OUT NOW!
English teacher Corazon da Silva attended the funeral of Isabella Morales, but after hearing two words whispered over the phone, she begins to suspect her best friend isn’t really dead.
Help me.
With little interest from the Colombian police, Cora goes undercover to hunt for Izzy in America. The journey promises to be dangerous, but she’s not worried because her big brother, Rafael, is watching her every move.
The only problem? Rafael’s an assassin, and he’s just shot somebody he shouldn’t have. Now they’re in a race against time to find Izzy before dangerous enemies catch up with him, and Cora isn’t the only person with a hidden agenda.
Quicksilver is the eleventh book in the Blackwood Security series but can be read as a standalone – no cliffhanger!
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The beginning…
Help me.
Two little words spoken in a breathless whisper before the line went dead.
Two little words from beyond the grave.
Two little words that would lead me to hell.
If only I’d known how things would turn out, perhaps I’d have acted differently. Walked a little slower from the kitchen to the living room so I missed the call. Chalked it up to a wrong number. Convinced myself that I’d misheard.
But I didn’t. I knew who’d called, not so much from the words themselves but from the tiny squeak that came afterwards, right before she hung up.
Isabella.
I’d heard her make that sound a hundred times before, every time she got caught doing something she shouldn’t. Taking mecatos from the kitchen as a seven-year-old. Borrowing my make-up when she hit her teens. And later, in her difficult phase, stealing from her mama’s purse.
The problem now?
I’d attended Isabella’s funeral three weeks ago.
And now her mama walked into the living room.
“Cora, are you okay? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
Not seen one; heard one. But I couldn’t tell Dores Morales that. No way. She’d always been nervy, highly strung, much like Izzy herself, and it only got worse after Izzy’s father died. After losing Izzy as well, Dores had barely kept herself together, and the last thing I wanted to do was give her false hope that her daughter was still alive. Or worse, send her further into the pit of despair by suggesting Izzy was in trouble.
“I’m fine. Is it five o’clock already? I’ll be late for work.”
“What time will you be back?”
She never used to ask, not when Izzy was alive. But now she called, worried, if I was more than five minutes late.
“My lesson ends at eight, so maybe half past? I’ll message you when I leave; I promise.”
“You’re coming straight home? Your grandma’s making bandeja paisa.”
Grandma always made bandeja paisa. A huge platter of food with beans, rice, pork, chorizo, fried egg, avocado, arepa… The list went on. Usually, I ran every day, or went to the gym at least, but since Izzy died, I’d spent all my spare time at home and now half of my clothes didn’t fit anymore.
I gave Dores a quick hug. “Yes, I’m coming straight home.”
In my bedroom, I pulled on a pair of jeans and a pale pink top. Pumps or ballet flats? Flats were more comfortable, but after dating a guy who spent six months complaining I was too tall, I’d bought three new pairs of high heels when we split up. I’d bumped into him on the odd occasion since, and each time, I’d looked down on him from four inches above. Screw you. I picked the pumps.
As usual, traffic in Medellín was at a standstill, and I choked on the thick cloud of exhaust fumes that hung in the air as I hurried along the street towards the Metro. And as I walked, I began to second-guess myself. What if I had been mistaken? Or could one of the neighbourhood kids have been playing a sick joke?
I quickly discounted that idea. The call had come on the house phone, and it was only by luck that I’d picked up rather than my grandma. The local children loved Marisol da Silva. She’d babysat most of them over the years, and none of them would want to hurt her.
Could it really be possible? Was Izzy still alive? All they’d found of her was a single hand, too decomposed for fingerprints, but Izzy’s favourite ring had been on the middle finger. I’d identified it myself. A created white sapphire I’d given her on her eighteenth birthday—diamonds were a little out of my price range—flanked by amethysts and inscribed on the inside with two joined hands and our initials to show we’d always be friends, no matter how much she tested me. And back then, she had tested me. Isabella Morales had gone wild between the ages of sixteen and nineteen, but over the last year, she’d settled down and followed in her mother’s footsteps by going to nursing school.
I’d never given up on her then, and with a sinking feeling, I realised I couldn’t give up on her now. Not if there was the slightest chance she was still alive, no matter how crazy that may seem.
But first, I needed to earn some money. Izzy had worked part-time as a waitress, so we were already one income down in our little household, and although my brother would send cash if we needed it, I hated to ask. Rafael had his own life, one he didn’t share with us anymore, and he was as reliable as a politician’s promise when it came to visiting.
Did I sound bitter? Perhaps that’s because I was. When my brother split aged sixteen, I lost a quarter of my tiny family, and although I knew that deep down he still cared, pesos made a poor substitute for his presence.
You’re probably wondering about my strange living arrangements, aren’t you? What slammed the da Silva and Morales families together eleven years ago? Tragedy. It was tragedy. None of us had anybody else left, so together, we’d moved from the wilds of the Amazonian region to Medellín for a fresh start in the tiny three-room home we were able to afford at the time.
Which was another reason I had to get to the bottom of what happened to Izzy. My grandma may have always been the strong, level-headed one, but when we came to the city, she was already in her sixties and confined to a wheelchair. Dores had worked like an ox to feed us all. If Izzy was out there, I owed it to Dores to find her daughter.
Mr. Black is back…
Black groaned as he took in the scene on the third floor at the headquarters of Blackwood Security.
A large, open-plan office.
Fifteen bemused employees.
And his wife standing on a desk at the far end, hands on hips.
“I’ll ask one more time,” she said. “Where the hell are Bob and Stewart?”
He skirted around the people gawping at Emmy and ducked into their shared office. Sure enough, her fish tank contained one goldfish—Kevin, presumably, although he had no idea how she told them apart—and two carrot sticks. Bradley, their shared personal assistant, had bought her the trio a month ago after watching a documentary on the Discovery Channel that said keeping fish helped people to de-stress, but looking at Emmy outside, it wasn’t fucking working, was it?
One of the clowns working in her Special Projects department had undoubtedly taken them, but none of the people outside looked particularly guilty. Well, apart from Nate, one of their business partners, but he always looked guilty. Black dropped his briefcase beside his desk and went to retrieve his darling wife.
“Diamond, get off the table.”
“Someone’s taken my fish.” She stared daggers around the room again. “You’d better be feeding them, you asshole.”
“They’ll bring them back.”
“But Kevin’s getting lonely.”
Black secretly doubted Kevin had even noticed his two companions were missing, but he kept that opinion to himself.
“I’ll find the fish, but we’ve got a meeting in fifteen minutes and I need to speak with you first.”
When Emmy didn’t move, he plucked her off the desk and set her on the floor. Now he got the benefit of her annoyance before she turned on her heel and stomped back to her own seat.
After three days in Albuquerque, a week in Belize, and another two days in Chicago, Black had hoped for more than a dirty glare when he arrived home. If only his wife looked at him the same way she looked at her remaining goldfish.
“The carrot sticks were a nice touch,” he said.
“Fuck you.”
Now, that was the answer he’d been hoping for. Before she could come up with any more piscatory complaints, he bundled her into the private bathroom that opened off their office and locked the door.
“On your knees, Diamond.”
“Asshole,” she muttered, but she stood on tiptoe and crushed her lips against his anyway.
“That can be arranged.”
“Prick.”
“That too.”
Black grabbed a towel from the heated rail and dropped it onto the floor. Really, they should get a cushion in here. Bradley left enough of them all over the fucking house. Emmy already had Black’s belt undone, and a low groan escaped his lips as her hand closed over his cock.
“Why are you still standing?” he asked.
That earned him another glare, which he ignored as he fisted one hand in her long blonde hair and forced her to her knees. Emmy pretended to hate being ordered around, but secretly, she liked it as much as Black did, in the bedroom at least. Outside? All bets were off.
Now she tugged his pants down, then his boxer briefs, and the instant his cock sprang free, she sucked it into her mouth. Well, not quite all of it. For a moment, he wished it were smaller so it would fit, because Emmy with a bigger mouth would be unbearable.
Then she scraped her teeth along the sensitive underside and swirled her tongue around the head, and rational thought became impossible.
Emmy was bent over the sink with her pants around her ankles when Nate shouted from outside in the office.
“Get out of the bathroom, you asshole.”
“Two minutes.”
Emmy raised her head an inch. “Five minutes.”
“We’re all waiting,” Nate told them, and Black knew his old friend would be shaking his head. But fuck him, because if he’d just got back from a job, he’d be doing exactly the same thing with his wife, Carmen.
So Black ignored Nate’s grumbling and thrust into Emmy once more, reaching around to play with her clit because yeah, they were kind of late.
“You won’t last five minutes,” he murmured.
“Yes, I— Fuck.”
She clenched around him, and he came too, holding himself deep as he peppered kisses down the side of her neck.
“Love you, Emerson Black.”
“Love you too, Chuck. Why the hell did you schedule a meeting for fifteen minutes after you got back?”
“Because I wanted to get it over with so I can take you out for dinner this evening.”
“Okay, you’re forgiven. But I still want my fucking fish back.”
“Would you like your swear jar back as well?”
“It’s full.”
The pair got a round of applause as they walked into the conference room, five minutes late for their ten a.m. meeting, and one joker threw a condom at them. But Black didn’t care. As the boss, he had to prioritise getting the job done, but as long as Blackwood kept running smoothly, he did whatever else he pleased. His wife, mainly.
She took a seat next to him and gave her friend Daniela some serious side-eye. No prizes for guessing where the condom came from. Their office assistant, Sloane, brought in coffee and a fruit platter, Nate dimmed the lights, and the first item on the agenda flashed onto the screen.
They needed a new executive-protection lead in the Texas office. Black had a preferred appointee, but as always, they’d discuss the options and take a vote on it. Eight people sat in on these management meetings, and Blackwood was bigger than any one man. Or woman.
Nick Goldman, the firm’s head of executive protection, leaned forward to speak.
“We have three men in the running for the job. First up, Joe Arlint. He’s been with us for seven years, and before that, he worked for the secret service under…”
Emmy’s phone vibrated on the table. Not her normal, everyday phone—she’d left that on her desk—but the one designated as her “red” emergency phone that she always had to answer.
Sebastien calling.
