Even assassins need a vacation…
When Diamond and her equally deadly husband head to Dahab, jewel of the Red Sea, all they want is a relaxing fortnight on the beach.
But the bodies soon start stacking up, and for once, it’s not their fault. Together with local cop Khaled, they’re soon sucked into the case, but there are too many suspects and not enough clues. Then there’s teenager Zena, their self-appointed sidekick who just can’t keep her nose out of other people’s business. Will the team be able to unravel the mystery before the killer gets personal?
Stolen Hearts is a standalone thriller novel featuring characters from the Blackwood Security series.
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Why not take a trip to the locations that inspired the story as you read? You can find a photo tour of Dahab HERE.
And if you have Spotify, my Stolen Hearts playlist is HERE.
Excerpt: The Beginning…
“Diamond? Do you want the good news or the bad news?” my husband asked from the cockpit of our jet.
We’d just boarded at Cairo International Airport, ready for a short hop over the Med to Italy to dispose of a particularly pesky oligarch’s son who’d developed a penchant for bumping off competitors to his daddy’s business. Whether it was to help the old man or simply to protect his inheritance, we weren’t sure, but either way it didn’t matter. Sonny boy’s last murder had been on American soil, and the powers that be had deemed he needed to go.
“Gimme the bad news.”
Get it over with.
“We’re not getting paid a million and a half bucks to dispose of Anton Ludovich.”
“Oh?”
“That’s the good news. He died all by himself.”
“How?”
“Drove his Ferrari off a bridge. Cocaine was mentioned.”
“So where does that leave us? Should I file a new flight plan?”
More bloody paperwork. The bane of my life. What do you think it’s like to be a jet-setting assassin? All glamorous parties and car chases and silenced pistols? I wished. No, mostly it was meetings and planning and occasionally, I got to crawl in mud. Then there was the time I almost died in the desert, but that’s a whole other story.
“Yes. We need a new flight plan.”
“Virginia?”
Virginia was home. Or at least, it had been for the last seventeen years—more than half of my life. At heart, I was a London girl and always would be, but I’d moved to the US after a job offer I couldn’t refuse, and look at me now—I’d clawed my way to the top of the ladder, leaving chaos, destruction, and piles of bodies in my wake. And still inconsiderate assholes dicked with my plans.
“We’ll need more fuel,” Black said, followed by a tiny hesitation. Most people wouldn’t have seen past my husband’s poker face. Me? I sensed there was a “but” coming. “But we do have a gap in our schedules now.”
See? “And?”
“We could take a…vacation?”
He said the word tentatively, testing it out. Black didn’t take time off as a rule. The occasional minibreak, maybe, or undercover work in sunny climates, but not proper holidays. In the fifteen years we’d been married, we’d only been on one bona fide vacation, and that was more of a recuperation period than anything else.
“Are you feeling okay?”
“We’ve got two weeks before our next job starts.” A joint security exercise with the Secret Service. We’d been hired to play the bad guys, hurrah. “We’re apart too much, and just for once, I’d like to spend some time doing nothing. See how it feels.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Since we’re already in Egypt, why don’t we go to Dahab? How long since we visited?”
Two and a half years had passed since I last set foot in the tiny town, but the memories of dragging myself up the beach in my underwear after trying to start World War III on the other side of the Gulf of Aqaba were as vivid as if it had happened yesterday. For Black? It must’ve been three or four years since he’d been there.
Together, we ran Blackwood Security along with two of Black’s old Navy buddies, and over the years, it had grown to be the second-largest security and investigations firm in the world. Thousands of employees and offices on six continents meant vacations were something other people took, although Nate, my husband’s best friend and one of our business partners, did threaten to send me to Antarctica on a regular basis.
Sometimes, I felt tempted to take him up on the offer. Business was booming, which meant our schedules barely allowed enough time to shit in the mornings, let alone go sightseeing. Black oversaw the investigations division while I ran Special Projects, which basically meant I got sent all the crap nobody else wanted to touch. Everything from rescue missions to spying to common or garden assassination came across my desk.
And I was tired.
“It’s been too long. A vacation? Are you serious?”
Stupid question. He was always serious.
“Change the flight plan. I’ll call Bob and let him know we’re coming. Actually, speaking of coming…” He eyed up the tiny bedroom at the back of the plane. “The admin can wait for ten minutes.”
“Only ten minutes? What happened to your stamina, old man?”
He picked me up and threw me over his shoulder, slapping me on the ass with his free hand. Any other man would have died for that, but with Black, I only giggled. Giggled. What was wrong with me? This whole vacation thing was already messing with my mind.
But who cared? A fortnight on the beach doing nothing but my husband sounded like heaven to me. Sun, sea, sand, and sex—the perfect combination as long as we didn’t mix the sand with the sex, because that could get painful.
I landed on the bed in a heap, but I was smiling. “Love you, Chuck.”
“Love you too, Diamond.”
Excerpt: A word from Mr. Black…
Charles Black lasted thirty minutes on a sunlounger. Sitting still for any longer than that left him bored. Irritated. On surveillance duty in the field, he could control the twitchiness, tamp it down, but it was always lurking in the background, niggling at him. With Emmy reading peacefully beside him, he tried checking his emails to distract himself, but when the damn phone threatened to overheat in the morning sun, he shoved it under his towel and stood up.
“I’m going for a swim. Join me?”
The sea was right there, calling to him. His time in the Navy SEALs had turned him amphibious. Two or three miles in the open water and he’d be calm again, ready to do whatever else a man was supposed to do on a vacation.
But Emmy didn’t look too enthusiastic.
“We’re supposed to be on vacation. You literally used that word yesterday.”
“And?”
“If I wanted to die of exhaustion, I could’ve done that in Virginia. And I’m already shattered from last night.”
No, they hadn’t made it out for dinner, but he had eaten well.
“Swimming isn’t exhausting.”
“It is when I’m trying to keep up with you.”
“We both need to stay in shape.”
“I’ll give you a blow job if you don’t make me swim.”
Black hesitated. Emmy sucked like an inverted hurricane and took pleasure in a job well done. Which was why he called her bluff.
“You’ll give me a blow job anyway.”
“Dammit, you know me so well. Okay, I’ll go if you agree to let me do nothing all afternoon.”
“Deal.”
“And bring me drinks.”
He wasn’t a fucking waiter. “There are staff here to bring you drinks.”
“That’s not the point.”
Of course it wasn’t. Black liked to be in control. Emmy knew that, and so she pushed the boundaries at every available opportunity. He pretended to be annoyed, but secretly, he enjoyed the challenge. He’d concede on this point, but he wanted something in return.
“Fine. I’ll bring you drinks if you wear a bikini.”
“Sure. I’ll wear a bikini.”
Hmm. That was easy. Almost too easy…
Black’s phone buzzed, and he moved to the shade of a carob tree to check who’d messaged. Nate, his former Navy SEAL swim buddy, checking whether Black would be available for a videoconference with a client the day after tomorrow. He almost answered in the affirmative, but then he thought of Emmy. The whole reason he’d suggested this trip was because the last three times he’d tried to take her out to dinner, work had got in the way. And he’d noticed the tiredness in her eyes this last month. She’d never have said anything, but perhaps Anton Ludovich’s untimely death had been fate’s way of telling them to take a break.
He tapped out a reply to Nate.
Black: Unless it’s an emergency, neither of us is available for anything for the next two weeks.
But Black still needed to swim.
“Ready?” he asked Emmy, sticking his head around the villa’s front door.
“Almost. Where are we swimming?”
“In the laguna?”
“Can’t. The banana boat’s bombing around, and I like my head where it is, thanks. We’ll have to walk over to Baby Bay.”
She stepped out of the bedroom, and Black let out a groan. He hadn’t thought this through, had he? Emmy had gone with a violet two-piece to match her eyes, and that wasn’t the only thing it enhanced. If she ventured out in public dressed that way, he might be forced to murder someone.
He went inside and rummaged through the closet.
“Here. Wear this.”
“A kaftan? Are you fucking kidding me?”
Behind the Scenes…
The cover of Stolen Hearts looks Photoshopped, right? Well, it's had a few tweaks, but it's actually a real photo, taken at the Canyon dive site in Dahab. Here's how we took it:
And here are the photos taken as I descended:
