Red After Dark (Blackwood Security #13) - Elise Noble Page 0,58
onto him. Nice.
But Alaric humoured her. “I’d most likely ask Eunice if she knew where anyone connected with Ryland worked.”
“I did. She didn’t. But she recognised Gemma’s picture, and so I knew she was his girlfriend.”
“Picture? What picture?”
“Almost every phone has a camera now.”
Hevrin had taken photos of them that evening? It bothered Alaric that he hadn’t noticed, and judging by Emmy’s pissed-off expression, she wasn’t happy about it either.
“But don’t worry,” Hevrin continued. “I’ve deleted them now.”
Which only offered a small measure of comfort.
“That doesn’t explain how you found her at the gallery.”
“Eunice said she used to see Gemma and Ryland in gym clothes together, plus she knew he drove a blue Honda. So I found it in the car park, and on the back seat, there was a class timetable for Workout World, so I figured they might both be members. All I had to do was look up Gemma’s details on the computer there, then visit her neighbours until I found one who knew where she worked. Eunice watched Indy for a few hours.”
All she had to do. Hevrin said this as if playing detective were perfectly normal.
“How did you access the computer at the gym?”
“I stuffed tissue into a plughole in the ladies’ locker room, then turned on the tap and told the guy at the desk the sink was overflowing. He took ages to find a mop, probably because I’d moved it.”
If Alaric hadn’t been crazy over Beth, perhaps he’d have fallen a tiny bit in love with Hevrin.
Wait a second. What was he thinking? He already had Emmy in his life, not to mention her whole posse of X-chromosomed loonies. The last thing he needed was another sneaky female driving him insane.
Meanwhile, Judd was looking at Hevrin with newfound admiration.
“Do you want a job?” he asked.
Actually, that wasn’t the worst idea he’d ever had.
But Hevrin shook her head. “I’m not allowed to work until my asylum application is processed. I don’t understand it—people here, they complain that the government gives us money, yet we’re not permitted to earn it for ourselves.”
“Okay, so how about this… You lend us a hand with this Ridley thing, and you can stay in the spare room while your asylum application goes through. We get info on a scumbag, and you get to avoid World War Three for a while. Win-win. Uh, how long does an asylum application take?”
Emmy scrawled a note to Alaric. You don’t know who she is.
“Years, maybe.”
“That long? Right. Okay.”
“I can’t expect to stay in your home for all that time. But just until the police let me back into my flat…it would be nice.”
Alaric scribbled back, I know we want her on our side.
Emmy gave a one-shouldered shrug. She couldn’t argue with that.
“Will you help us?” Alaric asked.
She nodded towards Emmy. “Who is she?”
“Emmy. She’s an old friend of mine.”
“Eric Ridley’s trying to interfere in a US senatorial election,” Emmy said. “The last thing any of us want is for more people who think the way he does to get elected to positions of influence. We’re trying to bring down his candidate, but we’ve only got nine days to do so. If you know something that could help, we’d very much appreciate hearing about it.”
“Eric Ridley should be in jail.”
“I’d dearly love to put him there, but we need your witness.”
“There are too many Ridleys in your military. They protect their own. From privates to the president, they protect their own.”
“James Harrison wasn’t the president when Ridley shot those people.”
“Men with power, they are all the same.”
“Not true. But I think you know that. Study thine enemy, right? President Harrison’s been pushing for more support for the Kurdish people, but he keeps getting stymied by Congress. Which is why it’s even more important to block a psycho from sitting in the senate for the remaining five years of Senator Carnes’s term.”
“The witness must be protected. She’s been through enough.”
She? On second thought, given his current company, that fact shouldn’t have surprised Alaric in the slightest.
“She was on the boat that night?”
“She swam a mile and a half back to shore as her family lay dead. I spoke to her extensively. Even months later, she still heard Ridley’s voice in her nightmares, giving the order to shoot.”
“Where is she now?”
“Now? I do not know. She went to live with an uncle, but they had to keep moving because of the war.”
“We can send a team to get her,” Emmy offered. “We have people nearby.”