Red After Dark (Blackwood Security #13) - Elise Noble Page 0,51

you’re so overpriced. Too many has-beens like you at the top, sitting behind desks, collecting overinflated salaries. You’ve forgotten what it’s like in the field.”

Oh, what a load of bollocks. Comparing Blackwood to EBR was like saying that the only difference between a sweatshop and Louis Vuitton was that Louis Vuitton had more managers. Blackwood competed on quality, not price, and we weren’t short of work. And as for suggesting Black kept his hands clean now… I had a feeling Ridley was going to find out just how dirty my husband could play, and soon.

But tonight, Black merely shrugged. “Sure, things change. Perhaps I enjoy finishing at five every day, then going home to my lovely wife.”

“You’re not the only one who can attract a pretty young lady,” Ridley snapped back.

Did he mean Kyla? Had O’Shaughnessy’s intern been right?

“And yet here you are alone.”

“You always were an arrogant son of a bitch.”

Black merely smirked. “Yet here I am with a beautiful woman and a football jersey.”

“Fuck you.”

Gee, that was original. The man certainly had a temper on him, didn’t he? Black and I watched as Ridley turned on his heel and stomped back into the banquet hall, no doubt ready to inflict his foul mood onto the next victim.

“You know,” Black said, his gaze heating as he looked down at me, “for once, I might actually take his advice.”

CHAPTER 20 - ALARIC

“WELL, THIS OUGHTA set the cat among the pigeons,” Alaric said.

Black worked fast, he had to give the man credit for that. The full forensic report had come in not long before midnight, and by the time Alaric’s morning coffee was cool enough to drink, the results were already spreading online, thanks in no small part to O’Shaughnessy’s campaign. Beth leaned over Alaric’s shoulder and turned up the volume on a local news piece.

“Following Aidan O’Shaughnessy’s dramatic fall from grace during Monday’s senatorial debate in Frankfort, Kentucky, there appears to be a twist in the tale. Fingerprints belonging to Eric Ridley, a member of Kyla Devane’s security team, have reportedly been found on a bag that held the Democratic candidate’s laptop, the same laptop that was confiscated by police after it was found to contain underage pornography. Bruce Goddard, campaign manager for Mr. O’Shaughnessy, has confirmed to KSBC News that there is no reason why any member of Devane’s staff should have handled the bag in question.”

“Do you think that’ll lose her enough votes?” Beth asked.

“Who knows? Give it an hour, and I expect the Devane campaign’ll come out with a rebuttal. Dispute the evidence, say O’Shaughnessy’s lying because he’s desperate, that sort of thing.”

The fingerprint evidence would be enough to cast doubt in a criminal case, but in a trial by media? Voters were unpredictable. Really, they needed something more to tip the balance. Dan had gone to interview Piper Simms’s grandmother with the dog riding shotgun—rather them than Alaric—and there was also Ridley’s civilian atrocity to dig into. Alaric planned to call some of his contacts while Beth helped Harriet for an hour, but the bulk of his network was in Western Europe and North America, not the Middle East. Ditto for Judd, and Naz dealt with Eastern Europe. There were definite gaps in Sirius’s coverage, but the firm didn’t have the capital to facilitate a Blackwood rate of expansion. Only Judd was minted, and most of his money was tied up in family trusts. Growth at the moment was slow but steady.

Which was why he had to ask Beth to help out with the investigative work as well as organising accommodation for the next week since it looked as if they wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon.

“I’ll send the owner of this place an email right away,” she said when he mentioned it. “Hopefully it’ll be free for a while longer. If not, I’ll find something similar.”

“I’m sorry you can’t stay with the horses all day today.”

“Don’t apologise—this is my job.”

“But still…”

The guilt was strong, and with it came the realisation that Alaric didn’t want Beth to make his travel arrangements and type his reports. He wanted her to play with horses all day, smile at him over dinner, scream his name as he fucked her, then curl against him while they slept. Even though deep down, he’d known the just-a-job story was bullshit, it was the first time he’d allowed himself to admit it, and the revelation hit him like a cannonball to the chest.

Fuck.

Could his feelings have reared their ugly heads at a worse time?