Joker in the Pack (Blackwood UK #1)

Chapter 43

CHAPTER 43

SCREAMS FILLED THE air as Tate and Nye both fell to the floor.

Mine.

The screams were mine.

Blood leaked onto the carpet as I tried to get to Nye, but my feet were too tightly bound to walk. I ended up jumping, desperately trying to keep my balance. Please, don’t let Tate have claimed another victim.

Nye didn’t move, but as I got closer, Tate groaned. Oh shit, he was trying to get up.

I grabbed an ugly statue of a dog from a side table and hefted it in both hands. It looked antique and, to my untrained eye, solid bronze.

And that meant it was heavy. Good.

I raised my hands as high as I could and brought the ugly ornament down on Tate’s head.

He lay still.

Carol’s voice popped into my head, telling her tale about Emmy and Horrible Henry, swiftly followed by a replay of Tate’s words from earlier. He had plans for my pretty mouth, did he? Well, let’s see how those plans went with a third testicle. I raised the dog once more and walloped him between the legs. If he was unconscious, there were no witnesses, right?

The bronze slipped out of my hands and thudded to the carpet as I fell to my knees next to Nye. I pressed my bound hands to his chest. An age passed before I felt the flutter of his heart under my palms, and I sagged in relief. But the wetness seeping into the knees of my trousers told me this wasn’t over. Nye’s blood had formed an abstract pattern on the floor, more Kazuo Shiraga than Jackson Pollock.

But at least he was alive.

A phone. I needed a phone, but before I could find one, a stranger walked through the door. Blonde, beautiful, and even with bodies lying all over the floor, she had a composure I could only dream of.

“Please help him,” I sobbed as the nightmare overcame me. “Please.”

She dropped to her knees beside Nye and tore open his leather jacket. His white T-shirt had turned red.

“That bloody idiot,” she said. “He jumped out the helicopter while it was still five feet off the ground.”

“Is he going to die?”

“Only if I kill him myself. He should have waited.”

“We need to call an ambulance.”

She tapped her ear. “I’m miked up, and it’s already on its way. I’m Emmy Black, by the way. I’d shake hands, but…”

“It’s a problem for me too.”

Before I could blink, she’d whipped out a knife and sliced through the rope. A second later, my ankles were free too.

“Are the others alive?” she asked.

“I’m not sure.”

I stumbled over to Warren and felt for a pulse. As my fingers pressed against his wrist, he stirred and opened his eyes.

“Olivia, are you okay?”

Oh, thank goodness. “Shouldn’t that be my question?”

He smiled up at me and raised a hand to his head, wincing as he touched the lump on his temple. “Palmer said you’d fainted and gone for a lie-down, and when I insisted on coming to find you, he must have whacked me with something.”

“A vase.”

“So much for storming to your rescue.”

“You tried, and I’ll always be grateful for that. Now, lie still until the ambulance gets here.”

Warren lay back again, but a groan from Tate on the other side of the sofa sent me reeling onto my backside, and I scrambled in the opposite direction. Emmy didn’t even flinch.

“He’s alive! What do we do?” I squeaked.

“How about you pop out to the helicopter and get my first-aid kit? The big green bag in the back.”

“But what about Tate?”

“Don’t worry about Tate. Nye needs fluids.”

I paused, torn between helping Nye and making sure Tate didn’t hurt anybody else, but Emmy flicked her wrist at the door and I went through it. I got the distinct impression it wasn’t a good idea to argue with her. The helicopter was parked on the back lawn between the swimming pool and the tennis court, and I yanked the door open. Green bag… Green bag… There it was. From the size, it was more of a portable hospital than a first-aid kit, and I lugged it back inside as fast as I could.

“I’ve got it.”

“Thanks. Left-hand compartment, I need a bag of Ringer-lactate, an IV administration set, and a packet of QuikClot EMS dressing—the little squares.”

“Do you know how to use all of this stuff?”

“I watched a couple of episodes of Grey’s Anatomy a while back.”

“Uh, I’m not sure…”

Nye cracked an eye open. “Ignore her bullshit. She knows exactly what she’s doing.”

Oh, thank goodness. “Then what about Tate? Should I tie him up or something?”

“No need,” Emmy said.

“I really think we should. What if he wakes up properly?”

“No, what I mean is Tate died. While you went to get the first-aid kit.”

What? “But he was waking up.”

“Head injuries can be funny things.” She shrugged. “Unfortunate.”

Her demeanour said it was anything but. “They can?”

“Do you have a problem with that?”

Did I? After all the pain Tate had caused to not only me, Nye, and Warren, but to his own family? Hell no. “Not at all. Sometimes it’s just easier.”

She smiled, more to herself than me, it seemed. “It is indeed.”

“But I feel fine,” Nye told the doctor six hours later.

“Mr. Holmes, you lost several pints of blood and took a nasty crack to the head. You need to stay in overnight for observation.”

“Can’t someone observe me at home?”

“I can do that,” I offered.

“You’ve already tested me for everything. How the hell is a stool sample relevant to getting shot in the shoulder?”

Apparently, Blackwood had a great insurance package, and the hospital had taken full advantage of that. I swear I heard the technician working the MRI machine mention something about today’s patient paying for a great Christmas party.

“You never know,” the doctor said. “And head injuries can be unpredictable. Look at Mr. Palmer. Miss Porter here clonked him with an ornament, and now he’s in the morgue.”

I wasn’t entirely convinced my efforts were to blame, but when I glanced over at Emmy sitting in the corner, her expression didn’t change.

“How about me?” Warren asked from the bed next to Nye’s.

A shortage of space meant they’d ended up sharing a room, but Nye had been surprisingly accommodating about the situation once he found out what Warren’s timely interruption at Prestwold Manor had saved me from.

“Same goes for you, Mr. Hannigan.”

“Nye, if the doctor thinks it best that you stay here, you really should.” I squeezed his hand. “I’ll worry otherwise.”

He pulled me down for a kiss, and he would have moved on to tongues if the doctor hadn’t cleared his throat.

“So, that’s settled,” he said. “I’ll get the nurse to bring you the dinner menu. I believe it’s beef Wellington tonight.”

Nye caught my eye and snickered. “Look on the bright side; it can’t be as bad as Maddie’s.”

“You haven’t tried her Moroccan tagine yet.”

“I’m busy that year.”

“Speaking of Maddie, she’s offered to come round tonight and keep me company.”

I said she offered, but I didn’t exactly get a say in the matter. Still, at least I could say sorry in person for being so stupid with Tate earlier, in addition to the thousand apologies I’d given her on the phone. And if she hadn’t called Nye when she did… I shuddered. The consequences didn’t bear thinking about.

“That’s good of her, babe.”

“Mickey’s coming too. He reckons he’s been researching my family tree, and I was related to Queen Elizabeth the first about seven hundred generations ago.”

“Doesn’t surprise me.”

“Maybe we could ask him to do yours?”

Emmy had a coughing fit, and I passed her a glass of water as Nye shook his head.

“Doubt Mickey would find anything interesting there.”

A knock at the door made us look up, and everyone groaned in unison as Graham poked his head into the room.

“Evening, all. I think I need to take a statement.”

He thought ? Good heavens, didn’t he know anything about his own job?

Nye waved him inside. “How about we make it quick? I need to get some sleep.”

“Of course, of course. Oh dear. I seem to have forgotten my pen.”

Emmy rummaged in her bag and passed over a sleek-looking black ballpoint. “Here, borrow this.”

“Thanks. And you are?”

“Nobody important. Hospital quality control.”

“Ah, in that case, let’s start with you, Miss Parker.”

“Porter.”

“Sorry?”

“Miss Porter. My name’s Olivia Porter.”

Graham questioned us for an hour, although we could have finished in half the time if he hadn’t kept asking the same things twice. By the end, Nye had feigned sleep and Warren pretended he had a headache and called for the nurse to save us. Then Emmy told Graham she needed her pen back, and he gave up.

“Do you think he wrote it all down?” I asked Emmy as we walked out to get a taxi back to London. Apparently, somebody else had already retrieved her helicopter from Tate’s garden.

“Doesn’t matter. That pen had special ink in it. Everything’ll be gone by tomorrow morning.”

I giggled. “Funny joke.”

“He deserves a disciplinary.”

“Wait—you weren’t serious, were you?”

She just smiled and kept walking.