My home, once my sanctuary but not anymore, lay a half-hour drive from the church. Two weeks ago, I would have enjoyed the journey, but today I barely saw the road. My thoughts kept coming back to how I was going to get through the rest of my life without the man who'd been a constant in it for the last fourteen years. We may not have spent all our time together, but barely a day passed without us speaking. My husband had been the one person who truly understood me.
He saw my frustrations and failures when they got me down, but made me get back up and try again until I succeeded. He had confidence in me when I had none in myself. He was the one I let off steam to when I got home at night, and he took my grumpiness with good humour, most of the time at least.
He wasn't only my husband, he was my best friend. I might have taken his name, but I'd given him my heart.
For all that, our marriage wasn't what people thought. Our relationship had evolved over the years, but it never became a traditional husband and wife arrangement, that was for sure. Yes, I wore his ring, but there'd never been any sex, and we'd had our fair share of disagreements. At the end, the trust between us was absolute, but it took us a while to get there.
For three months after we met, I hated him, then that hostility turned into a grudging respect and over the next year, friendship. Fast forward two years, and I'd found out just how awkward it was to get permanent residency in America. Going back to England wasn't an option, not when the company I'd helped my beloved tormentor to build was taking off. Then one drunken night in Vegas when I was moaning about all the paperwork and interviews to get a green card, a friend had jokingly suggested we get married and bypass most of it.
We both had enough alcohol in us that it seemed like a reasonable idea, and two hours later we left the Little White Wedding Chapel as Mr. and Mrs. Our prenup was written on a cocktail napkin—he kept his guns; I kept my knives—and we'd tipsily agreed that if either of us got serious about somebody else, we'd get a divorce. Somehow, that never happened, and nearly twelve years later we'd still been hitched.
Except now he'd gone, and I missed him more than I'd ever imagined I could when we tied the knot all those years ago.
I'd driven a couple of miles down the road when my phone vibrated in my jacket pocket. It was standard procedure for me to have three phones, and the same for the other key people I worked alongside. Each of these phones was designated as green, amber, or red.
The world and his dog had the number of my green phone, which spent most of its life diverted to Sloane. She was pretty busy.
Employees, friends, and a few clients had my amber number. Mostly I answered that one, but not today. I had no interest in speaking to anybody, let alone someone unimportant. In fact, I wasn't sure I could summon up the energy to deal with that type of call for the foreseeable future.
But the red phone was different. It was for emergencies only and was never, ever, turned off or diverted. Not a lot of people had the number, and most who did had been at the funeral with me.
And it was the red phone ringing.
Sweat seeped out of my palms as I pushed the button on the steering wheel to answer the call. What could possibly have happened in the five minutes since I'd left?
"Speak to me."
An unfamiliar voice rasped from the speakers, distorted electronically but definitely male. The line crackled, making him sound even more sinister as he barked orders at me.
"Stop investigating your husband's death. No more questions, and don't cooperate with the police. If you stay on your path, everyone close to you will die as he did."
"Who the hell is this?" I asked, though I didn't expect to get an answer. Not when the caller had gone to so much trouble to disguise his voice in the first place.
"That doesn't concern you. The only thing you need to worry about is keeping out of my business. Of course, if you insist on continuing, I'll be forced to demonstrate more of my toys."
Even disguised, his voice had a jovial lilt at odds with his words. He was playing a game with me. A deadly game, but I didn't understand the rules.
"What do you want?"
"Nothing. I want you to do absolutely nothing. Do you understand?"
What should I say? What should I say? If I could have reached across the airwaves and torn his windpipe out, I would have, but instead, bile rose in my own throat as I forced out an answer.
"I understand."
What other option did I have?
The line went dead as the bastard hung up, leaving me with only the demons in my head for company.
Fuck, I was a mess. I had been since my husband died. He'd kept me grounded and thinking straight, but with him gone, the monsters locked up deep inside me went for a jailbreak.
I saw a side road coming up and took it, barely slowing as my heart pounded against my ribcage. The back end of the car kicked out on loose gravel as I slewed round the corner before snapping back into line. I changed down a gear to get some acceleration, and the engine screamed in chorus with the demons.
A mile along the lane, I pulled over, leaving a trail of rubber behind me. The old ranch house I'd parked in front of looked fittingly desolate for the situation, with the front door hanging off its hinges and the porch sagging under years of neglect.
My legs shook as I climbed out of the car and started pacing, desperately trying to gather my thoughts together. They rebelled against order, a jigsaw puzzle where none of the pieces fitted.
I'd very much suspected my husband's death was arranged by someone who bore a grudge against him, or maybe me, and now that had been confirmed. The men who pulled the trigger were dead, but they were only hired help. The fucker who ordered the hit was still out there, toasting his success and racking up his phone bill.
I should have been furious, I knew that, but the anger wouldn't come. The place where it should have been was frozen like the rest of me. Where was the pain? The agony? I'd rather have felt anything but nothing.
Now I had a decision to make. Did I carry on with a search that had proved fruitless so far or back off? My friends' lives were at stake, and I couldn't face another funeral. Not when it might be Nick or Dan or someone else I was close to lying in that casket.
Dammit, why couldn't I concentrate? Logic got sucked into a black hole of oblivion as I scuffed my stilettos in the gravel.
If I told the team, they'd want to carry on regardless, of that I was certain. I could hear Nick's voice in my head right now.
"We're trained professionals. We'll be okay."
Dan would say the same, and so would everyone else. But what if they weren't okay?
We may have hit a nerve with our questions so far, but whose nerve was far from clear. We'd put out so many feelers, who knew which one caused the killer to react? Narrowing it down would take time, more questions, and possibly more deaths. The bastard had already proven he didn't mess around.
Short of locking everyone I cared about into a nuclear bunker for the foreseeable future while I tripped around chasing leads on my own, I had no way of keeping them safe. I didn't even have a nuclear bunker, so that option was out, anyway.
In the end, I gave up and let my broken heart make the decision. I couldn't risk anybody else getting hurt. I'd already lost my soulmate, and the thought of the others getting picked off one by one was something I couldn't entertain.
I had to shut this down, but how?
My head throbbed, and I rubbed at my temples, trying to relieve the pressure. The events of the last fortnight were sucking me down like quicksand. I hadn't felt so out of control of my own mind and body since I was a teenager. Back then, my husband taught me to take all the anger and fear and channel it into whatever was necessary to fix the problem, but this time I couldn't see a solution.
Deep breaths.
Take deep breaths.
I forced myself to count to five on each inhale and exhale, but the weight on my chest only got heavier.
My husband's voice echoed in my head, deep and gravelly, always so calm. He'd know what to do. He always did.
"It's like a fire, Diamond. First you get it under control, then you put it out."
He'd told me that more than once.
But I couldn't extinguish it, not yet. To do that, I'd have to take out the source, and I didn't have it in me right now. But I could stop fanning the flames.
How? By stopping the investigation, at least until I got my head straight and came up with a game plan that gave us a reasonable shot at winning.
I thought of what waited for me at home—the cops, the pity, and worst of all, the constant reminders of my husband. Memories lay everywhere in that place. I'd never get the space I needed to think things through there.
Soaked through from the rain, which was no longer a drizzle but a steady downpour, I got back into the car. Out of habit, I had my iPad in my handbag, and it only took a few minutes to log onto the server at work and use my administrator privileges to clear out the files relating to the investigation. That would put the brakes on things. They could stay in my personal cloud storage until my sanity returned.
As guilt ate away at me, I replaced them with a single document:
I have to leave. All this—I can't deal with it right now. And I need you to put a hold on the investigation. I can't tell you the reasons why, but I'm safe and I'll be back to explain. I just need some time. Please. Take care of each other, okay?
Looking back, it was a shitty thing to do, but at that particular moment, I couldn't see a better option. Making stupid decisions is easy when your brain's fucked.
Logic—flawed logic—told me that although my friends would be upset, and even more so when they couldn't find me, being upset was better than being dead. I was doing the best thing for them; at least that was how I saw it at the time.
With my heart a cold lump of lead, I turned off my red phone, started the engine, and set the navigation system for the airport.
It's always darkest right before it goes pitch black.