by Elise Noble
Was one day off really too much to ask for?
Emmy paused for a moment, turning the news over in her mind. Then her mouth set into a hard line, an expression Black had seen on her many times in the past. Determination. He loved that look. She hated to lose almost as much as he did.
“Doesn’t change much. We’ve still got two murders to solve. What about the autopsy report? Did you get that?”
“No, because Captain al-Busari’s still at his desk.”
“Bit keen, isn’t he?”
“I gather his wife doesn’t like him very much. And he wasn’t working on a case, he was updating the police department’s website. When he saw Khaled had stuck around, he made him help with Twitter. Seems he’s better at PR than policing.”
“So rather than actually doing the work, he just makes people think he’s doing the work?”
“Exactly.”
“Hmm… Maybe we should try that, then I could do you instead.”
“Nice try, Diamond.”
Emmy ran the tip of her tongue over her top lip, and all thoughts of interviews and searches and incompetent law-enforcement officials vanished. Dammit, she did this on purpose. Focus, man.
“Did you get a rabbit hutch?” he managed to utter.
“I’m lying here in Victoria’s Secret’s finest, and you’re asking me about a rabbit hutch?”
Oh, fuck it. What was the point? Black’s cock was already hardening, and he deserved a little fun after the evening he’d had. His belt buckle clinked as his pants hit the floor, and the knife from his pocket skittered across the tiles. He was about to hide it somewhere safe—to say Emmy was unpredictable in her sleep was like saying a nuclear weapon could be a bit dangerous—but then he had a better idea.
“What the hell are you doing?” Emmy gasped.
“This.” He held up the remains of her tattered underwear, and before she could knee him in the balls, he flipped her over and bound her hands above her head, looping the bra through the slats of the headboard. She tensed, then relaxed and crawled up the bed so her ass was in the air. He smacked it, hard, but she just giggled.
“Control freak.”
Yes, he was. And he knew that secretly, she didn’t want it any other way.
CHAPTER 21 - EMMY
MY LAPTOP WHIRRED away as I sipped my coffee on Wednesday morning. Had I drawn the long straw or the short straw? I wasn’t sure.
On the plus side, I’d been well-used last night, and an hour or two of downtime wasn’t a bad idea. But on the minus side, I had to research two missing targets online and pick up a rabbit hutch while Black was out doing something, even if that something involved “borrowing” an autopsy report then wrangling a bunch of wet-behind-the-ears police recruits into some semblance of a team. Khaled and his buddies may have forgotten to mention their plans to the captain and were now looking to Black as their de facto leader. Some people got all the fun.
Still, I had my trusty sidekick.
“We need to get more carrots,” Zena called from the rabbit’s bedroom. The rabbit’s freaking bedroom. “What time are we picking up the hutch?”
“Ten o’clock. That hasn’t changed since yesterday.”
“Hear that, Crash? You’re gonna get your own house. No more eating the furniture.”
At first, the carpenter on el-Fanaar Street had told me it’d take a week to build a hutch, but when I offered him a thousand bucks, he’d promised to work through the night and have it ready this morning. I’d left Zena to hash out the specs while I went to the bakery, so all in all, it hadn’t been a bad trip into town. For me, at least. We’d picked up Zena’s dress too, and yeah… It wasn’t as bad as the first one, which was freaking crocheted, but if it was yours truly who had to wear that abomination, I’d be drinking the tap water and eating uncooked chicken in a desperate attempt to avoid the ceremony. Those wedding photos would haunt the poor girl for the rest of her life.
Although when we got to the carpenter’s place and he proudly unveiled the rabbit hutch, I nearly stuffed her into the revolting outfit myself.
“What the actual fuck?”
Zena walked around it, reaching out to touch the wood reverently. “Isn’t it amazing? It turned out even better than I hoped.”
“It’s… It’s…” Three fucking storeys high. A mesh run took up the whole of the bottom, and on top of that sat a split-level rabbit mansion accessed by a ramp. It even had shutters on the damn windows and a tiny domed roof. “Zena, it’s bigger than the bedroom she’s in at the moment. It won’t even fit in the truck.”
The carpenter beamed at me. “Yes, yes, it comes apart. Like IKEA.”
Good grief. “We only have one rabbit.”
“I thought we could get her a friend,” Zena said. “In case she gets lonely.”
Holy shitballs, what had I done? “No. No more rabbits. We’re only here for another week, and fuck knows what we’re gonna do with her after that.”
“But they should live in pairs. I checked.”
“I don’t even know what I’m going to do with one rabbit yet.”
“Grandpa can look after her. I’ll leave him instructions.”
Oh, Bob would be just thrilled to hear that, I was sure. And what was Black gonna say when he came home and realised the entire lawn was covered by the Playboy fricking mansion? I’d have a lot of sucking up to do, and my jaw still hurt from last night.
“Let me think about it, yeah?”
The carpenter was grinning like a lunatic as he handed me an invoice. “My brother will help me to put the rabbit house into your vehicle. Do you want us to make it at the other end? That will be another fifty dollars.”
The only thing worse than them coming with us would be having to reassemble the damn thing myself, although if I kept busy, that might stop me from strangling Zena.
“Thirty dollars.”
“Okay, thirty dollars.”
“Deal.” I’d have paid a hundred.
As they were loading the monstrosity into the truck, I heard laughter and turned to see a white pickup had pulled up alongside. Gunther from the Happy Fish restaurant leaned out the window, chuckling. Omar, Carmela’s waiter friend, was in the passenger seat, and his mouth was doing that twitchy thing like he was trying to keep a straight face. All I needed was for NorthernGrrrl from the hotel to put pictures of the farce on Twitter and my mortification would be complete.
“What on earth is that?” Gunther asked.
“Would you believe it’s a rabbit hutch?”
“Scheisse, you’d better have a big yard.”
As if I didn’t know that.
He drove off in a cloud of smoke before I could beg for a ride out of there. Was this destined to be my life? People laughing at me for making bad decisions? A man in a white shirt and black trousers walked past on the other side of the street, smirking, and I recognised him as one of the porters from the Black Diamond. Did anyone else I knew want to show up?
“Are you mad at me?” Zena asked when we were halfway to the hotel with the carpenter and his brother following in the carpenter’s cousin’s taxi.
“Whatever gives you that idea?”
“I’m sorry, okay? Awad said he’d make whatever I liked, and I didn’t think it’d turn out quite that big. I just want Crash to be happy.”
Please, somebody shoot me. I’d do it myself if I hadn’t left my semi-automatic back in the villa.
“Black’s gonna lose his shit when he comes home, so you’d better make yourself scarce when he arrives. But in the meantime, the only words I want to hear out of your mouth are ‘How can I help?’”
“Now you sound like my mom.”
“I’m not old enough to be…” I trailed off as I realised with no small amount of horror that, technically, I was old enough to be Zena’s mother. Boy, that made a sobering thought. Her smirk said she’d done the math too.
“Actually, you—”
“Shut it.”
“Perhaps if we painted it?” Ze
na suggested two hours later. “Green to blend in with the bushes? White to match the buildings?”
“White. It reflects the heat.” Why was I even having this conversation? “But I’m not sure we have enough time.”
When would Black be back? I hadn’t heard a peep out of him, and although we generally worked on the premise that no news was good news, that didn’t help much in our current situation. I tapped out a quick text.
Me: How’s it going?
CB: Al-Busari’s updating the PD’s Facebook page. Khaled’s filing and making lists. The others are out asking questions.
Zena breathed hot air all over me as she leaned over my shoulder. “The police have a Facebook page? What do they put on it? Pictures of checkpoints? Stats on the number of times they’ve fallen asleep on duty?”
“Who knows? But we might have enough time to paint this anathema.”
Another call to Awad, the carpenter, saw him on his way back, this time with a bunch of nieces and nephews in tow, all willing to pitch in as long as I bought them candy and let them use the hotel swimming pool afterwards. Perhaps I should’ve felt guilty for employing child labour, but I was desperate, okay?
“Drones,” Zena said.
“I’m sorry?”
“Drones. Captain al-Busari really hates drones. Apparently, the Egyptian government’s banned them, and according to Facebook, if he catches whoever keeps flying one around Dahab, they’ll be ‘severely punished.’”
“So that’s what they’re doing instead of investigating real crimes? Chasing drones?”
“According to Google Translate, they wasted fifty man-hours trying to find the culprit last week. It buzzed a police vehicle, and the captain went out personally to command the search.”
“Really?” Hmm… I kind of wanted my husband back at some point, and who knew how much longer he’d have to sit outside the police station waiting for al-Busari to leave. “If only we had a drone.”
But where the hell could I get a drone in a country where they were illegal? It wasn’t as if I could nip down to the shops and buy one.
“Someone’s definitely trolling the captain,” Zena said, oblivious to the plan forming in my mind. “Look. They’ve linked to YouTube footage of the chase in the comments.”
“Let me see that.”
When Zena said “footage,” I thought she meant a video of the drone, not from the drone. Wow. Whoever was flying the thing had balls, I’d give them that. They’d hovered it three feet above al-Busari’s balding head while he leapt about like a demented marionette below.
But how could I find the pilot?
Possibilities flew through my mind. I could get Mack to hack into the YouTube account and find the owner’s IP address, then cross-reference that to either an address or a phone number, then track down the location and pay the owner a visit. Or I could isolate the people in the background and use facial-recognition software to identify them, then find out where they lived and see if any of them saw the drone operator. Or… Or I could simply send the person a message.
I quickly switched over to a covert browser, set up a new YouTube account, and commented under the video.
IHeartMischief79341: Are you available for private parties?
I added a throwaway email address, then turned back to the more immediate problem—Crash’s crash pad. At least if Black kicked me out, it was big enough for me to live in too.
I’d just texted Bradley for further advice on the colour scheme when my phone pinged with an email.
DaredevilDork: What kind of party?
IHeartMischief79341: I’d like to cause a small distraction in Dahab ASAP. Are you interested in making a few bucks?
DaredevilDork: For doing what?
How much did drones cost? A quick internet search gave me a ballpark figure of two thousand quid for a high-end personal drone. Three hundred dollars seemed like a reasonable amount to pay the guy.
IHeartMischief79341: A fly-by at the police station. The captain spends too long sitting at his desk.
DaredevilDork: Captain al-Busari? He’s a lazy arse. Even if you go to the station with witnesses, he refuses to take a report.
Did I detect a hint of bitterness? Another victim of al-Busari’s complacency, perhaps?
IHeartMischief79341: I figure he could do with stretching his legs. Will you help?
DaredevilDork: How do I know you’re not the cops?
IHeartMischief79341: You don’t. But if you have confidence in your skills, that shouldn’t matter. I’ll wire you $100 bucks as a deposit and another $100 upon completion.
DaredevilDork: Make it $150 on completion and we have a deal.
IHeartMischief79341: Agreed. We have a deal.
DaredevilDork: Pay the money to this email address by PayPal and give me half an hour.
“Is it time for lunch yet?” Zena asked.
“Nope.” I stuck a spare paintbrush in her hand and consulted the text that had just arrived from Bradley. “The window trims need to be Baker-Miller Pink.” He swore that would have a calming effect on Black. “Find out what that is and paint them.”
CHAPTER 22 - EMMY
“HOW’S IT GOING?” I asked Black when he phoned mid-afternoon.
I’d been waiting for the call ever since my new favourite dork sent me a video of his antics half an hour ago. He—or possibly she, who knew—had flown the damn drone right up to the police station and tapped on al-Busari’s office window. Two minutes later, a dozen cops ran out and gave chase, led by the captain, but I hadn’t spotted Khaled in the group.
“Better than I hoped.”
“Oh?”
“We got the reports. And they’re…interesting.”
“Oh?”
“I’m on my way back. We can discuss it then.”
“Oh.”
“Everything okay, Diamond?”
“Couldn’t be better.”
“Liar. Did you pick up the rabbit hutch? Tell me you picked up the rabbit hutch.”
“We picked up the rabbit hutch.”
“Good. Then whatever else you’re not telling me can wait. Have you eaten? Do you want me to bring lunch?”
Fantastic—a way to prolong the inevitable by another five minutes at least.
“I’m starving. Could you get me a cheese twist from the German Bakery?”
“I’m nowhere near the German Bakery.”
Yes, I was well aware of that. I’d considered asking him to go to the koshary place on the other side of Assalah Square, five minutes farther away than the bakery, but ultimately, I’d decided that might be pushing my luck.
“But I’ve got this craving…”
“Why are your cravings always for carbs?”
“Cheese isn’t a carb.”
Black sighed. “Just one cheese twist?”
“Maybe two.”
“Fine. Do me a favour—find me paper, pens, and tape while I’m gone. I need to start a link chart when I get back. More information’s coming, and I want to organise my thoughts.”
By my calculations, we had roughly twenty minutes. Twenty minutes until Black did that thing where his face went all stony and he looked like he was about to explode.
“Zena, paint faster.”
I needed to swap out my underwear for something fancier.
“What the fuck?”
Black stopped in front of Casa Crash, and his hands twitched at his sides, itching to ball into fists. Where was Zena? Well, she’d crawled up the ramp and hidden inside with the rabbit, leaving me to deal with one severely pissed-off husband.
Where should I start? “Uh—”
“Why has the kiddies’ play area been extended into our garden?”
“It’s not a kiddies’ play area.” Although granted, the wire mesh at the bottom would have kept them nicely contained. “It’s the rabbit hutch.”
Uh-oh. His eyes had turned into two chips of granite, flat, glittery, and hard.
“The rabbit hutch?”
“Yup, t
he rabbit hutch.” I leaned in closer and whispered, “I’m not wearing any knickers.”
All things considered, that had seemed like the best option.
His gaze lost its focus, just for a second, and I fought a smile. Men were so predictable, even my cyborg of a husband. I angled my body to block Zena’s view if she got brave and peeped out the window, then cupped Black’s rapidly growing bulge.
“Forget the rabbit and show me what you got, Chuck.”
“Bitch,” he murmured in my ear, but he meant it as a term of affection. “I won’t forget this, but I will let you suck my dick while I think up an appropriate punishment.”
“Ooh, make it hard.”
He threw me over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold, one hand inching under my shorts to check whether I’d lied about the underwear. Of course I hadn’t. This was a win-win situation for me. My ass cheek stung when he gave it a hard smack.
“Shh. Zena’s in Crash’s lounge.”
Black spun back to check, but Zena was still hiding. “What the…? On second thought, perhaps temporary amnesia isn’t a bad idea after all.”
An hour later, I sat naked in bed next to Black, who had the photocopied pages of Carmela’s autopsy report propped against his knees, covering up the good bits. One of us was sitting in the wet patch, and after the bunny hutch fiasco, I figured it was only fair that it should be me. Bits of pastry flaked off the cheese twist and landed on my bare tits as I munched. Just another day in the life of a pair of jet-setting billionaires.
“Carmela had marks on her ribs,” Black said. “Although the doctor couldn’t be sure whether they were from a knife or from whatever ate her afterwards. Looks as if her abdomen took the brunt from the barracudas. They got everything but her upper lungs, bladder, and part of her large intestine. There wasn’t enough left of her vagina and anus to tell whether or not she’d been sexually assaulted.”