Red After Dark: A Romantic Thriller (Blackwood Security Book 13) Read online

  But Alaric didn’t seem fazed. “I’ll take that under advisement. Are you sticking around?”

  “For a few days at least.”

  “What about Sky?” Emmy asked. “You said you’d get her training started.”

  “I delegated to Rafael. It’ll be character-building for him. I also drove through the night, so I need to get my head down for a couple of hours, and then I’ll join you two when you visit O’Shaughnessy. Unless Alaric’s too busy chasing paintings to go?”

  Black’s tone said he’d be more than happy if Alaric stayed behind. Where did the animosity come from?

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Have fun at the horse farm.”

  Black had made his disdain clear on the last two words, and I wasn’t sure I liked him much either. What was wrong with a horse farm?

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” I offered, more to annoy Black than anything. I already had my orders—monitor the company emails and send a holding message to each person until I could speak to Alaric. Start the search for summer holiday accommodation, a nice house so Rune could stay with Alaric while she was off school. Ensure there was food for dinner. Let the dog out.

  But to my surprise, Alaric nodded.

  “As it happens, there might be. Harriet lost some of her staff, and she can’t afford to replace them. How do you feel about helping out with the horses for an hour or two?”

  If I couldn’t spend time with my own horse, the next best thing was pottering about with other people’s. A morning at a ranch sounded fascinating. How did they do things in Kentucky?

  “I’d love to lend a hand. Just let me grab a pair of boots.”

  CHAPTER 11 - BETHANY

  “THIS IS YOUR dog?” Harriet asked.

  Not really, so it seemed safest to avoid the question. “She’s called Barkley. You don’t mind us bringing her, do you? Otherwise she’d be left on her own.”

  “I love dogs. Samson, our blue heeler, he passed away two months ago.” There was an air of sadness about Harriet, hardly surprising given the circumstances. “It feels like I’m losing everything.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, my words totally inadequate.

  Harriet led us into the kitchen at Lone Oak Farm, where a bunch of devices were laid out on the huge kitchen table—two mobile phones, a laptop, an iPad, plus a notepad full of wobbly handwriting, most of it barely legible. On the way over, Dan had told me she planned to check through them for clues.

  “Here’s everything I could find,” Harriet told us.

  “What are all the notes?” Dan asked.

  “That’s Daddy’s jotter. He kept it on his nightstand. If he wrote anything down in recent weeks, it’ll be on there.” Harriet peeled a Post-it note off a pad and stuck it onto the scarred wood beside the jotter. “And these are the passwords. I’ve already been through everything myself, and I can’t see anything unusual, but feel free to look again. Are you here to help Daniela?” she asked me.

  “Oh, no, I’m not an investigator. Actually, I’m here to help you, if you’d like me to. Alaric thought you might need a hand with the horses?”

  “You know horses?”

  “I have my own back in England. A dressage horse. His name’s Chaucer.”

  “We don’t do much in the way of fancy stuff here. Most of our horses are trained for barrel racing and team roping.”

  I wasn’t even sure what barrel racing and team roping were. The window over the sink gave a view of the paddocks behind the house, and I spotted a pair of foals beside the barn, nibbling grass behind a post-and-rail fence, plus a handful of older horses grazing in the distance.

  “You breed as well?”

  “That’s my favourite part of the job—bringing on the babies. But this year… We lost one at birth, and I’ve had to sell some of the mares to make ends meet.”

  “How many horses do you have here?”

  “Thirty-one of our own, plus another three geldings for training. Two stallions, eleven broodmares, eight colts, seven fillies, and three Arabians left over from Daddy’s heyday. He liked to show them when he was younger, but we’ve gradually switched over to quarter horses. Nine live in the barn, and the rest are out at pasture. And we have a dozen Corriente cattle.”

  Thirty-four horses? I found it time-consuming enough looking after one. Where did Harriet get the energy? She was a good six inches shorter than me, and she didn’t look particularly strong.

  “Sounds like a lot of work.”

  That was borne out by her scuffed jeans and faded shirt. She clearly spent a reasonable amount of time outside with the animals.

  “It is, and now I only have Rodrigo left plus Rusty on the weekends when he’s not at school. And Stéphane, of course, but he takes care of my father’s affairs and the house, not the animals.” She leaned in a little closer and dropped her voice to a whisper. “In fact, he’s quite scared of them. You really don’t mind helping?”

  “Not at all.” I’d only be sitting alone in a rented house otherwise, missing Chaucer. I wouldn’t get to see him until the middle of June when I flew home to watch my little sister get married. “Where do you want me to start?”

  While Dan got stuck into the investigative work, I headed out the back with Harriet. She proved to be easy company, and by the time we’d mucked out the horses in the barn and given them their lunchtime feed, I’d learned the basics of barrel racing—basically, you galloped your horse around three barrels in a cloverleaf pattern, competing against the clock. Team roping wasn’t her main focus, rather something she did to stop the barrel horses from getting stale, and it involved two people on horseback catching a steer with ropes. Dressage seemed so much safer.

  But the horses were docile, even the stallions, and although I was technically working, it felt more as if I were on holiday. People would pay thousands to wake up with that view—pastures and shade trees, and in the distance down a gentle hill, fields of tobacco and a winding river.

  “This place is beautiful. Have you always lived here?” I asked.

  “I was born in that bedroom up there.” Harriet pointed at a window on the top floor of the house. “For as long as I can remember, all I ever wanted to do was breed horses. How about you? Did you always want to be… Uh, never mind.”

  She was right. No little girl grew up dreaming of a career as a PA, perhaps with the exception of being Girl Friday to a famous movie star or a billionaire—I’d binged romance novels as a teenager, okay? I understood how it worked.

  “I wanted to event in the Olympics. But my parents sold my three-star horse while I was injured in the hospital, and that was the end of that.”

  Harriet gasped. “They sold your horse? Without you knowing?”

  “I still miss him. My ex-husband bought me a dressage horse as a consolation prize, and between the physio and my father’s constant browbeating, I didn’t have the energy to fight.”

  “Were you injured badly?”

  “I had to have my left ankle pinned. It wasn’t even Polo’s fault. A fox shot out of a bush during the cross-country, and he swerved to avoid it. I just fell off the side and landed badly.”

  “I broke both of my legs at different times when I was a teenager, and Daddy helped me back on again as soon as I could hobble. I even rode in a cast.” She stopped sweeping for a moment and leaned on the broom handle. “I realise what you must think of Daddy. That he’s a liar and a cheater and a thief. But he wasn’t a bad father. I just didn’t realise how awful he’d gotten with the money side of things. Mom used to take care of the finances. The money was hers, you know. Her father owned a bunch of local newspapers, and she inherited the spoils. That’s why my father chose her over Dominique.”

  “The money?”

  “This place was in trouble back then as well. A few bad winters, and they weren’t sure they’d make it through another. My father was in love with Dominique, but he needed my mother. And Mom was so set on keeping her cowboy that she forgave him for the affair.�
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  “What happened to Dominique?”

  “She died. After Daddy ended things, her car went off a bridge. The police never determined whether it was an accident or suicide, but it broke my father. He changed. First, he sank into a depression, and when he was ready to face the world again, he’d become more…guarded, I guess. Red After Dark was always meant to be his. He’d paid a deposit. But Edwin Bateson, the artist, was also in love with Dominique, and after he realised she’d lost her heart to my father, he refused to hand the painting over. Daddy thought it had been destroyed until it turned up in the Becker Museum. I guess Bateson was short of money too. Or maybe he just wanted revenge? To keep Dominique away from my father forever?”

  “That’s such a sad story.”

  “It’s what happens when you marry for money rather than love. Why do you think I’m still single? I’d rather live the rest of my life on the streets than defy my heart.”

  “I wish I’d met you twelve years ago. I needed to hear that then.”

  If I could turn the clock back, I’d have done a moonlight flit with Polo and spent my twenties penniless but happy as a groom on somebody else’s stable yard. Who knows? Perhaps I’d have come across a man like Alaric before both of our lives turned to crap.

  “You mentioned an ex-husband—it was a bad break-up?”

  “You could say that. I wasn’t out on the street, but until Alaric gave me this job, I was in dire straits financially.”

  “How long have you worked for him?”

  “Officially, this is my second day.”

  “Oh. Wow.”

  “Exactly. The afternoon we met, I basically screwed up his surveillance operation, and I think he felt sorry for me.”

  For a moment, Harriet just stared at me. Then she burst out laughing. In a heartbeat, I joined in, because it was a far better option than crying.

  “We’re both disasters,” Harriet half giggled, half choked.

  “Horses are better than men anyway. They don’t screw my friends. Or their dental nursing assistants.”

  I’d never been able to confirm about the nurses, but for a pompous work-shy ass, Piers spent an awful lot of late nights at his dental practice.

  “You married a dentist?”

  “A cosmetic dentist. Honestly, I don’t know what I was thinking. ‘Darling, I’ll do you a great set of veneers’ was the worst pickup line ever.”

  “He really said that?”

  “I thought he was joking. So I laughed, and then he laughed, but now when I look back on that evening, I think he was actually serious.”

  In the end, Piers had given me the veneers as a wedding gift. And goodness only knew what I’d do if I chipped one because it wasn’t as though I could afford to get it fixed.

  “A guy once invited me over to see his pet snake.”

  “Oh my gosh. You didn’t…”

  “I was eighteen, and thanks to my parents, my upbringing had been quite sheltered. So I thought a pet snake was totally cool, but it turned out to be more of a worm.”

  “What happened?”

  “I also laughed. He didn’t. Hey, do you want to try barrel racing after lunch?”

  Did I? Hell yes. It looked a little scary in the videos Harriet had shown me on her phone, but I didn’t ditch my old life only to stand on the sidelines of my new one.

  “I’d love to, but isn’t your father’s nurse coming over to speak to us?”

  Harriet’s face fell, her earlier good humour wiped away in an instant.

  “Sorry,” I muttered.

  “You’re right, she is. Maybe tomorrow, if you come back?”

  “Maybe.”

  I had no idea what tomorrow would bring.

  After lunch, I met Harriet’s father. Irvine Carnes ignored me completely, and he barely seemed to register Harriet’s presence either. There were pictures of them together all over the house—the latest taken just a few months ago—but Irvine looked a decade older now. Wispy hair curled over his temples, and his voice was thin, almost inaudible. When he told Dominique they’d be together again soon, Harriet’s eyes glistened, and I couldn’t stop myself from giving her a hug when we got out into the hallway, professionalism be damned.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Not really. It’s just hard, you know? Mom had a heart attack—one minute she was there, and the next, she was gone—and I was heartbroken because I didn’t get to say a proper goodbye, but this slow decline is a hundred times worse to deal with.”

  “I’m sure Dan wouldn’t mind talking to the nurse on her own.”

  “No, I should be there.”

  Barkley joined us too, curled up beside the kitchen table on an old horse blanket. She seemed to like being around people, which was a minor miracle considering the start she’d had in life.

  Rosaria was a smiley middle-aged lady from a small town on the Mexican coast, so she said over drinks while we waited for Dan to finish a phone call. According to Stéphane, the senator didn’t like Rosaria much, but Harriet said he wasn’t keen on any of his caregivers. They reminded him of his own limitations.

  Once everyone was settled with biscuits—cookies—Dan kicked off with the questions. I’d offered to take notes, but she said she was recording everything. Standard Blackwood procedure, it appeared.

  “I understand you attended to Mr. Carnes the Wednesday before last.”

  “Sí, I checked the schedule. I was here.”

  “Can you talk us through your visit?”

  “I come in the afternoon. Mr. Carnes, he tell me to go again, but he always say that. I made him lunch. Chicken and dumplings, but he didn’t eat it.”

  “Does he usually?”

  Rosaria bobbed her head, black curls bouncing. “Always. He might lose his thoughts sometimes, but he never lose his appetite before.”

  “Did you clear the food away?”

  “Sí. And when I get back with his pills, he was out of bed, trying to button himself into a shirt. Then he told me he have a guest coming in half an hour.”

  Dan, Harriet, and I all looked at each other. Surely this had to be our courier?

  “Did he say who?” Dan asked.

  “No, and he also got the time wrong. The man didn’t arrive until four o’clock. I was meant to finish by then, but Stéphane hadn’t come back, and I didn’t want to leave Mr. Carnes alone with a stranger.”

  Harriet managed a smile. “I appreciate that.”

  “So they were strangers?” Dan asked. “Not friends?”

  “Not friends, I don’t think. The man, he acted more like he was there to work. Said it was good to meet Mr. Carnes, and was he ready to get started?”

  “Started on what?”

  Rosaria shrugged. “Mr. Carnes asked me to wait in the kitchen.”

  “You didn’t hear anything that was said?”

  “Lo siento. No, I didn’t.”

  So near, yet so far. But Dan didn’t give up. Rather than act defeated, she gave Rosaria an encouraging smile.

  “I’m sure you know more than you think. Let’s start with the moment you realised Irvine’s visitor had arrived…”

  Dan walked Rosaria through the whole afternoon once, and then she did it again. Unfortunately, Rosaria had spent her time waiting in the kitchen on the phone to her niece rather than being just a tiny bit nosy about what was going on in Irvine’s bedroom. The courier could have arrived by car, horse, or spaceship—she didn’t have a clue. At least we knew he had a local accent.

  “You said he was white, in his forties, with brown hair,” Dan said. “Did he have any distinguishing marks at all? A scar? A beard?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Would you be able to describe him to a sketch artist? We’d pay you for your time, of course.”

  Rosaria agreed, but I suspected it was the promise of cash that persuaded her rather than a conviction that she could provide a good likeness. Then they went over the clothes again—jeans, a grey T-shirt, and one of those man-bags. Wait. She h
adn’t mentioned the bag the first time around. Dan picked up on it too.

  “Could you tell me a little more about the bag?”

  “It was a green colour. Khaki? And it had leather edges.”

  “What shape was it? Slim, for a laptop?”

  “No, fatter than that. And shorter. Maybe a foot long?”

  “Did it have a logo?”

  “Not that I saw, but there was something stamped into the leather.”

  “Can you remember what?”

  “Billington? Billings?”

  “Billingham,” I blurted. “They make camera bags, the expensive kind. My ex-husband had one.”

  All the gear, no idea—that was Piers. After he found out photography was harder than he thought, the camera spent several years languishing in the stair cupboard until it went obsolete. But the pieces clicked into place, and I saw from Dan’s expression that her lightbulb came on at about the same time as mine did.

  “Ah,” she said. “I get it now. These people didn’t just send a courier; they sent a videographer to make absolutely sure they got the footage they wanted. Which means not only do they have money, which we already knew, but they’re seriously organised too.”

  “But how do we find this person?” Harriet asked.

  “Simple. We know from the accent that he’s from this area, so we get a list of videographers for hire in Kentucky. Then I’ll start calling the A’s with Bethany while you and Stéphane work your way backwards from the Z’s.”

  Lovely. I hated talking to strangers. I nodded my agreement, but in all honesty, I preferred mucking out the horses.

  CHAPTER 12 - ALARIC

  “WHO ARE YOU people? My campaign manager told me I should take this meeting, but I don’t know who you are.”

  Siri, show me a man in despair.

  Aidan O’Shaughnessy’s unkempt appearance was a contrast to the well-groomed Blackwood/Sirius team. Emmy was back to the pantsuit, and Black was in a shirt and tie. Usually, he only dressed up for special events—was this an attempt at intimidation? If so, Alaric had to conclude it was working. O’Shaughnessy could barely look at the bigger man.