Stolen Hearts

by Elise Noble

  What did this boat have that we could use? Water lapped around my ankles as I rummaged in the locker under the rear seat and came up with life jackets and a flare gun. There was a picnic cooler too, and I almost didn’t want to open it, but I had to look.

  “What’s in there?” Zena asked, curiosity getting the better of her despite the trauma.

  “Cash.” About a million bucks, if I had to guess. Black was right. Murder boiled down to three motives—sex, money, or revenge—and we’d just found ours.

  Four life jackets… I wrapped two of them around the cooler and tied them in place with a spool of red cord I found, trying not to think of what else it had been used for. The water was up to my calves now, and Zena sat on one of the front seats, crying, knees drawn up to her chin, as far away from Stefan’s corpse as she could get.

  “Here, you need to put this on.” I helped her into a life jacket. “We’ll have to go into the water in a minute, but your grandpa’s coming, okay?”

  With Zena ready, I heaved Stefan’s limp form into an empty locker and tried to shut the lid. Damn the guy for being so porky. I jumped on it a couple of times—don’t judge me, he fucking deserved it—and finally the latch caught. I didn’t want his bloated body washing up on a beach in the next few days because some awkward sod would ask questions about the hole in his skull.

  Black was nearly at the boat now, swimming on his back while he towed Aurelie along. She’d gone silent, and that worried me more than Zena’s quiet sobs.

  “We need to put this on her.” I grabbed the remaining life jacket. Black and I would be fine without. The water temperature was in the mid-twenties—or the mid-seventies in Black-speak—and Bob was on his way.

  The water on board had passed my knees and was lapping around Zena’s ass on the seat as I reached under Aurelie’s armpits and hauled her onto the edge of the boat. It’d sink soon, but she’d be able to rest for a minute or two.

  “Are you okay here?” Black asked, glancing towards the Saudi Arabian shoreline.

  “Yup. Go for it.”

  Black took off after Magdalena, his arms slicing cleanly with each stroke, as at home in water as he was on land. I almost felt sorry for the bitch. Drowning was a horrible way to go.

  But enough about her. I wrestled Aurelie into the life jacket and cinched it tight just as the boat started to go under.

  “Won’t it suck us down?” Zena asked, suddenly panicked. “I saw Titanic.”

  “It’s not big enough. Just relax and float, okay?”

  “Bob’s ten minutes away,” Nate told me.

  Zena kicked her legs a bit as her seat disappeared, but when I gave her what I hoped was an encouraging smile, she stilled and did as she was told for once. The cooler floated free, but I’d tied a length of cord to the handle like a dog leash, so I was able to keep hold of it while it bobbed about like an oversized cork. Aurelie still worried me. She’d gone limp and kinda grey.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “I thought I was dead,” she whispered, almost too quietly for me to hear. “I thought I was dead and no one would ever find me.”

  “You’re not dead. An hour, and you’ll be back on dry land.”

  “He said he’d cut me up. I heard them talking. He said he’d cut me up because they’d already sold my heart.”

  A wave washed over her, and she spluttered, squeaking in fear. I grabbed her hand, and the last tiny piece of the puzzle slotted into place when I caught sight of her bracelet. Her medical alert bracelet. I flipped over the tag. Aurelie Butler - Blood group AB+ - Allergic to gummy bears. No next of kin. She wore her blood group on her freaking wrist for all to see.

  A white dot appeared over the next crest, and I raised my head to get a better look. Was that the Blue Tang? Say it was the Blue Tang.

  “Nate, we’ve got a boat approaching from the west. Is that Bob?”

  “Hold on. I’m not hooked into his GPS, but I’ll get his coordinates.” Twenty seconds passed. “That’s him.”

  Thank fuck. I fired the flare gun into the air, then settled back to wait.

  CHAPTER 40 - EMMY

  “WHY DID YOU leave the hotel, Zena?” Chris asked, hands on his hips. “Do you realise how much trouble you’ve caused?”

  Five minutes, we’d been back at the Black Diamond. Five minutes. Did the man have no tact? Lynn rushed forward to hug her daughter while Chris kept tutting.

  “The whole of the staff’s been out looking for you. Lunch is late. Rooms haven’t been cleaned.”

  “I left a note,” Zena said.

  A note? Good grief.

  “Where?” Chris wasn’t giving up. “I didn’t see any note.”

  “I pushed it under Emmy’s door.”

  The door of the villa we weren’t in. Brilliant.

  “That’s just not good enough. You need to apologise to each and every person whose time you’ve wasted today, and you can start with your grandfather.”

  Outwardly, Black was calm as he held Aurelie up, but his gaze had hardened. He was itching to kick Chris into the swimming pool, as was I.

  “Zena saved a woman’s life today,” I said. “She deserves some thanks for that.”

  “Whose? Whose life?”

  Aurelie spoke up, the first word she’d uttered since she got off the Blue Tang. “Mine.”

  Chris looked her up and down. “Who are you?”

  Bob appeared, having parked Sondra’s SUV and found a pile of blankets. I gently took Zena’s damp towel and wrapped her up in something warmer. Although the sun was up, there was a danger of both girls going into shock, and the last thing either of them wanted to do was visit the hospital.

  We’d spent the trip back going over our story, that terrible moment when Stefan and Magdalena, having held us at gunpoint, sabotaged the boat with us still on board and took off in a RIB with an accomplice from Saudi Arabia who’d come out to meet them. Where were they now? We had no idea. None whatsoever.

  “It doesn’t matter who she is,” Black told Chris. “What matters is that you’re behaving like an asshole to two women who’ve been through enough today.”

  “Who are you calling an asshole?”

  “Do I have to spell it out for you?”

  “How dare you tell me how to speak to my daughter?”

  “She’s not your daughter.”

  “In two days, she’ll be as good as,” he snapped. Zena broke free of my arm and ran towards the villa, gulping back a sob. “Now look what you’ve done.”

  What Black had done? With that remark, Chris made it all the way into my top ten of self-absorbed douche-canoes. But I didn’t stop to congratulate him—Zena was more important, and I jogged after her. By the time I reached the terrace, she’d retreated into Crash’s run, and the bunny was sitting in her lap as she sniffled.

  The cop on guard outside the villa reached out an arm to stop me from going any farther, but I just shrugged a lot and jabbered at him in Italian. Since he was looking for an English woman, he shrugged and let me past. I crawled into Crash’s palace and wrapped an arm around Zena’s shoulders.

  “I hate Chris,” she said. “He’s a giant dick.”

  “Can’t disagree with that. Is he like that all the time?”

  “At home, it’s not so bad. He mostly ignores me. I’m only his ‘daughter’ when it suits him.” She used finger quotes around the word. “Like the time his work held a family quiz night and I knew all the answers. We won a five-night vacation in Miami, but he left me behind and just took Mom. Then when they got back, he complained I’d used his credit card to order a pizza. It’s not my fault I memorised the number.”

  Getting pizza in seemed like a perfectly reasonable move to me.

  “Do you want me to try speaking to your mom?”

  “She won’t listen. I already tried that, and she just says I’m being melodramatic. But Chris is always nice to me in front of her. Today’s the first day he’s behaved like a total jerk while she’s watching.”

&nbs
p; And I’d seen her face. She hadn’t been impressed. There was a glimmer of hope, but I hated to leave anything to chance, and we only had one day until the wedding. I made a mental note to call Mack—if she’d dug up anything I could use as leverage, maybe I’d be able to convince Chris to go easier on his soon-to-be stepdaughter.

  “I’ll see if there’s anything I can do, but you need to play your part too.”

  “I always—”

  “Shh. Let me finish. Chris is a grade A twat, but he was right about the note. Why didn’t you ask somebody to go with you?”

  “You weren’t there, and I couldn’t find Grandma or Grandpa, and I figured if I asked Mom and Chris, they’d stop me.” She wasn’t wrong about that. “And I don’t know what happened to Patch.” Another sob. “Stefan kicked her, and she ran away.”

  “We’ll find her. But Black and I are in a teensy bit of trouble with the police at the moment, so we have to fix that first.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “The police captain isn’t too happy that we decided to investigate the case on our own.”

  “But you saved my life, and Aurelie’s.”

  “It’ll get sorted out, don’t worry. But you have to promise not to run off again for the next few days. Gunther’s still on the loose.”

  Unless Khaled had staged a coup. We hadn’t heard from him since Nate told him to pull his finger out, and when Black tried to call him from the Blue Tang, there’d been no answer. Our next task, as soon as Zena and Aurelie were settled, was to find Gunther and make his life a misery.

  Zena stiffened beside me. “You think he’ll come back to hurt me?”

  “Honestly? No. Now that everyone’s looking for him, I think he’ll run like his sister. But we’re not taking any chances. Promise me you’ll stick like glue to either me and Black or your grandpa until this gets sorted.”

  “I promise.”

  “And Aurelie could use a friend too.”

  “What should I do?”

  Zena seemed to be holding up remarkably well, all things considered. And while being kidnapped at knifepoint had undoubtedly been a scary experience, she’d known Black and I were on our way, that help was coming. Aurelie had been completely alone, bundled into a suitcase like dirty laundry and tossed into the sea. Terrifying didn’t even begin to cover it. And at the start of this, she’d lost her best friend too. She’d need a lot of help to pick up the pieces.

  “Just be there for her. Introduce her to Crash, see if she wants to watch a movie, make sure she has something to eat. We’ll be back later.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  “You want me to find Patch, don’t you?”

  “I’ll come with…” She caught a glimpse of my expression and trailed off. “I’ll stay here and watch TV with Aurelie.”

  “Good girl.”

  “Can we use your villa?”

  “Just let me move some stuff first.” Because no way did I want them seeing Black’s murder wall in all its technicolour glory. “Sit tight for a minute.”

  “Can we get room service?”

  “Sure.”

  “And premium movies?”

  “Yup. But stay off social media, okay?”

  “Okay. Emmy?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do I have to wear that horrible dress tomorrow?”

  Oh, I was such a sucker, wasn’t I? Give Zena an inch and she’d take a mile. But it was such a hideous dress, I felt I’d be doing Lynn a favour by keeping it out of her wedding photos.

  “No, you don’t have to wear the dress.”

  “What about the first one?”

  “We’ll sort something out.”

  Great. How was I going to find a replacement dress in less than a day? I needed help. Our friendly kitesurfers had dropped Bob’s truck back and were now in the dining room, hoovering up the lunch buffet like a pair of starving locusts, so at least we had our phones again. I tapped out a text.

  Me: Bradley, I need some assistance.

  CHAPTER 41 - BLACK

  WHERE THE HELL was Khaled? The man wasn’t answering his phone, and neither was Gamal. Nobody at the hotel had heard from him either, including his cousin, who was busy pruning bushes by the tennis court.

  “We need you to stay in here for a few hours while we tie up loose ends,” Black told Aurelie, leading her into the villa. She didn’t have any family for them to call—her father had never been in the picture, and her mother died when she was nineteen. When Black voiced the question, that had brought a fresh round of tears. Did they have enough tissues left? “Bob’s going to wait outside, and nobody’s coming through that door.”

  Bob was currently arguing with the cop who’d parked himself on the sunlounger, who wasn’t sure whether to call al-Busari or arrest Black himself.

  “Does ‘loose ends’ mean Gunther?”

  “Yes.”

  “I trusted him. He acted like my friend, and then he…he…”

  Tried to kill her. When Gunther saw Aurelie passing with food for the dog, he’d called out to say it was in his garden. Apparently, they’d had a nice chat about the pooch the previous afternoon over coffee, less than a day before Gunther revealed he was acting as broker for the Middle Eastern version of Burke and Hare. Aurelie had stuttered out the basics on board the Blue Tang, but the details would have to wait until later. First, Team Blackwood had to track down two missing cops and a homicidal German.

  Zena managed a shaky smile when they walked into the living room. The murder wall was empty, the sheets of paper presumably torn down and moved into the bedroom by Emmy, a tattered reminder of an investigation that had cost so much for so many.

  “Hey, come and take a seat,” Zena said to Aurelie. “Do you want a drink? There’s fruit juice or coffee, or tea, but if you want something else, I can go—” Zena glanced in Emmy’s direction. “I can call somebody to bring it.”

  Aurelie shook her head and sank onto the sofa, arms wrapped around herself. Work was needed there. They’d find her professional help at the earliest opportunity.

  “Emmy, you ready?”

  “Yup. Assalah?”

  “Yes. We’ll have to go out through the bedroom window. There’s a small situation on the terrace.”

  “Life’s never boring with you, Chuck.”

  Black had expected the streets around Gunther’s house to be teeming with law enforcement officials, trampling over the crime scene or at least scratching their heads, but the area was deserted. The white pickup Emmy had seen him driving was still in the driveway, but fresh tyre tracks in the sand indicated a second vehicle had recently been parked in front of it. The dark-coloured SUV Khaled had seen, Black was willing to bet.

  Why had Gunther struck out on his own instead of leaving with Magdalena and Stefan?

  The pickup was empty—no personal effects, no trash, no satnav that might give a clue as to where Gunther had been or where he was going. The door of the shed where Zena had hidden hung ajar, and Black checked inside. Sure enough, there was a hole with bones visible at the bottom, a neat arrangement of phalanges and metacarpals belonging to an as-yet unidentified victim. How many more would they find?

  Behind Black, Emmy peered through the first-floor windows of the darkened home.

  “It’s quiet. Unless Gunther doubled back and hid in a closet, he’s not here.”

  Black joined her, walking around the other side of the building to look at a tidy European-style kitchen that spanned from one end of the house to the other. Or did it? There was a discrepancy between the walls visible inside and the length of the building. Not a huge disconnect, but Black estimated there was an eight- to ten-foot difference. Suddenly, the idea of Gunther doubling back to hide didn’t seem quite so far-fetched anymore.

  “There’s a secret room in there.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?”

  If it hadn’t been for Khaled’s radio silence, Black would have held off. Perhaps asked the Cairo office to send over their RANGE-R devi
ce, a handy little unit that used radar to “see” through walls. There was a reason Black and Emmy’s Virginia homes had a layer of metallised wallpaper underneath the patterned stuff Bradley chose. Forget infrared. Those colourful pictures you saw in the movies? All bullshit. IR couldn’t even see through glass, let alone brick.

  But with Khaled’s whereabouts unknown, time was of the essence. Emmy had a knife, and so did Black. They’d just have to improvise.

  “Here.” He passed his wife a pair of nitrile gloves. “Might as well go through the back door. Nobody’s watching.”

  Emmy pulled out her set of lock picks. “Do you want to do the honours, or shall I?”

  “Go right ahead.”

  Inside, Emmy gave the second floor a quick once-over while Black took the first.

  “They left in a hurry,” she whispered into his earpiece. “Clothing’s strewn everywhere, but there’s nothing else significant up here.”

  The police would have to go through the house properly at some point, but for now, Black had seen enough. Time to get into that secret room.

  Which turned out to be easier said than done. It took ten minutes of searching before they found a latch hidden behind a bag of flour in a storage cupboard. Emmy crouched, waiting to spring while Black swung the door open, careful to keep the thick wood between him and anyone waiting inside.

  “Fuck,” Emmy whispered.

  Gunther wasn’t there. In fact, the tiled room was empty other than a stainless-steel table, a metal cart full of saws and scalpels, and a stack of picnic coolers that reached from floor to ceiling. They hadn’t bothered to clean up after their last victim, and the metallic tang of blood filled the air. Luminol wasn’t required to see the place had been used as a slaughterhouse.

  “This makes Youssef’s back room look positively hygienic,” Emmy said before voicing the question on the tip of Black’s tongue. “But where the hell is Khaled?”

  They moved out, scanning the grounds before they stepped into the sunlight. A scratching noise came from the shed, and Emmy glanced at Black.