?

  “Oh, no way. No way!”

  Russell’s fingers stilled for a moment. “You’ve got to the part about the blow job?”

  Fuck, fuck, fuck! “Yes.”

  Back in the good days, Michael had liked to make the occasional home movie. Strictly for personal use, he’d always assured me, and I’d trusted him. Truth be told, it was kind of hot watching ourselves back afterwards.

  Except judging by the snippets in front of me, it very much looked as if Michael had filmed me sucking his cock, uploaded it to a porn site, then sent the link to his two best buddies afterwards. Cold dread didn’t just settle in my stomach, it cannonballed into my gut from a great height.

  “Now do you see why I didn’t want you to read this stuff?” Russell asked.

  “I don’t need I-told-you-sos, okay? What if people could see my face? How many sleazes have watched me giving…giving…” I couldn’t even say the words.

  “I’ve already found it and taken it down. And no, I’m not telling you how many people viewed the clip.”

  Oh hell. That meant it was a lot.

  “Could you recognise me?”

  Russell’s silence told me all I needed to know. Each time I thought this couldn’t get any worse, it did. I sagged back in my chair, and he reached across the table to squeeze my hand.

  “We’ll fix this, Kylie. I promise we’ll fix this.”

  “How? Michael’s too smart.”

  �
��No, Michael’s a cocky bastard. So far, he’s been lucky, but luck only gets a man so far.”

  Really? Because from where I sat, it seemed as though Michael slept on a mattress of four-leafed clovers.

  I forced my gaze back to the screen, and I’d soon lost count of the times Michael had called me a dumb blonde. Halfway through, he shortened it to DB to save those precious extra seconds of typing. Honestly, if I could’ve turned back the clock, I’d have cut off his balls while he slept, stuffed them into the blender, then gladly done the prison time for it.

  But three-quarters of the way down the long, long list of ramblings, I spotted something odd.

  Bossman: Demon got caught cos he’s not as smart as us.

  On its own, the one-liner in reply to Owen was a short and sweet hint at criminality, but if Demon was who I thought he was? That had bigger connotations.

  All this time, I’d assumed Michael, Shane, and Owen were accepting bribes from criminals to turn a blind eye to their activities. A tip ignored here, a heads-up there. And I’d thought they wanted me out of the way because, after a few months on the task force, it was becoming clear that my ethics didn’t jibe with theirs. Too many times, I’d pushed for a search or an arrest when Michael wasn’t keen on the idea.

  But Demon… The only Demon I knew of was a coke dealer in Rockhampton. His name was actually Damon, but somebody started rumours he was into Satanism and it wasn’t difficult to see where the nickname came from. Rockhampton was out of our jurisdiction, but cops talked.

  “Russell?”

  “Mmm-hmm?”

  Dammit, lose the glasses. “There’s a message here about Demon.”

  “I saw that, but we don’t know who Demon is yet.”

  “I think he’s a drug dealer in Rockhampton. And Michael’s comparing himself and Owen to him, which means…maybe…I don’t know… This is crazy.”

  “You think Michael’s dealing drugs?”

  “He’s a cop.”

  “That didn’t seem to put him off murdering a man.”

  “True, but surely if he was selling drugs, I’d have noticed. Right? I mean, where was he keeping them? And how was he selling them? People would’ve needed to pick them up.”

  In Egypt, I’d lived next door to a guy who sold hash, and I’d noticed within five minutes. The clouds of smoke drifting over the wall, the super-mellow guys hanging out by the pool table in his backyard… Truth be told, I didn’t have a problem with a little recreational pot use—I might even have partaken myself on occasion—but the harder stuff? That was a whole other story.

  Was that why Michael had always offered to come to my place rather than the other way around? Two nights out of every three we’d spent together had been in my apartment, even though his house was bigger. Had he been hiding a mountain of coke in a freaking closet? Because who the hell would’ve searched his home?

  Russell sucked in a breath. “I don’t have those answers, but I’ll tell Leyton.”

  That was it. He’d tell Leyton. Never in my life had I felt more helpless, more out of control of my own destiny. With little else to do, I scrolled through the rest of the messages and found nothing useful, but Michael appeared to be dating a redhead now. Can you guess what he called her?

  Yep, DR. Oh, he of little imagination.

  Dusk fell, and with darkness came candles, music, and a four-course gourmet dinner, courtesy of Akeem. Romantic, huh? Not really, since one of Russell’s laptops took the third place at the table and he spent the entire meal staring at the screen rather than me. In the end, I skipped dessert and went straight to bed, wondering whether Thursday would be any better.

  So far, it wasn’t looking good. As I headed for the kitchen in search of caffeine, Russell scrambled for the remote and switched the TV off, but not before I caught my mum in tears on the screen. The press were harassing my parents now? Those maggots were the lowest of the low.

  “Sorry,” Russell said, swapping the remote in his hand for a half-drunk mug of coffee. “I suppose at least they know you’re still alive now.”

  “They always knew. Well, I hope so. Every so often, I sent them a postcard. I didn’t sign them, obviously, but they’d have recognised my handwriting.”

  “Weren’t you afraid someone would track you down?”

  “No, because I got people to mail them from other countries.”

  Overseas, casual sex had become a vice of mine, a way of filling the void, and most guys were happy to do me a favour after I’d put out. I could have been anywhere from Italy to Ecuador.

  Russell merely nodded. “Smart.”

  If I’d learned one thing during my time at the resort, it was that Russell was a man of few words. He turned back to the laptops. Well, at least this part of our “marriage” was realistic—two people sharing a house and pretty much ignoring each other. I tried reading a paperback from the shelf in the lounge, but once I’d skimmed the first few pages ten times over with no comprehension whatsoever, I admitted defeat. I was on the verge of calling Akeem to beg for sleeping pills or maybe some alcohol when Leyton stumbled onto the terrace.

  Until that moment, I’d never seen him look anything but perfectly put together. What happened to his hair? It was sticking out in every direction, and his clothes were all crumpled. Was that lipstick on his face? And glitter on his shirt?

  But he held up something silver in a plastic bag, grinning triumphantly before he collapsed onto a sun lounger.

  “Got it!”

  “Bloody hell,” Russell said, peering out of the door. “What happened to you? Did a bust go wrong?”

  “Is that a phone?” I asked.

  “Shane’s phone. It’s battered, but it still turns on.”

  Holy shit. Suddenly, I was wide awake. “You’re serious? How did you get it?”

  “It’s a long story, and I need coffee first. Preferably by intravenous drip.”

  “I’ll make it.”

  Russell had already disappeared inside, clutching Leyton’s prize, and I soon heard his keyboard clacking away. My foot tapped in time, impatient, as I waited for the hideously complicated coffee machine to work its magic.

  Finally, I had a passable cappuccino for me, a plain black coffee for Russell, and a double espresso for Leyton, who was lying flat out with a hand over his eyes.

  “I’m not sure whether you need this or sleep,” I said, passing him the cup. Despite sleeping myself for eight hours last night, I’d had nightmares of the bike chase, of my brush with death at Mimi’s dainty hands, and I felt like he looked.

  “Both. I need both.”

  “What happened?”

  Leyton covered his mouth while he yawned. Groaned. “So I kind of know the morgue attendant. And by ‘kind of know,’ I mean she hits on me every time I attend an autopsy or go to speak with the ME. So I figured I might be able to do some sort of deal to get Shane’s phone, assuming his family hadn’t claimed it yet.”

  “And you obviously did.”

  “Whatever’s in those messages better be worth it.”

  “Worth what?”

  “Going as Glinda’s date to her grandmother’s seventy-fifth birthday party.”

  A snort escaped. “Sounds like a riot.”

  “I’d rather have gone to a riot. After a couple of margaritas, she told me she wasn’t wearing any underwear.”

  “Glinda or her grandma?”

  Leyton’s eyes widened in horror, and boy were they bloodshot. “Glinda, thank fuck. I figured it’d be easy—you know, drink tea, eat some cake, call an ambulance if anyone’s heart gave out—but those women are wild. Glinda passed out at midnight but her grandma’s crew kept going. They were teaching me to salsa dance at four o’clock this morning, and I’m not sure what happened after that, but I woke up face down on a sofa.”

  “Couldn’t you have snuck out early?”

  “Glinda thought of that—she wouldn’t give me the phone until after I’d done my duty, which meant another visit to the morgue before I came here.
I nearly flaked out in one of those metal drawers.”

  Leyton looked offended when I laughed, but I needed that moment of relief on an otherwise dark day. The stress was getting to me, Michael’s reach like a boa constrictor that coiled tighter and tighter around my chest every time I took a breath.

  Hold it together, Kylie. I stared past Leyton and homed in on Russell sitting at the dining table, calm and focused as his fingers worked their magic. He may not have had much to say, but his composure helped to anchor me in the storm.

  “Do you need to take the phone back?”

  “Nah, I got one of the interns to find a lookalike and smash it up properly. Swapped the two over.”

  I glanced across at Russell again. Leyton had come through with the evidence, but the question was, where would it lead?

  CHAPTER 9 - KYLIE

  FOR THE THIRD time, I dragged a chair next to Russell as he did his Ether trick. The actual process was quite quick, and I leaned in, elbows on the table as I stared at the screen. Our thighs touched, my bare skin to his chinos, and I should have moved back, but I didn’t. Russell kept me grounded, and I was starting to like that feeling. He didn’t move either.

  His fingers reminded me of a concert pianist’s. Long, smooth, elegant, the way they danced over the keys. Controlled. Mesmerising. What else could he do with them?

  Fuck. I should not have been thinking that way.

  Then Shane’s messages appeared on the scene, and I leaned forward, my breath hitching, everything else forgotten as I read the missing pieces of his and Michael’s conversation.

  Duke916: Froggy wants to change the handover point for Saturday.

  Bossman: Why?

  Duke916: Reckons there’s heat.

  Bossman: He always reckons there’s heat. Froggy’s a paranoid freak.

  Duke916: He wants to delay too.

  Bossman: We’re not delaying.

  Duke916: What’ll I tell him?

  Bossman: Where’s he want to change it to?

  Duke916: 39 Nabarra Street

  SurfsUp: *********************

  Bossman: Some bloke probably looked at him funny in the dunny.