Pitch Black (Romantic Thriller, Completed)

Chapter 4

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."