Red After Dark (Blackwood Security #13) - Elise Noble Page 0,80
had to admire Sky’s thought process if not her conclusion.
“If anyone had a motive for framing Alaric for the theft, it was Black,” Ana continued. “You should applaud Sky for having the guts to tell you the truth, not punish her because you don’t want to hear it.”
“Fine, I’ll tell her to swap the treadmill for the Jacuzzi.”
“How about we focus on the more important issue?”
“Which is...?”
“The theft.”
“What? You think Black did it too? I know it wasn’t him.”
Ruining Alaric’s life and career had, by extension, impacted on me and my happiness, and Black wouldn’t have risked hurting me like that. Not to mention the fact that I’d ended up being shot at during the handover.
“Why? Because he told you so?”
“No.” Come to think of it, he’d never explicitly said he didn’t do it, but that was perhaps because I’d never asked. “Didn’t you hear me say he wasn’t even here?”
“Where was he?”
“On a job.”
“Where?”
“North Carolina. Wilmington.”
“Alone?”
“No, he was with Pale. They flew back the next day.”
Pale was one of Black’s long-standing partners in crime. Along with Nate, they’d been three of the four original Horsemen of the Apocalypse, a group of elite assassins used for jobs considered more or less impossible. After White died, the Horsemen had expanded to include me and a handful of others, but due to politics and the fact that trained killers were renegades by nature, the group was more or less dormant now. Officially, anyway. But Pale, Black, and Red were still tight. Case in point—who had Black turned to when he needed to rescue me from Ridley’s clutches? I’d woken up in the back of an RV to find Pale’s weathered face looking down at me. He ran his own team now, but he’d always help out an old buddy in a pinch.
“You saw them?”
“They landed on the airstrip out back. By that point, me and Alaric had already been used for target practice off the Virginia coast.”
“What if he got back early and left again?”
“Ana, why are you doing this?”
“Because somebody has to ask these questions and you’re not going to. We know whoever stole the money was bold as well as cunning, and who’s the most capable person you know?”
She did have a point there. Fine, we’d go through this stupid exercise so I could point out the flaws in Ana’s arguments, and then maybe she’d stop acting like a bitch with a bloody bone. The thought process might even shake some other ideas loose.
“Okay, brainstorm away.”
She looked kind of surprised at my acquiescence but led me into Riverley Hall’s gallery. Four stone pillars stood in front of the four windows, each with a rearing horse atop it. Black, Red, White, and Pale. The white horse had a black ribbon tied around its neck.
“Why the change of heart?”
“It’s easier to get this over with, and then we can focus on the real problems like you said.” I dropped onto one of the sofas, squashy beige leather that kind of hugged you as you sat. They were far more comfortable than the harsh-angled white ones in my gallery over at Little Riverley. The paintings were different too—classic oils and watercolours that contrasted with my abstract modern acrylics and sculptures. “How would you have done it?”
“I’ll let you answer first.”
“For years, I always thought it was a combination of Alaric’s boss and the crooks. I never liked the guy, but in all the time we’ve been watching him, he hasn’t put a foot wrong. No fancy holidays, no expensive cars, no drugs, no alcohol, no hookers. He fishes on the weekends.”
“But?”
How did she know there was a “but” coming? Sometimes, her thought patterns were too close to mine for comfort.
“But just lately, I’ve been wondering whether Alaric could have had some involvement.”
“Despite what you told Sky? What makes you say that?”
There was no judgement, only curiosity.
“Honestly? Because we’ve more or less ruled out everything else, and a few weeks ago, I found out…” I closed my eyes for a moment because I still couldn’t believe he’d omitted to tell me about such an important part of his life. “I found out he has a daughter. A fifteen-year-old daughter.”
“That’s…unexpected?”
“Understatement of the year. And I keep thinking that if he kept me in the dark about that, what else didn’t he tell me?”
“Maybe he had a good reason?”
“We dated for eight months. He’d made noises about transferring to the Richmond field office so we could spend more time together.”