Black As Night (Quentin Black Mystery #2) (3 page)

Clicking off my web browser, I exhaled again, half in tiredness that time.

Combing my fingers through my long dark hair, I rested my head on the back of the seat. I stared up at the limousine’s roof, wondering again what possessed me to agree to go to work for Black in the first place.

I also wondered why I wouldn’t just head to the beach as soon as I got there, leave him to fend for himself regarding whatever crazy mess in which he’d gotten himself.

I knew the answer, though.

To both questions, really.

Two

FOLLOWING ORDERS

“MS. FOX?” A voice called out to me, barely audible over the traffic.

I turned, flustered, my two jackets already shed and balanced over two different arms.
 

It was hot. I should have tried to fit the jackets inside one of the bags.

Managing those, my purse, a long silver case which Kiko gave me a photograph of and told me to pick up in baggage claim in Bangkok, my phone and a different, white, carry-on suitcase––a roller bag I’d also never seen before today––had me more than a little overwhelmed.

That probably would have been true even without jet-lag and the eighty-five-degree heat with eighty percent humidity at six in the morning. The crowds of equally jet-lagged people trudging through customs and security with me and out towards the long line of taxis that waited outside the terminal didn’t help. We all bumped into one another and sweated on one another even as we stared around with equally bleary and unfocused eyes.

Since it was so early in the morning, there was a quietness in the air, too, however. People were friendly, if exhausted-looking. The crowds were less bad as well, I suspected, compared to what they might be in the middle of the day or early evening.

The two suitcases were probably the hardest part to manage.

Based on what Black said, I assumed the white roller bag must be filled with clothes from my own apartment––also thanks to Kiko. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what was in the larger, silver hard case, since it appeared to be fitted with an expensive-looking combination lock.

Whatever it contained, I highly suspected it wasn’t meant for me.

As I went through the revolving glass door to the sidewalk outside baggage claim, I found myself wishing I had an extra set of hands.

Even so, when that set of hands appeared, taking both jackets, the larger silver case and the roller bag away from me with a polite smile and a bow, I just stood there, confused. In the end, I felt strangely naked, despite my near-instant relief at having it all gone.

He left me my purse and phone, so that was the good news. I found myself thinking it likely wasn’t a thief, given that. I still wondered if maybe he’d confused me with someone else.

Then a woman called my name.

My eyes found her standing next to a white SUV parked at the curb.

She was Thai, maybe five-foot-two and in her early thirties, I guessed. She was well-dressed, wearing a black pencil skirt, three inch heels, and a sky blue blouse with a ruffle. She was also almost shockingly beautiful. She wore a suit jacket as well, but I didn’t see a bead of sweat on her. Her make-up appeared flawless. Her straight black hair had been swept up perfectly into a mother of pearl comb.

Her hands folded neatly in front of her as she smiled at me.

“Ms. Fox?” she repeated politely.

The man in the black suit who took the jackets and the two suitcases from me seconds earlier was already disappearing those inside the back door of the SUV as I approached.

“Hello,” I said, smiling. “You’re here for me?”

“You are a guest of Mr. Black, yes?”

Reaching her, I extended a hand, which she shook carefully.
 

“Yes,” I said, still doing my best to hide my puzzlement. “I’m his, uh...employee. You can call me Miriam. Or Miri.”

Smiling wider, she motioned towards the car politely with one hand.

“Please,” she said.

The man who’d taken my luggage now held open the rear car door.
 

Hesitating only the barest moment, I nodded stiffly, then followed the direction of her motioning hands.

Climbing into the back seat, I thanked the Thai driver right before he closed it. Then I watched him walk around the front of the car while the woman walked briskly around the back of it. The man opened the door in front and slid into the driver’s seat, which was on the right, like in England. The well-dressed woman opened the door opposite me. Sitting precisely on the same bench seat but across from me, she smiled at me again.

Neither of them spoke.

Seconds later, the car was moving out into traffic.

I looked out the window, at first seeing only glimpses of sky and greenery through pieces of the cement parking structure around the airport. Then we emerged into the early morning sunlight outside the complex and that light blue sky opened up. Once we climbed the onramp and entered the freeway proper I began to see buildings on either side of that long stretch of asphalt. They weren’t tall like I expected, not at first. Instead I saw elaborate billboards lining the freeway for a few miles, more greenery than I expected, snaking waterways that looked like canals and what looked like rows and rows of suburban homes with tile roofs.

We must be pretty far out from the city still, I thought.

We drove for a few more minutes in silence when I remembered something and turned, looking at the woman. She met my gaze, smiling as politely as before.

“Umm...” It hit me that she’d never given me a name. “What shall I call you?”

“You may call me Fah.”

“Fah?” I smiled. “Okay...Fah. Did Mr. Black tell you anything about picking up someone else?” I hesitated, trying to read a reaction in her eyes and failing. “He mentioned the Hanu Hotel to me...on Sathorn. His lawyer?”

She smiled, nodding. “Yes.”

“We can go there?”

She nodded again.
“Chai, khá.
Yes.”

I nodded, trying to hide my puzzlement. I found myself wondering if she spoke much English. Related to that, I wondered if she’d really understood what I’d said or was merely being polite.

Also, what she was doing in the car with me exactly.

I ended up reading her briefly, with my mind, I mean.

I tried not to be invasive, but what I found reassured me. Black’s people had called her to come pick me up the night before. She’d worked with Black in Bangkok previously, and didn’t find his odd demands particularly surprising. She’d understood me about the hotel. She also knew we were supposed to go to the police station after that.

Once I knew that much, I relaxed a little.

Even so, it hit me in the same set of seconds that it had been pretty foolhardy of me to get into a car with total strangers. Really, if I hadn’t been so out of it, I should have read them
before
I let them take my bags and hustle me out of the airport. If there was ever a good use of psychic powers, it was to verify your escorts’ identities before getting into a strange car in a country where you don’t know the language.

I’d have to be more careful, at least until I could get some sleep.

My flight ended up being almost twenty-five hours––including layovers––with one stop in Tai Pei before arriving here. I’d spent a good chunk of the longer leg of that flight watching movies since I’ve never been any good at sleeping on planes.

I found myself thinking about Black now, as I stared out the window of the car, only seeing a blur of green broken by buildings and roofs as my mind wandered.

I really barely knew him. I’d barely even seen him since the whole Wedding Murder thing went down. Probably a full week passed before my body recovered enough for me to think about going back to work. Then I’d spent another week or so buried in reams of paperwork and security clearance crap for his company. That included everything from stacks of forms to fill out to range and written tests for firearms permits, tours of the databases and encryption software utilized by his team to conduct research, obtaining my own passwords, desk, phone and chair, as well as a small office in the main building on California Street.

Black also requested that I go through a medical examination by his team. When I agreed verbally, he also had me sign yet another written document that in part assured me the contents of that exam would be confidential and destroyed were I to leave his employ.

I didn’t see much of Black himself during that time.

He was around, but I don’t think we had a single real conversation over those few weeks, not even a work-related one.

We definitely hadn’t talked about anything else.

Hell, I don’t think we’d even been alone together.

He’d kept his promise about not bothering me in the apartment he set up for me in his building. In fact, if I were being completely truthful, he kept that promise a little better than I wanted...and definitely better than I expected. Since I lived under the same security protections in place both for his office and his own residence, he seemed to think that my being safe and under his direct purview was enough.

More frustrating still, I hadn’t gotten a single opportunity to ask him the million or so other things I wanted to know about him––meaning about who and what he was, or what he claimed to be, at least. He’d told me before that we’d talk about those things “later” when we had time to get into it all in more depth.

But that “later” never came.

He’d disappeared not long after the last time I tried to pin him down on a time for us to talk, and until his phone call of the day before, I hadn’t spoken to him.

When Black hadn’t reappeared after fifteen or so days, I’d moved out of the building on California Street and back to my own place on Clement in the Inner Richmond.

I’d decided to keep my old office on Fillmore too, since I didn’t want to dump all of my therapy clients––at least not overnight––and I was paid up on a year of lease. I’d been working out of there primarily for the past few weeks, rather than the building on California. One of Black’s tech guys even came and set me up to use the databases and the software encryption there, so I had to assume Black knew, or at least was okay with the move in theory.

His disappearance stung a bit though, I admit.

Not the fact that he’d left for work, which he’d already warned me he would do on a fairly frequent basis, but more the fact that he hadn’t bothered to tell me before he did. Also, if I were being totally honest, it bothered me that I hadn’t heard anything from him in the time since.

I don’t know what I expected when I went to work for him exactly, but I think some part of me thought he’d loop me into his plans a bit more.

More precisely, I thought he’d finally
tell
me some things.

When I first met him, he’d intimated a lot about who he really was, who he thought I was, where he thought we both came from and what it all meant. He’d fed me bits and pieces of some crazy conspiracy he seemed to operate under, which included him being from another dimension, some other race that looked more or less like humans, psychic assassins, alien religions that involved racial purity, crime lords...

Okay, and now, as I was thinking this, I found myself wondering
why
it was I wanted to talk to Black about any of it. Really, why had I even agreed to work with him?

But I did want to know.