When the Shadows Fall (Blackwood Security #14) - Elise Noble

CHAPTER 1 - SKY

I FELT HIM before I saw him. A dark shadow materialising behind me.

“Your knife’s showing,” Rafael whispered as he took his place by my side.

I’d never seen him in a tux before. He scrubbed up well. One might even mistake him for civilised, but I knew the truth. Tonight, he was a mountain lion forced to play the part of a pussycat, but those claws would pop out at the merest hint of trouble.

As the string quartet in the corner began to play, I glanced down at my dress. Dark grey silk with a tight bodice and a long, flowing skirt edged in black lace, it was easily the most beautiful thing I’d ever worn. And since I’d borrowed it from Emmy, my new boss, it was undoubtedly the most expensive thing too. But sure enough, the edge of a carbon-fibre handle was peeking out from my cleavage. Shit. I shoved it farther into my bra and rearranged the girls.

“Better,” Rafael said.

Was that a hint of a smile flickering at his lips? Yes, I do believe it was. A momentous occasion.

“Stop looking at my tits.”

“Just doing my job.”

Unfortunately, he wasn’t kidding. As one of my mentors at Blackwood Security, the company I’d somehow ended up working for, Rafael’s role—perhaps even his passion in life—involved telling me what to do. Run faster, jump higher, hit harder, get that bullet in the centre of the fucking target, Sky. This morning, we’d started at five o’clock with a ten-mile run, then spent three hours in the gym, another two on the shooting range, and finally got to my favourite part—learning how to ride a motorcycle. After two weeks of practice, I could do wheelies with the best of them.

But tonight? Tonight, we were going to dinner. Three courses plus wine at a flashy awards show, complete with tasteful music, dancing, and—if everything went according to plan—the capture of an art thief we’d been hunting for months.

And when I say we were going to dinner, we weren’t going far. The whole event was nothing more than an elaborate sting operation being held at Riverley Hall, Emmy’s husband’s ancestral home. Most of the time it was her home too, but a month ago they’d had a bust-up and she’d moved into the house next door. Little Riverley, although that was something of a misnomer seeing as it had six bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a swimming pool, and a movie theatre.

Why all the pretence? Because Killian Marshall, the guy we were after, was a hard man to talk to. Firstly, he lived in a secure compound in the town of Penngrove, Virginia, and he didn’t go out much. Secondly, when he did leave his home, he had a habit of travelling with trigger-happy heavies. Plus research showed he had a concealed-carry permit. Emmy and Alaric, one of her exes, had been on the receiving end of Team Marshall’s firepower when an operation went wrong eight years ago, and nobody wanted a repeat performance.

A dozen of Blackwood’s finest had spent the last week sniffing around Penngrove, including staking out Casa Killian, and what they’d initially thought would be a simple job got trickier with every new snippet of information they unearthed. In fact, they’d been about to hop over the wall for a sneak-and-peek when Mackenzie Cain, Blackwood’s number-one IT geek-slash-hacker, pushed the proverbial panic button. I’d been in the gym with Emmy when the call came, and she put it on speaker.

“Has the team gone in?” Mack asked.

“They’re on—”

“Stop them.”

Emmy didn’t hesitate, not even for a second. She just picked up another phone and did exactly that.

“Dan? Stand down, and Ravi too. … No, I don’t know, not yet, but Mack’s found some sort of problem. Call you back in five.” Then to Mack, “Okay, what’s up?”

“I did a little nosing through the records at the sheriff’s office, and I found notes of an incident that took place seven years ago. There’s not much in the way of documentation—it looks as though they tried to hush things up, probably because Killian Marshall sponsored Sheriff Braunton’s daughter to study drama at the Juilliard School in New York.”

“And?”

“Two kids decided to snoop around on the Marshall property one night. Local teenagers. They claimed it was a dare because the house is kinda creepy and Marshall doesn’t exactly welcome visitors. According to the notes, they were meant to take a selfie on the front steps as proof they’d been there. Except a storm came over, so they thought