Quicksilver

by Elise Noble

  Okay, six miles. He could take an Uber for six miles. And if Emmy hadn’t left the damn key in the car, he really would kill her. Black sighed as he slid into the back seat. Why him? Was this some sort of cosmic revenge for all the dead bodies he’d left in his wake over the years?

  “Where are we going, sir?”

  Black read out the zip code.

  “Very good. There are drinks in the cooler, and the TV on the back of the seat, and I also have the Wi-Fi.”

  He’d installed a motherfucking disco ball too.

  “I’ll give you two hundred dollars if you get me to that parking garage in ten minutes.”

  “No problem, sir.”

  Mahmoud burned rubber as he shot out of the parking lot, and Black slid across the seat and landed on a tasselled throw pillow. Had Bradley arranged that too? The engine screamed louder than the cacophony of horns that followed them through the streets of Fort Lauderdale, and Black bit his damn tongue when Mahmoud bumped the car up onto the sidewalk. Steam rose from the hood when they arrived, but the driver turned to him proudly.

  “Nine minutes, sir.”

  Black handed over three hundred dollars and took Mahmoud’s business card. Perhaps he could fly the man to Virginia on Dan’s next birthday and have him chauffeur her to the restaurant? It was hard to find someone who drove worse than she did, but today, Black had finally managed it.

  “Thanks.”

  “Have a good day, sir.”

  Oh, how he wished he shared Mahmoud’s optimism.

  The Porsche was parked in a dark corner on the third floor, and when Black patted the top of each tyre in turn, he found the key tucked under the rear wheel well on the driver’s side. On the steering wheel, a bright orange Post-it note held a one-word message from his wife.

  Sorry.

  She would be when he caught up with her, but first, he had the not-insignificant task of tracking her down.

  Where to start? He walked through the parking garage, relieved when the red light of a security camera blinked back at him over the exit ramp. How much cash did he have with him? Another eight hundred dollars. That was plenty to buy off a parking attendant.

  He found the man in an office next to the stairwell, a grey-haired guy in a white vest with the figure of a sumo wrestler and a snore that rivalled a military jet taking off. Black knocked on the open door, and he nearly fell off his swivel chair.

  “You got a problem?”

  “Yes, I have a problem.”

  The man pointed to a sign next to the door, a long list of legalese that absolved management of responsibility for just about everything.

  “Not that kind of problem. I think my wife’s been seeing another man.”

  “Join the club, pal. Way I see it, I get me a little peace and quiet and some other dumb schmuck forks out for her dinner.”

  A quite unique way of looking at things.

  “Between you and me, she’s after my money, and I’d rather not give it to her. A friend said he saw her drive out of here with the asshole she’s cheating with, and I want to find out if that’s true. More ammo for my divorce attorney.”

  “I didn’t see nothin’.”

  “No, but I bet your cameras did. I’ll give you a hundred bucks if you let me review the tapes.”

  The lazy fucker pursed his lips.

  “Two hundred.”

  “A hundred and fifty.”

  “Deal.”

  He held out his hand and Black ignored it, just looked pointedly at the door until the man got the message and levered himself up out of his chair.

  “You’ve got an hour, pal. Any longer, and the boss’ll start asking questions.”

  Black doubted that very much, but he nodded anyway. “One hour.”

  As it happened, he only needed fifteen minutes. At a quarter past twelve, a black Suburban drove down the ramp with Ana in the passenger seat. The shadowy silhouette in the back was Emmy—Black would recognise her anywhere—and Mercurio was presumably in the trunk. But behind the wheel?

  Alaric McLain.

  Emmy’s last serious boyfriend before she committed to Black, and a man who knew more about disappearing than Black himself. For a moment, he wondered if Alaric was helping Emmy in revenge, as payback for what Black did seven and a half years ago, but he quickly discounted that thought. Nobody but he knew what happened that night. He had an alibi only one man could break, and Pale would never talk.

  CHAPTER 20 - EMMY

  “I CAN’T WAIT to hear this tale.” Alaric McLain passed Emmy a bottle of sparkling water and took a can of Sprite out of the fridge for himself. “Why do I have an angry man duct-taped to my weight bench?”

  Emmy had been deliberately vague when she called Alaric on Ana’s burner phone, but thankfully, he’d always had a sense of adventure. When she and Ana had stuffed the unconscious Mercurio into his car boot, he’d just rolled his eyes and sighed.

  “It’s a long story,” she said.

  “Pretty sure he’s not going anywhere.”

  Emmy took a seat next to Ana, who was carving slivers off an apple with a combat knife. Why didn’t she take a bite out of the bloody thing like a normal person?

  “Okay, so last week, the dude downstairs shot my pseudo-father.”

  “Which pseudo-father? The boxer or the drug lord?” Alaric shook his head. “Now, there’s a sentence I never thought I’d utter.”

  “The drug lord. But he’s a hired gun, I’m sure of it, and I want to know who hired him. So far, he’s been a little reluctant to talk.”

  In the Porsche, Mercurio had uttered a few directions about where to drive after leaving the precinct—not that he had a clue where he was going, that much was obvious—then he fell asleep. Well, not fell asleep, exactly. More like passed out. For Emmy’s last birthday, Sofia had gifted her a one-of-a-kind poison ring, a work of art in white gold complete with a hidden compartment. Twist the top, and a tiny needle popped out, loaded with enough Fentanyl to knock out a grown man. Emmy had been dying to test it out for ages, but today was the first time a suitable victim had come along.

  The intercom buzzed, and Alaric picked up the phone.

  “Yes? … Sure, come and join the party. Why not?” Then he turned back to Emmy. “Carry on.”

  “When Fia gets here. I’m not going through this twice.”

  “You didn’t tell her the details either?”

  “What, did you think you were special?”

  In actual fact, Alaric was special. Not many men would have dropped everything to help with such a crackpot scheme, especially an ex-boyfriend. Those had been good times, her days with Alaric. The man had a gift. If Black was the king of the information game, then Alaric was a god, and he could talk his way into anywhere. On one date, he’d blagged tickets to a movie premiere by pretending to be a Hungarian porn star. Which he totally could have been because…

  “What did I miss?”

  “Hey…” Emmy got up and hugged Fia tightly. “Thanks for coming.”

  She and Fia had been friends for a decade. At one point, they’d even gone beyond friendship, but that was more of an experiment than anything else. Still, they’d remained close, and if there was another person crazy enough to go along with Emmy’s plan, it was Sofia Darke.

  “It’s Florida. Girls’ weekend, right? I’ve brought plenty of sunblock and bikinis for everyone.”

  “I won’t complain if you wear them,” Alaric said. “But I’m not sure it’s that kind of trip.”

  Fia waved a hand. “Oh, the sicario? Yeah, Emmy mentioned him. But that won’t take long, right? I mean, you’re looking at the dream team right here. Shame Xav’s on vacation. He would’ve loved this.”

  Cheerful Fia had come to visit, and Emmy was glad to see her smile. Fia had always been prone to massive mood swings, but since she met Leo, there’d been more of the good times. Today, she was the sunshine to Ana’s perpetual darkness and Emmy’s simmering-anger-tinged-with-a-hint-of-guilt.

  And Mercurio u
nnerved Emmy. Not because he was smart and sneaky and deadly, yadda, yadda, yadda, because she was all those things too, but because of the way he looked at her. It was the eyes. They had an intensity she’d only seen on one man before.

  “A sicario?” Alaric asked. “He’s Spanish?”

  “Colombian. Ever hear of a guy called Mercurio?”

  Alaric’s eyes widened. “Mercurio? That’s who you’ve got in my basement?”

  “I knew I should have called you sooner. What can you tell us?”

  “In truth? Not a whole lot. He stays in Colombia, and I don’t do much work out there. But I’ve heard the name, and everyone who’s ever mentioned it lowered their voice and looked over their shoulder before they spoke. Rumour says he came out of Comuna 13 in Medellín, and if you want to book him for a job, it’s done through a fixer who vets you first. He’s picky, but he’s good.”

  “That’s kind of what I wanted to hear.”

  “That he’s deadly as fuck?”

  “No, that he vets his clients. I want the client’s name.”

  “Good thing my basement’s soundproofed. The previous tenant used it as a recording studio. But if you’re gonna make a mess, you’ll have to put plastic sheeting down. Blood’s hell to get out of concrete, and I’ll be moving on in a few months.”

  Alaric never stayed in one place for long. Since Emmy met him, he’d lived everywhere from Italy to Barbados to Alaska, and his intelligence network covered the globe. That was his job—intelligence. He’d started with the FBI, specialising in tracking US citizens overseas, but when a sting operation went wrong and he lost his job, he’d turned freelance. At heart, Alaric was a nomad, and now the world was his playground.

  He’d dropped off the face of the planet for a while, but soon after he reappeared, he’d started a new business venture—Sirius, a private intelligence agency selling research services to governments, corporations, and anyone else who could afford their prices. Emmy had passed a few pieces of work his way, quietly since there was no love lost between him and Black.

  Emmy shuffled her stool a little closer and gave him a smile. “Honey, could you do me a favour and find us some plastic sheeting?”

  “You women are crazy,” he muttered, but he got up and fetched his keys. “There’s a Home Depot down the road. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

  With Alaric gone, Emmy turned to Sofia. “So this might sound crazy, but I want you to walk into the basement and look at this dude. Just look at him. Then tell me what you think.”

  “Huh?”

  “I want to know if he reminds you of anyone.”

  Fia raised one eyebrow. “O-kaaaay.”

  “Now?”

  “Pass me the water first. I’m parched.”

  After she’d drunk half the bottle, Fia followed Emmy to the basement with Ana bringing up the rear. Secretly, Emmy was more than glad to have Ana there because if the worst happened and Mercurio got loose, Ana would probably snap her fingers and turn him into a rat or something.

  The three of them filed silently into the cavernous room, empty apart from Alaric’s gym equipment and a securely locked strong-room at the far end. Mercurio was exactly where they’d left him—flat on the weight bench, unable to move an inch. Only his head was free, and Emmy tore the strip of duct tape off his mouth.

  “Feeling talkative yet?”

  Nothing.

  They’d parked Mercurio under a fluorescent light, and Fia leaned over to take a closer look. The sicario glared back at her with cold, hate-filled eyes and a twisted sneer.

  Finally, she stepped back, and the girls convened in the far corner.

  “Well?” Emmy asked.

  “Shit.”

  “I’m not wrong, am I?”

  Ana folded her arms. “Stop talking in code.”

  “Mercurio looks like Black did ten years ago,” Fia said. “Before he mellowed.”

  “Black is mellow? Psssht.”

  “No, seriously. Black used to be so uptight he could eat coal and shit diamonds. What we have now is more dark grey. Do you really think…?”

  A while back, Emmy had clued both Fia and Ana in to Black’s secret heritage. That he wasn’t American as everyone believed, but had in fact been stolen as a baby from Colombia by a CIA agent and his wife who’d brought him up as their own. Last year, Emmy had travelled back to Colombia with him to see if they could find the village he came from, but there was little left of it. Valento, hidden away in the jungle on the banks of the Amazon, had been razed to the ground eleven years ago in a war between rival drug cartels. According to the stories circulating in Leticia, the nearest city, nobody had survived the massacre, and the rainforest was gradually reclaiming what was left of the village as its own.

  They’d visited. Driven as far as they could, then trekked through the oppressive heat behind a guide and found the remains of Black’s birthplace. The motley collection of houses, a church, a school, a small store, all charred by fire and riddled with bullet holes. For only the second time since Emmy had met her husband, he’d cried. They’d both wept over the life he’d never known. Over the drug war that had claimed his entire family including, three years ago, the twin brother he’d never met.

  But now Emmy was on the run with an incapacitated hitman who had eyes that looked exactly—exactly—like her husband’s.

  Until she walked into the interview room, her only goal had been to get the name of whoever paid for the hit on Eduardo then put the sicario out of his misery, but now she had more questions. Who was Mercurio? Where did he come from?

  Le sigh. Why did nothing ever go according to plan?

  Fia and Ana were still looking at her, and she nodded once. “Let’s do this.”

  “How?” Ana asked.

  “I’ll start off by asking nicely. I mean, he’s got to realise he’s in a sticky situation.”

  Four rolls of duct tape would do that to a man.

  “You think that’ll work?”

  “Probably not, but professional to professional, I feel I should give him the chance.”

  “And then?”

  “We’ll have to get creative, but I don’t want him to die before he’s answered my questions. Best to keep the bloodletting and internal injuries to a minimum, at least to start with.”

  Ana’s turn to nod. “I’ll go and find what we need.”

  “I brought sodium thiopental,” Sofia said. “That might help.”

  The fabled “truth serum,” otherwise known by its brand name, Sodium Pentothal. But it didn’t work quite like it did in the movies. Sure, it made people talk, but they mostly told you what you wanted to hear, and sorting out fact from fiction wasn’t always easy. And getting the dosage right was tricky. Even with Fia’s expertise, people often ended up unconscious.

  “Last resort, okay?” Emmy drew in a breath and walked over to Mercurio. Those eyes… “In the interest of transparency, I’ll explain why you’re here. Eight days ago, you shot Eduardo Garcia. I want the name of the person who hired you. I can get that the easy way or the hard way, so I’ll start by asking you straight. Who’s your client?”

  Nothing.

  “Dude, you’re not helping yourself here. Congratulations on pissing the Mafia off, though. They’ll be lining up after me to fuck you over.”

  Nothing.

  “Okay, we’ll do this your way.”

  When they’d stripped Mercurio and tied him to the bench, Emmy had noticed the half-healed bullet wound on his arm—the result of Floriana’s efforts, no doubt. Now, she cut a patch of the tape away and waited to see what goodies Ana would bring back. A nice selection, as it turned out. Emmy chose a pair of pliers, and Mercurio closed his eyes and steeled himself, clearly understanding what was to come. He barely flinched when she yanked out the first stitch.

  “Just the name, sweetheart, and I’ll kill you quick.”

  Fuck. Emmy pulled out all the stitches, and it had to hurt when she poured half a bottle of vodka into the wound, but Mercurio stil
l didn’t speak. In fact, he was barely breathing hard, and worryingly, he reminded her more than ever of Black. Emmy had seen her husband behave exactly like this when Alex, their sadistic, ex-Spetsnaz personal trainer, poked needles under his fingernails. Black was serious about training for every eventuality.

  “We could wire him up to the mains,” Ana suggested.

  “I don’t have a defibrillator handy.”

  Perhaps they should try the needle trick? Ana had found one of those sewing kits you got in hotel rooms, as well as sandpaper, a mallet, a packet of habanero chillis, a bag of oranges, a dozen bamboo skewers, a lighter, a Taser, coat hangers, and a banana.

  “What’s the banana for? Not…?”

  “No, I’m hungry. But I suppose we could…”

  Ick. Emmy would take a pass on that. For now, at least.

  Footsteps sounded at the top of the stairs, and Alaric appeared with a Home Depot bag.

  “I got drop cloths, wire, a couple of screwdrivers, electrical tape, and…” He glanced at Ana’s goodies, and his gaze alighted on the sewing kit. “You went through my bedside table?”

  Ana shrugged.

  “Hey, you brought donuts,” Fia squealed, giving Alaric a hug. “We should get together more often.”

  Yup, she was definitely in one of her manic phases. As usual, she’d refuse to see a doctor, but she tended to self-medicate if she felt particularly high or low.

  “Or not,” Alaric said, turning to Emmy. “You’d better hurry up with this because it’s only a matter of time before your dearly beloved catches up with us.”

  Because there were cameras, cameras everywhere. Emmy figured they had a few hours, maybe a day before Black and Nate dug their way through the shell companies Alaric had undoubtedly used to rent this place.

  Better get going, then.

  Emmy stuck a needle under Mercurio’s thumbnail.

  “Let’s try a new question. Where were you born?”

  The slightest crinkle appeared in the man’s brow, but it vanished just as quickly.

  “And I don’t mean Colombia. I want the name of the town. Or the village.”

  Nothing.

  She tried with another needle, and he didn’t even flinch. Did the asshole have some weird insensitivity to pain?