“Let you go? Oh no, sweetheart. I’ve got plans for you.”
“Plans? What plans?”
For the first time, a hint of worry came into the teenager’s voice. Even though I was still mad at her for taking my car, I also felt pity because I wouldn’t have wanted to be on the receiving end of Emerson’s “plans” either.
“I need to see a doctor and have a very awkward conversation with my husband.” Her husband? Poor guy. “Since you’ve sidelined me, you get to make amends by taking my place on the surveillance team.”
Alaric opened his mouth to argue, but Emerson silenced him with a sharp look. That didn’t stop the brat from protesting though.
“Are you kidding? I don’t know the first thing about surveillance.”
“Maybe not, but you’re street-smart, and that’s something you can’t learn by taking a course. Just do what Alaric tells you and don’t steal any more cars. How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“How old are you really? Don’t lie to me. I’ll find out the truth, one way or another.”
“Seventeen.” Her tone turned sulky. “But I’ll be eighteen in two months.”
Emerson nodded to herself, and I couldn’t read her smile. Cunning? Satisfied? Whatever, it made me nervous.
“Your name?”
“Sky.”
“Your real name?”
“That is my real name.”
“Full name?”
“Sky Malone. I don’t have a middle name. My birth mother was too busy smoking crack to think of one.”
Emerson’s smile only grew wider.
“Alaric, meet Sky. You can bond in the car. A father-daughter surveillance team—how does that sound?” Then to Sky, “Don’t forget to call him Daddy, sweetheart. He likes that.”
Alaric’s face clouded over. “Shut the fuck up, Emmy.”
“What happened to your sense of humour?”
“I lost it eight years ago.”
“Ooh,” Sky said. “Have we wandered into a domestic?”
This time, they both turned to her and spoke in unison. “Be quiet.”
She ignored that. “Look, I’d love to help, but I can’t.”
“I wasn’t giving you a choice. A couple of hours, and it’ll be over.”
“No, you don’t understand. I can’t. I only came here to pick up my brother, and he doesn’t do well on his own.”
“Yeah, I know. We met. Find him some clothes, and I’ll drop him off in London on my way to the doctor.”
“No offence, but I don’t trust you.”
“I get it. Believe me, I understand how hard it is to trust people in your position, but sometimes you have to take a chance. The other option is for me to call social services and the cops. Technically, you’re still a minor, and I’m sure between them they can put you through hell for the next two months.”
“You’re a bitch.”
“I’m not disagreeing with you, but I’m a bitch with enough contacts in London to make your life a misery if you cross me. I’ll take your brother home, but you will do this job. Get your knee cleaned up. There’s a first aid kit in the boot of my car.” Sky’s expression turned mutinous, but Emerson didn’t care, and now the woman turned her attention on me. “Do you need to call your contact to explain you’re running late?”
I couldn’t decide whether to be envious of her self-confidence or disgusted by the way she ordered people around. But I realised I had to do as she said. I was the wrong side of thirty so threats of social services wouldn’t work on me, but she’d surely think of a way to make my life even more of a misery than it already was. And as she said, it would all be over in a couple of hours.
“Yes, I should probably call.”
“Gimme five minutes to round up the right junkie and organise a team to come and clean up this shithole, then we’ll get going.”
CHAPTER 12 - SKY
“FOR THE RECORD, Emmy was bullshitting about the Daddy thing,” Alaric said as we followed Bethany Stafford-Lyons’s car along the M4 towards Richmond-upon-Thames with the AC blasting. Stafford-Lyons. I’d been dead right about the posh part. Who needed two surnames?
“Yeah, I figured that. She looks like she talks a lot of bullshit. All I can say is that she’d better take Lenny home the way she said.”
Otherwise, it wouldn’t be her hunting me down. London was my home turf, and I’d find that bitch, starting with a trip to Blackwood Security’s building in King’s Cross. I’d seen the card she gave to Bethany and memorised the address out of habit.
“She will.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I’ve known her for a long time, and she’s a woman of her word.”
“I figured you two had some weird kind of history. Do you, like, know her, know her?”
“None of your business, kid.”
“So that’s a yes, then.”
I took some satisfaction when Alaric scowled, his pinched brows and flattened lips reflected in the windscreen. So far, he seemed slightly less unpleasant than Emerson, but she’d set a pretty low bar so that wasn’t saying much. And I still didn’t fully understand what was going on. Something about a stolen painting and a pickup, and Alaric needed a sidekick because a lone male watching people would stick out like a sore thumb if he hung around for more than a few minutes. Fine, I could stand next to him for a bit. I got that Emmy was pissed at me—her nose had looked like Rudolf’s by the time she drove away in that fancy car of hers, swollen across the bridge and turning a nice shade of red. Considering the way she’d trussed me up afterwards, I was oddly proud of myself for managing to inflict so much damage.
Lenny, of course, had no recollection of the incident whatsoever. We’d found him in the living room, seated in a dusty velvet armchair wearing only those damn boxers and a vacant expression. When I saw him, that was the closest I’d come to crying in months. Years, even. I just wanted him to get better, but apart from picking him up every time he fell, I didn’t know what to do. Drugs had taken ahold of him, and I was fighting a losing battle to break him free. Life had turned into a vicious circle—the more trouble he got into, the more it cost me to get him out of it, everything from paying off his dealers to making sure he ate. Lenny hadn’t been able to hold down even the most menial of jobs for months. And the more hours I worked, the less time I was able to spend babysitting him, which meant he got into even more trouble.
The selfish part of me was grateful that Emerson had taken charge of him because it meant that for an hour—just one damn hour—I could leave the worrying to somebody else. Helping some American to follow a painting was child’s play in comparison to watching my wayward foster brother. Especially since that painting was the one from the boot of the Fiesta. I mean, the thing was in a hefty wooden box. Nobody could slip it into a pocket or swallow it if the heat got too much.
And while I might not have had any formal training in surveillance, I’d gone through a phase of following Lenny’s dealers and shopping them to Crimestoppers. Half a dozen of them had been arrested, and those assholes had been sneaky fuckers. I’d only stopped because Lenny had a knack for finding suppliers and each new one was worse than the last.